Suzy’s Show (opening theme)

Werewolves in the alley . . .
Vampires in the street . . .
Godzilla’s crushing downtown . . .
Alien fleet’s about to attack . . .

But this is Suzy’s Show
Suzy’s Show

Suzy’s got an apartment
Suzy’s got some friends
Suzy’s got a cool job
Let’s watch Suzy having fun

’Cause this is Suzy’s Show
Suzy’s Show

No time for crazy monsters
No time for crazy fights
No time to save the world
It’s just Suzy’s Show tonight

Let’s watch Suzy’s Show tonight!

The Road To Magonia

A couple days back

at our library

the pretty young girl

always dressed in black

was dressed in all white.

I bought a ticket

for the lottery

but it didn’t win.

I blame Tricia but

I think only courts

in Magonia

would uphold my claim.

Synchronicity

is like that. Also

it isn’t like that.

When Tricia comes in

all pink like Paris

I’ll buy two tickets

for the lottery.

And I’ll ask her out.

Synchronicity

makes up its own rules

and you never know

what connects to what.

You never know but

even if Tricia

wore a pink beret

and a pink sun dress

and pink high-heel shoes

I wouldn’t extend

my credit limit

until I really

won the lottery

and I wouldn’t buy

tickets for a show

until she said ‘Yes.’

Whatever colors

the signs are flashing

I enjoy this trip

and the gentle rain

that washes away

chance frowns on the road

to Magonia.

Marvelous Scripture

Can you imagine
if super heroes
all became Christians
and all the stories
in super hero
comics and graphic
novels were only
about how mankind
could only be saved
by the blood of Christ?

If all that happened
would people notice?
Would there be a fuss?
Would people complain?
Would folks say, “It’s strange . . .”

But in an equal
but opposite way
this really happened.

All super heroes
embraced a kind of
dark, fatalistic
nihilism that’s
downright religious
in intensity
and all the stories
in super hero
comics and graphic
novels are only
about how only
existential pain
and existential
struggle redeem us.

Did people notice?
Did anyone fuss?
Did people complain?
Did folks say, “It’s strange . . .”

Well. Isn’t that strange?

Pork And Beans Tennis

New technologies

both in rackets and

in athletes have made

tennis a new game.

Winners from behind

the baseline. Big serves

nobody can touch.

Strategies that win

even though players

may hit four dozen

unforced errors. Now

in more and more points

umpires will call ‘let’

and replay the point

when the tennis ball

transforms into a

can of pork and beans.

Sure it’s great TV.

But is it tennis?

Cats And Cows

They had to break up.

He showed her his new

expensive Farside

compilation. She

brought up B. Kliban.

The ensuing fight

was so long and loud

all the cats and cows

went into hiding.

They had to break up.

Fragments of Orwell

Ten thousand little

fragments of Orwell

coruscate around

us all like mayflies

with silenced pistols,

mayflies shooting us

all in the head with

little hollow points

that carve through our brain

exploding away

the chunks of our self

that don’t conform to

ten thousand little

Newspeak lexicons

the damn little bugs

want us all to talk.

They quickly die but

they’re quickly replaced

by a new damn hatch.

These are the new days

when a cage of rats

strapped onto your face

is sweet nostalgia.

Sasquatch And Anime Girl, #3

Anime Girl

Oh, Sasquatch, the golfing girls say they will steal my ball wherever it lands and prevent me from completing my round!

Sasquatch

Be calm, Anime Girl! When I bellow from the out-of-bounds trees those stick-ball girls will all run for the shelter of the scorer’s trailer.

Anime Girl

Oh, Sasquatch, you roar like concrete shattering in an earthquake but with me your voice is like cloud shadows moving across a mountain-side. I love you, Sasquatch.

Sasquatch

And I love you, Anime Girl, I love you.

Bras, A Werewolf And Paris Hilton

Linda keeps her bras
in a bucket. She calls it
her bucket o’ bras.

Trish keeps a werewolf
in her basement. She calls it
her lunar redoubt.

Brenda keeps a book
by Paris Hilton under
the one short leg of

her breakfast table.
She calls it Paris working
for the greater good.

An Angel, Another Angel And Paris Hilton

Linda thought she saw
Britney Spears but it was just
an angel of God.

Tricia thought she saw
Keira Knightley but it was
only an angel.

Brenda thought she saw
Paris Hilton and she did,
she did see Paris!

Golfing, A Butterfly And Paris Hilton

Linda dreamed she was
Neve Campbell learning to play
golf with Tiger Woods.

