READING

READING 8/10/10 7:30pm Bookshop Santa Cruz

Tim Fitzmaurice

Poodle dressed in his tightest tee and his shortest shorts
& stood with cradled clipboard in front of Starbucks
mingling with the aging hogsters and other exhibivalents.
flashes a winning smile and he speaks: Have you got one minute
to save the whole flucking animal kingdom?

How could anyone say no to that knuckleball?

They taught Poodle this pitch at the POODLEPEACE
marketing school for summer interns in Daly City,
where as they say: We can get you to yessiree!
Actually they did not use the word flucking
in the course on sidewalk counseling and outreach.
Poodle added the word himself as his personal attempt
at rhetorical intensification and just that dollop
of edgy intimidation.

Well plenty tumbled. It was worth the drive
from Daly City to the City that never said No.
Only the evil could say no to anything.

But if he got a squirmer, Poodle could be crazy cruel
and play them like a brook trout:

Do you have a minute for the beasts?
Do you have any friends who are beasts?
Can I be your friend?
You don’t have a minute to make a friend?
Or is it you don’t have a minute to make a poodle friend?
Have you done anything for anybody today other than yourself?
Oh you have?
Then I guess that poodles don’t qualify for your good heartedness.

Even the slightest hint that he had gotten into their heads and
into their nightmares could be as good as a sale.

People would cross the street and go to the Coffee Roasting Company
instead of Starbucks
and so Poodle had to mosey
down to the space in front of Urban Outfitters,
next to where the cinema line would queue up.
He always chose the coziest sidewalks
or the tight squeezes.

[Hand out the poem machines. For applauding.]

Poodle: an explanation

In the 1960’s I read Goethe’s Faust to my son, Jason, when he was two weeks old. It was edited by Stephen Spender and translated by Louis MacNiece. Wagner is talking to Faust. Faust sees something in the stubble and corn and Wagner says that it is just a poodle. But Faust says: But don’t you perceive how in wide spirals around us he is running, fire eddies behind him in his wakes? And Wagner replies: I can see nothing but a black poodle. So is he the devil or just a poodle? Well since then I have written many poems using Poodle as my eyes and ears and paws because he can go places that I cannot go.

A first poem
Defining Poodle (1969)

A poodle is not an act of god.
A poodle is a symptom
of advanced education,
a highly developed
artistic temperament,
an unusual interest
in the accidents of breeding,
and too much time on your hands.


Poodle & Mozart Bug Spray

The people from kick back santa cruz
seem to think that poodle is the problem.

They got that right!

He defecates on Xmases
and pisses on Passovers
and he has humped
all nine of the penguins
who brought baseball to Pacific Avenue.

When poodle was scratching himself
at the metro station
with all the other curs,
they sprayed him with Mozart
from the klaxon lips of god,
the music that god can’t get out of her head.

Little did they know he squatted at Peets
each evening at 8:45, dreaming of Salzburg.

8.
Poodle knew a master of escape. His motto:
no leash strong enough to hold me.
Let’s call him Rex.
Rex got out of the draft by
pretending that war was evil.

Since then he has learned that a little
violence & vituperation carefully distributed
can be a reasonable prophylactic and a therapy of some benefit.
It can quell the disturbing insistences of our enemies
because even Obama knows the enemy never rests.

Of course that was when he was prone to outbursts
of incoherent barking
and refused to get a haircut.

digression:
Poodles recognize three haircuts in general:
1 fashionable
2 practical
3 disheveled
of the fashionable you know the drill:
Little balls at the ankles and a coiffed head,
that resembles Little Richard,
and a ball at the tail.
A lot of shaved places.

Practical?
Remember that a poodle is a hunting dog
meant to be in water up to its arse
and beyond.
Ergo the puddle/ poodle asymptote.
(Yes I know what the word means!)

But back to Rex.
He walked in the holy land
and brought only peace & harmony
with him wherever he went.

So he saw that the land was divided between
the haves and the have another falafels.

And he looked upon his creation and said
Sweeeet!
No worries!
It’s all good!


4.

