The Radio Poems

Here I am with a new cold in my head
& a can of beer in my hand
stoned on Chlor-trimeton B.
The only drug I trust is aspirin.
No more red wine since I drank five glasses
at a party & puked in the bushes
as Jim was about to shake my hand
& wish me a good night.
The beautiful woman he had brought
stood there asking, Is he all right?
over & over as I bent & gagged,
Jim helpless, answering, It’s cool,
it’s his front yard.

I have no excuse for my bad habits,
but as for my aching joints, Mom, I said
once when I thought she was listening,
you have me some weird genes.

© Bob Rixon

(for Lou D'Antonio)

I have not learned how
to property balance
the mundane details of life,
the phone bill, the gas bill,
an overdue library book.

A tiny bird hops along
the broken concrete wall
channeling the river.

I am only concerned
with how beautiful things
also must struggle, yet
they show little anxiety
for tomorrow's rent
or appetite for memory.

A wasp fans a nest of mud,
the river sluggishly flows
through a steamy Jersey July,
the hospital expects money.

Where is that peace in which
we can enjoy our modest blessings,
our human troubles, our daily bread,
a sturdy tent & the lovely
presence of children?

A six-thousand year-old question,
forgive these ancient complaints,
for I have chosen a hard chair
as my bleak watchtower,
& in its squeaky springs
I hear the rusty pulley
on my mother's clotheslines
when dandelions were yellow flowers.

I will give them their dollars
enclosed with an ugly silence,
then listen for the thunderstorm
crackling through my radio.

© Bob Rixon

the only cactus
native to New Jersey
sits on the window sill
in a plastic pot
glowing green in the dark
unmoved by the breeze

skin so tough
flies won't go near it

Someone brought Elvis to the party, so
I put on the new Lennie Tristano
record & said, “Mister Presley, if you
added a final couplet to your new
song, you’d have a perfect Shakespearean
sonnet form, & what do you think of the
latest poetics from Charles Olson?”
Elvis replied, “Mister, I don’t what
the hell you’re talking about,“ & walked out.
He assaulted my innocent daughter
in front of the house before he went home.
I’d say he crashed the party,wouldn’t you?
But there’s nothing wrong with him that a few
years in the Army couldn’t straighten out.

© Bob Rixon

(Vince Everett is Elvis' character in Jailhouse Rock.)

Yes the moon looks good
Yes the moon looks good
Yes the moon looks good

A voice on the radio said
the moon’s 99.5% full,
won’t reach 100%
for another three hours

But the moon looks good

© Bob Rixon

sleet covering snow
is a serious situation,
plus tonight’s astronomical rarity:
the moon at its closest approach to Earth
at the same time the moon & the Sun
are aligned so that gravitational forces
are magnified. Evacuate Atlantic City,
that hoax is only a sand bar.
Nothing escapes, not the broken bulb
on a string of blinking Christmas lights,
or even Venus as I have known her,
naked with a rash on her thigh,
bending to test the bath water.

Not B.B. King & his guitar, Lucille,
although their love wins eternity,

or Rocketship X-M with Lloyd Bridges aboard,
landing by some freak miscalculation
on Mars instead of on the moon,
a tough break when you forget to set the alarm,
it’s hard to wake up when gravity works.

© Bob Rixon

In the first subbasement the Mayor was eating hot dogs.
Grinning, he said, "I’m still the Mayor. They give me
all the hot dogs I can eat. I like it here."

In the second subbasement I saw a former girlfriend
being blown about in the arms of her lover
by a dark wind. "I’m glad you got yours,"
I shouted. Stopping, she replied,
"The sex is great here. My genital herpes
have been cured. We’re thinking of getting married
after we win the lottery next week."

In the third subbasement was a radio studio
with Allan Freed. "I never play a song
I don’t like," boasted the great DJ.
He spun "Little Darling" by the Gladiolas.

In the fourth subbasement I met some familiar poets.
"We all have new books out," they bragged,
"beautifully printed hundred pagers with
choice of original artwork by Blake,
Botticelli, the Bellini boys, or you pick 'em."

In the fifth subbasement I found the old piano
I’d abandoned in an apartment twenty years ago.
"Don’t touch me!" the piano yelled. "You had your chance.
Art Tatum is due here any minute for rehearsal."

In a dark hallway next to the elevator,
a door marked JANITOR led me to a
small car parked near Sandy Hook Bay
on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

© Bob Rixon

A face behind the glass
I stared at her

Tiny girls in leotards
walked in & out
of her tiny office

A shy child needing her
to sew a tear -
she closed the door

Mothers gossiping
who got the best parts
in The Nutcracker

Shifting my weight
from foot to foot
pretending to read
an old magazine
was my dance

Twice I went out for air
then returned to wonder
at her rice powder face
& when she walked down the hall
I admired her ass

I had heard she had a boyfriend
but was unhappy
with his abuses

I wondered if she ever
danced away from those men

I gave her my dance
in an envelope
asked her to read it later -
it had the moon in it

When the ballet class ended
my niece stage-whispered
“Did you talk to her?”

© Bob Rixon

My father loathed the Kennedys,
also Eleanor Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson,
Hubert Humphrey & George McGovern.
He hated triplets in rock & roll,
the incessant, self-sustaining beat
drove him mad, it never ended.
Triplets spread like an infection
from song to song. He woke
to triplets tapping on his window,
heard them in expansion joints
as he drove to work. Hammers
pounded them, radiators
clanked in counts of three.

My father changed as he aged,
became more conservative,
told me Nixon was too liberal.
He listened to zither music
& Hungarian marches.
After his divorce from my mom,
he married a widow of some means
who shared his great passion
for the cannon he had constructed,
a Revolutionary War replica.
When he finally turned the gun on himself
his heart flew over fifty yards,
a new world record.
He left a farewell note
condemning every doo wop group
with the name of a bird.

The Masons performed at his wake,
a bagpiper whined over his grave,
& my ex-brother-in-law eulogized,
"This was a man who despised
a job left half-done."

© Bob Rixon

The spirit of my Aunt Mary's dead husband
rang her doorbell, shouting, "Let me in or I'll
float around back & piss on your roses."

Peeking through her curtains, Aunt Mary replied,
"You were a reasonably decent man
even if you were protestant, but obviously
the rejoicing of the Sisters of Saint Joseph
who prayed for you was for nothing,
your death bed conversion didn't take.

"Those roses are dedicated to the Virgin.
She protects my hard-earned & restful
widowhood. Seek her intercession
& purgatory will be no more painful
than ten hours of agonizing labor
followed by a caesarian section."

With that, the spirit disappeared,
leaving only a wisp of Lysol
drifting in the air.

© Bob Rixon

If I could turn my knees around,
stand patiently in shallow water,
looping my long snake-thin neck
as I stare at the dim shapes of small fish
I stir up with my feet, I would be
a white egret meditating on a meal
in the solitude of salt marshes.

You might see my head raised above
a field of reeds like a strong flower,
then disappear as I strike lightning fast
at the substance of a shadow.

If you look upon me too long, I feel
the hollowness of my stomach, then
unfolding my ungainly wings, I lift myself
a few yards above & distant, to a place
I imagine I am once again invisible.

You would do well to imitate me,
learn the art of fishing
& mind your own business.