Dream Team, 1998

Andre Breton, pitcher
Joseph Cornell, catcher
George Jones, first base
Phillip K. Dick, second base
Eugene Chadbourne, third base
John Zorn, shortstop
Charles Fort, left field
Allen Frost, center field
Charles Bukowski, right field

Kurt Schwitters, designated hitter

The Grey Ghost

He sits on a broken brown suitcase
or the top of a television,
feet dangling down.

He spins on the paper inner circle
of an old Stravinsky record.
The bassoon bellows loudly,
and he's off, floating wearily up,
like a week-old balloon,
to the high still corners of the room.
Waiting.
It is safe to come down now.
Over to an oak table.
The dark, cool wood beneath him,
he lays down to rest.

The smell of lamb and boiled cabbage
wafting up the stairs reminds him
of the Roosevelt administration
and seeing his first airplane
blink across the night sky.
He is filled with a brief strength
and moves a chair across the room.
They will notice this.
Then tired again and sitting on the floor,
hunched over with short breaths.

When night ends
he leaves the room
and through the hall window
watches the sun rise
like a bleeding plum
oozing across the landscape.

Creating
more
days.

The View

brown Wisconsin fields
seen from bus
window beneath
trouble clouds
rings of leafless
trees, white
paper caught
in low branches
foreclosures
temporary ponds
tilled soil
where birds perch
they say before
the meteor hit
there were
plane-sized
reptile birds and
cats as big as
tractors who
skulked & strode
on limestone
cliffs & stalked
prey across
red granite
expanses
clouds of sulfur
floating expanding
bursting over bogs
reflected in the
animal's convex eyes

Mystery

A tower,
a phone,
a pregnant woman.
Connected somehow.
I don't know how.

Froggy

I suspend a frog
in a block of ice for
a couple weeks.
The first warm day
in March
I release him,
the block melting slowly
on the splintered porch.
And the frog emerges,
dazed, a little sheepish,
but eager to hop around and experience.
I feed him some algae,
and then I give him
a little banjo to play.
He's not bad and he has
a high, yodeling voice
like Bob Wills.
Then I pack a little car of
full of provisions
and a box of Holy Bibles
and tell him to drive around
the country and solicit money
to set up storefront churches.
He nods his green head yes.

An Interview

Grab the chrome handle

and slide back the wooden door

through its wooden grooves

to reveal a white duck

on a black dinner plate.

Ask him your questions.

"How tall was Ching Kai-shek?"
"Five ft. seven."

"Who was the first man to climb Mount Shasta?"
"E.D. Pearce."

"How deep is the Sargasso Sea?"
"Three miles deep."

"What is the name of the Aztec sun god?"
"Huitzilopochtli."

"Who invented the refractometer?"
"Ernst Abbe."

"Why does the mind see colors?"
"The mind is a harbor box."

That is all.
No more questions.