carving pumpkins (1988)

a. this is a poem about writing about poetry,
like a cigarette you think
you're only getting tobacco but yer smoking the paper,
like religion you think you got god
but it's just opinion with trace elements of motive,
but unlike other products this poem
has substance and a vague nature
  Q: does it smell like the wet oils of mondrian?
       does it do descarte's illusory polka?
       does it shrink, cotton-candy in the saliva
           of your mind, or does it explode,
            a dream deferred? does dream smoke
               exist, rene, if all thoughts run dreams
the question is, what are you missing
         art thou a happy green cow?
                         

                         *
                       
b. for you lazy sack of silt readers
this is an aesthetic poem, meaning
it don't address the mystery of the locked nest monster
nor does it issue a fashion statement
nor does it stimulate emotions deeper
than nausea, loneliness, ennui.
          tonight we carved pumpkins

cut around their stems& pulled out
strands of gooey slime
we piled the entrails on paper sacks cut down
the middle& pulled flat
my friends took them into a dark room and that made it
even darker, they glowered like demons
like a proper wedding
like god al made one with a smiley face
&put it in the gutted out torso of an old TV set,
an innocent model from the 1950's

its shadow flickered onto our faces
we thin gin
we sing sin
we die soon, build fleshy prosthesis controls
we remote control kids
we say no, we silly putty cracks,
we are the envy of the world spanish maid,
indian doormat
god on my side get off my cloud
pumpkins in the office, the classrooms

                   *

we used to get our milk from the goldenbergs
when i was little
when family owned little blue an ancient VW bug
we'd go puttering up to their farmhouse
on the south side of town by the public pool
where brother grant and i first played with black kids
they rubbed baby oil on their skin
to slide thru that water
grant and i would wait by the car when momma
went fetching, the front of the hood
tied shut with rope fenders red white and blue
by the farmhouse was a hedge apple tree
that gave us ample ammo for the cows
in the field their udders all saggy
leather clouds
none of them had bells around the neck
none wrote dissertations or baked perfect pies
they perfected Moos
they never tried to jump that moon
Once we saw them deliver a calf next door over at
harvey's barn in the middle of night
by the light of kerosene lanterns we say it
get born and it was swirly
                         like a red beard full of snot
                         like a frozen sun
                         like heart's drain plug 
mom would come back out with gallon jar
of natural milk, tinfoil rubber banded lid,
at home she separated cream off the top
tho invariably a tiny white curd
or two made it past and we'd wish for store-bought
milk, real milk
i'd like to think she told us sorry that's life
but i think she took it and framed it
on the mantled wall, next to a swatted fly stain,
not the thing itself,
its image.



1988 
stillwater Ok