JAKE SHEFF - POEMS

 Jake Sheff is a major and pediatrician in the US Air Force, married with a daughter and six pets. Currently home is the Mojave Desert. Poems of Jake’s are in Radius, The Ekphrastic Review, The Cossack Review and elsewhere. He won 1st place in the 2017 SFPA speculative poetry contest and was a finalist in the Rondeau Roundup’s 2017 triolet contest. His chapbook is “Looting Versailles” 

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Good Danger
​

​The corporal observed Danger running
obstacles like bombed out cupolas
for rubber toys. His fleet-footed nose
 
caught a whiff of nitrate before his
team hit the road. A cold August dawn,
reheated like a chicken patty, was
 
prevented, many times, by his friendly
growling. In former wars, dogs carried
messages on s-hooks through alyssum
 
and barbed-wire; shook tanks with
tilt-rod mines attached like second
leashes yanked from Elysium; or took
 
asylum as beloved mascots. Amicably
barking at a three-headed Alpha, war
dogs prove more loyalty than bone.

Ode for Glaciers
​

​From Hudson Bay, they carved Wisconsin’s
granite rib. Crevasses formed
their theft deterrent systems, got
them classified 4F. ‘Never turn down
 
a blessing, or you’ll wrinkle young,’
is what Ford Madox Ford would have
seracs tell William Carlos Williams
and toppled statues in Iraq.
 
A little much and ice age, but lakers
love a drumlin like a Lexus; so
why not? Passports have no lever,
screw or wedge; so why should they?
 
A postcard from the potluck at
the padlock to Wisconsin said: Take care
of your bergschrund; ogives will
take care of themselves! Whereat –
 
I assume – the deteriorating wheat
lost out to its rutting chaperone.
We’re all blinded by good, but good
is blind, I guess; and data-driven blue.
 
With undue pleasantness, a glacier’s face
is still, but more expressive than a river’s.
A military-industrial simpleton,
like Mona Lisa, a glacier holds the highest
 
office in the land and erratics. Law-
abiding, incomplete plucking was
lauded by the maker of rule-makers
near Mariehamn; chatter marks
 
be damned! These slimy pieces of
autocorrect that bring down plutocracies…
When time was born, despite the tocolytics,
icy motorists rode in like hot shit.
 

Utopian Exchange
​

​“Money is a kind of poetry”

• Wallace Stevens

 
“Most monies are bad.”

• Bias of Priene, mistranslated

 
The interest rates have risen like the wind
in a dead ear. The dedicated dead:
too big to die again; bank on it. When
 
The Fed exalted bonds – inflated bonds
in latex gloves like latex gloves – it’s said
then hydrogen invented water, ‘winned’
 
became a word. Committees with carte blanche
to grow economies are in the blood;
or else the red laments, “Remember when.”
 
And even pavement is revamped by winds
of change like Mercury dimes and quarters fed
hindquarters; “Winter’s windfall,” whinnied-whined
 
a central, flat, depressing bowl of skin
and tender dust. The Markets Group has read
the fingerprints like static ripples. When
 
a pointed finger, like a trigger, bends
the wrong direction, (Tube or not tube?), heads
will roll without their mouths; a reddish wind
will question to forget our dish of when.

 

​ESSAY ON THE MIGHT OF NIGHT: A MOCKTURNE

                            …let what is
speak for itself, not to redeem the time
but to get even with it.
 
                            GEOFFREY HILL, The Orchards of Syon
 
And then the gradual and dual blue
As night unites the viewer and the view…
 
                            VLADIMIR NABOKOV, Pale Fire
 
Pentheus.
   How is thy worship held, by night or day?
Dionysus.
   Most oft by night; ‘tis a majestic thing,
                the darkness.
 
                EURIPIDES, The Bacchae
 

​ACT ONE
The beginning of the night is barking fear…
 
1. A PRIVATE RESIDENCE; THE DINING ROOM WITH SUNDOWN IN THE WINDOWS
 
[The brothers – NUMERATOR and DENOMINATOR –
continue their discussion of obscurity’s condition]

​NUMERATOR: That rubbernecking sun. She always sees
the back of Mother Nature’s head. Must be
the pain of phantom landscapes that our bread-
and-circus in the sky keeps coming back
for, rising – double-yolked – to cast her hours
on our imperfect worlds becoming scarce.
She falls – above reproach and lift – while redder
than a palindrome without a reader.
 
DENOMINATOR: Is paradise divided better than
elided, brother? Truth is like a headache;
thorny thunder in a Cajun mood.
 
NUMERATOR: A bearded question gets a beaded answer:
dusting off the nightstand during sex;
it is that lover’s yes. A smorgasbord
of ill-will twinkles up above, apart
from our debate and diabetic gloom.
 
DENOMINATOR: Your filial device: a pot to groom
and piss in. Boundlessness miscalculated
or the dark emasculated cooks
the books, a morbid favor only crooks
forbid. That starry music recreates
the silence of belief; its shiny deafness
cures a lack of faith. Has hatred ever
brushed its teeth?
 
NUMERATOR:            A vision rides a lightning
bolt, or else is fixing to. Your cunning
‘view halloo’: a nightmare; faux and sleepy
foe to vixens too. The greatest thing
about the greatest thing is no one sees it;
the mentor’s torment in vast kingdoms of
sand castles. Hate is just the concubine
of trust in night’s sobriety. And night
is merciful to those who wait; a deathbed
poets pet into a zebra skull.
 
DENOMINATOR: Pretending earth is heaven’s birthmark? Naked
as a dry lake bed, varieties
of silence will persist. Combustible;
the rubble in your voice as choices bubble
on the double. First, a ribbit – less
comestible than ribbon; buoyant bayonet
of air – then two-fifteenths of night is there,
but not inside! Our fireplace has never
seen a flying tree, since irony
is history’s chief import. No ailanthus
grew the Valkyries.
 
