you’re alright, we wouldn’t want you to go
cross-eyed looking at the film through
the spokes of the steering wheel, between
the long silences that buffered the mystery
of the pillowed darkness in the back seat.
Never once did I look back, but kept my eyes
on James Stewart and John Wayne
in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
Who among us hasn’t looked up at dawn
alarmed, wondered what it would be like
to be someone very ill and the vigilant song
signalling the end of darkness, beginning of light?
I think of my old man
who hated the sea
too great and too mighty
impossible to tame
Some days I wake up inside a whirlpool
of boats and houses and trees and dogs and people,
and my missing sister is there too:
spinning, spinning, her small mouth open
and fish are popping out of her.
Yes, my sister is a home for fish.
Who would have thought.
He built a ticky-tacky shack on the market place
and charged 5 bucks for cat-telling fortunes
a trumpet playing strumpet reached into her bag
a bulldog jumped out and started a World War 3
When Satchmo’s ghost refused enlistment 3 its later
all cats on Earth — telepathically warned by Bill’s mouser —
wary of vampire dogs, wolf man jazz, flying fish,
chicken feet and Dixie minstrels in a trombone parade
Hank dreamed of Hendrix & Zappa
but his heroes were Tarzan & 007
in his nightmares he was pursued by a
horny queen on a lianas with a Strat & a 45