FRAGMENT

Our first date.

Set the scene:

The boardwalk.

That funhouse:

a maze—all Caligari walls and halls.

Bowed mirrors bestowed you breasts.

Did I look okay?

—from “Raabe the Robot & The Anaclitics”

“I WILL NOT BE YOUR ADAM WEST”

I see now the you I saw is not the you you are

self-cast in a self-hewn, ’70s sitcom hell

Well…

I will not be your Adam West

a middling, paunchy performer

with Shatnerian, stentorian, constipated cadence

blessed/cursed with a two season campy triumph

then

shunted into heavy rotation syndication

— trapped always in a cartoon camp world

of Romero/Burgess/Gorshin guest-shots

amber-cast in blue blazers, ascots, capes and cowls

Living for your sporadic cameos

Julie Newmar (or Phillips, if you must, but not MacKenzie)

to my punchy avenger of the night

Typecast for an eternity

consigned to auto shows

and girdle-bound walks-ons in burn units

and malls

low budget exploitation films—a day’s work, a career’s blight

While you bask in reflected glory

an icon to drag queens

cabaret performers

and Soho beauticians.

(In the hall the children come and go—dazzled by the auto show)

I will not see us embalmed

on Nick at Night

or TV Land

All we were bookended by scratchy commercials

not worthy of digital remastering

or even colorization

(How fat he looks…they’ll say

Tim Burton didn’t even call him…

…he and Burt Ward aren’t talking…)

Go—share your silver spoons with Halston

stagger in starlight my bimbo, bête noire

using Liza and Margaux as your walking sticks

I will soldier on, awaiting a revisionist, postmodern, noir makeover

FRAGMENT

the man with no hands

plays charades in my head and

denied the water wings of your smile

i drown in my own stream of consciousness

are we not each of us?

say you like me…really like me

like a reformed crip

expunge the graffiti you etched on my soul

don’t you see that

i am a target of opportunity

like a clerk at an all-night Dairy Mart

alone and with a register so full

and no trigger for the silent alarm

i wait, seen but not perceived

heard but not listened to

known but not known

a single malt amidst a backbar of Old Granddad

awaiting last call

FRAGMENT

Call it Ma and Pa Kettle inherit the

Bates Motel.

Ma gave me the wrong key:

A duplicate.

That’s me:

standing at Some Unspeakable Threshold

…staring slack jawed at the most amazing thing.

—from The Tedious Potluck

FRAGMENT

you: enthusiastic enabler

of my inner-child endangerment

—from “Last Lines”

FRAGMENT

Michael Apostolius said it:

“In the land of the blind,

the one-eyed man is king.”

But old Mike never tried to make

a three-cushion bank shot

on a ten foot table.

—from “Abraham, Rondo and Tor”

To Sir(han) With Love

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