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SPITon the

GRIDDLE

Mike Finley

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Table of ContentsAppreciating the Ape...........................................................6Pineapple Spake ..................................................................8Spit on the Griddle.............................................................10Product Placement..............................................................11A Kind of a Joke................................................................12Barren Landscapes Do Not Merit Historic Markers..........14The Woman in the Whole Foods Parking Lot....................15Things Are Looking Up.....................................................16Peggy Palmer.....................................................................17The Third Happiest Moment in My Life..........................................................................18A Demon Grew Inside Of Me ...........................................22Gozilladon and Me.............................................................24At least poetry....................................................................26The Boards.........................................................................27From The Roof Of My Apartment Building In Downtown Minneapolis................................................29Landlocked.........................................................................30

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Old Man Stone...................................................................32Poor Jack............................................................................36A Melting Pot.....................................................................38William Mulligan...............................................................42The Favorite.......................................................................44Foundling...........................................................................46Money................................................................................48Agricultural Worker...........................................................50Admirable Moment............................................................53The Tissue..........................................................................54Staples................................................................................55Other People Are OK, You Guess......................................57Dog's Prayer.......................................................................60Death..................................................................................61Surrender, Editor!...............................................................62The Thing Writers Never Learn, .......................................66And Also Everyone Else....................................................66Remember..........................................................................68Exodus................................................................................70In Albemarle.......................................................................71At Harmony Village...........................................................73

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In the Office Tower............................................................77Palp....................................................................................79Freshly Crucified Lawyer..................................................81Consolation........................................................................83Lunchroom.........................................................................84The Prevalence of Mystery in Everyday Life....................86Compassion for the Tall.....................................................87Harbinger...........................................................................89Hippies...............................................................................91Losing a Daughter Is Like Being a Bee on the Moon........92

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Appreciating the ApeAn ape that goes to work all day

And comes home tired but willing to play.

An ape stumbling about on its two back feet

Somehow finding a way not to step on me

An ape that loves me and teaches me words,

And when I am sleeping, he does not disturb.

Having thumbs must be a special thing,

no one gives full body rubs like a simian.

How odd that dogs should live with apes

and I am at the door when he comes home late.

When I go wild with the trash,

he does not take me unduly to task.

Strange other species, so different from mine,

Thank you for being my valentine.

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Pineapple Spake Dole: “The happy plantation at the volcano's edge”

Pineapple is aghast at the exploitation it sees.

Pineapple remembers those who went before.

With his prickly cheeks and pointed hair

I understand what wisdom is there

Pineapple has sacrificed everything for sweetness.

I thanked it for its sacrifices

to the world of children and men.

I scooped its eyes out

with a sharpened spoon.

This all along was what it had pined for.

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Spit on the GriddleAs a kid on the farm

I was amazed when the wood stove fired up

and unlike a regular stove where only the burners get warm

this stove was seething from every pore.

When Grandma wasn't looking I would lean in toward

the glowing cast iron and spit on the surface,

and watch the little blob dance like a clown

going Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! and hiss until,

like the farm itself, it was no more.

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Product Placement(An experiment in designating additional sources of revenue from my verse.)

For me, there is no better way to start the day

than opening a can of Libby's vacuum-packed sweet corn

and scooping them up with a clean soup spoon.

You wonder how they removed so much liquid

from the can without the corn going bad.

Delectable? You can taste the soaked-up sunshine

in every mouthful!

Libby's: Hot or cold, the best canned corn around

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A Kind of a Joke

A good one is a kind of joke.

It begins and ends and hinges

on a failure of your expectations.

You are fooled, which is always good.

Our presumptions are what make us hilarious.

The change overtakes us like a choking fit

and for a while we hover between

a clench and a release,

a test of our virtue, a test of our strength.

Then it goes and the new information

floods into us

like a blossoming field.

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Barren Landscapes Do Not Merit Historic Markers

We make too much of empty holes.

Keep moving, the next vista

is convex.

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The Woman in the Whole Foods Parking Lot

The parking lot was full except for one space.

I edged toward it and then saw her idling nearby.

I waited four seconds, she did not move,

so I eased into the spot.

"Oh," she said gaily to me as I exited the car,

"you must not have seen my turn signal!"

Glumly, I protested. "I waited but you didn't turn."

She laughed magnanimously and marched

through the slush toward the clothing recycling bin.

