Moonlight On My Machine

Painted ships upon a painted desert.
Ah, that’s Close Encounters Of The Third Kind,
Sherman told the cicada girl

who was hanging on his arm.
The past, whatever past
they had ventured into, twirled.

Sometimes the machine
was way too precise.
The cicada girl was wearing the same jeans

she had worn to Papalote
the very first time she made
chicano history.

Sherman kicked the Gobi desert sand
from his cowboy hat
and balanced sand grains

one on top of the other
until they made a stairway to heaven---
the cicada girl’s eyes

reflected the stairway.
Her smile imprisoned Sherman
like a poem imprisons poets.

The Guadalupe River flowed,
the water molecules were made of brick.
Ain’t no use being a fish in here---

Mr. Bones threw away his gills.
He watched the lovers walk along
the bank

until they disappeared around
the bend of the river hand in hand.
The sun broke in half.

Sherman cranked on the machine
and they were back in the present,
the Waybac machine lit up by moonlight.

The Twinkle In Bullwinkle’s Eye

Time in not as simple as you think,
its four parts never equal
once you have divided,

and the sum is always zero,
that’s what confuses even Sherman.
Is that what initiated

the famous visit by Klaatu?
The lovers sit in the cafeteria,
sharing curly fries,

time is outside in the shape
of an ostracized fly---
“That’s Greek to me!”

we hear Mr. Bones chortlize.
His hat askew,
almost brand new, shirt animated.

Sherman holds onto
the cicada girl’s hands,
he feels her heart as it pumps,

pumping in her wrist, in her fingertips,
pumping no doubt in her thighs---
there, underneath the table.

The hell with the universe,
(very uncharacteristic of Sherman to curse)
“you’re all I need…,” he says

as his words become cubes.
Suddenly, all the angles created intersect
and become round in her eyes.

This Ain’t No Disco

This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco,
for Sherman, of course,
could do neither.

If history came back,
you could not fool him,
handle on the Waybac machine

bears his young
and old fingerprints,
his heart the scars

of battles waged and lost,
his heart the joy of battles won.
Ah, you finally found me out,

yes, I’m the narrator (M. Bones).
Cracking the truth and jokes,
distinguished by not being different.

Sherman is holding hands
with the cicada girl
in the shade of the campus trees.

It is springtime at Whattsamatta U.,
the equinox knocks
and the drawbridge

comes down over the moat.
Sherman has the remote in his hands,
they enter the castle in Lucy’s sky.

Later that night the Waybac machine
is blinking and blinking
against the wall of the mall.

Sherman puts on his boxer shorts,
stumbles around in the dark,
hits the wrong button on the machine.

Was that America that he smeared
with the wrong goo
Professor Peabody thought he discarded?

But, as they say, love conquers all
and Sherman stares in the cicada girl’s eyes,
his Coke bottle glasses tumbling in ahead of him.

Sherman Grows Up

I’m teaching creative writing
at Whattsamatta U.,
I’m a grown up Sherman

and this ain’t no
Waybac machine trick,
search me, go ahead.

I gradgheeated waggna hound lab
from Harvard Home-Schooling,
never had a girlfriend

until the cicada girl
came into my ineffectual life.
All the teenage masturbation came in handy,

oops, did I say that out loud,
wipe that off the blackboard!
Boris burst in, “Aw, shut up your mouth!”

Natasha looked down at my crotch,
smiled (as hard as that is to imagine)
and said, “Hello dollink.”

As I was saying, class, CLASS!
These avantaged garded students
are a hazy Brady Bunch,

all they wanna do
is string a bunch of strings together,
when it comes to humility, they’re the greatest.

So I teach them stuff
but don’t warn them about Frostbite Falls,
that’s them in the cold adjectives down there.

I meet the cicada girl for lunch
in the Home-Schooling cafeteria.
Her brights are on,

she can see right through me.
Ah, Miss Know-It-All.
Will I be able to extricate myself?

Stay tuned to the next cartoon
when my short pants fall in love.
At another table, Bullwinkle’s antlers twinkle.

The Shell Game

“Awright, boys and girls,
we’re going to play
the shell game,

nothing up my sleeve---
oops, forgot to shave---
like I was saying,

nothing up my sleeve
but moose hair.
Is she under this shell?

Is she under this shell?
Is she under this shell?
She’s got to be under one of them,

each shell has a different sky,
this one has a bluish white-speckled sky,
this one has a moonlit one,

this one has a cicada sky,
noisy with poetry at one time,
silent with poetry at another.

The cicada girl crawls up
Bullwinkle’s sleeve,
making him either a liar or a scoundrel.

I wish she were crawling up my sleeve,
her nails digging into my arm,
a sweet pain radiating to the heart,

the red scratch marks last all week,
yes, lasting long enough for me
to savor her poetry again.

