can’t play pictures out here

by Mike Foldes

jorge focused on taking the same photographs over and over. different people who all looked the same. mangold said “we can't keep writing the same poem, painting the same picture, shooting the same photo…. you must get out and away and come back with fresh flowers and wet sand.

i think there’s some down that alley.” jorge went to search for wet sand and fresh flowers. mangold never saw him again. when he returned, jorge was a different person, unrecognizable. his work was different, too. he’d taken up guitar and composed music for it that turned rivers green, the sky red and mountains mauve. when he put away his instrument, the world he played in went dark. mangold said, “let’s go inside. you can’t play pictures out here.”

man of furrowed brow for r.s.

by Mike Foldes               

man of furrowed brow
eyes set in cups so deep
they’re hard to read
even in the best light.

man of furrowed brow,
stone cold, yet living,
high above the rest,
a memory in flight.

scattering clouds,
where are they now,
calumny and silence,
smoke and mirrors.

how it is that a face
carved in stone set
on a pedestal of blocks
can explain the human condition.

not entitled

by Mike Foldes

the space now empty
where the dust was
atmospheric mosh pit
you on a trajectory
loading up your vas
deferens, not to quit
until the rectory door
opens, skin under white
collar turns red, and
years later you find out
it just doesn’t pay
to be stone cold dead.

can’t play pictures out here

by Mike Foldes

jorge focused on taking the same photographs over and over. different people who all looked the same. mangold said “we can't keep writing the same poem, painting the same picture, shooting the same photo…. you must get out and away and come back with fresh flowers and wet sand. i think there’s some down that alley.”   jorge went to search for wet sand and fresh flowers. mangold never saw him again. when he returned, jorge was a different person, unrecognizable. his work was different, too. he’d taken up guitar and composed music for it that turned rivers green, the sky red and mountains mauve. when he put away his instrument, the world he played in went dark.  mangold said, “let’s go inside. you can’t play pictures out here.”

monster evening

by Mike Foldes

the monsters came from everywhere
to sing, to dance, to copulate,
to pen their poems in shadowy halls
where monsters go to procreate.

the languages they spoke were one,
a blend of blood and sand and snow,
of crystal skies and perfect fruit,
of guttaral, pachyderm and crow.

the monsters came from everywhere
and when the shiraz began to flow
unscheduled breaks, a spark, a spore,
their fecund minds, flint and steel

lay lightly on the feathered plain,
throats parched, riven to the core.

Bumped

by Mike Foldes

“The graveyards here are so very big,” she said,
As we drove through Queens, then Bronx.
“Those graveyards are filled with the bones
of people who put this city on the map,”  said I.
“It’s 500 years we’re talking about.”
On the Cross Bronx, she said,
“Those walls look to be 100 years old.
“It must have taken a lot of money to build.”
“Not taking into account sweat equity,” I said,
Weaving through traffic under the elevated
to get to Tremont, Webster
and the impacted ramp onto I-95 South.
“I bet they’d kill me if I got out here,”
The white girl said at Arthur Avenue.
“They won’t kill you,” I said, “My daughter
went to school here. She survived just fine.”
“This part of Bronx is Little Italy,” I explained.
“Where everyone gets bumped…,” she said.
“Bumped?”
“Bumped. Like in the movies.”
“Oh. Bumped. Like in the movies.”
“Where are the Italians?” she asked.
“Bumped,” I said. “Like in the movies.”

Two-Day Drive

by Mike Foldes

Leafless trees
With steel trunks
And stars in their eyes.
300 miles between words.
An Appian Way
Where all roads
Lead everywhere
And you don’t know
Where you’re going
Until you get there.
The old roads aren’t
Where they’re supposed to be;
drive for years,
the landscape never
looks the same
As what filters
thru memory.
A veil of fog settles
on the valley.
We drive into it,
As if opening a book,
Suspending animation:
“There are other planets
in the universe,
But none like earth …”

American Hades

by Mike Foldes

We was scammed.
30 years working
at the bottom of the well
in the oil-thick fluid drive
of American Hades,
where newcomers start
at the bottom, societal
recruits, plebes, and
pledges, scummies
seeing the rise to the top
as a struggle, but always
with hope, and an eye
to the light above.

We was scammed,
The light got brighter,
came at us faster
… for a while it seemed
the muck was thinner,
the surface nearer,
and with lungs aching
for the oxygen
we workers, schooled
in appropriate behavior,
moved more quickly
in the fashion of herds
toward the light above.

We was scammed.
The surface seemed nearer,
the light seemed brighter,
uncertainty went the way
of memory, fading as if
what made those memories
never did exist, and the whorl
of anticipation carried
days to extremes where
dreams are extinguished.
Where the last race
is the next race, but with
no time to train.