When I returned to my car, she had peeled

the magnetic peace symbol my daughter

had given me years ago for my birthday

from the bumper and stuffed it into the door handle.

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Things Are Looking UpMarch sees the mud blubbering up from the ground.

The river hacks up its fermented opinions.

The poop on the lawns starts to crumble in the sun.

The birds are busy with all their bird business.

The trees are cursing because they have to go to work.

Scraps of paper chase one another down the street.

Even the clippings of obituaries

of those who didn't make it through the last cold month

convene in the park by the shut off fountain

and sing till their pages are shimmery with joy.

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Peggy PalmerMy sophomore year in high school I discovered

that under the table in study hall

you could see the girls' legs and underwear.

One week I dropped my pencil twenty times

to gaze at at Peggy Palmer's knees and thighs,

in her coppery nylons that seemed as taut as mail.

Each time I surfaced on the formica tabletop,

like a pearl diver, gasping, I would avoid

looking into Peggy Palmer's eyes.

Was she wise to my activity? She was either

very much so or not at all, because she never let on,

and if I were a sentry stationed in the ceiling beams

I would keep a special eye out for the boys

who could not hold onto their writing implements

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at any table throughout that place of learning.

The Third Happiest Moment in My Life

I was nine, playing in the Amherst, Ohio, Little League. My brother Pat, 11, was on the same team, and our dad was sometimes third base coach.

I wasn't a terrible player. I was good at flies and grounders during practice. But during a game I tended to clutch. It felt like I was in the spotlight, and everything depended on me being perfect, putting the glove in place, trapping the ball, and throwing it back to the infield.

But my heart would speed, up and i would do time travel to the aftermath, the kids carrying me off the field on their shoulders. And all i had to do was catch the ball.

It 's the 6th inning now, which was the ninth inning for our league. Pat is at second base, I am in left field, swatting my

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wonderful worn-in Billy Pierce glove.

Some kid hits a high fly ball. It is the kind that you can hardly follow because it goes up, up, up and it then it comes down, down, down -- without really changing position much.

I could feel my heart rising in my throat, feeling the sped-up beat pounding against my larnyx.

I look up and I am lost. I sort of see the ball, but not really. I climb into the time machine all right, but it is a dark hour in history I am headed to.

My friends throwing their gloves in the dirt in disgust. No one talking to me on the way home.

I get dizzy now, and I seem to be swimming in the gloves. The sleeves envelope me, the pantlegs trip me up. The grass in left field seems a foot tall, and loaded with grasshoppers.

I turn my back to the ball and fall to my knees.

And then I feel it. The ball landing in the hollow of the

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glove. A one-handed, back-to-the-ball catch.

I quickly put my other hand on the ball to hold it in, and struggle to my feet.

The umpire, a serious alcoholic named Jim Barnes, signals out, and it is just like a dream, the kids on my team, who customarily groan whenever the ball goes my way, leap into the air and shout yay, or hurray, or something.

In a daze, I stagger to the dugout, players clapping me on the back with their mitts.

I want to do what I am doing now, slow time down and tell everyone about each tick of the clock as I stood out there in the dying sunlight.

But good judgment overtakes me, and I keep my counsel. We get ice cream at Zimmerman's but I keep my mouth shut for a change.

Gradually people turn to other topics, and I sense they are going away from me forever.

On the ride home, I announce from the back seat to my dad

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and brother, "Boy I was as surprised as anyone by that catch!"

But no one wants to hear. I always say too much and wear people out with my consciousness.

So I keep the game ball. And all the way home I toss it from one hand into the well-oiled pouch.

The catch was a fluke. I had no idea where that ball was. it caught me, if anything.

But it didn't matter. It went into the books as a great catch, forever.

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A Demon Grew Inside Of Me ...living inside my skull, an inch from my left ear.

For years I had no idea it was there,

until one day I felt pain and fell down

and I could hear the demon talking to me.

My name is Meningioma, it said,

and I claim this brain as my own.

But you can't do that, I said,

palming my ear and wondering at the noises,

which were like a riverboat chugging up

a choked waterway --

I need my head to make beautiful things.

You thought that was you, the demon scoffed,

As if you could come up with all that,

and with that the demon bit down hard

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on my auditory nerve and my hearing

started to fade.

In a moment I understood all the suffering in the world,

all the people brought down low by demons.

What do you care, the demon said,

you're going to be just fine.

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Gozilladon and MeWe found the egg in the garage

And decided to just let it be.