Poodle goes to the avenue each day
to see whose missing


Some are present:

Pinnochio the registered sex offender. & balloon man,
tarot man, empathy man, taco bell boy, saxety yak,
Long legged short shorts blonde man who keeps his head down at the margins,
The maestro who with his boom box tucked under his arm
plays tapes of his endless piano etudes to the unsuspecting and uncomprehending.


Our friend, the polite Vince, who loves to boogie
while standing in doorways. He listens to his walkman
in doorways wearing the new clothes that his parents give him
once a year when he goes to the east coast I think on vacation
from his schizophrenia. We trade ten dollars
about once a month. He always pays me back
even when he doesn’t owe me anything.

Or Paul with his trout post cards,
who fell down last year and almost did not get up

High-five woman who works the crew. She gave me a book
that she wrote last week which said APPY BOOEK on every page.

& scarves lady who preaches to the unsaved and spanges the rest
and who is not cosmic lady or the lady with scarves
who danced ecstatically outside while Warmth played in front
of the Cooperhouse. Then everything changed.

The youthful and enthusiastic soilies, is it? The new tribes who play gypsy music
and live in magic buses and who have pushed the less charming old men and women to the side streets and in the bushes next to the library. The brutal aisles of the downtown are thick with jealousies & rivalries & heartbreak. The old envelopes are no longer entertaining. These deead letters, their addresses have all been obliterated.


But I see some of the disappeared
Of course the obvious California Slim and sawplayer Tom. But
I would like to point out a special case
Ra, The Sun God, but how can you point to a negative.
He was absent when he was present. Then he was erased.
In a nutshell: he was thrown
from the Water Sreet Bridge and killed
maybe twenty-five years ago?
The person or persons were male or female and
between the ages of 1 and 100. I believe
they are still at large. So if you see them,
please call the local authorities.

Ra was the one—do you remember?—
who stood on bridges or in streets with his head
tilted back and his face to the sun and he stared
with the beatific abandon of St Teresa of Avila
whilst she lingered in the vise-like grip of her spiritual wedding.

His skin become the color of a French roast
Tres Americas coffee bean but edged in gold
with patches of a permanent blush.
Then one day he was thrown away.


6. Poodle learns that Power corrupts
and obnoxious power corrupts
obnoxilutely

How many fat asses can you fit into a mediocre mind?
asked nostradamus.
So poodle could see that the all hell could --
well you know the rest..
So Poodle tried to give advice
at a perfectly ordinary picnic table.
So yes he told Nostramemus the burgomeister:
Don’t do what you imagine and
don’t imagine what you do!
No one will even mention the quicksand
until you can taste the grit in your mouth.
They will gladly finish your sentences and deliver
whatever poison you wish for with ribbons and gladness.
If you fall down they will say you are leaping.
If you crawl in the mud they will say it is dancing.
The swankness you swank will be swanked upon you.
just like your nostramomma told you.

But he fell like adam upon eve and grew somber.

Fortunately he was saved by the inclemency of the arrow that flies by day
so he shouted like Houdini
drop the tray
and I will strop the stray
and the terror that flies by night and
the arrow that flies by day.

We shall tattoo this upon every mother’s heart in Live Oak
and it will announce my resurrection to terms everlasting.

for

What is a hero if it isn’t the me
who eats shit
and shits policy.



7.
Poodle Pissed upon Eleven palm trees
on Mission Hill
in order of height:
no easy feat!

Not including the baby palms just sprouting and too tender
for his unction or the palm tree locked behind the cloister wall
of the home for unwed mothers,
from where he has never heard singing,
but yes thoughtlessly upon the rectory
but not upon the church itself,
which would have been at least blasphemy and
probably a violation of the muni code.
& he passed the crumbling graves overlooking
the hardware store covered in quaking grass and thistles
He could not add even an exclamation point
to the desecration of it.

But you cannot hold it against a dog for not holding it
& pissing.

Pissing for dogs is conversation. My language.
It is a series of assertions
of a fact, agreement, contradiction,
ejaculation or condolence. Just as smelling listens.
Every thing speaks to them. Things shouting at them.
We cannot know what contrariness and annoyances
they deal with. Poodle can tell you:

When dogs are finally in government,
there’s gonna be a whole lot of sniffing and pissing going on.

