and/or Reply to Sunset.
The white elephants lead the parade, it was on Good Friday,
Coming back for their drums down the old Avenue
Marching to Darn That Dream on yr wooden musicbox
Bent out of key and stomped in the street once the saints marched
Out of a crowd of circus silhouettes and Sidecar Achilles
Peter was carving disbelief with Caution Tape to block the streets
And setting up a roadside Arcade under tents and neon lights
Standing under the awning out of the rain
And yawning orcas carrying constellations made up of the blandly expressions on Jonah’s ivory face
And when grandfather clocks finish up at the docks all of the shipwrecked orphans show up on the doorstep of yr place
And leave ashes on yr floor and trip down yr fire escape
And yr alley marshes and sound of beer can crunches
The way that we can’t afford postage
Darn That Dream!
If I could
Water walk
They bashed in yr music box
But pocket change was always more than enough
And you were jumping rope to the tune that
Solomon knocked on yr door and leant you
Or was that just the moon in a mud puddle?
And Scorpio slamming his window shut when he saw yr gate was stuck?
Your bedpost Beatitudes and Mount Olive mouth organs
Aren’t attempting to bend any branches
You just sit in the rain soaked spots and watch Peter walk by on crutches
Cradling yr bow and belly of wooden tune
Oh! The things that hunger creeps in to do!
The sirens were yr last chance out of town
Darn Them Too!
And a trapeze messenger in a vest telling tragic dangling in the balance the drip dried plastic cups and empty tables and throw away chairs about
How his Valentine’s are Blue
Water walk
Not tonight
All of the belching Holidays excused
And you and yr parking meters wrongly accused
And before red lights- I swear I look both ways down the Avenue.
Followed a trail of water colors and the flashlight gave out and the mirror shattered on the ground and a little piece, but beg was all I came to do.
Your out of state soaking wet Christmas Cards
Eugene’s sympathies were all that was left to subdue
But that song never ended and now it’s just ignored
But sometimes you find yrself coloring in the lines
Of the hound dogs or mules
That were dreaming outside vacancy signs of November’s arms
And the orphans lay down with rhyme & ridicule
With mouths on fire from the drool of pipelines
And furnace full of fast food
Damn the red table cloth and the prison food
Navigation west of the most recent grease stain on the carpet
Find me still in my dog eared shoes
Knitting smoke at the red light until the four bar rest is through
And your factories in rocking chairs on yr window panes with dead plants
And dumpster eyed alley cats wearing the same red flannel as Jack and giving appraisal to yr trash, probably empty rice boxes and soggy ol’ tea bags
Water walking before the ice pick dawn shatters the appetite of glass…
I send you away just so that I could get high on the fumes on yr exhaust
In a tin can room where love is rust and the mockingbirds all hold their tongue
And the Nazarene beebops chew invisible gum
And offer me candy wrappers to lay down for when Thy Kingdom Come
And the tv antennas keep their fingers crossed and the wind finds every crack in the wall
Yacketting after ceased symphonies and sacred attempts for shelter after Last Call
Winding up all of the mustard speakless voiceboxes we didn’t breath &
Water walking fingers on cracked piano keys.
The parables on plates at rest stop diners
And the salt shaker maracas to speak easy bohemian songs
Open 24 hours a day, but the days are numbered with the hairnet of lawcatching fish and bargaining them for a tartar sauce of truth to Heaven
But Heaven knows those bribes from the way that they squeal and give birth to the masculine moo
And don’t remove their shoes at the door but the detour was too much for them to pull through
And Darn That Dream spins past yr paper Mache walls and rattles all those pictures and the lines that you drew
Past leak & bucket & prayer until the flood intrudes
And with Eugene sending out for you
Looking like the finale isn’t too far off…
The truck stop.
Wilt the Worchester sauce and dim the lights
They’re playing our song except we won’t even flinch a half smile or an eyebrow on rye
Our archaic libraries
Mount Olive’s stairways going out of business
And doors closing in our face, but we wouldn’t know the difference
CLOSED signs illuminated for all night and eternity’s false teeth
Recycled tunes in our head
Tell my family that I found the sun in the produce section
And I’ll be sending home again to do my laundry
And I’m too tired to fake it now
I just want to hear the car keys
We lost every cent in the Arcade
Darn that scheme those penny suckers
The oxygen tank tracks and paraphernalia
The split end silverware and dead end string
I’m sleeping in a pile of Bazooka comics
And your waiting at the punch line
Behind warehouses you keep the assembly gnawing at yr last dime
And they try to give you peanuts and peeled banana pride behind the scenes
This is nothing new
Your saints march to music and the music marches to you
A eulogy for Eugene and a sunset on Waterloo
The Lady doing dishes endless at illiterate palms read
Leave yr jewelry at the edge of the sink
Guilt etched in Tupperware and sponges
The parades been over for months and still the flyers scatter down yr alleyway
And all of yr clowns in drag will falsetto serenade
And their holy stockings will fold and curl to touch the ground
Like a little tea pot short and stout
They’ll hopscotch and leave the bottle
They’ll hose down yr prayers with a twelve pack and use the box to sweep up the kaleidoscope hurled from yr window
The radio’s always on like a wasps nest humid and hung
Held together with the bottom of yr shoe and its chewed gum
Darn That Dream - the euphoric machinery hum
Sell my ticket and don’t leave the porch lights on
Yr American Flag prophecies
Give in to whatever Novocain you’ve withdrawn
And give the Mona Lisa her sunglasses back
And Darn That Dream and that E flat
Too, the seagulls voices bent and cracked
Too, avoid the rearview mirror at all costs
Too, the leftoevers weren’t for you to touch
The East is a hairnet vision you run yr hands through
And the mad man Max under fisherman hat who played “Pooper.”
And we sat where our knees could touch
Like Moses’ pretzel sea
yr hair
And that Damn Cat and Darn that Dream!
And when yr Orpheus strings sigh “She Belongs to Me”
And the fishermen cast their nets in shame and stare at the backs of their eyelids
DELUGE
(barefoot faith, fish, scales, arpeggios, and superglue)
they solemnly bow their heads
And wished you had come for Eugene instead.
Gina Marie LoBianco graduated from Eastern Illinois Unviersity in May 2009 with a BA in English. She has written nine unpublished novels, six different children’s books, has self published three separate literary journals, and has written five books of poetry. She has coordinated poetry readings at The Paper Café, and read at poetry readings provided through her university. She has received the Louis Murray Award for Children’s Literature in Spring 2008 and Spring 2009, as well as the Mary Coon Cottingham Scholarship for Creative Writing in 2008. She is currently doing an internship with poet Barry Silesky in Chicago where she is working on her tenth novel (and searching for a paying job).