Idle Thoughts Of A Sea-Monster

The Lock Ness monster comes up
for a breath of fresh air,
no pesky Nessie hunters

seem to be around,
no tourists boats are near.
Off in the distance

a castle stands
in the light before it gets dark.
I swish my tail

and head back down
into the murky depths
that must be universal.

The clouds are weeds
up in the sky---
these thoughts spill in my mind.

Look, there’s one of their stupid cameras,
supposed to capture my image
for mankind.

I always grab it from behind
and point it away
from me.

I settle to the bottom
and sometimes even wonder if man
is just a hoax.

Love Poem Misplaced In Another Poem,
By Accident, Of Course

Bullwinkle pulls a hat
out of a rabbit---
now that’s magic!

It looks like Lincoln’s stovetop hat,
a bullet lodged
at the lodge,

a rail-splitting pain
grips Neruda
as he writes

twenty love poems
for the cicada girl,
a shell of herself,

a sand dollar spent
at the sandbank---
waiting for her

to blossom again,
into my arms,
her legs wrapped around me

like corn leaves
around tamales.
Bullwinkle looks

straight into the TV camera,
“ Kids, don’t try this at home,
unless your parents are gone!”

Why he addresses adults that way,
I don’t know?
He’s a moose, get over it!

Maxwell Smart in The Get Smart TV Show “Missed him
by thaaaaat much!”

“Who moved the peninsula?”
Anne Heche’s Sermon On The Mount

Mr. Bones is always watching Six Days Seven Nights,
every time it comes out on cable,
(never mind that he owns the dvd),

he likes the part where the Harrison Ford character
tells her
she’s got small breasts

and a narrow ass.
“You forget that Ellen DeGeneres
has had her tongue all over that…”

Henry tells Mr. Bones
during a commercial break.
Mr. Bones doesn’t hear Henry’s Comet.

“Quinnie’s girlfriend,
now there’s a woman!”
Henry describes saftig.

The movie is interrupted
by a special news report
that says a grenade

has narrowly missed Dubya
as he spoke in the Republic of Georgia.
Darn.

The Dark Side

Darth Vader calls up Princess Leia,
he’s breathing pornographically
under his black suit,

“What are you wearing Princess?”
“Who is this?” she says.
More naughty breathing

and then a big, ugly sigh
that disturbs the universe.
“Is that you, Darth Vader!”

screams Princess Leia into the phone.
R2D2 beeps like crazy
and C3PO runs around in circles.

Dubya takes off his Darth Vader helmet
and imagines himself a man---
yeah,maybe in a galaxy, far, far away!

Things To Do Before Watching The New Star Wars Movie

Email the damn Ewoks
to stay the hell
out of the doghouse,

as a matter of fact,
email them to the stay
the hell off of my cloud,

or does the damn cloud
belong to the Rolling Stones?
Fur balls that only kids like,

distant relatives of stars,
distant relatives of Alf.
If you’re a cat lover

don’t read the next line
because this is where Alf
eats kitten burgers.

Yet,no one is angered
at how many Iraqi children
are killed and maimed.

After the movie,Mr. Bones has to vacuum the carpet,
the popcorn, the spilled soda, the seats, the Americans,
but Dubya’s Evil Empire will not come clean.

Dream Song

George and John played all through
the Hard Days’ Night,
eight days a week

for what seemed like an eternity.
The guitar strings
became string theory,

the universe was twins.
“Ever wonder why there’s no head
at the end of the guitar neck?”

Mr. Bones laughingly asked as he stole
a drumstick from Ringo
and symbolized the cymbals.

Paul played the base
from an Iraqi military base
turned into a prison for democracy.

Yoko drifted in and out of the room
as the music became wedged
between the present and the past.

Sean joined in on guitars
as the wheels came off the bandwagon,
but the band played on.

My Guitar Gently Rhymes

Curiosity killed the cat
but satisfaction brought it back,
and quite by accident

brought back George Harrison as well.
All the lights shone brightly
in the Crackerjack Palace,

all things unpassed,
the lord unlorded,
the center fell and fell,

the cat meowed
and scratched the front door
before it remembered the pet door.

George picked up his guitar,
the guitar gently weeps,
then it rocks, then it rolls.

The cat rocks back and forth,
coughs up a hair ball
that looks like the Fab Four.

Henry’s Elegy For George Harrison

Henry got the magnifying glass
and shouted with joy,
“That’s him, that’s him!

It’s John, it’s John Lennon!”
In a Mexican minute
Henry composed himself,

no, he didn’t compose himself
in a song or a poem,
he composed his composure.

John looked up and said
“alright, lads, you done found me,
where are the other lads?”

Mr. Bones blurted right out,
“They're on tour, Paul and Ringo,
George had died, you know?”

John did not know
and he was crestfallen,
and the Yellow Submarine turned pale,

the Magical Mystery Tour
lost its magic,
Shea Stadium shed its cheering crowds.

