Ray Gun
I took out my ray gun
and began zapping
The wordless power of light
would annihilate demons
How else to subdue
the approaching hoard?
I had faith in the word
but it was weak
I couldn’t recall
when it didn’t exist
The animals gave hints of it
but they were vanishing
gone or in zoos
like some of our forbears
My fingers
would trigger the light
Its power would do it
I was told
But the ray gun was gone
and I couldn’t find it
My inspiration continued
nevertheless
The apparatus of my
body required it
saying nothing
Breathing in
Breathing out
© Susan Weiman: January 6 insurrection taken from tv
The Protector
He was not greedy for life
pointing to her from the hospital bed
as she looked the other way
Little did we know
he knew what we didn’t
protecting as always
signaling we take up
the task he had assumed
when he married her
We did what we could
learning why he’d loved her so much
she his queen so quietly independent
and understated in her love
Last Legs
(remembering Bill the Walker)
i wake up
and there is an absence of light.
i stretch my eyes
and blink.
i’m not naked,
but i’m alone on the couch.
i stand,
afraid to go back to sleep.
reaching for the brushed nickel
of the midnight door,
i pour myself another drink
and proceed to enter.
Ideé Fixe
If Memory diverts Now
stops the New
If Nothing is material
and thought a repeat
an Illusory to Be
to laugh or to weep
why not lock yourself
in a box
rock like a hobby horse
propelled by magic
a special pill
or the lever your master
will gladly pull?
Tom
Tom is dull
He doesn’t know
dirty gasoline can’t clean very well
He washed his grease stained pants
in a plastic pail filled with dregs
from an oil cap
You can’t say he was wrong
The pants lost their stains
Perhaps he knew
the results
before wanting our advice
and getting it
like the time he asked
eight times
how to roast a chicken
and gave up
To place it in the oven
and wait two hours
overwhelmed him
He even paid Carol to do it
though he was nearly broke
Perhaps that’s normal behavior
for a man trained to be cooked for
Still, something was definitely wrong
The way he vanished,
made us suspect it wasn’t
simply a matter of intelligence
We recalled, then, his friend Jack
who never looked you in the eye
as he pumped for information
acting drunker than he was
and Tom’s wide eyed adulation
when he spoke of his hero
the brother who was in jail
Still, we didn’t think it strange
that he lost his job
the day after moving in with us
But that’s another story
Like the money he didn’t have to fix his teeth
and how he planned to burglarize a house
so that he’d be sent to prison
“They had good dentists there,” he said
She Marveled
Mother marveled
as she listened to Dad read the want ads
in the New York Review of Books,
someone in braces seeking
a mid-day rendez-vous on Wall Street,
another into good looks, money,
with a knowledge of Turkish
and Buxtehude’s Magnificat
…My God!
What they want! mother exclaimed
raising her shoulders
with a gasp of amazement,
knowing compromise well
not married to a Hollywood star
or a saint
I’d picked up the publication on the subway
not knowing romance was advertised
on the back pages,
and I pondered the brilliant theories and disquisitions
promised on the cover’s attractive headlines
Judy subscribed to the review
I was not focused as she
a bit nervous like my father
But I gave it a try
took it as a sign when I found it
and brought it home
not thinking Dad would read it,
he with just a grade school education
and fast with numbers like the Chinese with abacus
I’ll say no more about my parents
how their marriage was not made in heaven
with nothing exotic, forbidden,
or filled with pre-baroque music,
but how it got me here, I who am no angel,
I who brought laughter’s revelation into the home