i have a great idea for a movie

opening scene everybody would die except
just two or three would survive, to live
gruesome scabby yet riveting lives
the survivors would have cleft chins
and perfect breasts that heave on command
or off

and they, the stars, the beautiful stars
would repopulate the earth in 90 minutes
make it a better place for kids and golden retrievers

the movie crests into naked euphoria
in the first two seconds
when bill o’reilly explodes in a deluge of magma
surging up from the earth’s core
directly into fox studios

the remaining eighty-eight minutes
with the movie’s perfect pacing
of cliffhanger rescues followed by frenzied fucking
feature nancy grace, the former prosecutor
whose southern accent
with its bitter yet come hither edge
makes me and all other cinematic
dorky ass viewers of cable tv cringe
and lust mightily at the same time
her full lips feverish and shiny
her open thighs ready to receive
the burning priapus of the sub-plot

anyway i digress from my movie idea
of the people who recopulate the world
and for a brief time live happily, so happy
in utah, where the mormons used to practice posture
before my movie sent them all to kingdom come

in the denoument, just before the climax
a really horrible thing happens, finally
after reams of crazy deaths and ecstatic coupling
but strangely, it seems rightly horrible
you might even say – apropos of
all the things, the death, the life
the well-hung dialogue, the rippling tears
the crippling laughter laced in the sacral bone
the very emulsion of the film itself
all melting together – beguilingly
a strange comic relief, a last straw
in the unending beverage that is my movie

we didn’t do what we wanted tonight

we wanted to ride marta without stopping
screaming all the way down the line
to the west end terminus and beyond
blaze new tracks for the good of the community
but the goddam train broke down at MLK
left our boots twitching
us murmuring incantations
over copper tokens—what good’re they now?

we didn’t ride where we wanted tonight
we listened to the same four songs over and over
Captain Beefheart, Boz Scaggs. Penguin Café Orchestra and Whodini
they’re good songs but they don’t mix so well
- - like drinking skanky beer
after a sleek lemon drop martini

so we got off the broken down marta train
its not what we wanted to do tonite
good thing we had our boots on
and a shiny sense of the impossible
otherwise we wouldn’t have walked all the way
to Ponce de Leon
visit Marlene and Kathy
who both work at the Majestic Diner
on Sunday afternoon

we ordered grits and implored them
we said we’d do whatever you want, Marlene and Kathy
we’ll call you Hepburn and deitrich, Kathy and marlene
we’ll fashion a Balkan ferris wheel
from a strand of pearl hominy
we’ll take you
to where we really want to go

but actually, what we really wanted
maybe all we’ve ever wanted, really . . .
is to blow up the marta train that broke down on us
blow it to kingdom come
pieces of aluminum and chrome
raining down all over marta repair yards everywhere
and after that, all we really want
is to do something else
something its hard to argue with
ecstatic coupling would be ideal, for example


by the boy poets, jumping the turnstile