Henry pulled the magnifying glass away.
Mr. Bones had a tear in his eye
the size of everything.

John Lennon, 2005

John Lennon is
a race car driver,
driving hard

into the curves
of Yoko Ono.
Watch out for Nara deer.

Watch out
for English bees.
A foam mustache

takes over the Mersey Beat.
Beatle bats
fly out of the cavern.

John squints in
the bright sunlight,
his sunglasses

go on without him.
Shattered as if hit
by a broken guitar string.

John, is this you
on this line
of poetry?

Hey, Henry, get a magnifying glass,
see if you
can find him here!

El Kabong

Mr.Bones
pretends to be
El Kabong,

or maybe
he really
is El Kabong,

but he screams
at the top
of his lungs,

“Dammit, Chuy,
don’t you know
any other song

besides La Bamba!”
We’re in
a coffee shop

in San Marcos,Tejas,
Aztlan,
pasado chingado.

The Black Hat poet
is reading a poem
about the Sasquatch,

the big foot
of the white man
on chicano throats.

Mr.Bones
is just now
learning chicano history,

but he’s already a revisionist.
He gets a chainsaw
and cuts Chuy’s guitar in half.

The guitar strings
snap in all directions
hitting Mr.Bones in the butt.

Compton

The cops go berserk
in Compton, California,
as a police chase

ends up in a neighborhood.
Over a hundred rounds
of automatic weapons fire

is sprayed
into a Suburban
carrying a lone black male.

They reloaded their weapons
and started firing again
as though Compton

was their private firing range
which, of course, it is.
Though the black man was

unarmed,
he’s still a danger
to all cops,

even the Papalote cops
fired their water pistols
in solidarity.

The Second Law Of Poetry Dynamics

Elizabeth Willis,
her schoolish ways in
pretty underpants,

the human abstract
finds you
in a jungle of words

that end up
at the doorstep
of Mr. Bones.

Mr. Bones takes them apart
and Henry walks in
to find the moist disaster,

one corner of it
lying by the sofa,
the other in Aztlan.

Chicano children gather like ants
and drag the bits
and pieces

to La Malinche.
Elizabeth runs naked
from the Spanish helmets

in a black and white movie
filmed beside a brown suit
once worn by Tino Villanueva in Giant.

Words crawl out
of other words,
between the thighs of words.

He’s A Poet

He’s a violent little vegetable,
he’s no vegetarian,
he’s no shrinking violet,

he’s a Venus flytrap,
he won’t shut his yap,
you have to put up with his crap,

he ain’t a peaceful potato,
he ain’t a cowardly carrot,
he ain’t no sissy spinach,

he’s vicious little vegetable,
he’s not a pretty flower,
he’s a thorn not roses,

he’s a violent little vegetable,
he’s a punk of a plant,
he’s a poet, what do you expect!

“I’m Right Behind You!” Promises
Dr. Strangedubya

Dubya rides the bomb
all the way
down to the ground,

well, actually, he gets
a Chicano Marine
to ride it for him.

Dubya’s half-gallon
cowpoke hat hangs safely
in the Oval Office,

the Chicano rides
the bomb
all the way to the ground,

the bomb explodes,
blowing up buildings,
men, women, children,

dogs, birds, plants,
and the Chicano Marine
is vaporized,

breath him into your lungs,
yes,
that’s him.

Dr. Strangedubya Or How I Learned
To Love The Car Bombs

Freeing Baghdad from
the bombs bursting in air
or among children,

our country sucked
this way and that
but never towards humankind,

we chastise the runaway bride,
the famous actor,
the king of pop,

to clean up their sinful souls
and the cable news channels lift the Bible
with their buttocks to our faces,

but the car bombs do not discriminate,
you can be good, bad or in between,
the car bombs practice American democracy.

The Three Lives Of The Third Person

Henry floated above himself
and looked at his body,
hell, he thought,

that ain’t me,
that’s Marilyn Monroe.
I knew

those couldn’t be my hips.
I knew those
couldn’t be my breasts.

Just then Marilyn
woke up
and walked into the bathroom.

Henry felt
like a peepingtom
until he woke up Mr. Bones.

Damn it,
Henry said aloud
when he

finally realized
that it was Mr. Bones
dreaming naked Marilyn Monroes.

The Cicada Girl

for RF

The cicada girl comes around
once every twenty years,
in the hot sun,

in a white see-through dress,
in the country,
in the cities,

sensuous long hair
blowing in the wind
like magic sprinkles

transforming me
into a hungry lover,
blood pumping like the sun,

the sun misshapen
in the heat of the moment.
The cicada girl comes around

once every twenty years.
Her wings rub together like thighs
in my mind.

Twenty years is so meaningless
now that my cicada girl
is back again.