Moon Like a Dwindling Stitch
An assortment of birds stamp their feet
on the storm wet thruway, pecking oyster
crackers scattered by children playing
the witch is out for murder.
Yesterday the Flower Lady rolled her cart
up this street where lunch traffic briskly
crashed the grand opening of Costa Rican
restaurant.
Today her after burns entropy underfoot,
pieces of pink carnations, lambent fern, lost
cards of congratulatory condolences stripe
the sewer grates hours ago a street sweeper
erased, squared in cartooned numbers, a
sidewalk chalked in sunshine.
The remote wind sabering down from
Vancouver via the Bering Strait is a month
overdue;
I batwing my sheepskin collar under a
teahouse awning studying the auras of rec-
onciled lovers, the permanently afraid who
need no reconciliation, those on the precipice
of hate or just dreaming in the hours between
fate and me no master of conversation.
At my shoes, guitar case, a mellow flamingo
scrapping by on five strings in need of a
shave and a new set of clothes, offering him
cheap applause, having joined the growing
parade of the unwed.
And so Mary, as the myth goes, would turn
on and off so no one could know, nor reject
or invite gratitude or desperation, loves or
dislikes, for ill or inseparation, to make the
game one could never finish.
Escaped ten years back for no other reason
than she was the last, friends dropping away
like flies (and so were mine) packed up her
camera and vanished. Every odd year phon-
ing in from exotic locations that brought on
envy and sickness;
she was a genius, now there in the mist of it
appearing as if she rediscovered the fountain
of inapproachability, stirring up all the bad
scenarios I fretted over.
Was not alone, tall and handsome with a
sailor glove snapping the stem, dropped a
bleeding heart in her hair and began to laugh
like whiplashed sails, immune to the storm
every inch surrounding them. (only blue sky
and no rain, no rain and blue sky)
Next to them, people too betrayed to laugh,
not as tall, not nearly as handsome with no
need for ships, but every need for rain.
(water and dark clouds, dark clouds and rain)
On every word that Mary gifted him he hung
himself on.
What well-dressed hero would saturate this
comedy, walk like Paul Bunyan cutting a
patch-quilt of lakes?
Dizzy on lithium in vacuums of space Elvis
lives, disguising himself in a library of pug
wigs and electrical suits flash-synced for
invisibility, attempts to swat down a taxi
with his fat musical fingers, but no one
sees him. (but me)
Their six feet sewed through the swarm of
North Beach tourists, along marijuana phar-
macies, redlight masseurs, aluminum people
furled in the back pages of The Sun and
everyone, absolutely everyone
grasping for facsimiles of love.
I just sat there like a sky rat clutching a
wrinkled notebook and a pen full of
invisible ink.
(Think,
what was I thinking,
what do I ever think?
Think!)
…Anything else but this…
It was not the way it always has been,
years ago it was her handing me flowers
and the one that cried.
I tried to warn her about the neurosis
weighing my head, nepenthe thinning the
blood, but stopped short for the lights were
dimming downtown in the old State Theater,
the one that had comets on the ceiling and
rocket ship lamps down the aisles.
We fell in furious (row S, seats 12-13)
Clockwork Orange was playing, near the end
eyes clamped open, hazed to a metal chair
enduring the Ludovico Technique
looking long and hard imagining you naked,
bruised and beaten, as the dopamine raced.
Was the beginning of the end;
I politely dropped you off at the door seeing
you safely inside, guarding you from the
obsessions I would display in the coming
tomorrows.
“Goodnight my love, goodnight.”
But not this time, this time the house was
all tinseled out in dichotic ornaments, crayon
LEDs pragmatically lit crawling like live
wires made of methamphetamine smoke.
Champagne splatters down a cupid fountain,
those mischievous stone eyes drunk on too
much sex and too little talk, relieves himself
beside the Christmas tree;
hangs limp from the branches, martyred
saints, pearl-stained copper stars, Mary’s lips
vacuumed to the shoulder bone a woman, as
she always did when in-between husbands.
The new year already long after midnight,
hijacked by intellectuals spiraling like heat-
singed moths on psychiatric sofas; souring
the vibe with lectures on financial mobility
and the necessity of prenupes before lust.
The pacifying purr of a bubble machine
(lay down and tell me everything)
(did any of this really happen?)
or was it just a pen full of invisible ink.
(Think,
what was I thinking,
what do I ever think?
Think!)
For Elvis, who had been here all night fading
against grape wallpaper suddenly ground his
hips howling a prison song fonzy'd his
fingers, girls instantly gluing themselves
across each arm.
Ups and leaves abruptly disrobing the static
of a few thousand crickets and mockingbirds,
the dream of fame’s charity just that, immea-
surable against the romance of combat.
“Thank you all,”
(this will never happen again)
“goodbye and farewell sweet friends.”
(this will never happen again)
My color is returning, expressions seem
more genuine, dyed in seroquel and bi-weekly
therapy, though I do not speak of recluse,
ten years going, what’s the use.
“Goodbye everyone,”
(this will be the last time we do this)
“goodnight, goodnight,”
“goodnight ladies and gentlemen.”
(this will be the last time we do this)
Redlights stuck blinking into the forever,
inside any bedroom the pouts of heavy feet
and slammed doors. The end falls as snow
would mired, police sirens and pistol fire-
Mars pressing oppressively overhead.
Aluminum people scatter to the
tanglewood of the hunting hour.
“Goodnight neighbors, goodnight strangers.”
Moon whittled like a withered peach
another minute will be gone.
“Farewell Father, farewell Mom.”
I am unaccustomed to the flavor
of eucalyptus, here seaside, hangs like heavy
anesthesia. Punch-drunk precipice,
white hiss of the pacific breaking, taste of
too many cigarettes, crocus clinging to the
bikini moss and a fear of heights I am more
than ready to challenge.
Out from the fog weed locusts spring alive
like angry scissors, these things I was meant
to reject, now brings on pleasure, picturing
her declothed, gagged and tethered.
I tried to tell you, but you were sleeping,
that I didn’t mean any of it, but here I
am trying to end it.
Below along an unpatrolled shore bonfires
of factory pallets warm the gathering mass,
fateful neglect erasing traces of soulmates
from time’s blackboard.
Remnants of short and aborted men, fear
falling like angel’s fall, black two-faced
eyes rob with their ironed-on charm.
lovelessly wretched, the wretchedly
beautiful, walk in equal procession
just before silence falls.
The brush is stoked with strife, animals
eating animals eating animals eating
animals (under a)
moon like a dwindling stitch
mytopicly swings just below the horizon;
caught on the trellis of smog, muted glow
limping under the Golden Gate erases the
february waves, confected mourners behind
mirrored morass.
Inside any bedroom the bouts of panicked
breathing and suicide glass. Struggles to
the foyer from too little sex, zeros lost in
downward spirals;
tattoos of swords sprawled across
a hairy sienna chest.
Searching for the head-on flash of
paramedic headlights curled under card-
board boxes in sterilized darkness.
The same God who loves them, loves me.
(this dream will never happen again)
The lovingly blessed, beautifully loving,
wonderfully wretched and wretchedly
stunning walk in equal procession.
“Goodbye ladies and gentlemen,
good morning and farewell, sweet friend.”
This dream will never happen again
“Bless you, women and children
Godspeed as you hide from the light.”
Until she comes and winds the watch again.
Intriguing and very avant garde, Yarbrough...Your poems do not fit into the usual patterns - they have a life and exquisiteness of their own...love these lines and the flow and the ever changing poetic landscape...
incredible write... full and richly evocative... candid, raw, impactful... loved the line about the 'sea heavy like anaesthesia'