NUMERATOR:            The ground is not
an enemy combatant? Though a day
can seem as tall and stupid as a lovelorn
stem, Goliath to the night is evening;
like cocksuckers from the whole of history.
 
Her appetite is brown, it spins around
inside her tummy and beneath the ground. 
It likes the books like bread; it's only read 
the books that bled if bit inside its head. 
It likes to hoard the dust; it only trusts 
what grows a crust and never shows it rusts.
 
That’s from my ‘Ode to Evening.’
 
DENOMINATOR [to himself]:           Ambidextrous
climates offer order upside-down
or inside-out but nothing in between.
 
[To NUMERATOR:] I liked
           
The drama of our love is on
an island in the sky;
aloof to stars and birds, it charts
the realm of passersby.

             I hope you kept it in there.
 
NUMERATOR:          How
about
 
I'm good at worthless art
to make you think. I take apart
the world you took to heart
 
too soon and long ago
when knowing cost the world its glow
and promises to show?
 
DENOMINATOR: Your passion needs a chimney sweep or nanny!
That’s a compliment where wisdom is
the border.
 
NUMERATOR:            But it never is the entry
or the way.
 
DENOMINATOR [to himself]:           To lacerate your depth,
these pointless clouds – excoriated by
your power’s makeshift will – are nothing more
than bruised collegial notions for a Spartan
Saturday. A boyish, handsome outcome,
made of constantly outdated norms,
will not be welcome. Customs stoned on H
can try their best, but only in the second
June and swoony wilderness.
 
NUMERATOR:            You lose
me, brother. Hudson Bay can turn a boy
on – hideous display of piston sans
epistolary alley-oop; perhaps
the bottomless ‘Aloha’ from these haloed
harbors heckles and abhors
casuistry without a roadhouse near.
Let’s sink our bailiff-eyeteeth in some beer!
 

​2. A COUNTRY ROAD, PUBLIC; FOREST ON THE LEFT, A CORNFIELD ON THE RIGHT
 
[NUMERATOR and DENOMINATOR walking
north toward a tavern owned by BUCEPHALUS]
 

​DENOMINATOR [looking down]: That moon is always playing “Taps.”
 
NUMERATOR [rolling his eyes]:       A daft
Thermopylae is somewhere in her tidal
lock, I guess. It could be worse, if she
were kleptocratic or a Chatty Cathy
like these woods.
 
THE WOODS:                        
Our cedar cadre’s jonesing to invite you
to scratch and sniff our fourth estate. We might do
sexual exegesis to delight you.
 
[THE WOODS giggle.]
 
THE ROAD [aggrieved]:        I’m walkin’ here!
 
DENOMINATOR [screwing up his thighs]:              To be
like corn; rejoice and carol in the sun
and cattle. Manufactured deviance,
for sure! Escaping fate so individually
rapt.
 
NUMERATOR [smiling]:        If only trading tirades counted.
 
DENOMINATOR [eyes dilate, he turns to NUMERATOR]
But they make a triad of us.
 
THE ROAD [to himself revealing]:    So,
this operation is to make a fool
of sense and find a better man or way?
 

​3. THE TAVERN
 
[NUMERATOR and DENOMINATOR
sitting at the bar, nursing drafts of ale ]

​BUCEPHALUS [wiping the bar, studying the brothers]:
You boys got ailments alimentary
as mist to solemn hours. I’d never seen
a golden golem till you boys ignited
nature’s expletives and innermost
data. It’s elementary! To you two,
Galen and the Via Dolorosa
are interchangeable – is that right? Well,
this arch-destroying turns a midnight moon
to midnight noon. You dig?
 
JUKEBOX [playing in back; a female singer]: This sultry earth
sees all mankind as interchangeable
with moonshine…
 
DENOMINATOR [contemptuously; to BUCEPHALUS]:       If the universe does not
play nice with light, then why should we? A dark
profession rules the night’s procession, plans
the blackest crimes; unsportsmanlike in her
arrest. 
 
BUCEPHALUS [shaking his head, cleaning glasses]:            You peer-review the night with macro-
minded shutters on, like reapers on
the pier. And yet the night refuses solace
from herself or gated meanings.
 
JUKEBOX [a male singer]:     Hours
in succession let the daylight part
with sessions on your hair…
 
NUMERATOR [to BUCEPHALUS]:    But solace
comes to solar and the shadows come
to grief, you know? The night’s a cousin to
survival; couscous for the day’s approval. 

​[The front door opens; enter SHINING OWL
and PROSTRATE LAKE, continuing their
conversation]
 

​SHINING OWL: Too critical of trees and the velocities
of autumn – bony trees in vortices;
those fields of innocence – oblivious
to squalor and its good societies;
and yet, you know it all among the lemon groves
and Augustines?
 
[NUMERATOR waves to PROSTRATE LAKE; he nods in return]
 
PROSTRATE LAKE [to SHINING OWL]:      Your variations on
the Thames. A grudge is escargot. Entitled
to escape alignment, categories
critically assign the sergeant’s pepper
to his lonely heart’s divine reconnaissance,
malign its weighty scroll of gratitude
our hands cannot let go of.
 
SHINING OWL:          Yet; cannot
let go of yet. Or learn one angstrom from
to compliment our days.
 
JUKEBOX [a pair of voices, male and female]:          Night wears a permanent
display of wretched faces turned away.
 
[the record changes, audibly; the new song features two male voices, accompanied by horns and up tempo, heavy percussion]
 
BUCEPHALUS [sarcastic; to the new arrivals]: Well, look’ee here! The night let your belated
flight continue. What’ll it be?
 
PROSTRATE LAKE [while taking a seat at the bar]:          Corona
Light for me.
 
SHINING OWL [sitting; agitated]:    Corinna? Her integrity
is poachable, but less approachable
than she is.
 