Then it hatched and the chick

Broke free like the sound

Of a train going off a high bridge.

The first thing it saw,

Holding a garden edger by the door, was me.

Now it follows me everywhere,

Dragging power lines around its ankles.

I take the same route to work each day,

To restrict the damage to a poor neighborhood.

I threw a stick once without thinking

And it returned with a watertower in its teeth.

At night I turn off the lights

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But leave one venetian blind open

So it can see me from the street.

It lies vigilantly across twelve neighbors’ lawns

And only wants to keep its yellow eye upon me

because I am the treasure of its life.

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At least poetry

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The BoardsBe joyful as you climb the stepsput spring in your toes and the treetops You are measured out for these sleevesand boxed in by these exigencies God gave you bells so give them a shakelet them tinkle to the striking clock Say oh what a beautiful dayas if you were Gordon McCrea

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From The Roof Of My Apartment Building In Downtown Minneapolis

The moon is down to the cuticle now.the stars nod in and out. The night goes as dark and as deepas the hole in the shed of the potato farm in Michiganthat grandfather Bill had for sixty eight years, and then lost

1975

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LandlockedDriving in the cold and dark through St. Paul,

1212 miles of hard land to the Atlantic,

1704 miles north to Hudson Bay,

2173 miles west to the Pacific

1340 more down to the Gulf of Mexico.

My headlights shine on the International Airport sign.

Imagine that, instead of crawling across the tundra

on skinned knees to get to work

you could board a plane and in a matter of hours,

alight in some beautiful place.

I would opt for the Isle of Malta,

with their knights, their falcons, and their funny dogs.

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I picture myself tending the goats

high up on a green cliff,

me and the other goatherds drinking wine

from a bladder, and chucking down

those malted milk balls that come in the cartons,

surrounded on all sides by blue sea.

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Old Man StoneStone was a mean old man, wholeTown of Kinbrae knew that forEntertainment he used to take potShots at his dog, a good old girlDeserving better. One day Stone wasSaid to have got bad news fromMontevideo, folks saw him stormOut the post office, kicking dust,Spitting on the sidewalk andCussing out the Goosetown Savings &Loan. Mr. Miller said he purchasedA package of Illinois whiskey andThat was what they found later on, aBroken pint bottle by the pump house well That'd just gone dry. Must haveHauled his rifle down where it hungBy the stove and stomped out to theYard with a box of fresh shells,Loaded and reloaded, pumped lead

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Into the milkshed wall and cackledAnd gnashed his nasty teeth. HisYellow tears skittered down his dryCheeks as the dark deed formed inHis mind, the notion occurring toComplete the thing for once and forAll, and he whistled Betty to heelAt his feet. And she sidled,Shivering, up and imploringly searchedFor the better nature behind his redEyes as he pulled two sticks ofDynamite from a toolbin and tiedThem to the poor bitch's tail, litThe long fuse, smacked her hind endAnd sat down on the hole and watchedThrough the open outhouse door asThe dog took off yelping straightThrough the kitchen doorway and doveUnder the master's brasspost bedWith the eiderdown comforter pulledDown in after her. No no no no,

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Cried Stone, and he screamed withAll his saw-toothed might with theIndignation of a man so wronged byCreation perverted by willful beastsLike a dog so dumb she couldn't evenGet blown up right, and he screechedHer name and called her forth andCondemned her disloyalty as theLeast-best friend a most-cursed manMight have, a churlish cur whoFought his dominion from the day sheWas whelped, who skipped napsThinking up ways to undo him, him,Him who now wailed like a ghost toGet out, get out, get out, get outOf my pine-board, tarpaper, chinaPlatter house God damn your four-Legged soul. And Betty, hearing hisBreakdown without and imaginingHerself the object of some grandReprieve at the hands of this

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Passionate and lovable if you reallyUndertook to know him but until thenDeeply misunderstood failure of aMan and imagining moreover her life-Long ordeal at those knotted handsTo be miraculously over and herselfForgiven of the unforgivable crime ofHaving been his, dashed happily downThe creekstone steps and full tiltAnd with her master's heartfeltCries of No no no no no echoingAcross the furrowed glade leaped gladlyInto his awe-crossed arms and theTwo best friends saw eye to eye,Each bade goodbye, and left KinbraeForever.