A Little Night Music

by Mike Foldes

Moonlight walks among the shadows
stalking darkness, it’s white cape wrapped tightly
as Mick Jagger’s pants around thin bristles
of tall ash, tips whipping in Agamemnon’s
persistent last breath, a wild heaving from he
who would have none of it now, pacing
the cave floor where cancer spreads
like tundra moss into one of many throats.

You could drop him there like a rabid beast,
hear the music as its body hits the floor,
but misery loves company more than salt
and the butcher would not cut off his right hand.
So climb back into the cab of the truck,
take the mandala in your long red fingers
and listen to the gods sing through nights
of knives in hearts and arrhythmic beats.

Third watch on the conga, lately interrupted
Steps forward to argue with the buried kings.

Betsy Tango

by Mike Foldes

Betsy Tango, dance with me.
When I first read your name
I wanted to strip it off the page,
take it in my arms, swirl
it like warm brandy
in a crystal snifter. Dance
with me while I run fingers
along the curves of your ass,
pull our hips together, squeeze
juice from the lemon.
Betsy Tango, you’re out of earshot,
now, I can say it aloud,
let me take you on the floor,
upright, rigid, succinct
in movement, violent, yet
thoughtful, step by step
from dusk when you come alive,
until, infused with night,
morning stops us
in our tango tracks.

Great!

by Mike Foldes

(these greetings are a bit like candy hearts
We used to get as kids and trade like some
Kids traded trading cards, baseball, football, basketball,
And in those days that was about it, there were
No hockey, NASCAR, dead presidents, ugly critters,
Except maybe characters from MAD Magazine
That escaped from their hallowed pages
And made it to the big time. GREAT, WOW,
I LOVE YOU, YOU'RE MINE, MY FRIEND.
The first dose of LSD I ever took had been
Dropped onto one of those candy hearts,
But I can't remember now what it said,
Something like, "Get ready because once
You go up you'll never come down," or,
"Get out the Kleenex because this is going
To make you laugh so hard you'll cry, and
The tears are just not going to stop there."
So now when I drop those notes of ablution
On readers of e-mail, and even hand-written
Notes noting the time of day, the day of the year,
The year of the Lord, etc., I am reminded
That time itself is not much more than memory
Stored in a safe place until it's wiped clean
by the torrential downpour that comes
late in the afternoon of a very, very fine day.)

my gods! and other theories on the origins of man

by Mike Foldes

1
just add water

a very large man in a white coat
and glasses, a very large man who
somehow resembles einstein, or
your favorite 8th grade science teacher type,
attaches a patch of solid material
to a plastic orb and sets it spinning
like a tiny top. only up close
it looks much larger. up close
it doesn’t look like it’s moving
at all. and in fact the large man
in the white coat who set it spinning
can slow it down and even stop it,
and at one point he does this
to check out how the patch
of solid material on the plastic surface
held up under the centrifugal force
of the spin and finds that several pieces
have split off and formed related
shaped masses here and there
upon the plastic. and with a very
long and finely pointed pair of shining
titanium tweezers he carefully places
fourteen items of genetic code
on different facets of the developing
project, and with a warm breath
of humid air that quickly condenses
onto the plastic surface of the orb,
sets it spinning again so fast
it no longer appears round, but
kind of flattened at the poles.
and that’s about the time things
really begin to change.

I will go to bed hungry, not of necessity, but of choice

by Mike Foldes

The pantry shelves are filled
with cereals, rice, canned goods
with current date codes, a rack
of long white potatoes, a store
of liquors and wines, though
for the most part you stopped drinking
years ago. The refrigerator
is much larger than it needs to be
for the cubic volume of fruit,
vegetables, meats, shrimp
and other semi-precious perishables
taking up its inner space.
Within the cherry cupboards,
lifted and moved from market aisles
to privileged seats, one
behind another, a row of spices
each raised from front to back,
bishops in high-backed chairs
adorning the paper-lined nave.
The swollen belly grows larger
to match the pain, the wind wails,
or is that children singing?
If only they could paint poverty
into the corner of remember.

the vampire poet

by Mike Foldes

take the dull man with the blank stare
sitting on the redwood bench,
the heavy set woman at the grocery
searching for the perfectly ripe fruit,
who looks sideways at the bent man
pushing the smaller of two sizes
of wheeled wire carts, empty
but for a box of bruised strawberries,
the child screaming to be freed
from the publicly acceptable
rolling stocks holding her
in a royal position at the top
of the heap of toilet paper, diapers
cereal boxes, egg cartons, ice cream
and her mother’s black leather purse,
take them all, color them
like dye transfer photographs,
pour the life back into them
with the swipe of the fox fur
paintbrushes of Manet or Seurat,
animate their tired lives and reverse
the spell of ordinary cast over them,
wipe the webs from their honeyed eyes,
bury your canines in the lexicon
of nameless manners,
reverse the curse
and give them back
their well-deserved
and everlasting lives.