Tom Carson

My advice, you tykes? Fall
In love quickly and always
With mountains, oceans,
Rivers, and their likes. Even when
You fall in love with sunsets,
All you’ve done is out
Yourself as an incurable
Polygamist.

True, mountains, oceans, even rivers –
Much less the particular bit of crooked stream
In Maine you waded, lucky you, that day
In 2002 nobody else remembers –
Nah, they won’t be there forever.
Ask any geologist. But
Despite some bad reports of
Late about their purchase on
Eternity, the overwhelming odds are
They’ll outlive you and
Be unperturbed by your love.
Since all true love is
Inadequate to its object,
There’s that by way of
Consolation.

To fall in love with a person,
On the other hand,
Is to learn what death means
At first sight. Or will mean, whichever
I-eyed U-Boat — “Dive,
Dive, please, honey! Dive, live, dive” — is
Sunk first by strange
Depth charges. Childless myself, I’m told it’s worse
When periscope-free kids experiment
With coral, enemy navies and torpedoes.
Reluctant professionals, bereaved parents mourn lost
Amateurs.

And to fall
In love with cities –
Oh, my God. That’s
An invite for grief
To get deranged by sudden
Holocausts of strangers.
Or else just be tyrannized
By new leaves on the flimsy trees
That contradict the concrete
On your block the day
You catch on they’ll
Outlive you. Renewal implies
Destruction.

By these standards, loving a sports team seems
Relatively safe. Even when
The Arizona Obladis get
Shut out in the Series by the
New York Obladas, a kernel inside you
Knows life will go on. Unless,
Of course, that much cheered
Strikeout in the extra inning meant
We lost you to a fucking
Humongous heart attack. As you sprawl
And — beers temporarily forgotten — shoals
Of sports-bar fans become an
EMT-awaiting cluster,
Farewell.

The saddest of all are those
Who love nations. We
Are the Gulf Stream’s Lost Patrol,
Idiots who clung to emblems
Long after the silt told us
They were anonymous prizes
Of the current. Mud presides,
No fault of any individual. Gaunt
With maps of our stupidity,
We wonder what rivers were like
When they just crashed to the sea
Sans human footnotes. The answer is
That crashing rivers don’t know the
Difference and could care less. They
Were always that way, and some
Bliss.

We never knew we’d end up belonging for life
To the other Mile High Club. More
Than our shock-effect, brusquely
Depantied or back-hunching,
Origami rivals — imagine needing a confined,
Unduly shiny (mirror and sink in a stubbornly calm
Argument over which one reflected more) bathroom-by-Boeing’s
Dimensions to turn yourselves intricate! — we

Mere smokers felt sublimely certain that our lovely
Clicks of a Zippo aboard Pan Am 007,
Individualism’s answer
To the seat belts’ stewardess-mandated and safer
Transatlantic simulacrum of a Communion wafer,
Were purchasing the toxic likes of us
Some fleeting immortality
On the American Century’s mortgaged
Behalf. “Be whole instead”
Was still Berkeley Sanskrit then, believe me.

Sweet Lindbergh, we were public!
Sanctioned by airlines’
Modest, chirping tin crickets
Embedded in armrests. You
Can still spot ashtrays on a few old planes.
Once the pilot got level,
We’d uncork our Camels,
Newports or Salems. On a night flight to Paris
The week Ford pardoned Nixon, one
Sheltered strange goddess — a Titian,
but dyed Brazilian — randily lit a Virginia Slim.

Peer with timezone-smudged eyes at that tourist-chopped bang of black hair,
Impatiently wafted somewhere
Past darkened Greenland by the exhale!
I lost her forever in luggage claim,
Too random and dumb a bag to rate a trial
Grip or even fluttered, abortive nicotine wave –
At the metal-jarred suitcase, not me — before
She settled on her brand: Vespucci. But hello,
Seat 48A from48F — so long ago. At least you
And I had one thing we shared.

End of Orly digression. “Man, they
Really let you do that? Puff away 30,000
Feet up like Caesar’s incense? It wasn’t your house, and
Did you board separately?” say random post-
Millenials, modern aviation’s
Avatars of a 21st-century contradiction
In terms: freedom minus vice.
“What was it like?” Death aside, it was nice.

The world wasn’t flat then.
It was round as a breast
Undisfigured by cancer.
Now grounded, I light up,
Generationally blessed.
You’re all so fucking lucky
That we could use a rest.

[Note: I also apologize for the Obviously Offensive Word included herein. But I wrote it after watching the sun set on the Mississippi River on Independence Day.  There really was a dog romping around, too. I hope everyone will understand the gist.]

He pricks up his ears

On the Fourth of July

And he doesn’t know why.

