Monday in a Lovely Dress

Take me anywhere darling
As long as you are there it is a feast, an entertainment
Take me to the planets, my love, or to the backyard, or
The estate sale, or the Museum. Or
Take me home, sweet scottish princess of these plains,
Your limbs graceful in a fabric in the wind.

So many words you could've said,
Who would have imagined you could want me?
There are pinwheels in these dreams tonight, sparklers,
Fountains of white and gold.
This heart is a great engine turning
This longing into jewels for your loveliness
These are poignant phrases for your wardrobe
Sweet salacious poems you can wrap around your heart, your soul.

O what will Tuesday bring? I have fallen deep into your eyes
& the Universe seems leathered and silvered and sepia-toned.
Each mystery reveals the blossom, petal by petal,
Its color and scent the fabric of a special life.


This poem came out of the period when I fell in love with Bill Panichi's wife, Constance McAllister. This too was a huge mistake, but hard to see how I might have known that. Bill told me he didn't love Connie anymore in the Spring of 1995, and I told her she should leave Bill and come be with me. Well, she left Bill, and she played with me for awhile to make it work. And Bill got mad about it, needing, as he did, to be in control. I had known this woman for several years, through the stage. Our daughters were quite good friends. I was friend and computer guy for Bill for many years. Bill provided the apartment space when Becky started leaving me, so that she could phone her friends (read Kevin Stein) without me hearing. Bill also was the person who told me I could get a court order keeping Becky from moving Paige to Bloomington, in 1995. We had a complicated relationship, though not as much as the one I had with Connie. At any rate I wrote some sweet love poems to this woman, before she dumped me completely after having gotten free of Bill.

The Seeker

Apologies to John Ranyard

There were many different days between us
Each characterized by innate optimism
I remember the pool table at John’s apartment
In the building that is now torn down on
Cass Street and the people from the museum where
I would later work. He came to live
On Scarritt, another itinerant writer boy,
Known as Root, he wore his knives
On his belt, storied sexing a raccoon
Dead in the water more than a week. Later
The boys, Banjo Gary and Kurt Shoggoth,
Lived in John’s parents house for as long
As they could all afford it, (too many rooms
To heat), the pool table occupying its historic
Space. I remember the ancient foreign cars,
Beautiful and fast John piloting the backroads
Around Lake Springfield. Banjo Gary & Kurt
Deserted Root abruptly that winter.
It happened again, that sudden wheeling
In the heart’s wind: in Tennessee his
Archaeologist-wife’s abandoning note, his
Hours gone with the stereo, the typewriter,
No more target shooting, no more poems
Of this loss. No point. I knew inside his
Water-brother body, toned and sun-painted,
The need to survive and find the truth
But do we grow undifferentiated by
The losses? Oh yes, Bruno the Pissfreak
Mamboed through that living room scene
Ned Riseman flashing his indifference
I might’ve taken that shot, but John just
Found his calm and only imagined the fatal blow
No need to take sad survivor of his
Mother’s holocaust to task. Ned never came
Back; Pat told him he would have to
Write and read. She did this for Our Boy
John. The only time, that anyone
Was sent away. And even to this day
Ned has his mother tied to him and he to her.
The slip knot of the secured child. A
Moment passes. In Hermosa Beach, not
Far from the Lighthouse, I lived a few months
With John and his little brother, Brucie,
Blonde jesus skinny with a broad smile. John
Grew a thick bush of cannabis, distilled
The buds to oil. JR rarely even drank, but
Little brother had to crawl from the wreckage
Of that chemistry, and did so, thank the Lady
Infinite now. (I remember) Lying in the living room loft,
Listening then to the Pacific. A scene of
Random beauty. It started to rain hard and
I left, saddled as I was with the damaged girl
From Rochester.

So many things to have
Left out, this late in this decade: He made
Puppets, marionettes. He started a
Free school. He counted single-celled phonemes
In a Petri dish, channeling all the collected
Wisdom of post-Darwin and the cancer doctors who
Sought funding or at least a path through the amino acids
He walked away from that room, left
The others waiting on the purple couches. I
Called him, some time during the moments
My second wife had tried to kill me. & he was
A counselor, someone with the right words
To say to me. Released, suddenly, by his memory,
His whispered graveled voice on the telephone
Those nights of severe betrayal, his knowledge of this pain
How to turn to this to music. And then, again, 1995
I danced that sad dance with the lawyer’s wife
She abandoned me, after she escaped him.
My lawyer beat me up one Wednesday night. & I called
John in Los Angeles. Once again, someone
To save me from the river, to pull me
Out and help me find the air.
We watched the Richard Pryor show together.
John turned the world into a suggestive metaphor
There was a passion there, the mind an
Intricate puzzle. Swimming in the dark waters.
Still living, imagination his only defense
Root canoes the western waters, writes his papers
Sends his dreaming on the arc that is
The Lady’s doorway. Fibonacci constant, he
Has seen the moment that turns,
Bruno becomes the conduit our chemistry
Rides the waves incoming the great liquid
Pleasure She gives us
−He still seeks the one true sign.