JUKEBOX [two male voices alternating]:
 
VOICE ONE:
Nature’s green word is ‘Go’ – yo! –
with herd or with a hoe, ya’ know!
 
VOICE TWO:
Hey yo, her early blade’s a plower
to cut in half the hour.
 
NUMERATOR [quietly to DENOMINATOR]:            Hear those two? Their speech just picks
the pockets of our conduct and condition,
pulling out airtight collisions they’d
refuse outright from night in her accouterments.
As if recruiting terror is her motif.
 
JUKEBOX, VOICE ONE AND TWO [in tandem]:
Relief defeats belief.
The apple is a thief,
 
VOICE ONE:
her seed goes down to pray.
 
VOICE TWO
That’s why nothing gold can pay. Ya’ heard.
 
DENOMINATOR [listening attentively; a struggle]:
‘Nothing gold can play’ – was that it? Golden
nothing: like this record; like these coins;
and like a different sun?
 

​PROSTRATE LAKE [next to SHINING OWL; raises his Corona Light in response]:          Here, here!
 
BUCEPHALUS [to those assembled at the bar; looking at none in particular]: Cherchez
la femme…Great poetry is no great pleasure;
its key to immortality’s the treasure. 
 
NUMERATOR [to BUCEPHALUS; for DENOMINATOR]:    But
examining the features
of the womanly idea,
the creature’s feathers,
 
you misapply fidelity –
a fatherly injunction –
for premature dysfunction.
 
DENOMINATOR [to BUCEPHALUS; looking toward his beer]:      You’re a serpent-
headed horse, ya’ know!
 
BUCEPHALUS [serious; looking deep into DENOMINATOR whom returns his gaze]:     Like it or not,
these onyx exit strategies – their inlets
you upend with intel, you…you creators
signing souls with craters – are the night’s
fair trade appendage. Nothing more. And yet,
tomorrow’s oeuvre has plenty of noonday monodies.
Remember, every bit of time has passed
the jugular of God. It keeps me honest;
juggernaut ideas, like phosphor shining
through clear trees that grow philosophers.
You stake black flags on lackland night, unlearning
the honey bee’s sweet ashes make an urn for yearning.
I can’t accept five-footed perfidy
that’s dressed like Mickey Mouse! It’s best at six-
feet under! Some mid-century modern bats,
you are; just flapping wings to show our silly stillness
your respect. Their membranes toss me thoughts –
I couldn’t care less. But – like it or not - your prestos
grant you purest priesthood if your will
impressed persists as wall-less laws.
 
SHINING OWL [wide-eyed; self-satisfied and looking down]:         Such myrmidon
prestige he grants so readily! My-my.
If myrtle could dismiss her green it’d be
more fair. This knowledge is unnatural,
the origin’s desire: to end
meaninglessness malingering beyond
our fasting, feasting on our leap year’s district;
armed and dangerous Mardi Gras for days
but sine die. Language enters with
a twiggy, nihilistic gait.
 

​[Enter LANGUAGE, from the restroom]
 

​LANGUAGE [fly and mouth unzipped, clean-cut; to the assembled]:         I believe
asbestos pals around with alcoholic
besties back there. [Points to the bathroom.] Ya’ might want to get it
checked before chimeric chimes of death and
dimes are marching dastardly through us.
 
ECHO [from the water closet]:         Who us?
 
LANGUAGE [annoyed]: Echo’s epiphany is not a new edition –
forgetfulness aside – of you or me or
gobbledygook that weds us like next Wednesday.
 
[Winks at ECHO.]
 
ECHO: Hump day.
 
LANGUAGE: I, hobgoblin in your goblets and – all
joking aside – jukebox supreme…
 

​[JUKEBOX disappears, but music still is heard.]
 

​ECHO: Juice box supreme.

​[A juice box appears where formerly
JUKEBOX was; still music plays.]

​LANGUAGE:   …hobnob with
kindle-killing Ken dolls, sweet as lazy
lidocaine, because I can’t sit still.
Mahjong of lifeless, loveless, lidless freedom’s
nth degree; a time for hunger’s audience. I
offer that and more, you could say. Or
procrastinating, preindustrial
Q’s to the U’s – like jam to sausage – but for lease.
 
ECHO [to the juice box]:        Für Elise!
 
LANGUAGE [dramatically deepens his voice; the lights dim]:
Roy G Biv – without the social graces –
shaving traces from the rippled air,
termitic-apparition riddled hither
until thither parks her iron storm,
verbatim, on my foppish brogue and bruit.
Wall-eyed gears to mute the blue; achievement
crossed with central hues to plagiarize
youthful and distant doom in shades of red.
Zoologist with whiteout to redact the night –
 

 [The lights return.]

​ECHO: A dactyl light. 

​[PURPLE in the room, hitherto the unseen
sort, slurps the juice box and transforms.]

​A TYRIAN BURP: To rhythmic lights on bended knees
the night responds with O’s and Z’s.
This brooding – robed in mysteries –
has robbed the dark, its industries
beneath the trees and dust. So drink,
and be a hooligan as pink
as snow more interesting than now
is: winter windowless. Who won?
 
ECHO: Excuse me?
 
LANGUAGE: I must be going! I’m very late! A midnight showing…

​[LANGUAGE becomes a duck-billed rabbit,
human-sized, and exits the front door.]
 

​ECHO: Am I supposed to echo that?
 
SHINING OWL:          You have to
say it – quack!

​[Exit ECHO.]

​NUMERATOR [to himself and the assembled]:        They’re off to greener suns
with plenary potential.
 
PROSTRATE LAKE [to NUMERATOR]:       Some enrichment
program that was, eh? The talons of
your logic’s magic tastes metallic, buddy.
 
BUCEPHALUS [eyes his gun beneath the bar; wary]: Here we go.
 
NUMERATOR [caught off-guard]:   Me? 
 