He’s an American dog.

You can all see that

He’s kind of a mutt.

His only trick

Is licking his butt.

He’s an American dog.

He makes everyone welcome.

Just watch his tail wag.

I guess you’ll have to train him

To spot a fag.

He’s an American dog.

The limerick version

A gal named Molly Marine once said,

“Where is the place where I can lay my head?

My uniform’s not

My idea of a cot

And I’d really like to go to bed.”

The haiku version

Marine gal looks up.

Gone as soon as the war ends.

Society is fucked.

The sonnet version:

I was dedicated in ’43.

That’s got a double meaning to a statue.

It’s not much to do with me.

But here I am coming at you:

Molly Marine, so proud and strong.

I was watching for planes.

Did you even notice when I said “So long”?

Now I’m supervising traffic lanes.

I’d like to go to Molly’s on the Market

(a well-known NOLA bar today)

Or Molly’s on Toulouse to park it

For a change, so let us pray.

Molly Marine! Be free of stone.

Men hate to see you all alone.

The Clerihew Version

Molly Marine

Said, “Why am I a gyrene?

I was made for satin.

Just not to raise a brat in.”

The T.S. Eliot version

Let us go then to enlist

Now that Pearl Harbor’s clarified the gist

Of the Pacific’s push-me-pull-you fable.

Let us go, despite misunderstood defeats,

Now grime that greets

Our restless dawns on radio news.

We still don’t know about the Jews.

The Walt Whitman version

Molly. . . . ! Words fail me.

Beth is a looker, that’s for sure.

She loved that bar, too, from the fake

Tiffany lamps to the tribute band’s

Amps. For Christ’s sake!

You can’t compete with the Messiah.

Not when he says “Hiya,

Baby,” flashing and fanning

Those pearly whites.

“Man, this just bites,”

I said to Vixen (then manning

The keg) when his Dentyne choppers

Introduced Beth

To his chromed H-D hog, which was hipper

Than mine. She could recline.

When Jesus hit on my girlfriend,

I thought it was the end

Of the world.  And of us, too.

Why couldn’t he have picked

Some other plump chick — Caprice, Suellen?

Both those gals were born licked.

Caprice was a six, Suellen

A seven. That’s how I’d voted

The night Beth asked me to confess.

She grew instantly moated:

“Oh, well,” she said. “We’re all

Size Four in Heaven, I guess.”

“Save me from Jesus, Lord,”

Was what I was still praying

When Beth left with a smile

Bigger than my credit-card debt.

So much for Vixen saying

That a truck could drive through

What I haven’t seen yet.

They were gone for three days.

I’d almost lost hope for our dream.

Later Beth told me stories

Of diamonds and things.

She was drunk on the stoop of our trailer,

And the King of Kings

Had pulled her strings

While I sat at home with  Jim Beam

And a dog we’d named Failure.

She’d have sniveled in her hovel

When she saw death with the shovel.

Next she’d try to buy a vowel and start paging Mrs. Howell

For her lifeline on Who Wants To  Be a Millionaire?

Ayn’s preferred title — Ayn, zwei, drei, you could say –

Was Where Eagles Dare.

Then she started to unravel and she spoke about a trowel

That she mistook for a gavel,

But the concrete was felafel and Ayn Rand was dead.

Now, I’m not Vaclav Havel,

And my navy isn’t Royal.

But I am a fan of Ravel,

Although he was a mite disloyal,

And her drivel gave me shivers

When I heard that Ben Bernanke

Really dug her hanky-panky

And even Greeenspan

Was a stone fan in his youth.

Gimme some truth.

We know Ayn is Charlie Sheen.

Frenemies do share a dream.

She was a lonely bunion

To the former Soviet Union.

But churches have no bike lanes

And an atheist’s confession

Is a lesion of a lesson

To a priest.  What’s this feast?

Ayn serves roast beast.

True, she cawed about her awe

Of verbosity sans circumlocution.

In her not too ample person,

Like Aimee Semple McPherson,

She was aiming for a fusion

Of reunions and contusions

With an Alka-Seltzer fizz.

And she hollered in her choler

About the almighty dollar,

And the fallow in their dolor

Want to call her

On the phone. Leave me alone.

If she’s your idea of force of will,

Maybe you’re out of Benadryl.

Viagra’s Niagara, meet the barrel

Whose latest squirrel is Ron Paul.

Divided in one part is his Gaul.

Not my idea of a bed,

And this just in: Ayn Rand is dead.

