Apples, Oranges and the Mystery of Orangutans

So I want to grow oranges

Maybe apples

Blood red 

Somewhere up in New England

Wake up …on the brittle stone edge

Mt Washington’s tears

Passed out from a frail memory that remembers somewhere

I have oranges

 

Olives and apples and potatoes

Feta cheese tumbling on low in the dryer to perfection

Crispy, no lint

Each and every bud

Very much still alive

On the same dimpled tree

 

If I can remember where I parked them

 

Last vision I recall was sailing

A beautiful woman

Standing in the brisk wind

Hinged to the helm

A southern west lower side past Houston subway

Smiling to the ameba across of me

“Have you seen the bodegas??” she…. he dials

Something pleasant ‘tween the teeth

“They're Beautiful!”

 

Then I remember flashes of old men

Screaming crumbs and obscenities

Into a neon leaky chess board

Alice in a mad hatted entourage

Diamonds around the fraternity of thick skulls

Whippets and

The queen moping in the

Side pocket with a jay

 

I recall briefly

Watching the holy flashes of a blinding white blanket

Billowing in autumn

Signatures everywhere

Drifting against a charred hull 

Twisted with the mental innocence of death 

A makeshift memorial amongst the rising smell of

Constance

The Best of America

Spread over everything as 

Shots ripped through the autumn of  the following year

Again the madness tried

 

But all of that ran away

 

Now I remember avocados

Digging out the centers of the universal

Seed

Nestled chaotically

In a cup by the sink

 

Now I think I must raise manatees and beautiful

Red skulled orangutan

Their eyes of burned memory drifting

I‘ll pick their qualities

Features in every one

Give names to

“Happy, Big tooth, Killer or

Strange-Wild-Wide-Eyed-Monkey-Whale”

 

I don’t know

I made this grocery list about thirty years ago and

Now

I want to walk the green with pops

See mom at the top of that hill

Speaking Spanish horoscopes

Over a delicious crowd of tomatoes

Laughter overfilling love

 

I want to hold it all like a snow globe

Grab grandma back to hold it with me

Go fishing and smoke bad cigarettes 

Bottle filled with bread

Minnows pecking at the jar lid as we pull on our strings

Coaxing the urban barracudas out from their sweets

Till this time we both die

 

Damn

Maybe I did grow oranges and raise orangutans

Manatees and apple scented avocados

Maybe it’s in the memories of sleeping near the tracks

A young American in cotton blend

Homeless in a snow globe

And the

World throwing lunch

From the highways and truck stops

While my thumb was

Always way out

Busted and typing on real paper

The future

Pointing here to this reality

Which survives always in the  wanderings of summer

Bridges and the peaceful sound of the

Slumbering creeks below

 

So now

I want to grow oranges and apples

Somewhere in New England

Possibly Spain

Too young to grow old

Properly