1975

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Poor JackOnly child, son of a football coach

and my curious Aunt Theresa,

who filled her basement to the ceiling

with canned goods, reasoning

that the Communists were coming,

and she would need V8 Juice

when they did, my cousin Jack

was an Eagle Scout and a lover of sports

but he was empty inside,

he disliked me because his mother

talked me up, and ignored

his own heroic efforts, nothing ever

being good enough for her, even though

he had a PhD and taught physical therapy

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at the Mayo Clinic.

Poor Jack was lost inside himself,

guilty, I think, at not being better

than he was, he loved to go to conferences

in other cities and whore it up in hotels,

he needed some filth in his life.

He was a smart man but he never felt

good about himself no matter

what he accomplished, in that way

he was like everyone who ever lived.

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A Melting PotMy mother's father didn't come over on the Titanic. A bad-tempered violent man, he lost his ticket in a pub fight. Or so I am told. He took his coffee with whiskey in it. Once he named a calf after me. Two years later he slaughtered it. I was one of his pallbearers.

My father's father was a diabetic most of his life. I remember watching him pinch a skinny shoulder and slipping the needle in. He was sweet by nature. A neighbor's son ran wild with a Model T once and killed my grandfather's favorite riding horse, a saddlebred stallion. Grandpa paid to fix the broken car. I remember when I was a boy and dropped by toothbrush into the toilet, he picked it out for me and washed it off. I dreamed of him once bursting into a fountain, his life shooting out all the holes he'd made.

In 1959 my mother is driving home late from her waitressing job. A stag bolts from the roadside into her

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beams. That night I hear voices, see a deer hung from an apple tree by the heels. Bread knife in hand, I see my father make the downward incision. The great heart tumbles onto the fallen fruit.

My father and mother's first baby was sick, and the two stayed together until she died. My mother went a little mad, in advance of the loss. My father went out, for a drink, or a dance. Sometimes he came home drunk and the two of them shouted. One time he hit her, and I hugged her leg on a bunched up carpet and cried.

My father told my mother that her mother was an imbecile, but that is not how I remember her. I see my grandmother's hands zipping open pale skin, and with one hand pulling the unborn egg into the light. Inside the hen the shell was still soft.

On television men are spading up other men from a California peach orchard. My mother says my uncle John was one of the dead, he had left home and lost touch.

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Two thousand miles away my father stirs his ice. He is looking at album with women and girls in it. Their names are Grace and Ruth and Rose and Mary, more beautiful than any I have seen, the way the light and shadow plays on their faces, the rosy cheek turned bronze, their hopes and smiles, gone into time. Someone ought to tell the story, says my father. Somehow it ought to be all gotten down.

A dozen families flee from famine to drought and depression to Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio. The branches of the trees intertwine in the pure product of our broken household, the girl upstairs, coughing in her sleep, the woman fretting to put things right, the man slipping through the boards like spilled water.

My mother's father, deep into Michigan, who married old and knew no more about Jesus than his druid roots, beats his daughters and sets them howling. Deep into summer they hack the milkweeds, head upon head. Something happened, I don't know what. My mother grew up anxious, as if she had a long head start on the sick child inside her.

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My father's mother is on a nursing home bed in Milwaukee with a stroke. She is 85, I am 24. When she sees me, she thinks I am my cousin, my uncle, my father. How are my children? The poor sick girl? The boy who went away to seminary? In my grandmother's heart I live freely and all at once through four and five generations.

My cousins drive me to my motel room. They talk about senility, psychosis, the stroke. I half listen. My grandmother is right in ways I will have trouble remembering. We swirl together in a pot of blood. I will not see her alive again.

1975

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William MulliganFamily legend has it that Bill Mulligan

had a ticket for the Titanic's maiden voyage

and lost it in a card game. Whether true or not,

it gave our family a sense of destiny,

and it gave his relatives in County Down a break

from his ill-humored ways.

"We never knew why he was like that," one said.

He settled in Michigan and grew wheat and raised

quarterhorses, and would be good for a month

and then go bingeing, and nobody binged

like Bill Mulligan. He beat his kids and

even as an old man criticized

everything about them.

No wonder they all wandered away, many of whom

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were never heard from again.

At age 75 he returned to Ireland for a visit

and insisted my mother drive from Cleveland

to New York to greet him at the docks.

And all the way home he berated her,

until we got to our town, and my mother

promptly rear-ended a patrol car backing out

of a used car lot. Of course she wept,

but old Bill, whom I would help carry

as his pallbearer a few years later, squirmed

in the car seat, balling his white fists and

whispering imprecations against her

and against all nature.