Poodle Waiting for the truth of Mozart
K283 PC

For two years he listened
and heard nothing,
like Frank Drake eavesdropping
on the death of god,
or the Grant’s patiently tagging finches
on Galapagos for twenty generations.

For two years he have just listened
and waited as if this thing
would walk through this door
if only he leaves it open long enough.

I wonder if I am so
irresistible that such gifts must come.

But it is obvious
that most wait behind doors
upon which no one
ever knocks.



Poodle & the Magician’s Last Trick

His darkening eyes hold
the distraction of it all
in their slim pools.
Loch Ness monsters could live
undiscovered
in the deep retinas
& sleep
& only wake to feed.

It’s possible there’s enough magic
left in this wand
to manage this last trick.

Where is the suit
with the pockets
in which the white birds live?

14

Now that they allowed our four-pawed pals
to trot downtown,
he could see the army of souls who have been
chosen to be there.

The diabetes man and his need-food sign, &
the man in the wheel chair
clutching a blanket between his teeth
and flying down the bike lane &
The Burrito man.

You know the bass-singing, one-note-playing,
guitar-plucking, cowboy-hatted blues man
who sings only one song:
AHHHHHHHHHHHH! I aint got no doughghghgh
to get a burritoooooooo! AHHHHHHHHHHH!

Have you noticed?
No “Homeless & Pregnant” signs this year!

And then there’s David
who once slept under parked cars
until they took his leg away.
Then they moved him to Pleasantville somewhere in Live Oak,
which might as well be Sweden.
but David still gets on the bus,
comes downtown, never speaks, no schtick at all,
only sitting in his wheel chair to cadge dollars
with a hand-lettered cardboard sign.

Poodle had to hate a world where
losing a leg was the best financial move
he had made
in his whole life.

12.
Poodle and the twilight of the gods
for Nobby

So to visit the gods
Poodle always trotted over to Sunshine Villa
in the Psycho house on Beach hill
where Dionysus was locked up
inside of a room which was locked up
inside of a room which was buried
under the ground
with windows that only looked out
upon the dirt.

He was the professor of Love and Shit,
so he was much admired in the poodle community.
Many watched the Gotterdammerung as myth plummeted
into history.

So many thought that the fall of Bockus was unspeakable.
They could not stand to watch
as he happily plummeted into soft food and silences.
It was not the silence but the smacking of his lips
that embarrassed them.

We are all happy to feel our friend’s requisite shame
After all genius consists of more than a tweed suit.
No surprise that very few could watch this fall from
gracefulness.

Poodle likewise never wanted to see his father’s
nakedness. But he endeavored to break the lock
and to enter in.

Poodle brought some gooey meta s’mores
by Ovid from S’Logos &
the professor of wine and exposes was
unspeakably hungry.

So here Poodle sat &
thought something about happiness
but what?

When all the previous tenses are swept away,
here it is: the lovely body:

Nothing more than
little boy
on a dolphin.



Poem Number Four (1988?)
for G on Valentines day



Swimming in your eyes I
am in two worlds.


Outside your eyes,
my hands are orphans.
My every smile
a supplication,
wishing for 20 dollars
from estranged American parents
on their mastercard.

Do you see the deer children
coming down thoughtlessly
attracted to the green?

What can I say?
Your soul
is my last country,
and I have burned my passport.



Dances

Tango: Keep your eyes
a poem of erotic love and frustration

Keep your eyes! I can’t use them
anymore. Everything in this world
is finally visible to me. No secrets.
No drums at a distance.
No having seen.

Mein gott ich liebe dich zo

Her ring and some lips.
The nesting of oranges in morning
sunlight:
So are they strangers, strange
as frozen pebb
They hit my window.

They hope to become invisible
in the warm room. Her lips
and eyes and some rings.

Mein gott ich liebe dich zo

You are the always other one of my dreams
the woman who walks past me in the street
a pickpocket and perfect explainer.

I am sick of your explanations and
smirkings.

