THE DURACELL RABBIT RUNS DOWN

 

At poetry workshop, my instructor came clean:
"poetry is washed up. I wasted 20 life-years

recycling publishing crap - in chapbooks, thin volumes.
Who knew."

"Sanitation engineers, "we piped up. "Wrong,
as usual," she said. "Garbagemen."

She was 8 chapters into an expose of her obsessed love,
life with a $million constructionist

long on insult
short on battery.

It was a book, after TV talk-show hullabaloo,
likely to be remaindered.

She bought, she told us, her 2x4 ground floor
peep-in loft with a 2x4 canvas she'd rescued from her

sinking love bout: jetsam salvaging flotsam.
"Smaller girls got bigger canvasses," she measured.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My dancing teacher, showing a sand shuffle, fell on her ass.
Soar no more. Sore. Sour on dance, tapped out on ball & change.

Once up on her toes, stumbled in second, in fifth position
was down on her back, Broadway was a cul-de-sac.

She felt, she said, "equal parts stretched out jockey shorts
and dressing-room G-string."

With some voice, she'd auditioned for a spot pony-
the short, high-kicking front-line chorus-girl.

For luck, I'd bought her Papagallos.
"Red shoes," she threw. "Serge, you jinxed me."

But it was her time step lacked nanosecond:
local delivery, no promise. Then

her dreams of Hollywood,
more ballistic than balletic,

turned animated, disneying:
10 little piggies, all up on their trotters,

no rent money. She woke in nightmare:
the Duracell rabbit ran down.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hosanna. Thanksgiving. My yoga guide inflated my soul
under pressure in season for Macy's parade.

She retails contortion, ever
ready with guy wires:

with her palm under my arch,
I balance my swan on a soiled pongee mat.

Her soles are echt dirty,
but I would sip sea-water from her footsteps,

because she metamorpho-sized me from
alpha male to neuter tabby.

Her breathing exercise
was honeyed hum in my throat.

In her custody I have bent my spine snakeless,
south by SW: my equator is flat.

My bones knit in odd shapes because I believe
in the power of what she dispenses.

I was marbled flank steak, now I'm
cold fish and aiming: she's vegetarian.

One night I see her in Shmulka Bernstein's eating boiled beef.
I'm shocked, I enter, I reach her table, my mouth frames "Wha?"

She summons the water for horseradish,
and to me she says,

"Yoga let me down. Don't ask. I want you to change your mantra,"
and sets me to meditate: "What we love doesn't love us back.

What we want, we lose quickest.
Anyway, death comes soon."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My grave digger shovels a whisper at me.
"You've got it easy. You come by limo,

lie in a polished box lined with taffeta,
and only have 2 questions to answer.

But for me, my ilk gets less silk. I expect the chevra,
my lodge-brothers' standard burial:

they'll drag me by my heels
unchaste over dry gravel slowly.

As I came in, except for
pubic hair, I go out.

Through the dung gate, scraped, scrapped, so I'd gladly second-mortgage
my soul to fall into your nice, cool wet grave."

"What 2 questions?" voiceless
I asked, abdicating sound.

"First, what's your name? You see -you with pennies for eyes-
they need to be sure, no mix-up, you get our due."

"&?" The digger's iron shovel struck a zinc nail
and a frank voltaic zinger sizzled me.

I thought I think again that
until I am under,

I am. The second quest:
did I enjoy the world made for me?

"No dead fool, "digger said, "it's: who, among friends, gets first
to throw dirt in your face?"

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