Tricia dreamed she was
a blue morphos butterfly
by a river bank.

Brenda dreamed she was
Paris Hilton studying
photos of herself.

The Golden Voyage Of Susan Complains

“If Godzilla films
turn out to have a basis
in reality,

Japanese people
will be better prepared than
people in the West.”

Professor Martel’s Startling Conclusion (10 of 10)

T E N


Professor Martel continued
toward his startling conclusion:

*

This one last thing. A final
repeating thing. The ultimate

repeating thing. This other thing.
With time and humor and love.

Time. Repeating time. In my breath.
Walking. In my thoughts and words.

Humor. Repeating humor.
In my choices and death. My trips!

Love. Repeating love. My work.
In Linda, the waitress downstairs.

In the attentive librarian
with the uneven skirt.

Even in the love of my life
happy with the mechanic.

All these thoughts – the past
as “accumulated expressiveness,”

the continuum of
repeated things, the great enterprise

of expressively embodying
thoughts, shopping and cleaning –

I see these things, and this last thing,
this “I.” And more so than see,

these things – repeating things all! –
blaze and sing and make dizzy and

bring saliva to the tongue
and twist the stomach and arch warm

under a touch and perfume the air.
Life: The repetitions.

And this last thing.
This one last thing. A final repetition.

This sensual thing, non-sense
really something, somehow, somewhere.

I write these words, write all
these words – this repetition of words –

opening a pattern. Opening
something, somehow, somewhere.

An opening to this last thing.
This “I.” My “self.” Or my “soul.”

Like my breathing
this writing repeats. Repeating, continues.

Continues expressively.
Expressively accumulates.

Accumulates with time,
humor and love toward the ultimate

repetition of the ultimate
repeating thing. Rather

the final repetition
of the final repeating thing.

Time, humor and love.
And me! At least, my “soul,” that final me.

And everyone else,
all expressively accumulated.

I love these words, this writing,
this lettering of time. I laugh,

breathing, writing these words
expressing these thoughts because I know

these words repeat my soul! I write my self!
And time, humor, love . . .

Professor Martel’s Startling Conclusion (9 of 10)

N I N E


A bare sixty watt bulb
dangled next to Professor Martel

sitting cross-legged at the head of his bed,
notebook in his lap.

The bulb, left, cast shadows, right.
His pencil moved toward its shadow,

leaving behind letters, words,
sentences, paragraphs, pages,

as if the pencil-point twisted shadow,
curled it and set it

firmly to the paper, but shaped
not by physical outline,

rather shadow as shaped
by Professor Martel’s thoughts. Light used

by its absence. An opposite
approach to mysticism.

Fittingly, too, because Professor Martel
wrote about “soul”

as a repeated thing different
from the repeated thing “light.”

*

So the drama teacher told me
the story of the actress.

And I read a very old quote,
from Propertius, saying:

“Should strength fail, the effort
deserves praise. In great enterprises

the attempt is enough.”
I thought a lot about that old quote.

An attempt suffices?
Does a thought suffice? I considered

abstractions and I itemized
concretes. I generalized.

I summarized. I derived
principles. I separated

incidentals from integrals.
I determined defining

characteristics. Constructed
definitions. Compiled lore.

And beyond those things, I struggled,
interrogating my heart,

struggled to face-up
to the true and false rather than lie,

intellectualize and settle
for the seemingly right.

I knew, too, “true” and “false”
trip more people than banana peels.

But art that can open and touch
an honest heart brings measure

to these repeating words
and the repeating thoughts supporting

the words, expressed by the words.
And, simply, I trusted my heart.

And do trust it, still. These words
expressed some of my working thoughts.

The repeated and repeating thoughts.
A garden of blossoms

in bloom. Blooming now.
But rooted in something, somehow, somewhere.

These roots and that soil
made up everything except one last thing.

Professor Martel’s Startling Conclusion (8 of 10)

E I G H T


Not a search, then,
nor a quest nor odyssey. Rather, a kiss

or caress. A repeated thing.
A passing repeated thing.

A straightforward transposition
of a simple expression

of a complex thought. Complex thinking
about time, humor, love.

Plain expression, like a sneeze
or cough or yawn. Or like breathing.

A transposition nearly one-to-one.
A self or soul. Words.

On Thursday mornings,
Professor Martel cleaned his apartment.

He dusted throughout. Mopped the floor.
Scrubbed bathtub, sink, toilet.

On Thursday afternoons,
Professor Martel shopped for supplies.