[PROSTRATE LAKE nods.]
 
            Thanks, amigo!

​BUCEPHALUS [to himself]:   Whew!
These permanently thirty-three year old
indictments, conquering their issues of
the day…I’m just too old for this.
 
DENOMINATOR [to all]:       This shit
is hurtling through epochs, modest domes
and my synaptic clefts. Relax the speed
of redux; slow emotions win the race.
 
SHINING OWL [agreeably, to all; with a shit-eating grin]:
You guys, I’m serious as the trees the day
the day misplaced his breeze: The next round is on me!

​4. A COUNTRY ROAD, PUBLIC; FOREST ON THE RIGHT, A CORNFIELD ON THE LEFT
 
[NUMERATOR and DENOMINATOR walking
south toward the home owned by their parents]

​DENOMINATOR [in good spirits]: The night is less time-sensitive than Mozart,
but she captures more. To genius, all
the world is Salieri on the cross!
 
NUMERATOR [equally amicable]: Speaking of which, it’s Sunday.
 
DENOMINATOR [imitates their father; superior, buffoonish, didactic]:   Teach your bland
amygdala to love The Age of Reason!
 
NUMERATOR [gamely imitates an eager student]: Why?
 
DENOMINATOR:        No reason. [Breaks character; they laugh.] Ah, his meteoric
meter, flying up above with all
the incorruptibility. Sums up
eternity though: wars that buried skies;
no windy sandwich or some parchment in
disguise. My equally approximate
attraction strips away my lateness. Its
medieval body odor walks inside
my wishes.
 
NUMERATOR:            D, [Indicates to DENOMINATOR with his eyes.] your nose wants blowing.
 
DENOMINATOR:        Oh. [Touches a scantily snotty nostril with his pointer finger.]
Thanks. [Plugs one side; performs a farmer’s blow, and sniffles once.] “Night’s a dormitory for a lost
command.”
 
NUMERATOR:            Fitzgerald?
 

​[Enter F. SCOTT FITZGERALD’S HEAD,
materializing between the brothers and
bobbing slightly as they walk along.]
 

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD’S HEAD:     Nope. It’s death, that foul
custodian of depth. In fact, that’d be
her job description, sport. If she was just
a door, another species full of dreamy
spices with its power increased by all
that holds it back…ah, what the heck! We’re all
big boys. [For emphasis, F. SCOTT FITZGERALD’S HEAD goes one-foot higher but speaks in a higher pitch.] It was my girl, Black Dandelion,
that drove the car.  No broccoli for me!
 
[His head and voice return near the brothers’ levels; he looks up.]
 
Like spinach or St. Nick, those stars – a care
away – all burst with strange technology
and boast of nascent privilege. Ernest told me
greed was how the night had greeted greater
hearts than ours. But I’m more ignorant
of night than any sun or Sunday sermon,
fellas. [He smiles at the brothers and blinks back tears.] Night, with her material
subscription to the laws. And writers, [A pregnant pause.] with
our heads in the maternal clouds.

[F. SCOTT FITZGERALD’S HEAD turns into SPUTNIK. It sputters and beeps, then hovers into THE WOODS. The trees bend over backwards before it to bow out of the way. SPUTNIK leaves a trail of incandescent puffs. The brothers follow behind it.]
 

THE WOODS [murmuring; closing behind the brothers]: This nightly death wish
leaves you breathless:
Psyche’s Kaiser;
none the wiser.

​ACT TWO
 
1. A CLEARING
 
[NUMERATOR and DENOMINATOR discover a glade
where moonlight shines on two sleeping women.]

​FIRST WOMAN [waking]: If sleep is disillusionment’s dark portrait
enlightened by these human dreams – the hymens
that begin in disbelief – then tightening
a glimpse, I’m pretty sure, is tantamount
to dressing mantles. [Looks over at the other sleeping woman angrily.] Sister! Wake your ass up!
 
SECOND WOMAN [stirring, roused; initially upset]: Hypnopompic bagpipes, shut your mouths!
Mnemonic arguments are less agreeable
than ague. Bless me, sis, and catch those cold,
uncommon and contagious vocal tics!
 
FIRST WOMAN [yawns and covers her mouth, then speaks]: Pneumonia isn’t in the air, but
something for consumption is. A new age
agriculture where the light is sewage.
This fever is no lever nor believer’s
shy endeavor. Volunteers of grass…
 
[FIRST WOMAN stoops to pluck some leaves.]
 
SECOND WOMAN: You speak of Mister
Whitman. I never read him.
Vulvas know, “Revolve.”
 
FIRST WOMAN [hunched over]: Voluptuous like
loaves. A lefty-loosey turn:
 
[She rips out several blades.]
 
Victory is wigged.
 
SECOND WOMAN: In valleys known to
tennis, love is zero, so
‘like’ is like manure.
 
FIRST WOMAN: A double-vaulted
sonnet matches sky with sky.
 
[She tosses all the grass into the wind.]
 
Revolvers volley.
 
[SECOND WOMAN reaches up. The leaves of grass are frozen in midair. SECOND WOMAN waves her arms, the blades line up to spell LIV – LIX.]
 
SECOND WOMAN: As numbers boring,
 
[NUMERATOR, behind a tree and looking on amazed, at this point frowns.]
 
but their words are formulas
for besting seven.
 
DENOMINATOR [to himself and hushed]: Live through licks?
 
NUMERATOR [same]:           Live minus licks? Or likes?

​ 
[The sisters hear the brothers, turn abruptly
and their spell’s released. Exeunt LIV – LIX.]

FIRST WOMAN [ritualistically]: Vicarious as
caviar,
 
SECOND WOMAN [same]:    no starfish spawn:
 
BOTH WOMEN: zero minus V!
 
NUMERATOR: A narcissistic high-five.
 
DENOMINATOR: Or sexy X halved.  
 