[NOTE: The U.S. Secret Service, of course, has to be prepared for anything. In the past, their code names for presidents and presidential candidates have often had a certain poetry -- for instance, "Lancer" for John F. Kennedy, or "Rawhide" for Ronald Reagan -- as well as, on occasion,  a certain malice: e.g., "Deacon" for Jimmy Carter. This memo's author is unknown, as is its provenance or reliability. But everything about it practically reeks of authenticity.]

Mitt Romney                                                Bootstrap

Michele Bachmann                                      Chuckles

Newt Gingrich                                              Krypton

Mike Huckabee                                            Weltschmerz

Ron Paul                                                        Trial

Sarah Palin                                                    Facebook

Haley Barbour *                                           Rectum

Herman Cain                                                 Negro

Rick Santorum                                              Fungus   Smegma Bungee

Jon Huntsman                                              Tintin

Tim Pawlenty                                                Bellhop

Mitch Daniels                                                Other

Donald Trump                                               Screwtop

*Barbour dropped out of contention after seeing an early copy of this list.

“I don’t want realism. I want magic!”

— Blanche DuBois

I know she’s mad at this

Stage. Tiny, all but barking for a hypo, she’s

In no mood to contemplate –

Unless she and her creator

Took it as a given — the mere

Elderly typesetter’s sneeze

That separates ontology from

Oncology, a hint that metamorphosis

Is to metastasizing what

Yellow butterflies are to black pearls.

We all live in Kowalskistan. And yet

The shop din’s sonic warp sometimes

Produces a misguided piano’s woof.

Watch out, Mr. K!  Even Stella’s not aloof

To Chopin’s plinked pinings just before

He too got the chop.  Yet as you smashed

Dinner plates like you were hunting ants,

Defenestrated radios

Sans an adios — then began to dance –

Your real luck was that even Mitch

Knew cancer’s answer to the rich

Questions Chopsticked on life’s baby grands:

“You’re all a bunch of ampersands.”

Meanwhile, Blanche is on her way to the nuthouse.

So what if — what if? — her bin-bound and verbose

Eyes, in the widow’s window

Of that strangely black taxi, spied

Robert Frank’s reply: the

Humdrum passage, back in 1955,

Of some few random stares

Whose ocularly hijacked

Owners hadn’t asked

To be this week’s onlookers

To much of anything?

What if their assorted

Gazes took her to the bank

Whose tellers customize

Life’s currency unbribed?

The picture’s genius

Is that no one — individually — knew

Or, for sure, cared

They’d all gone briefly public.

Things they each knew solo got

Redefined in an exile’s snap

As American knowlege, shared –

A map in transit to somewhere.

From left to right, a humdrum

Passenger miscast as

Future museums’ undone

Driver.  His eyes odd lockets

Of plans left unfocussed by glaziers in

Pay to the transit cops, he’s just

Passed Go with empty pockets

Yet again. The prune

Albino ice-cream cone

gone wrong behind him is sans hopes.

Her frozen fury –plainly everyday,

And not just saved for family

Reunions — suggests she thought she was once fruit,

Her grievance.

Two white kids, and the boy

Is strangely prim, as if  wonderstruck

In an almost Hitchcock way

That proper tailoring is childhood’s

Substitute for wisdom. Prematurely, his own

Eyes know better, and

The struggling girl — kid sis? — is wailing

And soon to be subdued by Nanny.  But

That black guy who doubts he’s even fully welcome

At this improvised Last Supper on the Ark –

Picture Chuck Berry identified

At last as an unknown, MIA Clark

Gable! —  indicates,

With his frame-breaking hand,  a twin

To the distraught birthday boy’s, that he wonders

If this window might become a table.

The unfocussed gibberish that’s caught in the panes’

Streetcar glass menageries above their heads –

Is that a pope, a rape, raw war,  odd tints,

Clawed awe,  just blurry

Everydayness ?– testifies

To how all of you from then, real or else

Profoundly  notional, still costume us.

We posthumous

Interlocutors run sprints

In vain to alchemize you.

If that’s lousy chemistry,  too bad. We’re

All still citizens here, I hope — that is, in a hurry. Nonetheless,

If you ask me, this  photograph  is Belle

Reve’s final owner’s one glimpse of her jury.

Caught on the trolley, shy

Or angry, they don’t scoff.

In the kindliest way,  they’ve all been had

By strangers, and  what their eyes ask is

This: Blanche, just where the hell

Did you get off? And why?

[see Robert Frank -- "Trolley, New Orleans, 1955"]

“I shot a cartoon in the air;

It fell — I know not where,

But after all there’s no regret,

The idea may be going yet.”

– Art Young, cartoonist for The Masses, circa 1917. Quoted in Allen Churchill’s The Improper Bohemians: Greenwich Village in Its Heyday (1959), in which Allen Ginsberg’s name does not appear.