Happy Little Washday Song
Pipe tobacco, toilet water, floor wax,
Rinso White,/ Rinso
Bright,/ Happy Little Washday Song.
Sometimes I sniffed the Rinso granules
for a good sneeze.
Time now to clean out
the debris of my parents’ lives.
Death of memory,
memory of death:
a matter of subject and object.
Shortly before my father
died
I held a spoon of ice cream to his tongue.
He neither
resisted nor welcomed it.
Pipe tobacco, toilet water, floor wax,
Rinso White, /Rinso
Bright, /Happy Little Washday Song
Toilet water, hard to believe
such a funny name. To believe
those who made me are granules
adrift in the Gulf of Mexico
off Holmes Beach.
Hard to believe their flesh is no longer flesh,
to believe
they’ve become abstractions
to believe people tapped feet
to Happy Little Washday songs,
believe
my father is smoking “that damn pipe,”
that my
mother’s dabbing toilet water
in one paradise or another
(aren’t they all the same?)
Hard to believe
they’ll speak now only through my tongue,
that I’ll
neither welcome nor resist their voices,
hard to believe they’re gone, to believe
in belief, in
the consolation of memories
of Rinso, toilet water, pipe
tobacco, floor wax.. . .
The Pillars of Cappadocia
The guidebooks call them fairy chimneys
but everyone
knows
they’re megalithic penises
hardened from
ancient volcanic ash
capped with basalt
to stand guard above
the
the mosques and minarets
the rock-cut Byzantine
churches--
every man’s dream, every woman’s
mirth,
relief that her own sexual architecture
is free from
threats of erosion,
sudden collapse.
--Goreme, Turkey
Fine Print
My eyes no longer let me read fine print.
Which means I’m
free not to heed
any warnings that would keep me
from
leaping over clouds and rainbows,
mixing elixirs, dancing
nude
down pathways of piano chords.
But tricksters
beware.
More keenly than before I suspect
potential scams,
jackpots, lotteries,
package tours that promise
visits with
the dead,
excursions to the archives
of all I have
forgotten,
my small museum of love.
For how can I possibly
believe
what I cannot see--
like the day I can no longer
read
both the fine print and the bold.