Thermostaphyllis, KS

Just so,
down, and down
southbound free range soil
Wagon-wheel driver, stop
looking at me with them frog-eyes
them eyelids clicking like bubbles.

Ants in gunpowder hills, beside the road
ascend and descend gilded ladders,
as molten silver twists down dark cavities
and form shimmering streams in little caves.
Walls of sand flank these chrome rivers,
speckled with shimmering Indian rubies.
Scarabs of antique emerald crack free
from century-old stones, deep below,
ascend to the dry soil.

Strains to hear it
follows him 'round
tick
In his yellow leather suitcase,
nestled next to stockings,
the canvas bag of yield.
tick
Silver star of the North.

O Susan, you haven't cried for me
because in me,
things are weighed in gold,
sold for bargains and measures,
bought with smiles and pleasures.

The wheels with radial tread roll on,
shake about the snake-eye die
in his wooden cup
beside his red garments
and his carpentry tools
and the canvas bag of yield.

Harbinger of beetles,
bringing up the well-suctioned mud cups
on the corrugated radial tread
sticking, getting stuck to the underside
clicking like bubbles, hissing like a roach
Susan's heart must behold her brooch.

"Them piles, them big piles down in Georgia bank
and they ain't made off with nothin' but dollars and cents..."
Those donations and stacks of gold bars over there,
just a country boy like me calls it decadence. 

But yeast in his form,
sesame seeds on the leather seat
beside him, ripped and torn
with rusty springs stabbing through
She wept under the covers, he remembers,
over frames of Jackson.

"How is that your face?
You must know I'm leaving
this place.
Throughout this year,
I've been suffering
in hot, crowded rooms,
listening to the hungry roar
of ugly, greedy men...
Needless to say,
I've lost my taste for it..."

Mandala blood rings
in her white gown
crop circles in the wheat dust.

Wagon comes about the crest of a hill
in blinding gold sunlight, and various insects
screech and rattle among the golden wheat fields
on either side of the jumping wooden vehicle.

Like the buzzing of a gramophone, that...
Looks around and sees, to incredulous fear,
thousands of flying insects in a terrific swarm
encroaching on their rear
shifting left and right, up and down,
morphing into sinister shapes in terrible synchrony.

The scarabs and locusts bear down on them,
with tremendous force and precise prejudice
thumping against the rotten wood like meteorites
bringing the bastion carriage to a halt.
'Tis like a thousand automobile engines
in roaring, deafening chorus.
What infernal plague is this?
From whose unholy will do they take command?
The book of Exodus hath been broken open
atop my emaciated mules
and my only wagon...

The hand of a merciful power seemed to swat them away
for silence surrounded the team and wagon
in receding waves, until all that could be heard
were the snorting mules and jingling reins.

More than defiant of his perception,
the dirty wagon driver rubbed his eyes,
shook his head, and looked again
at the image of an empty wagon seat,
rusty spring holding a slight vibration,
puncturing.

Wafu Tembo!

Spake the dead Elephant,
"Neither a borrower nor a lender be"


lapse, click, and on track
stereo breath...
relapse into white plasma
The implacable electromagnetic field
of digital ephemera to induce synaptic transmissions...
It's been years since we...
It's been hours since I...
Bright facsimiles hung about to dry
in the cortical dark room
Women of like age and wavelength
but hers of a subliminal nature...
{Buchenwald wasn't ventilated}

The plasma soundtrack comes in black vinyl...
This dusty old tune from the '70s was first written by
soggy temperance women and then sung by a blond man
in an Indian inflection, playing tablas and sitar
before the black mesh and sending it to me
in a dogeared envelope
inside of a cardboard sleeve
terrifically decorated.

xylophone bones of pale ivory
supporting the regal staircase arm,
that mahogany anaconda...
break one brittle pole
and this swollen snake may fall,
penetrate the floor boards, send wood dust up,
the dim seabed below now inscribed
with black serpentine patterns.
Must nothing be down there but an oil heater
and tin racks filled with our dusty belongings?
It's a stone gray floor from 1912
let him coil about it, it's Spring time now
The pressure's all the same.

