Awoken and
"lost in thought, [s]he taps his knee with his wandlike pencil, and at the same instant a car (NewYork [California] license plate) passes along the road, a child bangs the screen door of a neighboring porch, an old man yawns in a misty Turkestan [citrus] orchard, a granule of cinder-grey sand is rolled by the wind on Venus, a Doctor (Jacques Hirsch) in Grenoble [Oceanside] puts on his reading glasses and trillions of other such triffles occur-all forming an instantaneous and transparent organism of events, of which the poet (sitting in a lawn chair, at Ithica, N.Y. [desk chair in the bario of olde Carlsbad]) is the nucleus."
"Speak, Memory" by Vladimir Nabokov [edited & adapted]
The fates had been particularly cruel at the top of the witching hour.
The Tomcat, named Timmy was screaming, warning another Tom, Harry or Richard to keep their
distance.
The sirens blared by, red lights revolving on the blue walls under street lamps filled blanks with black.
The wild dog, who resembles a wolf down the street, begins to howl, chiming in the chorus of the sirens song, chasing high and low notes, he purses his lips and points his jowls.
A baby cries-deep in heavy fever, a door slams, and
then the upstairs people are making seesaw love on rickety furniture
and I lie
awake, refusing to rise and face the cacophony drawing me to rise up.
The woman must be mad.
She screams obscenities alone in her front yard, throwing cuss words like skipping rocks
in a low tide lagoon. She stabs herself and her imaginary foes with daggers of dialog-
directed at herself-
until I yell across the street, "SHUT UP!" and she whimpers 'sorry',
slinking away in the dark-
before erupting in a final plume "DIE! DIE! DIE!"
meaning me, my daughter, my family, she is haunted by these angels among us.
The other woman on the street backed into a parked car-
left a note.
And another other woman, that she lives with, hit a skateboarder in her car and drove off.
I agree with the man who was able to walk away with tire-tread on his board and only obscenities on his lips-
what if it had been a child?
The elementary school sits dutifully around the corner. Before and after school, the kids walk on our side of the street-to avoid the Hippie House from where the mad woman is still screaming at my house, "YOU LOUD B-" she screams toward me-
The cops are coming...hopefully...
Now, it is too late to sleep, early to rise.
Now I can only guess the ghosts got lonely, bored, mischevious, so the moon mixed up
a new batch of lunacy for the fates to spread,
liberally, locally,
on weak-willed ladies whose greatest fear is the mirror.
A woman wanes, watches,
grows wary with her words
and speaks only when spoken to, she is called Meek, she keeps everything inside.
It is the sound of body and mind collaborating, this is heartbeat,
a door pounds, the head throbs, the first train comes, the street admits defeat.
Finally,
the brutish bicep of the savior, our oiled and golden sun-had never been so desired,
lusted after-after this witch-
the moonlit madness was done painting garrish screams with brushes of danger,
pulling out long sharp notes from shallow depths while
prone bodies, zombies, robots, and warming up all combustion engines.
With curses
The king rises to day, the Queen rains
grey skies
hail with hate
making many more mirrors to break along the street.
The street sweeper comes on the second Tuesday.
Painting by Jerome Myers [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
