for K.G.
by Charles Plymell
Boo Hoo as Malibu story book cottages defying shoreline grief
on carefree sand like strays caressing in seaweed crevasses
in your silver underwave chariot chair or did I say underwear
as a rogue sunset rolling home floating into Orient lamps
could have been a home for a moment for highway strays.
The sky virus sets its broken diamond molecules against
geometric shares having lived its life, a story that falls away,
sheds itself in the neon sky as ghostly as the snake skin
with its pattern still . . . madness in stardust, the gift of creation
in a trapped animal’s eyes that will follow your love forever.
Medleys for Crandall
by Charles Plymell
Sorry I was strung out on Cosanyl
and didn’t make it to your wedding
as best man, Wichita in the ’50s
but I did drive with you in muffler
dragging Chevy to Santa Fe Opera
to hear you sing Ballad of Baby Doe
and Women of Trachis (Stravinsky)
We stayed in your loft on the Bowery
two families didn’t seem crowded
the Bums burned their barrel fires
to keep warm, pimps in Cadillacs
and latest trend in dress & jewels.
City was a crowded collage pushing
boundaries on Lexington Avenue
cut out my face and put in you
where sleeps the self I can’t escape
carried in wind of blind night of
neon in Church of the Unnoticed.
Bags of hope ended the ’70s with
dump truck driving along the Bowery
picking up bodies to dump in Potters field,
Punks appeared at CBGB’s to usher
the ’80s into cocaine and derivatives
bringing out more criminality of racial
consciousness of shooters and judges.
Buffalo shot for sport, now the humans.
Hollywood Blvd. for Dean Stockwell
by Charles Plymell
In Hollywood aged poodles recoil in fright.
Ancient sorority queens, chew Juicy Fruit
in Topanga Canyon all night.
Hitchhikers from eternity flag your Chevrolet
and hug your Blue Jeans in Barney’s Beanery
where they’ve added another room to hell
the jukebox keeps repeating
“Second Hand Rose.”
And in unison across the land
a thousand long fingers
of high school sweethearts
hold their cigarettes
through wisps of smoke.
There is a chance,
Second Hand Rose,
a star may fall at your feet.
But you know that chance
withers your lips as you sing
many versions of your love poem
torn alone in pages of the night’s
tarnished wings of the Angel’s Flight.
Past Fante’s all the way up Sunset Strip
unlikely as Dante’s self help programs
in heaven while lights of Los Angeles
hang like a hustler’s mad beads.
Cast this spell on neon
dye tonight, dark moon,
for tomorrow that ounce
of stardust will be
wiped from Cadillac chrome
unnoticed by freeway hawks.
Goodbye My Generation
by Charles Plymell
He felt obliged to parasitize when it came time to measure
the medications of life, brains changed outside of life, society
morphed subtle as the stain of light, fast and right, just behind
the light formed crash when fish are found in rocks not water.
In the beginning was the word and the incunabulum of the turd.
I got the rattlesnake rumble gonna strike if you tread on me.
Oh professor of English is death past tense or future perfect?
The nice man cometh, Lady Gaga excels in retro–classic
and the phyllotaxis of taxis in Times Square form a drama
she’ll buy a toy for a lover boy in a relationship of the moon.