I want you
to not be walking past me when I am
walking.

Mein gott ich liebe dich zo

Have you seen the streets flooded with mystics
with exaltation, with grief?
They are holding hands with so many
dead. They take air like a narcotic.

They are waiting to see if the experiment
failed
or whether—

I’m squawking about it because
it is your problem!

Mein gott ich liebe dich zo

A Dialogue (1985)
on a woman who died of anorexia

When will the sleeping margarets wake
and walk among us once again?
When we have made a gentle place
where women walk with loving men.

But the world I see is green with joy,
and if you try you can be free.
I know there are not margarets there.
I cannot see what you can see.

This is the garden my father grew.
I’ve done my best to make it flower.
If no Margaret lives beyond an hour,
then I guess this place will not do.

Well, what can we do to make it new,
to makle the sleeping margarets wake?
We’ll have to tear it up again
for every single margarets sake.

encore:

MAMBO: Hija del Volcan (Neruda)
wriiten on the occasion of the death
of a Merrill student, Sandra Frausto

“estando ya mi casa sosegada” (Juan de la Cruz)
“En la perdida misma los olivios encuentro” (Sor Juana)



1.

Nothing quieter
than the chaos and clamor of a ship at the edge
of the horizon, almost invisible, almost lost,
our daughter hear us,
our daughter of the volcano.



Alleviation:
en la perdida misma
los alivios encuentro,
our daughter hear us,
our daughter of grace and freedom.

My convict, impeccable wind.
La misma muerte vivo
es la vida con que muero. (Sor Juana)



Northing farther
by far than casa sosegada
almost invisible, almost lost,
Our daughter hear us,
our daughter of instrumentality.

2.

“at the hand of my
dying in wanting
at the hand of my
murdering in
at the hand of my
nourishing in poisoning

Would you believe it?
the dying I live
is
the living I die.
Would you believe it?”
--Sor Juana, Divine Love



3.

Where will we find it?
Point if you can.
Gesture.

In the terror of your island heart?
In the peace of your starry hand?

Those moments are carefully carved
like your individual teeth.

Her orchestras of hope are silent.
But waiting for that slim baton.

Where will we find her?
Our daughter of the volcano?

In the thrashing of her eyelashes?
In the heat of her last glance?

Those separate breaths are multitudes,
an army of sighing.

Who escapes? Nuestra
hija del
volcan?

In the tender kiss of politics?
In the silence of that distant ship?

Nothing sadder than a single glove,
sleeping in the chair.

My orchestras of hope are silent,
but waiting for the slim baton.

Did you know the world is dangerous?
Our stone?

In the fire that burns my fugitive tongue?
In this wasted secret:

“casa uno es el otro”

one pulled thread
is our unraveling.

Who has sucked the air from this room?
Who has frozen the summerlight?

POODLE'S TELL-ALL EPIC

TELL-ALL

'Facit indignatio versus' Juvenal

Intro

Lumbering toward the harvest of it

the trove of what lives and what must live

which we look through

POODLE writes his

TELL-ALL epic of the culture and politics

artistic and mercantile, agrarian, bumper vehicular, and piscatorial

ambitions of a small seaside resort community which has experienced

ten thousand years of human effort

and just as many years of animal persistence

in spite of that human effort.

1.

Gorgeous arrogant drama-queens of what ruptures

Poodle’s political life must be squashed,

the weakly skirmishings of pettifogging

and collapsing of consciences as we slurp

whatever porridges are offered to us—hot, cold, just right

and sleeping with strange bedfellows

in borrowed beds, hard, soft or just right.

Oh skies of boundless a pessimism,

How you can shape a cause

or cause a shape?

Oh politics

Oh song of myself! sd Poodle in

his halcyon days when he would run his naked toes

through the receptive and luscious coldness of

the leaves of grass in our greenbelt.

But then the storms will come and only by closely watching

buoy 157 or 46012 can you be certain to catch the swell at just its

perfect curling. Otherwise you are transparental.

Nothing about this resembles a refreshing breeze

from off the ocean which tingles in my curly black fur.