BOTH WOMEN [lightening up; a teasing tone]: The leaves are our slaves.
 
SECOND WOMAN: Ghosts of saying
 
FIRST WOMAN:         (it goes with
staying):
 
BOTH WOMEN:         spring and fall.
 
NUMERATOR: Are those your names?
 
FIRST WOMAN:         I knew you’d solve these veils
with salvageable parts like yours.
 
SECOND WOMAN [to DENOMINATOR; coquettish]:         Saliva’s got
your number, boy.
 
FIRST WOMAN [to both and to the air]:     If love believes in elves,
then leaves are softer versions of ourselves.
 
SECOND WOMAN [to both]: In green sleeves, if you like.
 
FIRST WOMAN [sincere]:     My name is Mirror.
 
[MIRROR curtseys.]
 
SECOND WOMAN: And I’m Mirage.
 
[She curtseys; reaches out her hand.]
 
DENOMINATOR [to NUMERATOR; thrilled and hushed]: These sisters are isosceles.
 
[To MIRAGE; takes her hand to kiss it:]       I’ll call you Marriage.
 
[Kisses her hand gently and lets go.]
 
NUMERATOR [looking at MIRROR; to himself]:     If she holds up a mirror to the mariner’s mire –
to the sea all aflame like a five-alarm fire
that is flooding his ancient and REM tears –
then I’ll see what I am from her miracle piers.
 
[To MIRROR:]            I am merrily not an emir,
but the salt in the sand on your seashore
I would gladly be.
 
MIRROR [coyly]:        Words are mere C4
for Miró to court-martial in rhyme.
You’re American, reamed out by night
and surrounded by pickets of light.
You’re a pitiful cowboy in search of Virginia,
you go eastward and westward but never within ya’.
 
NUMERATOR: Do you charge a great price, unboyfriendable rose,
for a walk in your garden and prick of great prose?
Because prose has a point.*
 
*A spurious and moralizing line inserted by some pseudo-Ovidian, post-Sheffian hand
 
MIRROR: Sweet semantics, my dear. And my numbers are clear. As for you
it’d be better if, letter by letter, you withdrew
insignificant sounds and spoke metric instead of in pounds.
Double-crowned as the night reconsidered by zounds,
so archaic. ‘The devil’s dick pic is the mortar’s
triptych.’ Was that you?
 
NUMERATOR:             You mean ‘martyr’s,’ and sorta’.
 
[Clears his throat; begins reciting.]
 
From domains too demure 
to moraines less obscure
but absconded, these murals
con amore and burials
of taste… [He makes a face; reaches in his mouth but extracts nothing.] 
 
Murphy’s law
gets affixed in the craw.
 
MIRROR: You have scattered the meanings
we’ve all sown in custom and sight,
but your reaching is wrecked
in demesnes of the night. 
The night is living in the past because
she makes it. So, what’s your excuse?
 
NUMERATOR: The raven’s crass reflection - Never! - is,
in fact, a crow: so work is peace
for thwarted men unthawed by it. Like greener
grasses grown by your legerdemain,
it’s only what’s renamed that will remain.
 
DENOMINATOR [observing NUMERATOR and MIRROR; to MIRAGE, jocular]: It’s like two moray eels
on a caduceus of air.
 
MIRAGE: I see a fledgling staff,
my sister’s contrapuntal snare
relaxed at times in this soiree.
 
DENOMINATOR: I’d take a tip from Eros
and hope my arrows only glance;
to separate the chancing from the chance
would be annihilation.
 
MIRAGE:         As when others err
it’s joy because a worldly answer’s rare,
a scarecrow without crows becomes a man
without a scare; a louse in torture’s bedpan,
truth be told.
 
[looking at MIRROR; to herself:] What pills her spills have killed…
 
DENOMINATOR [a semi-warning, semi-reassuring tone]: He won’t discount a lover’s yaws too much.
 
[MIRAGE does not hear this.]
 
MIRAGE [to all]: Who wants a story?
 
[NUMERATOR and MIRROR stop talking and turn to face her. DENOMINATOR continues looking her direction, but his expression changes to disappointment and surprise, albeit in a reserved and thus seemingly slight manner.]
 
NUMERATOR:            Something gory! Tales
ring thrice upon a time at once if blood
blinds us. Defiled expectation nails
the pleasure principle right in the head.
A pint of death’s cupidity we crave:
a story like the eyes of god; to look
into those corridors of loss and brave
their waiting and eternal chambers, book
a reservation for a later date
and scram. But night repackages our capers.
Tomorrow’s always pacing back and forth,
unsure if it’s just stern stenographers
that put a pilot’s eye outside our plot;
this petri dish for panic sewn to earth.
 
MIRROR [to NUMERATOR]: The night?
 
NUMERATOR [over-pleased, he forgets the sisters’ names]:          You’ve got it, Mare!
 
DENOMINATOR [teasing NUMERATOR]:               Heavier than air,
our disco ball of airy diction over there!
 
MIRAGE [invoking; oracular]: With bright concern the day reveals
a sorry turn to fate appeals,
though by another name:
Magnesium sulfate bathes its fame;
a caliphate could light its frame
of self-denial’s flame. 
 
[Her tone becomes unceremonious, upbeat.]
 
Decapitation’s Ode is a verse-narrative about Julius Caesar being kidnapped by pirates. This scene takes place on board a ship at night. The young captain, Julius Caesar – not yet emperor – is reading aloud a letter from his cousin. Two pirates standing guard outside his cabin listen in and get a few kicks, but later wonder if the man is mad.
 
JULIUS CAESAR [reading from a letter]: Your wimpy cravings, coward
of the stall and grip;
a new-age “Pip”
to contemplate and crush.
 
