ONGOING MOMENTS

(after the writing of Geoff Dyer)

1

When we see birds

in the evening,

Camus said,

we always think of them

as heading home.

A white truck,

its lights blurring

through the rain,

is coming

the other way.

2

Something was there

and no longer is.

The elevator door

will open again,

not on another floor,

but in another city.

TOMORROW IS THE HISTORY CHANNEL

WITH THE SOUND TURNED DOWN

Our textbook compared

the heart to a furnace.

Or maybe it was the brain.

Blood provided the fuel

as you were falling asleep

or just walking along.

We would get stoned

before class. The teacher’s

wife and baby daughter

had died in a car wreck.

I think of it sometimes

when I see the Nazis

invading Poland again.

MULTILINGUAL

She speaks seven languages, none of them well enough to teach. At the gym everyone else using the treadmills is fat. I like the way she looks in her tall, red leather boots, with the tightly packed buildings of the old downtown rearing up behind her. Freud described dreams as day residues. The best advice I could offer was, Don’t fall asleep. It grew dark while we talked about it. She had a train to catch in the morning. Snow was predicted, but not because of anything we did.

COULD BE WORSE

We could have other people’s thoughts in our heads.

Someone could have spoken to the police about us.

There could be an underground missile silo,

and not an empty lot, at the end of our street.

The neighbor’s dog could be a man-eating tiger,

and the bluish clouds that blew in last night

could contain remnants of Zyklon B.

We could never have met, or made love

like giants of modernism on a mattress on the floor,

or read in the instructions deep colors bleed.

THE EXISTENCE OF A CRIPPLE, NO. 4

More people enter

the tall buildings

notched with lights

than leave.

It’s the same process

by which clouds

become soiled and torn.

I might have only a dollar

or two in my wallet

as we walk around downtown,

but I carry enough rocks

in my pockets to drive off

any stray dogs.

A man has stopped

before the shop specializing

in religious articles.

Is that his wheelchair

that lies on its side nearby?

His head is bowed,

and the street suddenly contending

with the shuffling of angels

weighed down by their wings.

SONG #5

Not every place

with mobsters is New Jersey.

It says it right on the bag,

Plano, Texas, where Frito-Lay lives.

Red grapes or green,

it’s all made of the same mad stuff,

debris blazing from the Big Bang.

Because everyone knows

what the shortest distance

between two points is. It’s love.

DRINKOLOGY

Time disappears when I sleep.

When I wake up, it’s in a landscape

derived from security camera tapes,

the descriptions of witnesses.

Black cars abound – frailties, too.

But it helps a little if you think

of other words for being drunk.

Bombed. Looped. Shit-faced.

Destroyed.

PORNOCOPIA

Went to the movies,

wept,

so much evil,

so few bullets,

she hiding

a body

while wrapping

around me

like a curved

staircase,

her nipples

police

detectives

in rumpled

red suits.

FLAGMAN AHEAD

The choice

is always only

slow or stop.

Disbelieving

the idea

of progress

is itself

a kind

of progress.

It’s like

when you see

the words

whale songs,

songs

should be

in quotes.

BLACK SPRING

Nobody wants

to hear about

my false feelings

of well being,

or the woman

who was next

to me in line

but not with me,

or trees bobbing

to the surface

holding hands.

Any explanation

abbreviates,

anyway.

It’s only days

till spring,

and leaving

the police

station,

I noticed

for the first time

the moon’s

vacant stare,

its black front

tooth.

Acknowledgments

“Ongoing Moments” and “Flagman Ahead” originally appeared in elimae; “Multilingual” and “Could be Worse” in 2River View; “The Existence of a Cripple, No. 4” and “Pornocopia” in Metazen; “Black Spring” in Willows Wept Review; “Song #5” in Writers’ Bloc; “Drinkology” in The Toucan; and “Tomorrow Is the History Channel With the Sound Turned Down” in Disingenuous Twaddle.

Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of 18 print and digital poetry chapbooks and the full-length collection of poetry, Lovesick (2009). His second full-length collection, Heart With a Dirty Windshield, will be published by BeWrite Books. He has been nominated multiple times for a Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net anthology. He is co-editor of the online literary journal Left Hand Waving.