People Magazine

Thanks to the lenses of my paparazzi spies

I now know the names and the faces of all the people I despise.

And more, just to complicate the stigma:

The people I admire? They’re a complete enigma!

____________________

The Spectacle Pure

Beijing Olympics, 2008

The end was nigh, and the world lay in tatters

So the announcer man shouted out extra loud

To ensure that we knew that it mattered

That one-one-thousandth of a second

Had been shaved off the time

Of the runner of a footrace.

My own decline continued apace.

But the man on the television seemed very sure

That I was as thrilled as he was with the spectacle pure.

I was nauseated by the spectacle pure.

____________________

Advertising Song

To arms! No doubt, all those with a lick of sense

Will swiftly leap to the Creative team’s defense.

Or will they? The corporate world may gaze on, appalled,

At the antics of the Creatives, as they are (sardonically?) called.  

They may watch aghast as the bards (please don’t call them hacks)

Now suffer, and now inflict their verbal attacks,

And wheel, parry, thrust and bicker ‘til the dawn.

The business types may gaze, amused—then blink—and then stifle a yawn.

____________________

Paradise Lost

By Sammy the Bull Gravano,

as told to John Milton,

as told to Eric  Stull

I was looking outside the houses sliding glass doors, watching the snow fall, watching the icicles form on the trees, hearing the fire crackling behind me, when I spotted a deer coming through the woods. The fucking serenity of the moment brought home the chaos of the situation I was in.

- Sammy (the Bull) Gravano (as told to Peter Maas), Underboss,

HarperCollins 1997

Sammy the Bull! Once a good friend of ours,

Later, once and forever a made guy,

Famed for preemptory commands as when

He charged Modesty to show him her tits

(Which to be commanded she kind of liked

At first, less so later, when she was forced

Downstairs, beaten and raped and left for dead),

Famed for his steady nerves, cold blood and how,

In his Immortal Youth, he did unscroll a baggie,

Scooping white powder with a dainty spoon

(Lilliputian teaspoon! A children’s toy!)

Right there at the smooth mahogany,

And then, snorting deep, as his namesake would,

Bulllike indeed, pierced with his might eye

That asshole bartender who rang the bell

Until he stopped shouting, Last call, Last call.

The irony! Sammy would never knew

When it was that Last Call beckoned him

To his last night in our thing. How could he fall

To such depths, to this final, sure disgrace?

Indictments, gunfire, Rico statutes — sure.

But Omerta’s grim and lipless visage

Given a once and forever fungoo?

And for what? For a suburban lifestyle,

Pizza delivery, acid reflux,

A satellite dish and home video?

But Sammy knows why the uncaged bird sings:

To stay uncaged. And yet O, to witness,

To testify, to be motive and cause:

The end of the fucking serenity!

—Or the Beginning. Witness Protection:

Green lawns, good schools, friendly beaming neighbors,

As when fair morning first smiled on the world —

Strictly Nowheresville. Paradise, to some, 

Not Sam. Still, feet up in the Lazyboy

Of an evening, did disheartened pain

Then arise? Did remorseful memories

Come with Sammy’s testament? Pondered he,

Was this suburbia worth dishonor,

Shame, betrayal, the stoolie’s lot that is

The dark, unbottomed, ever-yawning Pit?

Sammy smiles and yawns. Fuhgeddaboutit.

____________________

Rockfall

Uncle Jeff was awful deaf,

He shouted something wild.

He bellowed this advice to me

When I was but a child:

“If it’s raining or it’s snowing

You can go outside and play,

But if we have a rockfall,

Gal, you’ll stay inside all day.

“Rockfall’s when the rocks and stones

Come raining from the sky

And bang and ping off our steel roof

While we hide, cowering by.”

My uncle’s hard of hearing,

My aunt can’t hear at all;

My cousins are all deaf as stones

From years of the rockfall.

Hurricanes and tempests,

Floods, catastrophes:

Rockfall loud upon the roof

Was scariest to me.

Uncle’s house is near the cliff;

It’s just beneath the hill.

They should move away from that rockfall

But I doubt they ever will.

____________________

Yellin’ at Helen

Everyone’s always

Yellin’ at Helen,

Though she tries oh so hard to be good.

True, she spilled chocolate milk

On her mother’s best silk,

But she’s not BAD–only misunderstood.

And WHY this continual

Yellin’ at Helen?

It is ALMOST more than she can take.

So she put frogs in bed

With her dear Uncle Ned!

He’s just lucky it wasn’t a snake!

All this certainly made

A dilemma for Emma,

(Helen’s grouchy and rule-minded Mater).

Helen broke all the rules

At a half-dozen schools,

And her classmates? Well, frankly, they hate her.

So Helen’s folks went and sent for a doctor,

And he vowed to reveal Helen’s essence.

He probed her and poked her

And stuffed her and stroked her

And then prescribed antidepressants.

Finally her folks

Made Helen a felon,

And sent her to jail, to her sorrow.

Although her time there was hard,

She made friends in the yard

And she gets out, I think–

Yes, tomorrow.

____________________

Sawtooth Moon

Just as soon as we think of a rhyme for June,

Then we all can sing songs to the Sawtooth Moon.

We’ve all sorts of words to put in our song:

Oops-too-late and a right-made-wrong!

Torrents and tempests and soothing breezes,

Yawns and sniffles and achoo-sneezes,

Bric a brac and Timbuktu,

Madagascar and Kangaroo. 

All sorts of words for our song-to-be:

But no starting rhyme for our song have we.

We need a good rhyme for our song to croon,

A rhyme for our song to the Sawtooth Moon.

Vexing old word! What rhymes with June?

We need a song for the Sawtooth Moon!

Haber-dashery! Tenterhooks!

Sacerdote! Cops and crooks!

Whizbang, Freehand, Illustrator,

Office! Excel! Incinerator!

All sorts of words for our song-to-be:

But no starting rhyme for our song have we.

[Maria, lie back, close your eyes and snooze:

And while you dream find a rhyme we can use.]

What rhymes with June? What rhymes with tune?

What rhymes with croon? What rhymes with spoon?

What rhymes with dune? What rhymes with rune?

I truly feel we’ll come on it soon:

We’ll have our rhyme for the Sawtooth moon...

____________________

Daddy is Loud

Whenever I get frightened, lost in a crowd,

I can always find Daddy, 'cause Daddy is loud.

Daddy's clear voice, sounding out like a horn,

Drowned out  other singers in church Sunday morn.

Daddy is daring, and once on a bet

He out-roared the roar of a low-flying jet.

Oh, I always knew Daddy could startle and shock

Our friends, our relations, the kids on the block

But as shockingly loud as my Daddy can be,

I'll say this for Daddy: he never scared me.

And when late at night when I lay down my head,

My Daddy sings softly to me warm in bed,

And then when he kisses me as he shuts out the light

So softly he croons to me: Darling, good night.