Streak
A jackknifed semi full
of dried feed corn has spilled its whole cargo over the eastbound lane
of State Route 231.
Driving the other way, I find myself humming along with Mitzi Gaynor
cartwheeling in South Pacific,
“I’m as corny as Kansas in August . . .” Across the meridian, the highway
has become golden
dunes of pebbly sand that men in green vests with diagonal, silver
reflective stripes
shovel toward a white truck’s black, swaying, elephant-trunk-like
proboscis sucking all
that bounty up. I hear Gaynor keep singing, “I’m as normal as blueberry pie . . .
I’m in love,
I’m in love with a wonderful guy.” That ecstatic show tune makes me
remember all
those gangly guys I had a half-unconscious crush on, with long
or short cocks and hairy balls,
doing the hundred-yard dash naked across the lacrosse field at halftime
in 1974, April of my junior
year in high school. The streaker craze. Vietnam and Watergate.
I was humming, “I’m as horny
as bucks in the springtime . . .” At the Oscars that spring, a man with long
brown hair and bushy
mustache streaked across the stage behind actor David Niven,
who was introducing
Elizabeth Taylor to open the envelope for Best Picture.
As he was saying,
“A very important contributor to world entertainment . . . ,” the streaker
jogged out from the wings,
grinning and flashing a peace sign. The agile film editor,
who had thirty seconds
of delay time on the live broadcast, managed to show only the streaker’s
slim torso, no genitals
except for the initial split second where you can still catch a fleeting
glimpse on YouTube
of his thick, dark pubic hair. Niven fidgeted with his black bow tie,
shrugged, couldn’t help
laughing with the audience. He interlaced his fingers—“Well, ladies
and gentlemen, that
was almost bound to happen. But isn’t it fascinating . . .” The audience,
which had momentarily
quieted, began tittering again. Niven pulled at his left earlobe,
formulating
his famous, impromptu line—“Fascinating to think that probably
the only laugh
that man will ever get in his life is by stripping off and showing
his shortcomings.”
The crowd exploded, started clapping. Niven smiled
drily in the English
manner. “Now, if I might continue with the introduction . . .”
and Elizabeth Taylor
swept in, making her grand entrance, tanned, in a low-cut yellow gown,
gardenias in her hair.
Her earrings, drooping loops of diamonds. She began, “That’s a pretty
hard act to follow . . .”
Living is a pretty hard act to follow. We are naked men and women,
exposing our shortcomings,
running for three seconds of fame across a stage. His name was
Robert Opel.
He became a gay rights activist and gallery owner in San Francisco.
A year after Nixon
resigned, he campaigned for President “on a platform of complete
disclosure.”
At his first press conference, he naturally appeared naked and said,
“I’ve got nothing
to hide.” His campaign slogan was Not Just Another
Crooked Dick.
He was shot and killed in an attempted robbery by two men
strung out on speed.
As Gaynor sings it, they were “high as a flag on the Fourth of July.”
Our lives are corny.
So much spilled grain. A single golden streak across a highway.
Exit Survey
If you are as lucky as I’ve been, you’ll wake up on a sunny morning in January in the middle of your
sixty-fifth year on earth, open your email, and discover a questionnaire has appeared there
overnight from God
The return address is god@universe.com, all lowercase
You think that it must be a practical joke
*
You read through the email and find that God has all the mannerisms of a corporate public relations
specialist from human resources
God says that he is mindful of how busy you are and how hard you’ve been working for the
greater good of the universe and how proud he is of you and all that you have accomplished
during your lifetime
He wonders whether you might fill out a questionnaire for him as you near retirement
*
He would like to get your view of the experience that you’ve had on earth
It would help him better administrate the universe
He is sending you a link to a Qualtrics survey
*
Please rank the following six life events from one to six, one being the event that you most prefer
and six being the event that you like least
• Your brother dying after puking two liters of blood from his ulcerated stomach
• Breaking your right humerus in three places while trying to relearn how to ice-skate
• Your mother dying a short, fast death from lung cancer
• Separating your clavicle from your scapula in a bad bicycle accident
• Getting divorced from a woman you once loved after a marriage of 32 years
• Your father dying a long, lingering death from Alzheimer’s
*
Please mark true or false:
God is a benevolent dictator who stands at the corner of Main St. and 4th Ave. and hands out
lollipops of all colors to people with sweet tooths who can choose whatever color they want
God is someone to whom you can turn when the heater core of your car’s heating system fails in the
middle of winter and you need to locate an honest auto mechanic who can fix it
God is the seesaw on which a small child and a large child seesaw all afternoon, and yet it is the large
child who gets stuck way up in the sky and whom the small child won’t let come down to the
ground but taunts, yelling, “Why are you so large?”
