For Sound Bite Purposes

A little snow. Branches broken then
shattered on the ground. An empty
brown table scared. A knob that
shines. Gray squirrels. Small change.
A cloudy November day. Fieldstones
leading to the porch. New England
farms. An empty room where a radio
plays. Or stray cats. Two trucks with
broken headlights. Wreathes of steam
rising from the thermos. Damp hair.
Fish wrapped in newspaper. French or
else Russian. One painted red. Until
the camera zooms. And the whole
thing develops into something much
lighter than a gob of spit.

- Maurice Oliver

(featured in the poetry forum 08.09.09)

Gemini, With Virgo Rising

But first, there are a few things you need to know about me:

- I keep my cosmos in the plenitude of June.

- I have never put much trust in a square peg.

- I wear brightly colored Euros with pennies in my loafers.

- My favorite anthology is a drum solo.

- I could stand by while war slashes its throat.

- When I wake-up in the morning my breath is fiber optic.

- The rattle of leaves in the wind blows my wine.

- I’m convinced Bob Dylan leaves no carbon footprints.

- I believe telephone bills are manna from heaven.

- I have grew-up to become his own chemistry set.

- Maurice Oliver

& Hearts, Tattooed On A Sleeve

Begin with an image
of the Pearly Gates
covered with graffiti.
Draw a picture of the
ozone swinging from
a trapeze. Find the
German lyrics to
“Mack The Knife” and
memorize each word
backwards. Brush your
teeth with lava. Walk
across hot coals. Sell
New Orleans back to
the French. Adopt an
armadillo for a pet. Or,
why not write your
apartment number in
the palm of your hand
when you go to the
laundry room just in
case you get lost. Try
eating shoelaces. Stick
your shiny sword in a
stone. And if none of
the above works, find
comfort in knowing that
you’ve never met a grain
of sand you didn’t like.

- Maurice Oliver

& Any Number Of Similar Requests

She says her dreams are always erotic and occur at a
time when postage stamps cost eighteen cents. I say
mine stand in a crowd of people watching fireworks
and tires to lift a man’s wallet. We both laugh when I
tell her the wallet has no credit cards and just enough
for coffee money.

Sometimes her dreams fall in my lap and never bother
to say I’m sorry. On those occasions they wear shoes
that lace up to about two inches above her ankles. The
shoes are always red and genuine leather. They talk
themselves off, then stand in the corner and take notes.

“I once followed the yellow brick road and ended up in a
strange apartment on the 9th floor of a very inhospitable
building,” she admits, as she encloses me in a series of
rectangles. “I once went through all the belongings of a
dead person and only found several porous insults,” I reply,
willing to scrape her thoughts with my rough hairy hands.

No Ordinary Dream, Wearing Go-Go Boots

It was no ordinary dream.

It wore a halo and walked out of a grotto full of flags
wearing go-go boots and a big Afro wig. It made
seductive promises of an all-night café where I could
OD on caffeine and order raw hamburger with an egg
yolk floating in the middle. I hate eggs. But I love
pickled relish and fish when it doesn't smell. The place
gleamed and the ashtrays were brimming over. There
was even a pinball machine that would let you tilt it to
win. The waitress was bow-legged with a hearing-aid
on strike. Her name tag read "Peaches" but they only
came in a can. Did I mention the homemade biscuits?
By the time I finished the meal I felt like the longest
rap song in a stanza. For dessert she offered a freshly
mown lawn covered in dew. I declined but my dream
ordered a hunting license and spent the next day taking
buck-shots at the VP, who was kind of beige and covered
by funny decals. Mysteriously enough, the pads of butter
the waitress put on the table could be sliced in half, in
case the dream wanted to shoot through them.

- Maurice Oliver

A Narrative, Turning-Up Its Hearing-Aid...
 
or she could decide to dress in
plastic money for a hat using a big
floppy pray of defiance
 
or wearing some vague paper stripe to
encourage the wallflower to wheel someone
else's sacred club of war as the rain falls
 
or exposing a burst of wildebeest thunder
that kicks-up enough dust to tumble yellow
then settle on the picture-frame's velvet purse
 
or just a chance to unravel her rope in a rich
man's car while searching for the map to life's
strong box, tucked away in her habitual handbag.

- Maurice Oliver

Directions To The Mezzanine
 
When we try flying-down the taxi
                      it just rushes right on by
                                            as if it were intent on
saving the world...
 
but mostly, we sit watching the
voices come out of each our necks
 
and hope that there is still a
                 reasonable amount
                                    of reality TV
to seal-off our abandoned mines.
 
We convince ourselves to walk over hot coals
pass beaten-metal and ammo cases in the hope
that there's a better world waiting on mezzanine 
if we can just find a getaway car
 
           with a full tank.

- Maurice Oliver

& Blued By A Varicose Fate
 
Then she describes what would happen if real aliens took over:
 
- They would lift ever pant leg and shake out the rats.
 
- Use the world as if it were a hammock full of mushroom bones.
 
- Demand every laundry list to kneel at their feet.
 
- Tattoo a bar-code for the price of heaven onto selected wrists.
 
- Cut-off every echo at the half-way point.
 
- Move the stage props of skid row to Beverly Hills .
 
- Insist on reforms that would cause the penal code to self-destruct.
 
- Invent a revolutionary red to lipstick sunsets.
 
- Relocate poetry to some undisclosed remote lake.
 
- Teach mattresses how to wake-up without hangovers.
 
- Make sure there's a slur in every new report.
 
- Propose that every shirt be based on a previous tale.
 
- Condemn every hospital gurney to a squeaky-wheeled fate.

- Maurice Oliver

Lyrics For A Tire Iron
 
To make matters worse the lyrics in the song promise us a place
"somewhere", if we just rub it first. We try it a couple of times but
all we get is Braille embossed  across the tire iron. And when the
extended version is released, the words take on the form of a set
of flashing lights at a railroad-crossing. We arrive just in time to see
the slobbering anthropoid wake-up in the back seat of a '56 Chevy  
wondering how it got undressed and where in the world those
white elbow-length gloves came from. We know the answer but
figure there's already enough brown jokes in the toilet of oblivion.

- Maurice Oliver