And Brigid is now on the grid
Clacking horror that a grown man
Wears a brony instead of a St. Christopher it’s
Another confluence at the Confusion River
Is all, the birds sing to be heard,
Use their minds to reduce as we do
What happened to what it is, meaning.
The woman agreed to be with the beast
After all, Avalon the red stone of Lemuria
Has value as a gratitude platitude
For virtuous full circles that don’t drift
As much as float, and float as much as watch
Like Mary Oliver’s swan, unconcerned
With how beautiful it is, how rare and fragile,
But tired of being admired turns surly,
Such are the dues paid for beauty, the elusive
Gratitude it would change before its own life.
They fall so hard for what they came for,
The rainbow flag day, but there’s no paper bag
Test for this, the exclusion. That’s the problem
With leverage, nobody bats an eye, as
The problem with connection is those who don't
Bat back, that is, there’s no compassion
For what can’t be understood, what is outside,
Unable to be seen, not like the ice today
In the urinal in Taft, the paintball on the grapevine
Roadside looking like shooting gallery tombs or honey homes,
The Arvin Chevron with half a million dollars sold
In ticket winnings, and beyond
Dirty Bird Guns and Ammo are rainbow umbrellas
Artfully poised over the champagne grape pickers,
Rainbows in the mirrors of the bird sparkles
So families might look think see at the hard-working
Migrant families and what they do for us, then
Maya Cinema, Pixley Pixies in HD, makes us think
Of Epiphany, will she take one of the fairies?
But there are warnings of spotted lanternflies
As Porcupine Tree sings of “somewhere, but not
Here.” Is it OK to drive, is it OK to be alive?
The silence of the pallet trucks hydrofoils by.
After Helix High School, I ran into Ruben Arthur
What-was-it, Torre, at the Church of the Open Door,
Directly above the California Club, below the fried iron
Scents of the Bunker Hill tenements, he was the one
Who put me into the room of beauty, and before
You know it we’re listening to Castro’s clandestine
Radio station after the sirens have stopped
During the bible college summer program
And knowing from the frenzy change was at hand.
And for me it came at Muroc, Air Corps Base,
Where proof-of-concept prototypes were trucked
Wings tucked from San Diego for the old out-of-the-box
In run flow and tension then thin air envelopes
Trying to beat the speed of sound brick wall, sneak
Around it, but the sound peeled the Shooting Star
Red enamel paint right off, the controls reversed,
The upside down world, dimensions transgressed,
Or was it the Seed Dart, no no that was the sea plane
Built to pontoon down and taxi on dry concrete
Like Patton wanted to roll all the way to Moscow.
The Navy wanted no part of that, it wanted Skunkworks
And it was such a long way from Niobrara, Nebraska,
Driving a Nash Metropolitan convertible, but he gave me,
My dad, a 51 Studebaker, looked like a rocket ship.
I riveted to it a top-secret military-grade seatbeat
Harness, but it buckled under the pressure
Of ordinary roads. Then there was the lemon
Maserati as signing bonus; that PI’d collected many
Such temperamental Hollywood beauties, that one
Some starlet committed suicide in, or was it
A different Maserati? It’s res judicata, baby,
Precedent has supplanted the memory
Of Belle Benchley, say, Grandmama of the San Diego
Zoo, or how the tools of ignorance get to be worn
By the smartest men, or how Nadine Remick
Played the clarinet, years later I was teased
Lightly once over about Naughty Nadine, as I was
Teased for wearing lamb with leopardskin
Before the coolest took to wearing lamb of course,
When other opinions mattered more than one’s own …
Twinkle twinkle little car how I wonder
How you are Burma Shave but the partitions
Are lost, only the ragtime nostalgia remains,
Like concrete teepees on the mother highway
To sleep in, more done up now than when they were
In neon, tomahawk windmills drawing in the windfall
Of gulches, with Gila River beaded lizards that lead you
To prototypes as playground planes outside of Bisbee,
To the enormous golden age wooden roller coasters
We scholars scour to polish from fading
But Rosemary Walker of Fall River has gone dark
As the YMCA pool she taught at, with those
Beginning swimmers she miraculously
Shepherded through the Great Blackout
Of 1965 sure as Eddie my friend made Ted
Williams’ mother crazy for calling him
Sluggish Ted, ah but the Navy guys
Are such soft touches, they would always be
Relied upon on shore leave for a nickel
To ride atop the Giant Dipper,
All that pageantry even though
There was a war on and we all knew it
Every moment, an air raid siren
Whenever a UFO was spotted,
San Diego blacked herself out
Based on warnings out of Alamogordo
For three or four hours of power down
Before the all-clear returned
And the father pleased as punch
To have the gift on His day of knowing
Sonny got close enough to his secret
Space programs to be moon landing skeptical.
Ah, but there's the plein air bin
And the oboe repair tray to attend to
And Magic Touch RV, Tipton farm and dairy
Supply, the Idle Spur Cafe, Milt's Five and Dimer,
But that's what it looks like from Buttonwillow,
Of the welding gas, Zingo's, the hungry valley
Echoes, the Super Ego Load Board (just for me).
Translucent the beauty as the amber rolls us on,
Norms we never close, and I can't get rid of
The ghost I picked up at the casino, the moments
Relentlessly going, to live long enough, in my case,
To declare Fictitious Sports the best solo Pink Floyd album.