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The FavoriteI knew my Uncle Craig all my life.

He was my mother's favorite brother,

the little one she looked out for

and made a thousand apologies for.

She was lace curtain but he was Fisher Body

through and through, and he disliked

(he would not say hated) the niggers

crowding him at the assembly line.

During visits that was the most common word

he used, and he said it with a chuckle,

like he had the courage to speak truth

and we were all educated pansies,

but his was the truth of the draft riots

and the insecurity of the Irish

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at the prospect of competing with former slaves.

Craig was rough but boyishly charming,

I remember taking a walk in 1968 with him

and him asking, innocently, how a man

could go down on a woman, this from a man

twenty years my senior.

Then the heart attacks came and the diabetes

and in the end they cut off his feet,

this charming, nigger-calling boy,

with the stacks of Reader’s Digest by his bed

and the longish nose hairs that I have, too,

and trim every time I remember

because I loved my uncle but I never

wanted to be like him.

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FoundlingMy mother had a brother Douglas who also vanished

and was never heard from again.

leaving the farm in Otisville around 1964.

There was a feeling among the brothers and sisters

that Douglas was not their biological brother,

that he had been left on the doorstep,

the child of a young girl from two towns away.

The other thing is that he looked very Mexican --

the ruddy skin, the clearly defined lips, that mestizo look.

Because he came as a baby, he had no clue himself,

and no one ever every spoke to him about it,

about who he was, and where he came from,

and my grandmother, the one who chased chickens

around the yard with their heads cut off,

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was not given to loose talk about her sons,

and after a time, about age 30, he disappeared

the same way he came, but I will never forget

him swinging me from a hayloft rope

when I was maybe 7, that huge rope,

that smell of fresh-cut grass stacked all around us,

and his delighted, open-mouthed face below,

and the Mexican brogue of his laughter.

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MoneyAfter we ran out of room in the house

we began moving it to the garage,

which filled soon thereafter.

We made a down payment

on a bloc of ministorage cells

and that took care of some of the overflow

but nowhere near enough.

We started leaving boxes of money

out on the lawn, and giving people

the evil eye who seemed too curious.

Eventually we rented a backhoe

and dropped over a billion dollars

in Hefty bags into the pit,

each one secured by a twist-tie.

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Still the problem wasn't solved,

so we were forced to stack it on the roof,

secured by a blue cabled tarpaulin,

so now when we eat we hear the beams

groaning from the weight of all that

paper and all that gold and all because

we knew the bank could not be trusted.

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Agricultural WorkerMy Mother's Brother, John Mulligan (1919-?)

I met him twice, as a very young boy,

he was handsome and blonde and withdrawn,

with a soft and lilting Irish brogue.

He worked the farm plus the night shift

at AC Delco in Flint, but he he decided

he wanted to see the world,

and rode freight trains around the country,

mostly in the west, taking jobs

digging ditches and picking fruit and artichokes.

After a time we stopped getting postcards

and in 1971 a report came of

a peach orchard full of buried dead men,

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the worst murder scene in history,

and the murder's name, Juan Corona.

The bodies were mostly too decomposed to identify,

but my mother felt that John was in one

of the shallow graves, because his last card said

he was picking melons in Sutter County.

I never knew my Uncle John well,

but I remember him sitting me

on the shoulders of a calf his brothers

had named after me, in Michigan,

and his eyes met mine, and I knew

he was a kind man.

Next year, I came back, excited to

see my bully boy Mike again,

but Mike had been eaten, because that

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is how things work on a farm.

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Admirable MomentMy dad takes it on the chin from me,

but when challenged I do have

one good memory.

It is late the night of the Fourth of July

and my sick sister Kathy

has fallen asleep on the blanket

on the grass at Cascade Park.

Though the walk to the car was half a mile,

my father bound her to him, and

carried her through the milling crowd.

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The TissueBefore she died, my mother lived with us for a year.

She was sick from diabetes.

Her feet were black and had no feeling,

and there was little she still enjoyed in life.

But one day I caught her in the kitchen.

She had dropped a wadded-up tissue on the floor

and was struggling to bend over and pick it up.

Finally she scooted a chair beside it,

stooped, and nabbed the bit of fluff.

It all took about three minutes.

Nothing worked for her any more,

but she was damned if she would leave

a Kleenex where everyone could see it.