In desecrated snow
I wrought some feeling from
your purchased slip-
of-the-tongue and busted
 
lip. In ten or twenty years,
if boats are sent into
my icy heart so dissertations
grow from blank persuasions,
 
maybe, cousin, I’ll invite you
on the hunt. But probably
not. Your moneyed character’s
cartel of decimated pews
 
where spilled your descanted
merlot was not merely suggested
sacrilege. In fact, by desperation
stewing like some counterpart
 
arrival, I can see, despite
some blue-eyed scrim
and scum, a purpose
altogether the worse-case-
 
scenario for ulterior motives;
too original for time’s
commitment or future
omission. Spewed by derivation
 
like some indigested stowaway,
get out now, and ask not
why you must; the why you
seek is sensible, and not to trust. [End of letter.]
 
[To himself:] By war and spit, my share
of life has turned.
The local ridges kept my chapped
endeavor; no recusal sought.
 
[He hears something.]
 
What’s that? Who’s there?
 
[Outside the cabin.]
 
PIRATE ONE [ear to the door]: Did you hear something?
 
PIRATE TWO: No.
 
[Back in the room.]
 
UNDISTINGUISHED GHOULISH VOICE(S): Daily comes the dairy cow
to plop, but what’s to plow?
 
[Outside the cabin.]
 
PIRATE TWO [snickering]: …
 
PIRATE ONE: Good one! Keep going!
 
[Inside the room. JULIUS CAESAR backs himself against the wall in terror.]
 
UNDISTINGUISHED GHOULISH VOICE(S): The antrum split, so atrial
involvement was assured –
 
[The voice(s) take(s) on the form of GOODMAN BROWN. JULIUS CAESAR’s terror transforms into a receptive attraction; he steps forward, childlike, with reaching eyes.]
 
GOODMAN BROWN [continues] I guess I’m here to parse
descriptions sewed to tendons?
 
Impatiens need disservice mowed
in gardens and skedaddled tropes.
 
[Outside the cabin.]
 
PIRATE ONE [jovial]: Okay, mate, that’s enough. Hysterical.
 
PIRATE TWO [stepping away from the door]: Gosh darn, that’s fun.
 
[The pirates overhear JULIUS CAESAR still talking in the room. They move back toward the door and listen in confusion.]
 
[Inside the room.]
 
JULIUS CAESAR: Please continue.
 
GOODMAN BROWN: Prima facie, or by dawn,
you’ll see a presence dappled
 
less than fawn but more
than yawn; is it sleep
in your eyes, you’ll ask.
A screwy, denervated doe
 
will not reply so honest as
me now. When something isn’t
there to defervesce or know
a suffragette or supernova supplicates.
 
JULIUS CAESAR: I understand. Decapitation’s owed
to dupe the culpable.
The stars have courage in
their entourage and my trochanter.
It’s how the world is rowed
to lords away.
 
[Outside the cabin.]
 
PIRATE ONE: Pshaw! Pudenda talk. A self-enchanter
with iatrogenic quiet like
a tambourine.
 
PIRATE TWO:            A Bruce Lee surrogate?
He hailed an empty toga ‘Emperor’ before.
 
PIRATE ONE: I saw the selfsame toga hailing him.
 
NUMERATOR [to all; theatrical]: Morituri te salutant!
​

​[Exeunt JULIUS CAESAR, GOODMAN BROWN and THE PIRATES.]
 

​DENOMINATOR [to MIRAGE; politely feigning uncertainty]: I think it’s ‘anteroom,’ not ‘antrum.’
 
MIRROR [same; with unquestioned certainty]:       You
meant ‘duplicate the colposcope,’ not ‘dupe.’
 
NUMERATOR [to MIRROR]: You meant ‘in the mien of the night’ earlier,
and not ‘in demeaning the night.’
 
MIRAGE [to the air with a capitulating gesture; indignant, righteous and accusatory]:            Next thing you know
the toga was a goat. “An empty goat,”
I’ll ask. You’ll say, “’Fraid so.”
 
[DENOMINATOR does not hear this.]
 
DENOMINATOR [to MIRAGE]:         So in this allegory,
which of us [Vainglorious; indicating both himself and NUMERATOR.] is young J.C.?
 
MIRAGE [temper cooling]:    What’s under
any chef’s hat is the answer.
 
MIRROR [amused]:    Ha! You two
are more like Malthus with Methuselah-
ambitions née bejeweled and hoodless wands
for wedging wonder in!
 
NUMERATOR [dismissive]:    You’d argue that
two zeroes make a lemniscate.
 
[To DENOMINATOR; sympathy assumed:] Her logic’s orbit
is a sailor’s knot that’s not for sale, right brother?
 
MIRAGE [smiling]: Go on! Beat our logic’s naked breasts!
 
DENOMINATOR [to all, but looking down-away in thought]: It’s heady and Lamarckian, I guess,
so could have value as a sort of valve.
 
WOMAN’S VOICE [inside DENOMINATOR’s head]: The sun is always just ahead of soon;
the son that’s double-owed, but one-in-two.
 
MIRROR: The night, a weird melanocyte in space.
 
MIRAGE: A blemish for a minocycline’s-worth
of photosensitive appraisal.
 
MIRROR:         Case
in point: the night is poetry reversed.
 
NUMERATOR [flustered, frustrated]: Enough physician-speak! You’ll trick my bro –
his Enkidu-skillset is Siamese,
a talent not for recognition – so
your jelly-eyed swashbuckling must cease
this instant. Night has teeth, a single row
of pretty Grendels dressed like Gretels. Sheesh!
 
MIRROR: You think our service is indentured, boy?
 
MIRAGE [to all; in a trembling voice and surveying her body]: Our talk of nuptials earlier has aggravated
Neptune. Bodies, cleaved by trident and
by oxytocin…
 
[All begin to shake and shiver; seemingly involuntary.]
 
MIRAGE: …in the clearing’s fennel
and ancestral phenylalanine
a dancing feeling crowns a timeless scene…
 
[The four converge and form a holy, hedonistic union. SPUTNIK descends on the event.]
 