Oh those days of my youth

when I would plunge on warm afternoons at Its

splashing up to my tight scrotum pursuing balls

from the hands of any providential tosser.

& what of course can swim in this water must have had all its shots,

something about shitting where you swim

and from here you can dream the smoke of the hotels rising

on the dust of the under utilized unexploited falling down

le bawheeha wrecks of the town. They are over for good.

So quit whining

and catch the wave of what’s next.

The dots that developed the hillsides

staring with feasibility at the developable parcels which once were gardens

their nipples erect with gladness in the their summer blouses

overlooking the flood plain. They see the future in the palm

of their own hand. While the weeping and moaning ecowarriors age:

What doesn’t make us stronger, kills us.

The calculation of profit is simple.

The politics of it is as simple as golf

& Poodle is quite confident about his golf.

2.

Poodle exposes corruption in a sleepy seaside town

Nothing could be further from the truth

but every new growth does require the

rotting of the old fruit and the composting

of the organic material with the selfish

but also generous efforts of worms and other squirming things

and what is that if not corruption—a natural process.

So poodle explained it to himself. Best of all

it becomes invisible as it dissolves into the future and feeds us.

Let’s use our imaginexcuses. We can go to the parable

of the Rod & the Blago: One man two heads, like Ray

Milland and Rosie Greer, who want to live: one in greed and

the other in what could be. The Rod squanders his opportunity

to live virtuously while the Blago dreams of hoardes visiting his grave

in gracelandia. The Rod decides he must die with humility

and unending fame. So who does he have to give away his money to?

and what do they promise in return?

The virtue of capitalism is easy to see when you are balanced on ridgetops,

where every light in the distant flood plain sparkles earnestly

and is indistinguishable from the one next to it, like the stars.

So you can see why they were right when they accused Poodle

of barking class warfare. He could be quite the insulting Bolshevik

when it served him or he could be the ghost of adam smith

if it was necessary. You never in the end turn down a bribe

because it was never really made in the first place.

Watch them. They fall like campaign checks in gentle flocks.

Then they burst like soap bubbles.

And they guarantee immortality of one kind or another.

3.

Los Hombres de los ambivalences

They asked Poodle to shove the hombres

from out in front of our hardwarestore

and he wouldn’t.

But he also couldn’t stand to stand

where they stand all day,

standing and waiting in small quartets

like bridge partners in a string of tables

at a whist tournament,

only there‘s no folding chairs or bon-bons.

Poodle decided that he should stand one day.

Then he could find out

how many people were really standing there.

It was impossible to count accurately

while driving by at breakneck speed

blinded by so many shadows and

like the supplicating sun,

never daring to look directly at them.

4.

Poodle goes to the avenue each day

to see whose missing

Some are present:

Pinnochio the registered sex offender. & balloon man,

tarot man, empathy man, taco bell boy, saxety yak,

Long legged & short shorts blonde man who keeps his head down at the margins

The maestro who with his boom box tucked under his arm

plays tapes of his endless piano etudes to the unsuspecting and uncomprehending.

Our friend, the polite Vince who loves to boogie

while standing in doorways. He listens to his walkman

wearing the new clothes that his parents give him

once a year when he goes to the east coast I think on vacation

from his schizophrenia. We trade ten dollars
about once a month. He always pays me back

even when he doesn’t owe me anything.

Or Paul with his trout post cards,

who fell down last year and almost did not get up.

High-five woman who works the crew. She gave me a book of wide ruled

that she wrote last week which said APPY BOOEK on every page.

& scarves lady who preaches to the unsaved and spanges the rest

and who is not cosmic lady or the lady with scarves

who danced ecstatically outside while Warmth played in front

of the Cooperhouse. Then everything changed.

Tbat building refused to be demolished without a fight.

The youthful and enthusiastic soilies, is it? The new tribes who play gypsy music

and live in magic buses and who have pushed the less charming old men and women to the side streets and in the bushes next to the library. The brutal aisles of the downtown are thick with jealousies & rivalries & heartbreak. The old envelopes are no longer entertaining. Dead letters, their addresses have all been obliterated.

