GHOST WHISPERS

Blame it on ephemera.

Or the etymology of the word sincere,

that is flawed to the core.

(Look it up, you’ll see what I mean.)

Blame it, - whatever it is for you -

on any damn thing you want.

But put the blame somewhere.

Get it out of you.

Cough it up like a fur ball.

Send it hurling into a spittoon

with a clang! and a splat!

Or is it splat! first then clang!?

Anyway...

Once you have gotten blame out

and are rid of it

and feel you can breathe a little easier,

then let’s everybody stop,

just for a second,

and all at once and together,

have a sort of Jack LaLanne moment.

Let’s touch our tongues to our fingertips,

wet our ‘prints and turn to the page

that says what the fuck!

Have I got your attention?

Hope so!

I just want us to be together,

that’s all.

Finally arrive!

Be

in unison,

and on the same page,

so to speak,

with or without the word fuck,

for once,

and know

we are saying something

of substance

to each other,

that holds our attention

like a balloon parlayed between strangers.

Yes, I’m talking to you.

I am talking to me. I am talking to all of us.

The us that craves to know another

with as few words as possible.

Once we have that scaffolding in place

then maybe we can

ride catastrophe like a calliope

into a Dust Bowl town

braying: The circus is here!.

Or ride calamity like a camel into an oasis

to set-up a Kool-Aid stand.

And once we’ve done that,

then perhaps we can turn pessimism over

and burp it like a new born,

so the bubble rises up

like resilience

from the belly’s Gerber gassy soup.

Trust me!

I won’t, along the way,

try to sell you a glacier

or swindle you into

buying the Northern Lights.

You can’t be sold.

I know that.

But if we can’t drink from the same glass

let’s at least agree to swim in the same lake,

and try to taste the salt the fable says is there.

Or shuttle the chickens, goats, pigs

and cows from the house,

so we can hear the quite the children make.

Or let’s let our minds tinker 

with translations or crossword puzzles 

to distract our hearts from their beehives

and our emotions from their anvils.

(Was that too heavy-handed?)

Whatever we do…let’s not blink.

We don’t want to miss a moment of our lives.

And if you throw your voice, I’ll throw mine.

And together we’ll create a new ventriloquism,

extemporaneously speaking, that is.

A new kind of musing.

Like whispers between ghosts.

But let’s not get too clever.

Otherwise we’ll miss what each other is saying,

and then we’ll have to hit the rewind button

and watch the tape go too far backwards,

beyond where it was meant to go.

THE HEDONIST

When you finish swilling your ice water

through a silver metal straw, hook me up

to a hypothetical experience machine, please!

So I might eat deep fried grasshoppers

for the first time and try on T-shirts

historians say were worn by Hitler,

or, alternatively, inhabit the habits habituated

by happy nuns. Let me take up residency

in Utah instead of Nevada,‘cause people

live longer in Utah, urbanologists say.

And why wouldn't I wanna I live longer, if I could.

Let me be a rambunctious harbinger of hilarity,

while still keeping my pants on

during morning commutes on public transport.

And be a collector of Wittgensteinobilia

to celebrate a man and a philosopher who was

irascible and melancholic to the core.

Let me be promiscuous with my use

of the word promiscuous and in my spare time

be a physician of the soul. Let me show valor

while passing through turnstiles.

Let me be the psychmetrician who will analyze

what happens when one extra minute is added

to the end of every colonoscopy.

Is it a happy ending or not?

Only the data knows.

And let me flex my orbicularis oculi

and my zygomaticus muscles

to show off my Duchenne smile.

You know the one I mean: the one

we make, quite involuntarily, quite naturally,

that is the sincerest smile we humans have.

The one where the corners of the mouth

curl upwards and the eyes crinkle like crow’s feet

at the edges. That one!

As a professed hedonist, what I want is

as many good moments as I can muscle my way into,

that have me discovering, promiscuously, my own

personal pleasure principle in the process.

I don’t want to fidget my way toward death.

I want to cluck and strut my way toward the gallows,

be as alive as I can be. And truth be told,

and if necessary, I’ll even wear a tutu and a tiara

on my way to the Emerald City.

I will, if it gets me to where I wanna go.

BELIEVE IT OR NOT!

Why not put a whale penis in a poem?

If Robert L. Ripley could stock a Chinese junk

with spectacles from around the world

then why can’t I fill my little creations

with queeriosities, as he called them.

With Cyclops children, three-headed calves,

chastity belts and Iron Maidens,

human inchworms and pincushions,

fork-tongued beauties,

and shrunken heads from Ecuador.

I could devote a stanza to the man

who hangs himself weekly and lives

to flaunt his leathered neck and rope burn.

Or to the woman, immune to heat and fire,

who swallows flaming torches.

Or to the man who has squids for hands.

Or the effects artist who specializes in weather -  

fogs, tempests, blizzards -

but who works hardest, believe it or not,

making the smallest of breezes.

Why would I do this?

Not because I have something to sell

like sympathy or Schadenfreude.

No, not because of this.

But because I can.

Isn’t that reason enough?

I could have a man cough up a bullet

forty-five years after he was shot in the chest.

And I could hang that slug at the poem’s center

like a purple heart.

And then to entertain myself further

and hopefully you too,

I could polish totem poles.

Or out-bargain Armenian rug merchants

who lurk at the fringes.

Or have corrective surgery

on my crooked teeth.

Or smoke yard long cigars. Two at a time.

Or traffic anachronism and hyperbole,

the spurious and the specious

like contraband or illicit metaphors

through my poems.

And I could make mention

of my dog and my girlfriend

in the same breath by saying their names,
respectfully and respectively: Hanky Panky.

I could confess that I don’t drive a car,

but I know how to float.

I could tell you, with some deviousness,

that a June Bug is actually a May beetle

and ruin your summer.

And then just for good measure I might

stretch the parameters of what a poem is

even further still by visiting

countries that don’t exist,

by mailing my mail

from an airplane over Africa,

by stammering and stuttering

and making sounds

my mouth was not meant to make.

I could slick back my widow’s peak

and dance like Fred Astaire on stilts.

And then I could increase my attention span

by conversing with only women

who speak eight words per second.

And I might even boast that my grandmother

was a Ziegfeld Follies girl, though she wasn’t.

I could also tell you I slept with a Dutch wife,

and really only mean I bedded down

with a big, long-ass pillow.

And then, when the timing was right,

I could unveil the fish that swims backwards,

and send it shimmering against the current

of my finely crafted verse.

And then finally,

as the poem’s pièce de résistance,

I could introduce you to

the greatest curiosity of all, Hope.

You know it: that thing with feathers,

as Emily Dickenson once upon a time had penned.

And it would be our job - yours and mine -

despite my false bravado and what I’ve said here -

to keep it out of harm’s way,

out of odditoriums and places like

the Mütter Museum or

Ripley’s Believe It or Not!

Keep it out of the hands of hucksters

and hoodwinkers, like myself.

Keep it and its illusory plumage

sleekly preened and forever safe.

Inspired by the New Yorker book review entitled,

“The Odyssey: Robert Ripley and his world,”

written by Jill Lepore, June 3, 2013 issue.