SPUTNIK [observing the orgy; to NIGHT, in beeping ones and zeroes]: To see that wall of nothing there,
there pain is born and with a mirror.
"Mirror, I've looked for truth, but where,
where is it?" "All is fair, lad. There,
there." But this manic house of rumor
rooms, it cries out...
 
THE BROTHERS AND SISTERS [Gregorian, decrescendo; caroling and moaning]: More! More!
 
[SPUTNIK flips a switch, turns on a light; creates a soupy glow above the groping shades.]
 
SPUTNIK [to himself]: Just gorging on their gorgeous disregard
for breath – it tastes of grog and gorgonzola;
gets you good and stoned, they say.
 
[To NIGHT; cloying:] Your silver
gardens really dazzle death, old friend.
 
[Observing MIRROR:] An eye for what? An I arriving more
diverse against the wall?
 
[A gust of wind blows through the trees around the glade.]
 
THE WOODS: The scent of myrrh
and memories murmur:
rhyme with Mary;
rhyme with murder.
 
SPUTNIK [self-consciously; oracular, invoking]: Centrifugal,
centripetal:
sound the bugle,
mount the fetal.
 
A TREE [to SPUTNIK; female voice]: Crush your sadness,
blind your badness.
All’s forgiven,
nap in heaven.
 

​[Exit SPUTNIK.]
 
ACT THREE
 
1. A VESTIBULE; THE FRONT ENTRANCE TO A PRIVATE RESIDENCE
 
[The door is opening; NUMERATOR and DENOMINATOR
are stepping inside, convivial and speaking excitedly.]
 

​NUMERATOR [rhapsodic, half-sincere]: O darling night, whose love was my beginning!
 
DENOMINATOR [gaily, half-agreeing]: Her gilded spirit’s gliding and not easy
to forget! But now she leaps into
a classic roan! [Half-fretfully, half-play.] Don’t let her grow blue dun –
I’ll be a gelding then! – but if to shed
the side effects of being born she’d spread
the remnants of her origin atop
our sheaves of lonely gaffes, I’d change my tune.
 
NUMERATOR: You hit a target no one else can use,
brother; like planets for the sun’s amusement.
 

[The door clicks shut behind them.]

​

​DENOMINATOR [a slightly slighted tone]: Roger. Be that as it may, the greatest
art is loved by nature and despised by people.
 
NUMERATOR: Sometimes men reject what death does too.
 
DENOMINATOR: You read that on the rheumy Internet.
Its human principles are on the fritz.
That purple coliseum out of doors
is in our stomachs and it can’t be wrong!
 
NUMERATOR: Your grip of time just took a sleazy lunar
swerve. All due respect, this feeling desperate
to be felt is like a fallen leaf
that floated back onto its tree from strange
phrenology. The percolating elms
regard their shrug regained as proof. Rebuff
this schizo candelabra.
 
DENOMINATOR [scornfully]:           Plastic, acrobatic
dreams are worth the psycho paychecks and
collateral chartreuse!
 
[NUMERATOR grimaces and reaches toward his rear-end; stops short of grabbing it.]
 
            Another pointless night
impaled like comedones; excessively
eloping – with comedic discipline –
beneath our heirlooms. Vital and diurnal
methods formed this Whitsunday, its melancholy
cliffs that spill and climb with prime do-overs
in the flesh. The woods that wooed us
tenderly were not outside the nighttime’s
blender, only blonder so her badlands
seemed more bland than Loma Linda to
the blind. If what they said was more than suede,
then I’m a blunderbuss persuaded! Now,
café au lait, my shadow’s hallelujahs
bound for hell, but its no doppelgänger,
zeitgeber nor color’s complement.
 
NUMERATOR [interjecting]: You’d push the night into a trolley not
to save a pentagram but rather just
to keep the line on schedule!
 
DENOMINATOR [cooling off, but first a mock-surprised expression]: It’s an allergy
to vacancies we share. My scrounging makes
a scoundrel but the scandal is the spandrel in
our anger’s architecture. Nothing lifts
a sandal like it!
 
NUMERATOR [relaxed, incredulous]:           Right, you put a sock in
night’s endowments; or around it? And
you lifted carrots from their orange bowl?
Or maybe tossed in sauerkraut to make –
for better or for worse – a bitter karat.
You, you see a pair of goldfish in the sun,
where two rings make an analemma but
two I’s the day’s dilemma.
 
DENOMINATOR [unfazed]: Well, it’s better
to be weird than shoved; more pinned against
than pinning. As Wisconsin wasn’t built
of clay in laboratories without lavatories,
why not spend a soul to make a self?
 
[Impersonates their father; grandiloquent, feigning a toast with an arm outstretched.] Divided we’re tall. Hello rib, go fetch
my bib! 
 
NUMERATOR [to steady the levity, plays along]:    Should I compare you to the summer’s
dad and send for the Rolls-Royce?
 
DENOMINATOR [still in character]: I rank
your rancor with the best of Plato’s
poets, jerking off reality
and asking, “Will it ever end?” The good old boys
that shattered air and broke invisibility;
tasking that – God forbid – is from the night
we die.
 
[The mood changes. The brothers look at each other with grave expressions. Noises come from upstairs; their looks become perplexed and curious.]
 
NUMERATOR [whispers]:     Come; soft-shoe on trajectories.
 
[He begins quietly and slowly to ascend the staircase to the second floor. A step creaks. The upstairs noises cease.] 
 
FEMALE VOICE [from the master bedroom]: Is that you, boys?
 
THE BROTHERS:       Yes, mom!
 
DENOMINATOR:                    What’s going on?
 
MOTHER [innocently]: Oh, we’re just coupling to people our
farewell!
 
THE BROTHERS [to each other]:     Ew, gross!
 
MOTHER:                   Just kidding! Oh… [Trails off.]
 
