Shanghaied

Shanghaied

Instead of an idea, you start with words,

And let them take you where they want to go,

Like a boat appears to be moving forwards,

Ship-shape, just going with the flow,

Smooth sailing starboard and lee,

When what it’s doing’s nothing of the sort

Because it’s really floundering at sea,

And there’s a sailor in every port

Who has your number and can hardly wait

Until your ship comes in and you’re docked

For all the time you wasted going straight,

Going off habitually half-cocked.

Start with words and it never fails to happen—

You wake up dreaming in an opium den.

                        Robert Forrey, 2012

Dance of Life

Edward Hopper, Morning Sun 

Dance of Life

The geometry of light and shade:

Early morning begins, like a contusion—

A new day’s mournful promenade

Of pain, broken promises, confusion,

Which register as layers of rectangles

Where a woman’s heart, light as a feather,

Is chained like supple limbs by bangles

Or lissome footloose feet by leather.

The dance of life, how like a minuet,

So classical, so—shall we say—Euclidian:

Often a solo, seldom a duet,

And only rarely Dionysian.

Later, long afternoon shadows and light

Give way mercifully to desire and night.

                         Robert Forrey, 2012

Fashion Plate

Automat (1927), Edward Hopper

Fashion Plate

She was bothered by what uncle Ned said—

That she, like most women, was fashion’s slave,

Who had gotten it into her cloched head

She was riding high on a suave wave

To Paris when she was actually bound

By the chains of convention and would find

Herself—if she held her fashionable ground—

On some Chanel isle where the natives dined

On older women who were not du jour.

She sat there wondering if someone, this day,

Took her photo for the rotogravure,  

Would she someday be the picture of passé—

The butt of bad jokes, like Thomas Crapper—

A louche, low-waisted, flat-chested flapper?

                             Robert Forrey, 2012

Nighthawks

Nighthawks (1942), Edward Hopper

Nighthawks

1

Not drinking his coffee, not listening

To the two guys’ stupid conversation,

The lone man stares at the urns, glistening,

Wondering, “Why in God’s creation

I’m so fucking addicted to the stuff,

Starting the first damned thing in the morning

Till late at night, like I can’t get enough—

What I need’s traffic signs all over, warning—

On the road to hell—DANGEROUS CURVES AHEAD,

Like Lana Turner, HAZARD: SOFT SHOULDERS—

Or Rita Hayworth,  CAUTION: RED HEAD AHEAD.

Bare arms! I won’t look at how Red folds hers,

Because she knows she’s driving me nuts.

Don’t think I ain’t got your number, toots!”

2

The man with the cigarette is telling

The counterman about that night’s big bout—

How Billy Conn, like the dummkopf Schmeling,

Would be champ, but he tried to knock the jig out

In the thirteenth, and  was K.O’d  himself.

“What else do you expect? A mick hoity-toit,

A light heavyweight, a goddamn elf,

Matched up with that big nigger from Detroit.

I lost a bundle on the fight, right honey?”

He says to the redhead staring at her nails.   

“Don’t get me wrong, Gus, it’s not the money.

I just hate it when a white fighter fails.

On the radio you can’t see the fight—

You can’t tell Lewis from Conn, black from white.”

3

She knows men inside out, as two exes

And dozens of others could attest.

A veteran of the war of the sexes,

She’s seen the worst and none of the best.

Childless, pushing forty, she knows men won’t

Be taking her to fights when she’s fifty,

Or to bed either, unless they’re drunk—they don’t

Care if you can’t cook, sew, are unthrifty—

Like the jamoke with his back to the window,

The one who can’t stop not looking at her—

No girl, no personality, no dough—

Is he her long dark night of the future?

Men! Which one of them isn’t a moron?

They act like they don’t know there’s a war on.

4

Augustus Jones was the counterman’s name,

But customers and A.A. friends called him Gus.  

The Village was a great place when he came,

The year of the crash, on a Greyhound Bus,

All the way from What Cheer, Iowa,

Where he’d worked as a small town soda jerk—

Not, following his father, studying law—

But wanting to make painting his life’s work,

Like Grant Wood, of American Gothic fame.

But drinking and a serious heart attack

Had taken the aspirant out of the game.

He’d made a resolution: Never look back.

His artistic dreams had come a cropper,
But he lives on—in Nighthawks, by Hopper.

                          Robert Forrey, 2012

Usherette

New York Movie, Edward Hopper

Usherette

Which was more boring, she wonders,

Working here or the Five-and-Ten?

Her life so far is a series of blunders,

A merry-go-round of wrong men,

Or boys rather, not half her age,

Emotionally and mentally.

Wasn’t  it time not just to turn the page

But to really change, fundamentally?

If only she had finished school,

But that bored her so much it wasn’t funny.  

Her aunt had told her not to be a fool—

That with her looks she could marry money.

She sometimes wonders if she could

Save enough for a Greyhound to Hollywood.

