Sunday, September 5, 2010

Bill Had






















Bill Had


Two deaf parents who taught him sign language
which he forgot after they died.
Next to mine, the best beat-up old denim jacket
in the crew.
Small hands for such a big man.
Thick dark hair, greenish-brown eyes, and one of the handsomest
faces I’ve seen outside of movies.
A talent for mimicry.
An irritating habit of taking things too far.
An endearing one of apologizing when he did.
Small learning and large curiosity.
A pretty short attention span.
An unshakeable belief that women ejaculated
when they came.
Many girlfriends.
Dozens of friends, including ex-girlfriends.
A part-time DJing job where he met many of his friends
and girlfriends and scored high-quality drugs.
Inoperable colon cancer at age 28.
A cop costume so good it almost got him beaten up
by Halloween partyers who had flushed their dope
until he shared out his own which was better.
A filthy apartment piled with pizza boxes.
A grin no one could resist.
Nimble feet, with which he performed amusing untrained
tap, soft shoe, and jig.
Zero ambition.
Occasional mean moods but no cruel bone in his body.
A Jimmy Cagney routine in which while singing “Yankee
Doodle Dandy” he ran at a wall and up it and back-
flipped off of it, landing on his feet,
which never should have worked because Cagney
was a shrimp and Bill was linebacker-sized
but I saw it, many times, from 1981 to 1985,
during the long afternoons when the galleries
were empty.

Old Master Memo






















Old Master Memo

Not how it happens,
old friend, not how it starts:

The choir doesn’t erupt in full throat
off the bat. They fidget and scrape,
murmur and stir, sing scales
and snatches of old tunes;

they’ve been known to bellow stale limericks
or hum a kazoo
before launching into
what they really intend.

It’s an indispensable rite
which gives a foretaste
of precisely nothing.

How could you of the icy
blue caves forget that?


How much

How much might change if you just started admitting, to yourself and to others, what does and does not interest you? How much might follow from just that start?

Saturday, September 4, 2010

Limits of a Holiday



Limits of a Holiday

Nine
days
home
and
already
I’m
shouting.