1. Surrender

What am I to do?
The power chords are raining
These aliens, coming to take over,
These friends, coming to take charge,
not up to you
up to him
up to this guy
singing this song

what gives him the right?
what wah wah wah wahs?

Do they want to connect?
Or to steal our precious things forever?

it’s not on you
it’s on him
should he make the deal?
We’re just spectators
He’ll do what he thinks is best
He feels lightning on all sides
Round and round we swirl
down the drain
I think we’re
going down
into a nice
pleasant
servitude

2. Alien Artifacts

He’s so melancholy
The sound rounds around
like a tiger
hunting this
deep-throated
orator

who wanted to come?
Who thought it would be fun?
When he says as you know I am (dumb) the music lifts up triumphant

Two people with their separate flashlights
in the dark
exploring in fear
as the music goes up and down and around gentle tornado
His voice is bits of furniture and trees and stones and automobiles all at right angles to the vortex

He’s there to return an artifact
why’s the other person there?
He’s moving down
Taking us
down

3. Chasing that same lizard

He was a little kid
It was in the sunshine
It happened so easy
even when you waited so long for it to happen
How does he remember Hailey’s Comet?
Those photos are a muted color
That was a distant sojourn
Cowboys and aliens at the hoe down

my body flies the galaxy
my toes on planet earth

How does he manage it?
He can’t he can’t explain

He’s back in the desert with his dad?
His sister takes him for a ride?
The warm earth and the brittle grasses
the bosom of a family not yet fractured
the heart of world not yet torn
the ease of a desert not yet molded over
why don’t we
descend the winding stairs
to the desert with a dad
no longer quite so young as before
but still spry and certain of time and space

It’s Nerd Blizzards that she keeps buying him.
It’s skinks that he keeps falling flat-faced chasing with a little loop attached to a long thin cylindrical dowel.
He missed the days of the horned toads
They were everywhere that season
And everything was pine needles, rough red bark, and crisp clean mountain sunlight

He’s back in the desert with his dad
but that was no desert
It was pine forest and cheer beer
And his dad was not a man but boy with several children and a small belly
And that thumb was not a beaut, but a mount
That ragged rocky thumb was a North Star
and we were sailors of sage, pine, and dry earth and sand

I’ll walk the edge of the sparkling cement dam
I’ll know the cold waters with ropey frondy water weeds climbing up almost to the surface and then clinging and drip-dangling from plastic oars in plastic oarlocks in a frustrating craft
I’ll know the edge of things, the sheer drop a hundred feet to the small cylindrical gush arching out of its hole near the base of this rounding concrete wall
I’ll believe in an afternoon splashing in a small manmade mountain lake, followed by fancy (with celery!) tuna sandwiches and an assortment of chips even Pringles (the plywood of potato chips, I now snidely remark, now that I’ve grown all this snide all over my hide). I’ll believe that such an afternoon and evening constitute the eternal Good that they promise
It wasn’t just on water; it was also climbing in and through softly rounding, lichen-sporting (here and there, like a whale’s barnacled back) stones that criss-crossed one another to form a natural play house; and it was along the warm trails of reddish brown and it was daylight waning as we picnicked on picnic tables right there near the lake; it was all over and everywhere and it would never leave

4. Brandywine
Paint poem lilts with the country folk railroad
pings carry us out of the narrative, which is played with a mouth harp
a commuter
a confession
to a two-step
I’m an adjunct in the art department
about as useful as a penny
used to dream things up the side of an elephant
now I keep it all pretty steady

I am fine on the brandywine

A rowboat in rough seas
A cartoon horse with rhythmic buttocks
A toast to all the others grown old and defeated
A toast to all the rest grown old and reasonable
A toast all around to remembering you never cared about your daydreams of great works,
that they were all always a secret or not-so-secret request to be cuddled and adored
But still a bit of Beauty,
if it could be created or evolved
better to wedge a bit of Beauty
into the chinks
wherever you can

5. Cave Theater
Steady circling and rising (gyring?) encouraging drums
to lift up the soft voiced young victim of circumstances
They came out here to see the desert sky
what is cave theater?
how does it live?
I hear some things I can’t explain
I hear the dark call my name
A spoken verse walk accompanied by silver cuts

He saw what?
He was where?

I know that aliens have arrived again
I suppose they’re up to their same old tricks and hijinks, lording everything over us

what remains is carved into stone?

Who says Cave Theater is still alive?
Or is it the doll that calls his name?
I say “19”?

Why were we spared by this mess?
Not ensnared by the rest?
The cave just consumes they say
18 they say
no us
???

Was all of that jut not a dream?

oh, the tunnel calls his name?

I saw that thing, I was there?

I’m so confused
And lost
In this pitch back cave
where alien overlords
pit baffled humans
against blind cave snakes

I’m so confused
and tired out from
the weather

What now?
Another day, another dollar
give me a shout, give me holler
I’m ready for the struggle
I ain’t your average muggle
I’m fit and rar’in to go
My wit’s a legend, don’t-cha know?

What now?
How to begin again?