Barbie
Pay $3.00 cover
to watch a saran wrap musician
play to the new Barbie crowd.
The 21 year old
pukes on the floor.
The Barbie crowd
declares it
Picassoesque.
Old poets wander in and out
try to revitalize
Ginsberg’s nightmare.
Does AIDS make your art
seem more real?
Cirrhosis? Psychosis? Heroin overdoses?
Or does it take lead poisoning
for Barbie and Ken
to find reason in insanity.
A Chatty Kathy singer
tells a Tupperware tale
where deformed villains
kidnap the perfected heroine
whose real love tin knight
sweeps her off to safety
without a hair blown from place.
Did you ever think about
telling Barbie or Ken
something they didn’t want
to hear?
As the moon drops,
the new Barbie crowd
speaks of Chaucer and Plath
as if they know;
speaks of Kerouac and Buk
as if they were the same.
Barbie saw Morrison once.
Came home with a
sweat soaked piece of shirt.
She jumped in the shower,
curled up with a bowl of tea,
dreamed what it be like
to be him...handing out
words and thoughts and visions.
Dreamed what it’d be like
to hear people screaming
for her premonitions.
Dreamed what it’d be like
to be high and crazy 24/7,
rational insanity.
The next night,
Barbie passed a peace pipe
to friends she’d already made
peace with.
Morrison wrote her a song,
opened the cage on his mind,
and hit the stage again
to hand out
words and thoughts and visions
and pieces of a sweat soaked shirt,
and maybe a clue to go with them.
His hand knew
the rough wood of a
non-peace pipe,
and he finally realized
there weren’t enough clues,
and gave up.
Barbie kept the piece of shirt, but
she’d already married Ken,
had a few little fashion dolls
that she taught about Morrison
from her dreams.
They lip-sync from their
rent-controlled apartment,
quote Chaucer and Buk
in the same breath,
drop chameleon clues
for a $3.00 cover
to the new millennium
Barbie crowd.
Fairy Tales
Snow White never started
a revolution.
She sang every day
while she scrubbed floors,
never asked for
a mop.
She choked down a poison apple,
but never got up
on the wrong side of the bed.
Cinderella never complained
about her sisters’ work ethics.
She never thought to
seek revenge.
Found an instant cure for
dishpan hands and washmaid knees
just for her prince.
Sleeping Beauty never resented
being taken from her family.
There was no
awkward period of adjustment
when she returned.
She never wondered why
she wasn’t allowed to have friends,
never considered breaking the rules.
And after sleeping 100 years,
she didn’t have morning breath.
The book’s hard cover dents my pillow.
I watch as you curl against it,
oblivious.
Sleep well, my love.
I can’t
won’t
be your fairy tale.
Make Me Laugh
In ancient times
when I was a kid,
we played
“Make Me Laugh”.
I was never very good
at the game.
I would have quit, but
it’s continual
for life.
Audiences want to be
entertained and amused.
I disturb.
“Your poetry’s good, but
Make Me Laugh”.
“Sorry, your work
is too intense
for our magazine.”
“Sorry I didn’t call, but
I’d rather be with someone
who Makes Me Laugh”.
I guess I should have
paid more attention to the game
when I was growing up,
less attention to watching
the shrubs for movement
when the ice pick rapist
was running loose
and I had to walk to school
in winter’s pre-dawn darkness.
I should have learned to turn
tragedy into a smile
instead of giving
the neighbor boy my sandwich
when his Dad got fired,
couldn’t feed 12 kids anymore.
If I’d know then
the game was never-ending
I might have learned
to make you laugh
instead of fighting the PTA
at age 12
for the right to
write what I want.
My apologies ring
like an empty oil drum.
Even as a child,
I knew
Make Me Laugh was
an eternal game.
I simply chose
not to play.
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