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StaplesNothing else fits together like them,

5000 to a box, arranged in sticks 150 long,

and then the sticks are nested into one another.

A small box of staples would make a good weapon,

but you could only use it once,

because the glued-together sticks

would all come apart, not into a haystack

of individual miniature croquet wickets,

but just come apart often enough that the purity of the formation would be wrecked

and if you put them in a stapler and went to town

the chances of one misfiring at some point

are pretty good, and it would get caught in the teeth

of the cheap chrome mouth, and you would need

a toothpick or something to pry them loose, and a few shots

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over the bow to clear the stapler's throat and

get it working, an amazing technology

but if you put this box of staples away,

forget it, those things are gone.

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Other People Are OK, You GuessYou like when you are all on the same frequency

and people are relaxed, with nothing to prove

and you know it's just another hour of being convivial

and you spin back to your solitary self.

You love when they laugh, you love when you

kid one another

because you have been friends for so long.

You're not so fond of that groping moment

when you are casting about for a hook with one another.

You don't like when they don't seem to see you,

or act like you are their waiter for the evening

or not worthy of any real attention.

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You blanch and think, Who the hell are you?

Most dismaying are the people

who almost get you, or seem to be drawing near,

but they are intent on something else

and so you never quite touch hands.

All your life you have just wanted to play

and stand on people's front stoops like a salesman,

hoping the peopkle would come out and join you.

Now you feel like that genie in the story

Who grew bitter corked up for a thousand years

and promised himself that the first kind person

to come upon him would be pulled apart

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at the joints, like a frog, to get that off your chest.

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Dog's PrayerIn the morning and in the night

You are my life's delight

Till I fail and lose my sight

Till I am covered over with white,

Till I can no longer fight,

And I can't lift my head to bite

I know it will be all right

If I can be with you, master

If I can be with you,

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DeathThe sucking sound

at the end

of the milkshake

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Surrender, Editor!They don't want to be your friend,

They don't even want to like your work.

They are trying their best to keep the bad stuff out,

and they know in their hearts they are failing,

and they are sitting in a room spattered with shit.

So you try different approaches.

The most boring of all is to announce, wearily,

that you are submitting X poems,

and that you published HERE recently. and THERE,

until you taste a bit of your own vomit

in your mouth, that's how real

that bit of braggadocio struck you.

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But then you have only your poem to sell itself,

and you know from experience that people

can't hear what is in a poem, exactly,

they know what a schoolbook poem is like,

but they don't get what you had to do

to get to this point.

When i was younger i sometimes acted

like i already knew the fellow.

"This bubbled up at Meatloaf this spring,

and I thought of you, Tom."

People get confused and think they drank

with you one night

on the white rocks up above the river

and lay on your backs together counting stars.

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Another way is to grovel.

"Oh, thank you for the holy work you do,

espousing imagination and blessing

the mentally ill writers of the world,"

like that is their true mission in the end,

not escaping their colleagues' censure for publishing

that poem about the cute little dog.

There is so much unhappiness here,

masquerading as wisdom and the preservation

of standards, when everyone knows there are none.

and that boat is not coming back to port.

And yet, if we never share these thoughts,

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they were like those trees you hear about

but never hear, because they fell alone, and their life

stepped out of them, and stepped away into the rustlie of the pines.

Oh little magazine editor, why don't you just

stop hoping for better and embrace my work!

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The Thing Writers Never Learn, And Also Everyone ElseIs why --

In writing, we are rejected,

but it is poor form to ask the editor why.

Is the writing poor?

Is the point of the writing stupid, or obvious?

Or are you just looking for something very different,

that your heart is set on, but cannot say its name.

Rejection is painful,

and I understand editors are loath to be interrogated,

especially from people who may be unstable or argumentative.

You are just supposed to figure this out yourself,

using the same brain that wrote the failed piece.

But what valuable input that would be:

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"It was OK but it didn't amaze me."

"I couldn't tell if you were an asshole or not."

"There is something seriously wrong

with your whole attitude,

that I can't quite put a finger on,

but trust me, it's awful."

It's more than a problem of writing,

it's a problem of life, never getting the feedback

that is obvious to others, but you never understand,

because, to you, you are just normal, the taste of water

in your mouth.

Something is wrong, and everyone sees it,

but no one loves you enough

to tell you the terrible truth.

