Michael Mayhew's Shared Poems

On certain mornings,
when Fate and the
God of Schedules
conspire to wink at me,
after I drag my
ass out of bed
and rinse the sourness
from my mouth
and store the hard plastic
device which,
dentists tell me, protects
my teeth from
night grinding,
and after I
have a good, long,
blessedly relieving
piss, and after I
wash down the
two pills which
middle age and
modern medicine
have decreed that I require,
and the one
vitamin tablet which,
like a lucky rabbit’s foot,
I take on faith,
I crawl back into the
(sometimes still
warm) bed
and sleep

quarter to midnight
and the air is sour with burnt cement

two enormous
construction/destruction engines
that look like
steamshovels and sound like
jackhammers
are perched on an overpass
the height of
a four story building,
devouring the roadway
as if it were a very large
but very fragile
breadstick

sloppy eaters, these two
chunks of concrete the
size of a man’s head drool
from their maws
and plummet to earth
in a steady tattoo

headlights above the cabs glare
like eyes and I think
there must be a metaphor
in all this

something about
human rapacity
or the transient nature
of man made things
or maybe it’s the
opening of
a science fiction story
or at least some
cosmic joke

but I got bupkis

somewhere up the road
is a terrible wreck

invisible still, the
view blocked by
fuming vehicles

overhead
a dozen helicopters
swim through
pale blue sky

flashing silver like
the tetra fish my
brother once kept
in a tank

circling above a
former comrade
lying stiff on the gravel

darting closer
with cannibalistic
curiosity

sometimes words are like toys
on a playroom floor
waiting for me to pick them up
and invent a new diversion
like did you ever play
the band name game?
it’s easy

when I’m driving or
shaving or washing dishes
I gather words and re-imagine
them as rock bands:
(Ladies and Gentlemen…)
Hefty Bag!
Spackling Compound!
Disenfectant Soap!
The Shivers!
The Sporks!

I like the way new contexts
make words sound fresh:
(Please welcome to our stage...)
Household Clutter!
Tedious Origin Story!
Severe Tire Damage!
The Book Marks!
The Amenities!
The Neckties!

sometimes I add a frontman
(All the way from Bakersfield…)
Petey and the Paint Cans!
Larry and the Lawnmowers!
Herman and the Hats!

lascivious and scatalogical
entendres are also excellent:
(Give it up for…)
Flatus!
Backside Cache!
The Lady Parts!
Manhole!

sometimes I actually picture the band
Flatus are Eurotrash
(and oh-so-serious)
Spork is an all-girl group
(they play the house-concert circuit)
Manhole is “a heavy-metal Village People”
(according to the press release)

these days you can play the
advanced version and
do a Google search
with the name plus
“band” or “music’
to see which names have
actually been taken
by earnest musicians
cranking away in smoky clubs
(one man’s whimsy
is another’s passion)

I could find out
but I’m afraid to look

One wet November night
I was waiting to meet my girlfriend
On the Venice Beach Boardwalk

The buskers had
Put away their drums
To huddle around driftwood fires
While the surf thumped
A bass line in the fog
Beyond the streetlights

Pacing and clapping my arms
To beat the chill from them
I noticed a little bistro
Where a lady in
Faded black high tops
With a body like
Olive Oyle and an accent
Like Hercule Poirot
Made crepes to order

It was amicably warm and
Tatty in there
Card tables, paper plates
And a tinny boom box playing
Incongruous pop songs

I bellyed up, tucked in,
and spent my last twenty dollars
On Crêpes de Poulet and
Cheap Champagne

That was nineteen eighty-five

The girlfriend cheated
I froze her out
We both moved on
The little crepe place is long gone

And yet even now
I see, I hear, I taste
The crisp, browned edges
Of that perfect confection,
Steaming bechamel dripping
From my fork,
Champagne bubbles fizzing into ether
Like the money I should have
Saved for the phone bill

It was just a moment
A tale with no special plot
Except the ageless one
About cold and warm
Hunger and food
Love and loss
And the sly charm of
Basketball sneakers