And this wooden desk frequented by father,
aged silver dollars, tin toy whales,
joyful bronze elephants, stray notes,
menacing receipts,
but government documents go in the waste bin!

*          *           *

your German ancestors were all
samurai sword-wielding Freemasons
with no concern for decent conduct
or national pride. 
your father, the volatile veteran
with cramps in his neck from screaming in his dreams,
curses the dishes in the kitchen sink.

Thanks for the absence of ash trays.
You might live longer than this
sedentary man who breathes in carbon
and exhales haphazard expletives
like an old bird, the old grey bird who drops seeds
about the stock-still statue of the first man,
sunflower seeds that germinate
and produce with fecundity static electricity
in that beige carpet oft found in modern apartments.

In this dim corner where the blinds are closed,
these electromagnetic vines grasp the ankles
and kneecaps -- great dusty bowling balls
wrapped loosely in gray leather --
of this national symbol, grand oily mammal
and CRACK the antique ligaments,
tear at faded pink dying tissue
squeeze that dried elephant blood out
until those opaque rubies
tumble along the off-white carpet.
Joints pulverized, scarce else will keep
this gentle apparition in the corner
from collapsing.
When the gray leather curtains fall
they'll fall, with terrible finality
like clay in a trash bag.
Sheath of calloused skin removed,
a decayed skeletal frame is uncovered.
Honey, call the Paleontologist.
Yes, I know it's an 800 number, just do it.
I'll pay the fee, it all comes out in the phone bill
{shouldn't we call the doctor?}

Our tower of bones has gone rotten
without water or wealth for
twenty or so dry years
unfortunately.
Yonder he sat, in the bare corner
gathering dust and essentially
decomposing on the inside,
while maintaining a reasonable composure
on the dreadful outside
unfortunately.
The rib-cage a sulfuric pocket
where even bacteria would fail to thrive
unfortunately.
We're left with this,
and the three cacti on the windowsill
sitting blameless in little red clay pots.

*         *          *

A simple man with oil-stained cargo pants
and a black tool-belt came by early in the morning
in the summer.
He wielded a terrific machine,
two pressurized containers on his back
with a long thick tube coiled about his arm.
He tells me his machine can
blast air and sand at a rapid speed.
He tells me his machine can
clean our skeleton in the corner.
He blasted away the dirt
and blew away the dust
and removed what was left
of the organic material.
He scrunched up the leathery tarp
and tossed it in the dumpster out back,
as a professional courtesy.
He said he'd be back in a couple weeks
to polish the yellow bones
and ship him off to Pathology.

"I'll be gone by that time", I said.

<--------------------------------->

By and by, here I came to lands afar
and they told me our trusty sandman
was fixin' to exhume our poor skeleton
and the whole brittle frame collapsed.
"He grabbed a tusk and cracked the spine", she said.

It sent that dust up everywhere, most probably.
Those damn Luddites didn't even put a tarp down.
I could have told them of the spinal fracture,
the deep fissure I caught not four weeks before...
...did they forget to shut his eyes? 


*************************************


Forty-some years ago, in that fertile crescent valley
five young calves frolicked about the watering hole.
They trotted about this black pond, six feet in diameter,
feeling the dry ground beneath their hooves,
escaping the cold wind blowing in from the East. 
The water tasted like dirt, but was bountiful...

Five young calves felt tusks grow in
and stomped out mammalian rites until dawn
and made their way back home in the evening. 

Course, that pond is gone now... he said {was, not is}
and is a massive interstate highway he said
our old home was torn down and replaced he said
with a larger, orange stucco house... I remember
the construction, all the dirt piles and the stone piles
all along the edge of the neighborhood he said
you know, I don't even remember where that pond was...
he said on his decrepit leather throne.