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RememberWhen you are young it is so extroverted,

he wants the world to know about him,

he presses against your pantleg and waves

from passing windows.

He is always up for everything.

You rest a drink on him at parties.

You consult him on all important matters.

But later, when you are older,

he becomes standoffish.

You say, How about this? and he

just shrugs and looks away.

You go, have a wonderful time, I feel

like reading and turning in early.

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Bit by bit he is retreating, retracting into himself

like a larva crawling back to the comb.

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ExodusThe forty years of wandering is usually blamed

on the faithlessness of the Israelites,

setting aside the knowledge

that Moses was already 80 when

the great journey began.

Though the tribe was young, and raring

to make the mad dash into Canaan,

the caravan had to stop every half hour or so

and encamp for another hour

while Moses peed, because

their leader's prostate was as big as a plum,

and increasing every day.

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In AlbemarleI was news editor, putting each day's paper together.

My copyeditor was a young woman named Janet,

tall and dark and quietly beautiful.

She was married, and I was with Rachel,

but I fixed great admiration upon her.

She was modest, and competent, and discreet --

but yet her eyes, and I'm thinking my eyes, too,

insinuated the joy we caused each other.

Her husband was Dennis, a lean man --

that is never a good thing --

who spoke sharply and seemed always to be cross

as if I had wronged him by being who I was,

We pretended to be friendly, but I thought

he was, in fact, a dick.

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I worked in a room of competitive young men,

who resented me for taking

the job that they wanted. I never won them over.

And yet, when Janet had a a son, a little fellow

who put in four-hour shifts every news day

under the desktop beside me,

in the darkness and the Teletype dust,

never once, in six months, crying

I would look up from the clatter and banging

of the newsroom, and see his little arms

moving above the blankets.

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At Harmony VillageAt age 77 the widow Ida should not have been a looker but she was, compared to the other women in the home. She looked the way all the great old actresses look, noble and well assembled. Either she had had some work done, or else she was some kind of a freak, because even at her age her cheeks were still taut, her eyes blazed bright green and there was no hint of wattle danging from her jawline.

The men who still could doted on Ida, standing by the door when she entered the room, even though the door was locked in open position.

The two most ardent men were Hal and Howard. Hal, with his full head of white hair, was a former alcoholic who once loved to dance, and was nursing a star-shaped tumor in his chest. Howard, with his oversized mustache and remarkable teeth, had been a department manager and owned a boat somewhere, although he could no longer pilot it.

The two men competed for Ida's favor, fighting to hand her

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the Mrs. Dash, jostling to nestle her in her metal folding chair.

Each man found Ida entrancing, intoxicating. They sought her glance and approval in all ways, never mind that they had both been impotent for years -- Hal from prostate surgery, Howard from just getting old. She offered, or they thought that she offered, a way out of death, to be known by a beautiful woman. It was a chance to back and be who they were, Hal the foxtrotting salesman, Howard the denier of personal injury claims.

Over the course of weeks the focus of the triangle began to change, from enchantment to rivalry.

On Tuesday, Hal elbowed Howard into the doorway on the way out of the social room. Howard, who had a new hip implanted just three months previously, stumbled and cracked his glasses on the doorframe.

Two days later, Howard stood at table and announced to all who were listening, “You, Harold McManus, are a barbarian and a bastard.”

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Hal drew himself up, tipped over the table, spilling several cups of weak coffee, a plastic pitcher of ice water and three small plates of pineapple upside down cake.

Hal stormed over the fallen table and began kicking Howard with his cleated golf shoes, which were not allowed in the center but reminded Hal of his trophy years. The cleats struck Howard at the cheek and ear and blood began to flow. Howard scrambed awkwardly to his feet but Hal was ready for him, pushing him backward into a Hummel figurine showcase. Howard sat in a daze among the cracked shelves and statuettes.

Hal turned his gaze to Ida, but she was smiling and intent on the image of Montel Williams, selling long term care for seniors.

Hal would live only three weeks longer. They found him shaking in his bed and were unable to revive him. Howard would continue for two years before succumbing to a stroke.

The beautiful Ida is still among us at age 85, still that

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straight line under her jaw, still with the shining green eyes, still deaf as a hardened post.

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In the Office TowerLeo and Lyndon were brilliant at what they did,

one was shave-headed and played punk guitar,

the other a combination of redhead and introvert.

Since they got on at the office they decided to travel,

and the trip cost thousands and they were so excited ...

