Curiouser and Curiouser
August, humid and smelling of funnel cakes
and sausages, we stroll in the Clearfield
County Fair. We’ve just seen Andy Kim,
Lou Christie, Maxine Nightingale,
and Martha and the Vandellas perform,
4 musical orgasms. Your
94-year-old grandmother’s hand-sewn
pillow won a blue ribbon. We visit
the poultry. So many chickens!
I’ll never say “They’re all alike” ever again.
Some look haughty, red-crested,
others thin, models after
a long photo shoot. Horses sleep.
One looks like Mr. Ed. The sheep sound
techy, like why don’t these goomers
just go home and let us sleep. Among
pigs we see a young man wearing a t-shirt:
I HAVE THE DICK SO I MAKE THE RULES.
His laughter and empty eyes make me want
to leave. We get snow cones,
don’t speak of him till we’re back
in our motel room, drinking martinis,
two men who love each other—who makes
our rules, unmakes them? We wonder
if he has a girlfriend—maybe
she’d think he’s funny. Until
he enforces.
Pack
“You’re nothing but a pack of cards.”
AIW
Religions deal each other
a bad hand. Pick a card, any card—
all 52 can explode. A woman holds
her baby. Half a world away,
some joker signs a paper--she’s in
pieces. To hide the smell,
we glug poison mouthwash.
The deck gets cut again
and again, but the joker rules all
kings and queens, says “I have principles.
God invites me to His best table.”
Pray. The joker’s gets wilder each day--.
a cannibal,
he’s hungry. And looking
right at you.
White Rabbit
There never was a Summer
of Love--while hippies put
flowers in their hair, boys
roughed me up, called me faggot
before I knew what one was.
It’s like I had a disease
and their hate quarantined me. Why not
follow Grace Slick and her white
rabbit? At 13, all I could feed
my head was Cheerios and reruns. And
music. I turned my black transistor radio
to WCFL or WLS, preferred CFL—
they had d.j. Ron Britain and neat
pocket radio surveys. I suspected
Grace’s white rabbit wouldn’t lead me
into the arms of Jesus. This bunny
kept sniffing strange stuff in California .
Near Chicago , I sniffed Ovaltine
made in a factory four blocks away,
waited till my parents went shopping,
then blasted “White Rabbit”
on our stereo, rode Grace’s voice
into several universes, all merging in
our living room. The God I was given
nagged me to sing “Amazing Grace.”
She was amazing in a green mini skirt,
long black hair--a white rabbit
leaping out of her mouth.