Poetry

John Talbot

APRIL POEM

 Bear in mind that suicide is a short circuit
 so don't blame yourself for what those other
 people do. Sword or no sword, if you walk
 the plank enough times eventually you'll float.
 Turds float too, at least some of the time.
 Don't be so hard on yourself. The sharks
 have all missed the point. A friend offered
 a protective lunch which I took but then I fell
 asleep. How many times has that happened?
 They found water on the moon. You can go
 there to take a bath but I wouldn't bother.
 How did we get from chokers to road rage,
 anyway? Frankly, I'm glad you're not here
 to see all this stuff. But how cold is it when
 you're dead, is what I really want to know.
 I can't stop thinking about that. Maybe it's
 better to be dead. I mean really dead,
 where nothing ever happens dead. Last night
 I walked past the West Side furniture store
 where I once saw the Great Author perusing chairs:
 wicker, bean bag, and some-assembly-required.
 You don't think of great minds as needing
 inexpensive places to sit. At least I don't.
 He wrote a book on how it feels to die
 but I haven't read it. Can you blame me?
 We'll all know in due course and text books
 are a burden. At the tax accountant's I caught
 the whiff of fear. My own, but what did I expect?
 We owe.

 THE BUNKER

 The most monstrous things were done without firing a shot.
 Over breakfast, usually, or sometimes in school. Frequently
 it's so quiet you can hear the clock ticking. The cat sits on my lap
 now but back then there was no cat. Just a dog, and it didn't bark.
 I always wished it were bigger so I could ride it, or scare people
 off. Powerful people want to be paddled, or peed upon. I am not
 powerful. My fantasy was a psychedelic bunker stocked with toys
 dropped to me by my friend, Gigantor. Unbeknownst to mom
 and dad the bunker was in our backyard. Only girls I liked could
 get in to take care of me, as I had a mysterious illness. I had
 a real illness once, too. I was in a coma for a week. They packed
 me in ice and said I slapped the nurse though I don't remember
 much except for the spinal tap. For that they held me down
 and I thought they were cutting a square hole in my back. I got
 better and had no lasting damage except supposedly I was sickly
 and later, accident prone.  I also suck at sports but that's not from
 encephalitis, which is what I had. The cat sits on my lap now.
 The clocks tick, different ones in different rooms. Monstrous
 things happen but mostly to others. We are getting a dog.


 LOUNGE ACT

 We must have royalty in the house said
 mom cause you're a royal pain in the ass.
 When I was a kid she was Elizabeth
 Montgomery. When I got old enough to date
 the good witch however mom had to become
 somebody else. A singer of show tunes
 unfortunately and ditties like this:
 "She's got freckles on her but she is pretty."
 Also: "I don't want her you can have her
 she's too fat for me." Best sung while fat.
 She chilled red wine in the ice box and stashed
 caramel turtles in the dresser though the turtles
 I often ate myself. She was a beauty even
 while sick. Have you seen a person cry
 so much their face chaps with tears?
 My aunt called her the poor man's Princess
 Grace which I liked because as Grace Kelly
 the princess was poor. Now I can't hear her
 voice at all. Can't seem to remember or
 imagine it and all my dreams are silent:

 Here I would like to say that I awake singing
 Bing Crosby but that would be cute rather
 than true. Sometimes silence is silence,
 okay? It has its own meaning.

 TELEPHONE

 The girl who knew King Tut said he was a cheap date.
 The girl who said she knew King Tut said he was a cheapskate.
 He bought jawbreakers and licorice but made her split the nickel
 back when a pack of Marlboro cost forty cents.
 They played four-square after three and he was a rascal.

 There's a rich guy at the Metropolitan.
 He's old and stinky but you'll get used to it. Wear cologne.
 My mother wore silver and platinum but I've decided
 I look better in gold. Have you met the boy with the jeweled face?
 It's not a mask.

 We used to climb trees and also kick-the-can. I could run
 fast but I often lost. One girl broke her arm.
 A man followed another man from King Tut's Wah Wah Hut
 to Washington Square Park and murdered him.
 Though evidently there's a replacement they shut the Hut down.
 Tax evasion. I miss the spongy furniture though not twenty-three.

 Our cat was Abyssinian. I can't get over the way he died.
 We spread his ashes in the garden at the pet cemetery.
 My mother's casket is made of mighty oak.  I will follow
 mom's lead but where will you go?

 THREE WAVES

 1. Grandfather forgive me for leaving you alone in a rowboat
 in the dark while I was inside with the hippies
 preparing a plate of grasses they said would make us sick
 because we hadn't tried them, but I was hungry.

 2. The metal up my sleeve was the snowmaking device
 I pulled from your roof to stop you from making that illegal
 black snow at night.  A tidal wave came down the street
 and confused the whole party.

 3. The three-tiered wall of water at the front of the restaurant
 was several stories high and angled steeply.  The lounge was wet
 but you said not to worry because you'd been through this before.
 Though the tables were tipped I took your advice and was late getting
out.

 TITANIC

 It's not the only ship that sank, you know.
 Just be glad we all have rowboats, even if
 they are made of wood. You have to submerge
 them each spring so the planks swell tight.
 There are life jackets as well but the foam is hard
 and flaky. You'll sink if you wear them.

 Did you panic the first time they pushed you in?
 I had to learn how to float, which dad thought
 was innate. How could a kid just sink, right?
 I doggie paddled for a couple of years. Doing the crawl
 gave me a sore throat from the water I swallowed.
 I never did learn how to dive. Doc told me to watch
 my nuts when I jumped.

 Think of the corporation as a ship and don't mind
 the rats. At least you get health benefits, right? Here's
 how to tread water: move your legs in a pedaling motion
 while sweeping your arms back and forth horizontally,
 palms down. In cold water survival time is estimated
 at ten minutes. Warm water enables you to do this
 for hours. Then there's the dead man's float,
 which you should practice.

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