But something happened in Stuttgart

and the two split apart outside the Schlossplatz

and flew home early in separate planes.

Now they don't talk to anyone,

they don't go to lunch, they eat in their cubicles

and quietly fold their paper bags.

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Does anyone really know anything

about other people?

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PalpThe palp in a clam is not that footy thing

that looks like a tongue but is not,

it's the rubbery flaps that guide food

into the mouth.

Palpate is the the art of understanding the body

without opening it up with a saw,

you do it with pushing and knocking

with knuckles.

Palpitations are when the heartbeat skips,

you can sitting there reading the paper

and then this rhythm inside you,

falling down the stairs,

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head over heels.

All these are reminders

we are made out of body,

so close every moment

is palpable.

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Freshly Crucified LawyerVerbatim From a Dream

Look, I know you're not in charge, but I know you know who is in charge.

and besides that, you just look like a good guy to me.

I see a lot of hard cases so it's refreshing for me

to see someone

I just know intuitively I can do business with.

I know you have responsibilities, and that's why

I hate to bother you.

But I believe you will want to take up my case

with the higher ups.

Delay too long on something like this

and everyone looks bad.

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Maybe you can fish out the card from my loincloth.

The boss will remember me, he and his wife sat across

from me and my wife at the last centurions' ball.

Tell him I was the guy who passed up

the last dinner roll, those crescent things

that taste so good.

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ConsolationIn the course of destroying you

experience makes you

what you are.

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LunchroomMost people seem pretty OK.

The ones reading the paper seem intent and engrossed.

That chubby fellow with dark frames

is holding his chuckwagon sandwich with both hands,

and he seems very pleased to have this respite from the job.

One guy looks miserable.

Smoking is not allowed except out

at the sleet-smacked designated area

and he stares across the Formica

with a look that is downright tragic.

One imagines divorce, no custody, persistent back pain,

wondering what good is this middle class life?

The managers may have it worst,

or they think they do, gaunt and sunken-eyed,

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their hair coming out in fistfuls in the shower,

as they try to figure out how to make us do stuff.

And then there are the women, spooky and dismayed

that they ever craved a powdered doughnut,

and now someone is clambering down into their souls,

everywhere they go they are looked at,

bold as brass, and then have

poems written about them.

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The Prevalence of Mystery in Everyday Life

Before you get blase consider

the plastic milk jugs borne along the river

the tree that grows inside another tree

that spear of light you glimpsed on a very cold morning

the search beams located high on the mesa

the bees that invite the wasp larvae in

the way the microwaves heat up the noodles

the venom contained in the spurs of the platypus

the time-space conundra of quantum physics

the aura of the hand cupped over the flashlight

the arctic cold of the shaving cream can

when the last foam splutters away

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Compassion for the TallMany admire these long drinks of water,

women who like staring into the mists,

men who imagine everything is proportional.

Lincoln beats Douglass on the basis of height.

But I have looked into the heart of the tall,

they're right there at eye level,

and know them to be intelligent

and empathic, like sorrowful giants

in certain fairy tales,

and never quite accepted.

Women feel they're peering down their blouses,

men sense they are being looked down upon,

there's no getting around it,

when each of these treelike beings

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were babes like us,

wailing at the impositions of life

and unable ever

to find a place to hide.

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HarbingerDuring our courtship Rachel would visit me at my apartment.

One day she was at the door and heard the music on the stereo.

It was Lou Reed, whom I had been a fan of for many years.

"Why do you listen to him?" she asked me,

"he's just a sick show-off."

I prepared a defense in my mind, about Reed being a voice

for the alienated, and refecting a brutal post-Aquarian ethic,

plus he had that chunky guitar thing going.

But she was right, he was a sick show-off.

Everything else he might be, he

definitely was that.

She stepped into the bathroom,

I slumped in my chair, and wondered what else

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the future would bring.

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HippiesYou weren't supposed to ever get angry

unless it was about war or the man being the man,

but angry is what you are now,

everyone thinking you were a goofball

and that abandoning technology

and relying on love despite

everything we have come to know,

and now you are getting dialysis,

your hair all matted where

it hasn't disappeared, the age

of Aquarius spinning like a top

and then coming to rest

with the other toys.

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Losing a Daughter Is Like Being a Bee on the Moon

Every morning you wake up shivering

gazing out at the darkened spires,

wondering where is a flower

in this barren land that you

can draw sweetness from.

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