--- S T A N D A R D   S C H A E F E R

						(for Uncle Bob, Evan Calbi, and all)

support our troops and pawn their paychecks, hats optional shoes forbidden
though on occasion a particular pair of waders through the quest and the question 
that were not, as Bob put it, in hand, just doves berserk in the compass,
avuncular forms of lust, and a flirtatious hostility 
to remind us history was only a colon to nature despite the tedious shift of the needle 
from bramble to ash the peculiar slope of dignity diverging from spikes in the crime index, 
and a hemorrhaged clarity

			two out of three ever waltz out that caldera, and the last out
is a big tarantula crawling across the angel food, up Cerro Gordo to Bob’s bestiary
of any opening any day it was no use, still too close to Camp Pendelton or Amalfi Drive
memoirs of a critic turning over in the shore like a shoulder of ruined foam
until the whole continent seemed less horse-like and more phatic—
taking sides against the topsoil in Bolivia or just a few years left of gas
the soft, but firm reactors over San Onofree insisting no one can escape the long worm 
of the lawn, as if the dirt hadn’t already grown up around the music—
on Red Hill there is nothing is above the music—the rest of the week, dank 
serious pedestrians walking their coins, maybe five divorcés team up to dance 
or discuss the well-mannered illusion of technique 
in which shots don’t exactly “ring” and the wind in the willows plays nothing particular 
and nothing if not partial to a lady who looks best purring thickly beneath the freeway 
about her love of pork chops, the beard her finest piece of jewelry,
something to be proud of out here where eighty-eight percent can’t afford 
the median home, she would tells us don’t move, but don’t peek and no one did.  
I never once saw the lights had gone out or the extreme tides
in which words suddenly seemed to work: a lone wolf was a lonely wolf, but 
upward the wand forward with the whiskey or not, never an outsider always a reject 
from the project of fragrance and proving things other than sixty-four cigarettes 
into a novel sixty-four pages until maybe sixty-four years of age, abrupt as Pomona 
or the satin whip of ellipsis, eclipse, elision after which you were gone, 
I returned the lake to its bowl to reflect—your project was rejection itself, 
each day the little closet over the city that was nothing but a big ole broken nose, 
and the ranch dressing was a tribute to half-time itself, now it is all half-time, 
heat activated, if three times a week once around the block 
the beagle and I share the same bad knee and a plum each morning for our health, 
the rest of the day sleeping off the smoky red dress, and though I owned neither 
the helmet nor the breast plate for the occasion, I did love those debaucheries 
even if fabricated to keep one of us, at least, from being lonely
at least then we knew why we were here—we were earthquake bait—
about the best you could say was it was all worthwhile, though only for a while 
and only while it was—not much of a Vienna, but one hell of a Pompey.