During the rest of the week
he accumulated a list:

Paper towels, bread, soda, candy,
sandwich meat, straws, soap four ways –

washing soap, shampoo,
laundry detergent and dish washing soap –

and cans of soup, stew, beans,
corn, peas and Mandarin oranges.

The list, never a repeated thing,
flexed like breathing – short, long.

Shopping/gathering,
itself a vastly accumulated

expression, repeated
a primitive opening, a touch

to ancient patterns expressive themselves
of ancient, deep thoughts.

Thursday, a Sabbath of sorts,
sectarian, with self for soul,

supporting Professor Martel’s
work-a-day mysticism.

A mysticism not light-based
or dull. A mysticism

of accumulated repetition,
thoughtful expression,

and mysterious only
in its pattern recognition.

This weird calculus
for juggling conflicts. Intrusive patterns.

Three senses and a self. Four somethings,
four somehows, four somewheres.

*

I loved these repeated things –
cleaning, shopping and all the rest.

But cleaning and shopping
expressed a special kind of thinking.

Mystic sociology.
A nonsensical religion.

Or civilization
as a repeated thing. Civilized

temples. Shop and shopper.
Civil self. Clean shop and clean shopper.

Too, I loved the timeliness
of this fun love. It touched my work.

Professor Martel’s Startling Conclusion (7 of 10)

S E V E N


The breath of laughter
enthuses not only life but also

the leaving of life and the weave
woven through both: The thread love.

*

The love of my life.
A young lady. An administrator

at the party school. Two years a friend,
then chance turned a chance talk

to talk of music. Rock and roll.
And consequently to death.

Love of Who music
led hundreds of Who fans at a concert

to rush to the music – a rush
trampling eleven Who fans.

“I heard about a tee shirt,”
the love of my life said, grinning.

My life’s love quoted: “I’d walk
all over you to see the Who.”

She giggled, laughed quietly,
then laughed louder and slapped her leg.

What life! A perfectly vital
appreciation of death!

A perfectly weird appreciation
of weird death that took

away my heart as long laughter
takes breath. This laughing woman

took me, breathless, and breathed on me.
Breathless herself, she lay back

to my own breathing. Life, laughter, love.
A third sense, then, this love.

Time. Humor. Love. Each something,
somehow, somewhere. Time. Humor. Love.

A momentary touch. A smile.
The moment and touch lengthen.

Love, then. A flux of the three.
Time, then. Flexible breath! Laughter.

Flexible breath, indeed,
bent over me, mine, then another.

I breath, I walk. She, breathing, walked.
All over. Me. We both saw.

I suppose you could say we both came
and we both conquered, too.

But then we both left, too.
I, for work, she, for a mechanic

who bought her a house off-campus.
A repeating thing, this love,

like time and humor.
Time repeating me. Time, repeating jokes:

“I guess that mechanic
really knew how to use his tools . . .” Breath!

Time. Humor. Love. I sat back
with these three. And thinking. And breath.

And expression. And, gradually,
I realized I sat

not alone! My self,
in the middle of time, humor and love

moved in the middle
of these repeating things, itself a thing

repeated. My self! Not a sense,
but something, somehow, somewhere.

Professor Martel’s Startling Conclusion (6 of 10)

S I X


Opposite the bitterness
inspired by the blunting dullness,

an absolute release of humor
opens hearts to laughter.

Laughter repeats. Humor. Thought.
Expression. Like a sense of time.

A sense of humor. Thought. Expression.
Something, somehow, somewhere.

Death like a punch line
tying things together. The ultimate

knock-knock joke. The ultimate
what-do-you-get-if-you cross joke.

The chicken’s own testimony
about crossing that damn road.

The political ramifications
of America

without any daughters of farmers.
Without burned-out light bulbs.

Without chicken soup
or spaghetti or watermelon or

Mexican water
or Canadian television shows.

Professor Martel bought
one piece of art for his apartment:

A double canvas painting –
the upper depicting a man

up-ended and tumbling,
the lower, a banana peel.

One big trip, thought Professor Martel.
An image that repeats.

Words that repeat. Expressions
of a triumvirate of thought.

Suicide, thought Professor Martel,
death by pie-in-the-face.

Cyanide whipped cream. Arsenic crust.
A bionic arm. Splat!

Breath-centered, laughter
the repeating thing celebrates breathing.

Syncopation in breathing’s meter.
Slurring grace notes and fills.

Bright eyes closed
for an exhausting solo of exhalation.

Inhaling, then, a breath and more –
an aware pause: Breath for breath.

