When his eyes snapped open, it was all gray tee-vee
static in his living room: an electric snowstorm hitting
someone lost at sea, a black and white confusion behind
his eyelids, angel dust in the dark dark country
that is the back-40 stable yard. He is the cameraman
for a flying circus. He is fired from every job. He is the one-eyed-wonder
who longs for a parrot and a gold-studded patch. He is an L.A. pirate
gone berserk over mini-sandwiches on site, over the portable
haymow and its crack-crazy ceiling. He wants
to know the blonde who works the trapeze. Wants
to know her fishnet thighs, her webbed fingers, her please
don’t never stop. He lost it all when the house lights dropped:
spinning frame of sweaty nylon, sequins, the smell
of sawdust in hooves. You can blame him for the soft-focus
on her ankles. Blame him for the jiggly hand and the lingering lens.
Blame him and his demitasse of flaming liquor taken every late
afternoon in his private trailer that cost him all of his irreplaceable
trinkets from Prague. He is the one who will always be cursing
the band leader: his shiny-buttoned jacket and mealy mealy voice.
Cursing Fluoride Tuesdays for their pucker and their bite, cursing
clumsy playground antics and that 4th grade brat-girl wielding
homemade pom-poms and sharp jelly shoes. All that he has
is his pile of unread books, his soaked and re-soaked dishes
in the drain, his leaning out the porthole at 1 a.m. screaming:
Oh steeple!
Oh canopy of pink cotton!
Oh yellow woman!
Oh climb me, all my ladders, to the top!