God doesn’t give a shit whether you prefer pistachios over pineapples or vice versa
God is a one-eyed, cigar-chomping, white dude with a three-day growth of gray stubble like iron
filings
God is the smooth-tongued, sniveling bureaucrat who sent you this weird questionnaire that
bemuses you and makes you smile even as you cry out in pain
God’s face has eroded like an arroyo in the wet season
God doesn’t care whether you answer this questionnaire or not
Whether you answer this questionnaire or not will not affect God’s higher plan for you and/or the
universe
God knows best
God only sometimes knows best
God is a teenage girl with a monarch butterfly tattooed on her right shoulder
God is a newborn baby whimpering to itself in its sleep
God’s labored breathing is that of a newborn baby whimpering to itself in its restless sleep
God is sunlight on an oaken floor
God is a goddamn narcissist
God has panic attacks
God is the dawn sky tie-dyed crimson
God is the horizon at sunset powdered the faintest pink with the softest of Japanese makeup
brushes
God is a box that must be opened by pulling the tear strip or not at all
*
After having lived 75% of your life, you feel like:
A) a vase of wilted red roses that someone will behead eventually to make potpourri
B) a blue helium balloon from a child’s birthday party, which the birthday boy has accidentally released into
a cloudless sky and is now staring up at, watching it disappear, blue on blue
C) the circle of dirt that a dog has worn into the green grass of a suburban front yard by running around a steel stake driven into the ground and to which is attached the chain in which it gets tangled and ends up howling all night
D) a hand-rolled blunt of medical marijuana whose sweet thick smoke a patient under hospice care inhales
deeply into her cancer-perforated lungs, making her sigh and smile as she remembers her first sloppy
teenage kisses behind an apple tree in her backyard with an awkward boy who had a cow lick
E) a prickly pear cactus blooming in a pot that is too small for it and not caring that its owner forgets to water it
____ Usually A, occasionally D
____ Sometimes B, but most often C
____ A, B, C, D, but never E
____ None of the above
____ Always E
Against All Endings
And this poem will go on
when you have closed the book.
It will keep coming into being and
keep being written and rewritten.
Long after you have read its last page
and shut off the bedside lamp.
Long after I am dead.
Long after you, patient and incredulous reader,
have fallen asleep,
and your breathing has slowed
to an almost imperceptible sigh.
Long after the wondrous beings
that people the book of the world
have gone to sleep.
And we will all wake again
in morning’s new book of dew,
which doesn’t end but keeps being written
by a hand that we cannot see
and in a language that we will never understand.
And we will keep repeating the great,
inscrutable, incurable language of our being.
We will shout or whisper it into the silence.
And the silence will not end.
The silence will hear us.
And the silence will keep listening
for the sound of these words
recited by heart by our many voices.
And the words will be
as timbrels hung from a tree
whose leaves are beginning
to leaf out into the first
yellow green of earliest spring.
And let those timbrels be struck by the many
hands of wind, rain, hail, and snow.
Different weathers will strike
from each timbrel
so different a sound.
Tune each timbrel to whatever
weather rages without
or within. Soft. Percussive.
Wisp-whispery. Steady.
Adjust the screws that hold the goat skin.
Stretch it taut or more loosely.
Let the steel bangles keep jangling
in all manner of weather.
We are each of us one word,
and the world goes on percussing us.
Let the world not end. Let it
begin again anew in the throats
of each of us here on this earth.
Let the sound of each of us travel
faster than the speed of sound
into the ears of any
who need most to hear
this which we have cried out
and will go on crying out.
