cantaraville | cantarabooks

FROM CLAPTRAP: NOTES FROM HOLLYWOOD

Democracy

I windshield shimmer her
jaunt down Wilshire Blvd.
just west of Rodeo Drive,
her beauty all past benz
and maseratis

legs,

dear god, she wears
nothing
below her belt
(pudenda v
as clear as black)
her dancing joints,
no skirt, no pants,
I’m lost. A prostitute
on drugs?

And brown as Africa
this deep princess lost
just past our dawn
as business men retreat to work
and I drive east,
her limbs a puppet’s gift -

no

my mistake up close
a mini leather, lace and gold confederacy
are mocking my slave owner’s naked dreams
as she, amphetamine dressed, and graceful
stutters on past grinding gods
of glass and stone and stainless steel

her lantern dim held humbly high to bless me, god,
for I have liberty from what I feel.

Land of the Free

Can’t disney this away,
can’t prozac it back
into the warm sofa
of this once obedient chest.
The grand chandelier
that’s turning like a satellite
demanding utter allegiance
and the closer attention
that should have been paid
to grammar, to the names
and statistics of all
the ballplayers
has lost its grip
on the color pink
mistaking it
for the space between
the first and second
amendments.

True Love

 

I catch it again: the reflection of you

(so much more stunning and true

than all the Marilyn Monroe diamond snow

sweet sewn seeds of success,

sucked so clean boned from the glory fish

of breast and beast and queen blood flow

to kingdom combed clean toothbrush fresh

my dream come through more red, white and blue

than my first view of Playboy magazine

 

that it undoes me completely.)

 

Your strategies succeed so mercilessly well

below the hard-wrought structures of civilization

(architecture, zoology, French, mathematics, etc.)

 

that your ligaments are attached to mine.

 

And, even though I'm 3000 miles away,

I fall to any knee I can find every time

your stone hard commandments are invoked

(far more potently I might add than

any golden calf Sinai ant hill version they sold to us

for worship)

 

because you and me are playing for keeps, babe

 

(womb powered, moon gathered

peace entreaties not withstanding).

We cannot risk the earth spinning

off her candy axis, can we?

 

Or can we,

 

even though my half thoughts stutter

at any view of myself

(mirror, photo, video

camera or mind's eye snap shot),

because, of course, it's

 

you

 

I see,

 

you

 

I carry

 

(baby inside me

that will never come out.

never cry, suck, piss or whimper

as I did,

 

this one will stay inside

what ever there was I was supposed to be

so you, my mist of all the silver cinemas,

can eat her way motherly to lunch in bed

and nap on the wine red blanket to heaven)

 

unless I do something

 

now.

 

For my dear wife, Naomi

Photosynthesis

I note it driving behind them:

the sly glance out their rusty passenger window

to the three trees rooted temporarily in boxes.

Easily steal-able (I imagine) into their GMC bed,

drop down the rattling tailgate, late at night.

They talked excitedly

the two dirty fingernailed men, faded jeans,

turning hard at the next curve

in their greasy cocked caps

and a whiff of Top 40.

Everything around them

a potential rape and pillage (I imagine)

with their delicious baby mouths

of suck and porn

and muscled dark tan arms

with sleeves rolled up

and faded shirts (the kind

Ralph Lauren claims as his).

Oh, to be that kind of young again

when every oyster spreads its legs for you

and the nails you hit on two by fours

sing out your praise and you can sell

those god damned trees to a guy

your brother knows and drink till three

and roam the roads for other trees

and slide back down deep into that warm salt sea -

anything, anything! but this dull, cold

dig by the numbers

where you fertilize and plant and water

every clockwork day and careful

not to crush the leafy fingers

as they too slow sing their deep green

rootedness up.
 

Crescent Moon

As Elvis Costello baptizes

the radiant morning,

blaring with the South Road sun

(my SUV windows up against the Yukon wind,

the oil of an Arabian child's blood whistling

this empire's chromed wheel's glory forward)

I see her dancing.

Dancing!

A pining child with her pockets

full of daddy's jelly beans.

Dancing

a ragamuffin's dreams of flour

for a thousand loaves of bread.

A pine tree.

Dancing!

Jiggling every pine tree

needle of her Christmas joy.

And if it's only a mix of Caribbean hot currents

and Arctic winter blow

then why aren't the other trees dancing,

stamping their roots to my English rocker

as our two countries throttle through

bombs and blood and casual facts?

Why does so much else sleep

while this child of wood whiskeys

across my wrinkling face, dancing,

as if she will never feel the axe.

_______________ 

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