*

At the party school
I remember a car-load of coeds

undressing as they raced
along fraternity row throwing

their underwear at frat boys.
Lots of loud laughs for everyone.

Here, in the city, Linda,
a waitress in the snack shop, spilled

salt one night. I pointed out
she needed to toss salt over

her shoulder to ward off bad luck.
She fell for it, tossing salt

against the chest of some guy
in the booth behind her. I laughed,

she laughed, the guy laughed.
Quiet laughter. Laughter – quiet, loud – breaths . . .

Professor Martel’s Startling Conclusion (5 of 10)

F I V E


After dinner every night
Professor Martel took a walk,

enjoying the walk
as a kind of externalization

of breath, that most repeated thing.
Walking, steps like breath repeat.

And repetition
in after dinner walking just destined

to walking, like breaths in breathing,
traverses perceptive time,

underscores time-sense,
a colorless dimensionality

also lacking scent, stomach, sound,
touch, taste and balance. But still

something, somehow, somewhere.
Time. A word. An expression. A thought.

*

Health clubs really pissed me off.
And joggers. And “power” walkers.

Expression without thought. Waste.
People fit. But for what? Living,

but for what? Thinking
of “accumulated expressiveness”

and thinking of time
turned my thoughts to the accumulated

expressions of everyone in the past
who thought and acted.

Every thought and action
that made my thoughts and actions more clear.

And I thought of every thought
in the past unexpressed, every

action unthought, undirected,
unsupported. Dull action.

Dull thought. Past and people faded.
Past and people just passing.

Dull people abandoning the thoughts
and actions of the past.

Dull people ignoring time
and the future. Repeated dull,

an accumulated thing, too,
accumulating dullness.

I got bitter thinking about
my own time-line. Days and nights

numbered and filled.
A low number compared to many. Lonely

compared to some.
A life – a repeated thing, too! – and a life

expressed within
the accumulated expressions of lives

repeated in the past.
A past blunted by fading dullness.

Blunted dull. Necessitating a shrug.
A painful shrugging.

Bitter thoughts. Bitter words.
Toward a watchful kind of repeating.

A repeating thing.
Young eyes opening with worldliness.

A shallow understanding
necessary, too. A young life

opening to pure living –
the ultimate repeating thing.

Professor Martel’s Startling Conclusion (4 of 10)

F O U R


Repetitions of repeated things,
Professor Martel’s days

cut a clear route to thought,
an efficient routine to thinking.

Thinking, not only, but also
the expression of those thoughts.

A written voice found phrase
and clear construction accessible.

With each pencil stroke,
as with a swimmer gaining energy

with each swimming stroke,
Professor Martel checked the sea of thoughts

ahead of him
and checked-off destinations easily ranged

setting instead as his destination
a distant breaker

sound obscured
by an equally distant horizon of fog –

thought-fog, rather, the unknown
and uncodified known around

some pattern, some essence,
some repeating thing, some description

waiting for words to describe it.
Thoughtful and considered words.

And like a swimmer
Professor Martel felt himself immersed

in the thought-stuff around him,
supported by and skimming through

the stuff, breath as practiced
as the motions that kept him moving.

And Professor Martel knew, too,
that the thought-stuff around him

offered an open embrace
as warm – or as cold – as water

offered. A comforting embrace.
An embrace motionless, still.

An expressive and loving embrace.
But an end to movement.

To repeated things.
To “accumulated expressiveness.”

An expressive and loving embrace,
expressive and loving

something, somehow, somewhere.
Embracing something, somehow, somewhere.

*

Thinking, writing, eating,
going to the bathroom, sleeping – I

allowed myself
some distractions, too, just to keep them in hand.

Transient distractions.
Sensual moments. Allowed, welcomed,

they kiss and go. Refused,
they intrude and brood, long, center-state.

Time then became every breath
and every breath drew out breathing

into vast time-cycles
like memories of youth or fears of age.

Time became
like a glass of cold soda: Grip-able. Drinkable.

Time became
a thoughtful thing, expressible, too: A pleasure.

Professor Martel’s Startling Conclusion (3 of 10)

T H R E E


Expression. Thought.
Expression as opposed to thought. Expression

in conjunction with thought.
Expression of thought. The spark of thought.

This instigator. This pattern
of patterns. This explosion

into order. This accumulation
of repeated things.

Professor Martel’s research
concerned boundaries and deep thought.

And the expression of that thought.
Words. Sentences. Paragraphs.

Words, sentences and paragraphs
ordered by conceptual

abstractions, exclusions,
definitions, creations. And love

of self and species and existence.
And of the deeper thing

he felt embracing him
and box-stepping him to conclusions.

