Ebb and Flow [Excerpt]

1. Progression: Russian Dolls

“One two three four
Can I have a little more?
Five six seven…I love you”
— Beatles’ “All Together Now” 

Mudflatgrounded, diamond-minds-racing — what’s it worth not to cut corners? 

*

Supple sweet gymnasts, friendly but distant
breastlifts when fossils go soft.

*

Prince Andrei stag party
crown jewels stuffed in strippers’ thongs
— quid flash Nana.

*

Dream out of time. 

Come to an end
who recalls which 
carbon’s coveted?

*

Doc, you embody
Christ consciousness
more than any body I know.

Turgid narcissist that I am
for a sec believed her hoke. Geezus.

*

In from the sludge where Rooskie bears wear
nyet but stares, he barely gets there

trampolines upstairs past pairs
of heirloom bosc pears to where hairless hares

groom au pairs who reign over clubhouse lairs.
Rasputin’s bruins’s Pa’s heir.

*

Landladies shrug
podagra assaults humdrum men too. Deposited

in janky big toes like cousin Henry the VIII’s?  Fueled by borrowed wives’ 

jiggy kidney pie parties, or Cromwell’s head? But aren’t I a homespun 

guy you hear sweating who suffers his fleshpot exercycling daily?

My true’s whatever compound ogle I didn’t or do
isn’t it?

2. DECIDUOUS ZEITGEIST FLOW  [vi]

i. Actuarially Long In The  

Seventeen no more, umptyump dental check-ups before I check out.

Companionable blue-footed booby more floss- than glossophobic — 
  don’t care how altecockers cope till dentures slide me past second base. 

Mangled bruxist’s repurposed hamster wheel pivot, I’d Sandy Koufax 
  no down-low career for a dozen months’ gerbil cusp hygiene flattery.

Early morning pee, bathroom fall, temporary teeth, everything is. 

ii. Private Affair 

The new electric toothbrush makes me vibrate like Tuva throat singers.

Devouring spouse wants it banished, but if I can’t rise on occasion…

Soused, I convulse strangers with this revulsion since we won’t meet again, 
  start to fudge but quit since one dish has an aura and lenient blouse.  

She consoles, Seventy-one’s the new seventeen, sleep the new sex — shhh.

iii. Pulling Sleeper Teeth At Del Monte Rest Home 

Melancholy on a tear; arch doppelgangers, noms de guerre not blessed 
  with a groupthink edge; vagrant impulse no longer bingo couched; inmates 
  stub their tongues working Divo Dad’s dementia unit’s pitted divan 
  bouts of pithed ganglia yacketayak fruit cocktail horseshoes’ ferment.

Pop’s gummy mouth spooling gibberish, eyes dilate, cry me a rivulet.

iv. Hammurabi And Hammurabi Jr. M.D. Inc. 

Eye for an eye, fang for fang, once we were enemies.  Now he believes  
    I’m his father reborn wiser, kinder. Dad rests his head in my lap.

v. Toothless Sendoff?

The freelance surgeon taught us, Scoff at tooth fairies: Elvis flew Pops to 
  his hermitage on the sly for Quaalude fit suture interventions.

Pelvis stirred one last time, Sis and I carry our all-access father 
  back to his dismantled home right before ferret incisors bite down.

How famous must one be before murder becomes assassination? 

vi.“and forgive me 

for lack of flow’s hubris
I do while I do, everyone
you betrayed or did not,

because I — I’m Dad’s son,
because I was born first,
because I just was.” 

As I leave her side, 
skitter into the labyrinth at dusk,
Sis asks

on the family’s behalf,
Why would you take that path?”
which isn’t answered.