Shakey Dave fumbles with the lott’ry ticket
squinting without his reading specs
to make the hard little pencil paint the tiny circles
the right tiny circles
then pays with quarters, dimes, and nickels
and one crumpled dollar bill

Shakey Dave grinds the starter
and pumps the pedal
til the engine coughs to life
exhaling a plume of smoke behind
that obscures his vision as he backs away

Shakey Dave listens to the radio
in the car in the driveway
instead of going into the house
on this night,
this last night not a millionaire
or else
the night like all his nights before
and
all the nights after

 
the ruckus out front
the day-laborers exulting in airconditioning and all-you-can-drink ice-tea
til the little fat mexican woman popped out of the kitchen like a cuckoo
wooden spoon in her hand
head merrily and quizzically tilted
and said “Que? Que? Que?”

I saw the hunter’s moon, low
over the end of the road big
as an orange at the end of my arm and orange
but when the moon got over the trees where
I could see from my back porch it was tiny white as a new golf ball

I stretched my arms up among the tops of the loblolly pines and
swayed with ‘em in the wind
my buttocks clenched
knees bent
head thrown back I
sucked in deep the cold air that seemed hot inside
then exhaled a visible cloud unsure if it was breath-fog or smoke

“Que? Que? Que?”

At somebody else’s suggestion I
studied some today on passive-aggression
which is an evil act a man commits
as I understand it
without actually doing anything
rather by maliciously not-doing something particular

“Que? Que? Que?”

I wore my rigoletto hat out in public
to the mall
to dinner
to the airport
a jester gesture to make people smile with
the delusion that acting the fool inoculates
me from actual foolishness

“Que? Que? Que?”

 
I smell the hickory wood smoke from someone nearby grilling dinner.

I hear the blue herons in the treetops clacking like a bamboo forest in an insistent gust.

I look back down the hill, thru the trees, across the swaths of green velvet turf,
into the turbid purple and blue lake water gilded by an offstage autumn sunset.

I can feel the weight I carry. I don’t mind.

 
Shakey Dave frets about the electricity
leaking out into the air
from the sharp sporadic static
on his cheap little clock-radio
by the bed
            at night,
	the staccato rat-a-tat
	shocks him back awake
            in the morning,
	late from the alarm that doesn’t always go off
	while he dresses he listens to the morning news
	he sees the clock blink the wrong time
	every time he glances at the clock
	because of the hawking-and-kachooing
	in the voices that is really interference
	after each article of clothing
	    he finds a sock he thought was lost in the laundry
	    it’s dirty but it matches a clean mate and his shirt
	blinking wrong time
	    the crease in his trousers is no longer sharp
	    but worse
	    the pleats in his trousers bulge out of their folds
	blinking wrong time
	    the shirt in which he once felt dashing
	    now seems lumpen, odd-colored, and hard to match
	blinking wrong time
	    the brad on an eyelet in one of his shoes
	    hangs by the lace, loosely
	blinking wrong time
                                    and when he looks away, he sees
	a light from in the refrigerator even tho’ the door is closed thru a gap in the gasket
	a mysterious puddle of water on the floor of the kitchenette

At a green light on the frontage road near the office
Shakey Dave waits for an ambulance he can hear but not see
until it comes thru the underpass
in front of him, then
the siren silences
the flashing lights darken
the ambulance slows
and proceeds gravely down the street

In the crowded elevator
Shakey Dave suddenly smells
sandalwood-or-is-it-patchouli in the hair of a cat-eyed old crone in front of him
instantly
Shakey Dave sees her not as she is but as she would have been
years ago in his imagination
                        he sees her with her long straight hair unbound windblown like her
       long dress made of summer-weight cotton thru which her form is almost revealed
                    tip-toeing thru a prickly field
                                              bare foot and bare legged holding her dress
                                         down against the wind and up away from the briars

Shakey Dave loves his little clock-radio
         (even tho’ sometimes it leaks electricity into the air)

Shakey Dave loves that the radio is ana-log, not digital;
	 that it seems old-fashioned even tho’ it’s new - its sound is somewhat tinny;
	 that it seems like company in a way that TV cannot;
	 that he is not captive while he listens, he can read or pace or daydream or catnap;
	 that the DJs intimately talk to him

Shakey Dave loves that in certain atmospheric disturbances
	 the soothing jazz channel has a contrapuntal voice underneath
	 from the religious channel nearby, on the dial,
	 where the histrionic cadences of the radio preacher
	 seem to make sense, anyway, only-half-heard

Shakey Dave is comforted by the voice
         with its message of hope and consolation
         and no particular instructions

 
Shakey Dave leaves his little clock radio on whenever he goes
that way, he won’t miss any of his favorite shows --
it seems as if he’s in two places at once.

 
As he wheeled up to the entrance of the garage,
Shakey Dave saw her
squatting on crates with the other minimum-wage-menials
and paid her no mind
until she stood without straining
and casually flicked her cig away
then strolled over to his car
with a rolling athletic gait
in a uniform too tight in all the wrong places

Shakey Dave had no illusions about a woman in a garage,
no romance about Rosie the Riveter
but maybe some curiosity...

Shakey Dave was in a hurry to leave the station
and return at noon,
but when she knelt at his car door
to take his information
he stopped to consider
	the drape of her long unraveled hair
            when she bent over to write, and
	her clear green eyes and flawless features
            when she looked back into his face
            to ask a question, and then again,
	the flex in her sinewy arms when she wrote, but
	the bracelet tattooed on her wrist and
	    her grease-limned finger tips, and
	the improbable name of Priscilla
	    embroidered above her breast

At noon, Shakey Dave sees
that she has twisted her hair
up out of her face
in the prop-wash of the force of her
he can only stammer...

	O Priscilla
	put your hair up for me
	while I watch
	as you comb with your fingers
	thru the wavy flaxen hair the color of moonlight
	then fix it with a barrette
	while you stand there
	hips akimbo, elbows high

	O Priscilla
	I see flashes of cubist eclipses
	here in de Chirico chiaroscuro
	like dry lightning on a summer night

	O Priscilla
	it would be safer for me
	to catch a lightening bolt in my bare hands
	than to test the heft of one such ephemeral arc