[FATHER is only heard with metronomic grunting; it reverberates; the walls rattle in time.]
 

​[A light begins to shine faintly through the
 sidelights and transom of the entry door.]
 

​NUMERATOR [looking out; still standing on the bottom stairs]: False dawn; domesticating contemplation
like the tavern did Bucephalus.
A thief reflected by our faith; baptism
of eyes where moonlight moors afflicted; vision’s
pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism.
A demon less demented with our madness…
 
MADNESS [wickedly subdued]: Say my name.
 
NUMERATOR:            We call you Love.
 
DENOMINATOR:                    You kiss
your diatribe’s mezuzah with that mouth?
Spouting arithmetic arthritic as
that Caesar nonsense? All of that was fiction,
born in mayhem’s mind; aggressively
conventional, at that. Having said that,
 
[He smiles up at NUMERATOR.]
 
the Caesar metaphor was clearly meant for me.
 
NUMERATOR [initially with feigned submission and a double-feigned manly indifference]: To heck with glory’s weight and natural air!
The night did thump us, bro.
 
DENOMINATOR [self-assured diplomacy]: And what a thumb
it was.
 
NUMERATOR [soliciting esteem; a quarter interrogative]:           To eat the name of night is more
salute than disappearance.
 
DENOMINATOR [fraternal patronizing]:    Well, you totaled night,
alright! That dirigible dirge…
 
NUMERATOR [with growing confidence]: …and corrigible scourge.
Insomnia’s summations favor yours truly –
 
[He devilishly smiles down at DENOMINATOR.]
 
proximal is what our father understands
as prodigal!
 
[NUMERATOR turns to go up the stairs; half-feigning runs away.]
 
DENOMINATOR [smiling; half-feigning, leaps to horse around]: Equality requires
a liquid quill! Here’s a half-nelson…

​[The brothers bound up the stairs. Near the very top
DENOMINATOR tugs on NUMERATOR’s sleeve.
NUMERATOR smiles and turns; loses his footing
and falls down the entire flight. There are several
crunches and hisses of air before the final thud.]
 

​DENOMINATOR [horrified; looking down at NUMERATOR’s eyes]: Oh, what light
twin breakers curb in windows dyed by love.
 
NUMERATOR [lying on his back, not moving; moaning; staring at the ceiling]: Long lost, I see those geometric traps
a dandelion imparts on everything.
 
[NUMERATOR dies.]
 
DENOMINATOR: What kind of dark aubade is this?
 
MOTHER [from the master bedroom]: What’s going on
down there?
 

[Exit DENOMINATOR through the front door.]
 
2. A COUNTRY ROAD, PUBLIC; FOREST ON THE LEFT, A CORNFIELD ON THE RIGHT
 
[SHINING OWL and PROSTRATE LAKE walking
north between the private residence and tavern]

​

​PROSTRATE LAKE: It’s almost dawn, that blouse of our perennial
unbuttoning. Impossible to justify,
her spark to falsify and fool the night.
A quarry really. Courier…
 
SHINING OWL [barking, insolent]:        …or cur
to eat the nighttime’s homework. ‘Death’ is what
she whispers, and the word retreats in vain
before, like Jonah in the whale, it’s swallowed up
by kamikaze blues.
 
PROSTRATE LAKE [with genuine concern]: You don’t see clues
in her nomadic hues?
 
SHINING OWL [scoffing]:    She’s poker faced;
encyclopedic; silence misinterpreted
as loving arrogance. But arrogance
in love is bought with pride and vanity
and always ends in war.
 
PROSTRATE LAKE [stops by a particularly bright patch of wildflowers]:            Hogwash! You bubble
up with disobedience imbibed,
bedazzled by your biblical malapropisms.
 
[He cups a flower head; speaking without malice, but acceptance.]
 
You’d stop and smell the katydid’s carotid.
We’ve lived our lives in parallel, but
perpendicular to fear; that is
the way of light, I s’pose. When right and left
are high and low…
 
SHINING OWL: …aye, there the winds in sheepskins blow.
 
[Referring to the dawn, now imminent.]
 
Ya’ know, she wears our poetry for a loincloth.
 
PROSTRATE LAKE: Who’s in the front and who gets the arrear?
 
SHINING OWL: Well, yours has always had a fishy smell!
 
[They laugh.]
 
I liked
 
The night has witnessed wars
men have hid in drawers;
she’s swept the blood-drenched shores
behind our white-washed doors
and under our wood-paneled floors.
 
PROSTRATE LAKE [embarrassed]: Yea? Thanks. How ‘bout
 
The day, in its red rubber nose,
Snorts darkness up its rubber hose.
 
SHINING OWL [a scholarly caricature of indeterminate jest; brow furrowed]: A tirade at the daytime’s tardiness.
It’s got the cinnabar’s rabbinical
and normal variants; a minty, bitter
aftertaste; and it got me to feel really bad.
 
[A cinematic pause; he rubs his chin a moment; gestures, with a single digit in the air, to precede and accompany his proclamation.]
 
Another feather in your crap!
 
PROSTRATE LAKE:    You don’t say!
 
SHINING OWL [considering the matter settled; mind made-up]: Yup! I’m feeling better having said it. 

​[A great commotion catches their attention; several stalks of corn
rustle near the road’s edge. DENOMINATOR collapses from
between them into view; disheveled and apparently distraught.]

​DENOMINATOR [to the pair; wild-eyed]: He hanged the night for being short and felt
himself short-changed right after; in a pile
of gored remission.
 
SHINING OWL: L’cheim!
 
PROSTRATE LAKE:              Opa!
 
THE WOODS:
Yes, it’s true that
now he sees her;
one (or two) that
named him CAESAR.
 
DAWN: And now we say ‘good night’ – and sigh –
to all our princely reasons for ‘good bye.’

​[The night turns into day.]
 
THE END