                    Robert Forrey, 2012

Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing

Do not wear your heart upon your sleeve:

Too bad that’s advice that’s rarely taken.

Do you recall when someone had to leave

The office if a friend, a dear relation—

A parent, spouse or, god forbid, a child—

Had suddenly left this world forever?

How devastated they were, how wild

With grief, their prospect of recovery never?

 But now that there’s an office in the cloud,

It makes no difference at all whether

We bare, tear, break, or lose it in a crowd,

Because digitally our heart’s always there,

Like a bird, high above, secure, unstressed—
Tweeting  electronically in its nest.

                            Robert Forrey, 2012 

Night Watchman

Night Watchman

The moon kept him company

On his nightly rounds,

Just over his shoulder—unearthly,

Pale, emitting no sounds—

But still giving familial advice,

                   Like a mute uncle who signed—                     

“Loneliness is a small price

To pay for peace of mind.”

                   Robert Forrey, 2012

Maiden Wake

Maiden Wake

My tomboy playmate, whose name

I forgot many years ago,

Was imprisoned, like in the game  

We played—ringalevio.

I recall the yellow shades were drawn,

Which sunlight turned to stained glass—

Glowing like the world’s first dawn,

Lighting the parlor in a High Mass.

I remember little if anything

Else of that, my maiden wake—
The open casket, the whispering,

The eye contact I dared not make,  

And the thing that overpowered

All else—her, pale and embowered.

                             Robert Forrey, 2012

Buffalo Bill

Buffalo Bill 

Across the sky, all afternoon

Great herds of albino buffalo,

Cumulusly, in mid-June,

Silently, whiter than snow,

Inch their way to the moon—

Or, perhaps, much farther still,

To the green plains of eternity

Where  a merciful god will kill

Them with kindness, show mercy—

Like a benevolent Buffalo Bill.

When the last herd disappeared,

The sky turned spectacularly pink.

As a blood-red sunset neared—

A flood of innocence—I think 

Of a non-ungulate with a beard.

                           Robert Forrey, 2012

Diving into the Wreck

Diving into the Wreck 

With a head cold that’s lasted three months—

All winter—it’s down to the unheated garage

Again to deal with the blasted wreck.

It would help if I was a mechanic,

Which  I definitely am not.

In fact, as a teenager,

I hated cars and wouldn’t learn

To drive one—a phobia, I guess.

I’m glad I got over that.

I even played football in high school.

Slowly, I lift the hood up,

Thinking to myself, “Is this worth it?

Don’t you have anything better

To do with a day off

Than tinker with this wreck?”

I thought of all the things

I could be doing with my time—

With the rest of my life—thinking

Of something other than my ex- or the field goal

I missed thirty-two years ago

That would have won the Thanksgiving game.

“Fuck it!” I tell myself. Stop living in the past.”

Though my fingers are already numb—

My circulation isn’t what it once was—

I think, “Aw, what the heck,”

Turn on the radio, pick up a wrench,

And dive once more into the wreck.

                   Robert Forrey, 2012

The Pontiff, the Atheist, and the Nonsequitor

The Pontiff, the Atheist, and the Nonsequitor
  

On Fresh Air, Hawking biographer Kitty Ferguson 
said she's not sure Hawking isn't a believer.


Will or will not Hawking convert?
Will he, finally, see the light?
Will he, like T.S. Eliot, revert
To the Anglican rite? 
“When the time comes to depart,”

The pontiff whispered, “atheists must—

Unlike chimney sweeps, however smart—

Turn to Jesus, not to dust.”

“Besides,” the pontiff added, “It ’ s my tiara.”

“We ’ll see if it is,” said Rivera.

                        Robert Forrey, 2012

Conversations with the Dead

Black Tomato

Conversations with the Dead

To the mother dying in a hospital bed,

To the father who was always in arrears,

To the sister who was cruelly misled,

To the brother who lived in dread—

In conversations with the dead,

I try to make up for the lost years—

For the tears I never shed, 

For the things I never said.

                 Robert Forrey, 2012

Plastic

Plastic

I

With a plastic flashlight,

We see with enhanced vision.

We make an incision in night,

We see inside the elision:

We see a plastic spoon.

We see it with misprision.

We see a plastic moon.

We see plastic sacristies.

We see the black balloon. 

We see wrappers in trees.

We see plastic in its lair

Of unbiodegradable possibilities.

We see all this—reflected clear—

In an ersatz Indian’s glycerin tear. 

II

O, wild west Indian, thou ghost of movies seeing, 

Thou, from whose unseen presence rappers dead

Are driven like leaves from technicolor fleeing—

Yellow, orange, and McDonald red—

Our once clear streams and blue oceans 

Are not just polluted but bloated 

With empties of spring water and lotions—

A planet plagued and plastic-coated,

Created by the Great White Father, a demiurge

Who is naught but to whom each defers. 

In the beginning was the urge

To create the miracle—polymers.

O, God—O, Madalyn Murray O’Hair—

Ungodly plastic is everywhere!

                        Robert Forrey, 2012