Old man dances feeling pretty good
All the things considered he feels good
Dances for ten minutes flaps flat down
Lies on the floor considering next moves
Lies there thinking he will have next moves
Simply cause he always so far has
Call the ambulance and tell them do not come
Tell those medics don’t they bother come
Old man roll over get back up and dance
Honkytonk pianos take on new chores
Honkytonk pianos give old lady mores
None of them read much, sing old people blues
Slate the wedding for an outside afternoon
on the rolling lawn beside the cemetery.
She planned her next wedding for outside
on the lawn of the old cemetery,
thanked botox she looked like a young bride
and chewed chalk to caulk dysentery.
Her sisters donated their caldron
and assembled a boys’ choir of bats
who rehearsed a new medley of hearse songs
and looked smart in wingtips and spats.
The groom was a problem: she’d not one.
Getting knotted seemed out of her ken
though in all of her ages and aeons
she had potted and parboiled more men
than a vampire’s had dinners, and sinners
had figured in all of her tales.
Her horoscope said she’d find winners
among royals. She flew off to Wales.
The watched horsehead dissolves, not needing eels.
It is just his coffee grounds dried in the cup
and while rinsing out the mud-hued mug he feels
as if redemption were stress-free as waking up.
But it ís not, he remembers. Memory sucks
him from this morning to one years ago.
The cup breaks where he throws it. The cat ducks.
The brilliant day has many hours to go.
Outside two suns are shining, one reflected
from the lake that’s calm as glass. He wants to fill
his cup, but it is shattered, cat-deflected
from the sofa he had aimed for. The light chill
of last evening says goodbye, goes up in smoke
and the cat slips off a-birding and the suns
merge into one as old emotions choke
the man: a name not heard for decades stuns
him into seeking cover till he twigs
that the voice calling out must be his own.
While the houseboat lists alarmingly he digs
through the rotting deck boards that the suns have shown.
The wind brings back the barking of dead dogs.
I hear among them yips of childhood friends
And their snarls as they protected us from threats
In woods now cut and on country roads now paved.
I watch the wind’s work shaping grass and trees
Into silhouettes of dogs known: pointy ears
And cold noses. It is strange how one supposes
These fleeting vivid images are not real.
© Alan Reynolds, 2012
I tire of this and that
and go attired in flat
old Dunlops loping right
across the moon at night
to knock up Desiree
who’s out of lingerie
and she says into books
rekindling iPad Nooks
with classic acid prose
that could be verse suppose
she drops her closing lines
and gets sent to the mines.
She reads a little Proust,
I say Marcel’s a hoot.
I put on Paul the Beetle
in hopes his songs will wheedle
a paragraph or two
of future déjà vue.
Playing solitaire provides a soothing sense
that your actions count: that turning a new leaf
gets noticed and obtains fair recompense
for efforts made, and that when play comes to grief
it’s in ways a fair reshuffle can undo.
Each time you try again you’re not ignored;
your conversing with the cards shrinks down the blue
and empty space where you’re eternally bored
into images of action you can spread
around your mind as feedback amplified,
by wanting some, into old warmth that’s bled
away so long you think perhaps you’ve died.
Each time play ends and flowing hopes congeal
you foresee a better next hand, and you deal.
‘You have twelve more years,’ read the angel. ‘Erm. that’s twelve more minutes.
What do you, I mean did you, want to do
with the rest of your life within these finite limits?’
The angel watched me take this in and stew.
‘That’s eight now,’ said the angel. I was whistling,
making mind maps of the places I should visit
if I did had time. Death’s scythe persisted chiselling
at the stump of my lifespan in a rhythm to elicit
a shiver with each chip. I was not buying.
‘It’s a dream,’ I told the angel. ‘You and Death
aren’t really here. You two have not been allying
except in those gory stories like Macbeth.’
‘Till now,’ said Death. Death grinned without a face.
‘There always is a last time,’ the angel added.
‘Don’t you mean “first”? I asked. They both embraced
my pedantry a moment. Then Death patted
my arm, that froze, and said, ‘you’re down to four.’
I sang a childhood song to show sang froid.
Death said, ‘This does not seem to be your year.
You’ve lived your life as if it were a schwa;
neutral, muddling middle, bland, unstressed.
You’ve not done aught that you must answer for
so question time’s not needed. Face stage left,
adjust your collar, try for debonair
as we get in step and march. You’re down to two.’
The angel turned the parchment page and said,
‘Well bless my soul, it was years!’ (Death withdrew.)
‘What will you do from now until you’re dead?’
Earth Tourist 