He printed carefully
and very readably. Lovingly.

He read, sometimes quickly,
sometimes slowly, and picked books to read

with days of forethought
and encompassing consideration.

Now and then
he thought of the librarian with the always

uneven skirt. And of possible
expressions for those thoughts.

But his love remained
with his more consuming thoughts. He resigned

these just distracting thoughts
to less than distracting expressions.

*

I couldn’t resolve,
or successfully and meaningfully

abstract, the issue of contradictions.
I needed, my thoughts

required, some kind of weird calculus
for juggling conflicts.

Some kind of infinite,
multi-ported barometer of

incidental pressures.
I saw two avenues of approach:

Existence, as such, and the concrete
and concretes around me;

Me, my self, this thin compendium
of time and perceptions.

Rather than choose and risk a mistake,
I attacked on two fronts.

Mornings, I considered
the world – rather, I mean, everything

not me. Afternoons, I considered
the strange knots of my self.

Evenings, I ate dinner.
After the snack shop I devoted

my time to reviewing
both earlier parts of my day. Sleep

gradually, then,
distracted even my careful pencil.

Professor Martel’s Startling Conclusion (2 of 10)

T W O


Written in sand or carved in marble,
the shape of words once shaped

stay shaped in something, somehow – something
other than whatever

softened first to the writer’s touch.
An actor acts and actions

(with an audience or not) somewhere,
somehow, accumulate.

During the third day
of his researches, Professor Martel

outlined his theory
to an attentive young librarian.

The attentive librarian nodded
and straightened her skirt.

She suggested dinner and drinks.
Professor Martel declined,

saying his work came first.
The attentive librarian shrugged.

Professor Martel returned
to his researches, more or less

sure his outline remained outlined
in something, somewhere, somehow.

*

I figured my obsession
might attract a romantic’s eye.

Back then, I understood
that the number of my future days

matched the pages in my notebook.
I didn’t want to hurt her

by letting her fall in love.
Love and words cast different shadows.

This thing
that I now call “accumulated expressiveness”

started as just the hint
of a thought when a drama teacher

told me a story
about a freshman student’s performance.

The teacher, decades earlier,
had witnessed a rehearsal

in the dressing room
of a famous actress. The performance

never happened
because the actress committed suicide

later the same night as the rehearsal.
The drama teacher

never detailed the events
of the final rehearsal, but

more than two decades later
this drama teacher, the only

witness to that last, complex rehearsal
of an intricate

performance, watched a freshman actress
lose herself in the depths

of her involved portrayal
of the same scene – a portrayal

capturing the same spark,
the same life, the exact same essence

of the rehearsal in the dressing room
two decades before.

What if somewhere, somehow – I thought – something
connected these scenes.

Professor Martel’s Startling Conclusion (1 of 10)

O N E


On a nine month sabbatical
from a mid-west party school

Professor Martel began his research
in an apartment

over a snack shop
near a library in a big city.

Intermittent and distant train wheels
replaced crickets. Whispers

of students
discussing anything but class whispered

only in memory.
Constant and close traffic sounds – engines,

tires on pavement,
horns, doors, drivers – greeted

each dawn, dusk
and all the forty minute periods between.

From eight to midnight
snack-shop conversation – talk and orders –

rose through Professor Martel’s three room apartment.
Food odors

rose, too: Eggs, sausage, bacon,
toast, coffee, burgers, fries, meat loaf,

potatoes and more coffee,
always more coffee. From his bedroom

window Professor Martel
could see the library. And all

windows looked out at old factories
partitioned into stores

and restaurants and office co-ops
and condos and health clubs.

Electricity for lights
and a library card for books,

a mechanical pencil
for writing in his spiral-bound –

Professor Martel settled like a seed
onto damp, warm ground.

*

It occurred to me without prompting,
forethought or desire

the first time I closed my new apartment’s door.
I stood alone

listening to second-hand snack-shop sounds,
looking at bare bulbs

in dangling fixtures, smelling bug spray
and mildew, tasting spit

that last tasted home grown,
farm fresh and country prepared dinner,

hands cold with sweat closing on warm air,
stomach tight and turning,

and everything rising up at me,
into me and out of me,

leaving me balancing
like a cat on a branch of a tree

during an earthquake – a sort of
embracing safety, embraced

by an even more loving,
thoughtful and considerate fear.

Fear of everything.
And a certain amount of bravery

there, in my new home,
because then my thoughts turned to my old work.