But I see some of the disappeared

Of course the obvious California Slim and sawplayer Tom. But

I would like to point out a special case

Ra, The Sun God. But how can you point to a negative.

He was absent when he was present. Then he was erased.

In a nutshell: he was thrown

from the Water Sreet Bridge and killed

maybe twenty-five years ago?

The person or persons were male or female and

between the ages of 1 and 100. I believe

they are still at large. So if you see them,

please call the local authorities.

Ra was the one—do you remember?—

who stood on bridges or in streets with his head

tilted back and his face to the sun and he stared

with the beatific abandon of St Teresa of Avila

whilst she lingered in the vise-like grip of her spiritual wedding.

His skin become the color of a French roast

Tres Americas coffee bean but edged in gold

with patches of a permanent blush.

Then one day he was thrown away.

5. No More Free Parking in Downtown Santa Cruz, or It’s only what it is. Get used to it.

Okay so yes cars must pay rent for the spaces they

occupy in our city and I could maybe calculate it correctly if I take some short cuts:

So let’s say the price in the lots is 50 cents/ hour and say each parking space is 8 feet wide and 15 feet long, then it is 120 sq’ and if a house is 1200 sq’ and it the rent were the same as a parking space it would cost 10 times as much as a parking space or $5/hr or $120/day or about the coast of a cheap hotel room in the beach area but not on the beach itself. –Stay with me here Poodle said—and the monthly cost would be $3600/month. Now that is a high monthly but not that unusual given the recent spate of corrupt mortgage practices. Not at all out of the realm of possibility. Let’s furthermore say that at any one day a mythical 5000 cars are looking for parking in an imaginary 6000 spaces. Well the outcome is misery. So in theory a charge for parking my freed up space. If you give away parking, then people will abuse the privilege and long term parkers will take places for longer periods of time and put at a disadvantge the short term shoppers who then decided not to come downtown. But if you also charge the short-timers to park for an hour, they will feel they are being short-changed because they will not be there to the full hour and then the space will be used again by someone and the same space will be used twice or three times in one hour and paid by all three at the hourly rate. Well you can see the depth of disenchantment with government this could cause. So environmentally it is good to make the cars pay for their impositions on the public road I guess. But do not forget that the roads belong to everyone—they are the commons so to speak which is the object of much idealism—and that day parkers might be seniors who by 8 pm when the parking is free again might be getting ready for bed while the young people who take very little responsibility already are going to the bars and night clubs. So we can now make a list of the advantages of the living in the 21^st century

1. tweets
2. homeland security
3. stimulus packages
4. gang task forces
5. anarchist task forces
6. the double shot
7. whole foods
8. Take back santa cruz
9. NEXTspace
10. Joes’s Pizza and Subs

Of course the century is still young. Now set that against the disadvantage of

No more free parking in Santa Cruz.

Is that too much to ask?

Well Poodle begs to differ.

6. Poodle learns that Power corrupts

and obnoxious power corrupts

obnoxilutely

How many fat asses can you fit into a mediocre mind?

asked nostradamus.

So poodle could see that all hell could --

well you know the rest..

So Poodle tried to give advice

at a perfectly ordinary picnic table.

So yes he told Nostramemus the burgomeister:

Don’t do what you imagine and

don’t imagine what you do!

No one will even mention the quicksand

until you're swallowing it.

They will gladly finish your sentences and deliver

whatever poison you wish for with ribbons and gladness.

If you fall down, they will call it flying.

If you crawl in the mud, they will say it is dancing.

The swankness you swank will be swanked upon you.

just like your nostramomma told you.

But he fell like adam upon eve and grew somber.

Fortunately he was saved by the inclemency of the arrow that flies by day

so he shouted like Houdini

drop the tray

and I will strop the stray

and the terror that flies by night and

the arrow that flies by day.

We shall tattoo this upon every mother’s heart in Live Oak

and it will announce my resurrection to terms everlasting.

for

What is a hero if it isn’t the me

who eats shit

and shits policy.

7.

Poodle Pissed upon Eleven palm trees

on Mission Hill

in order of height:

no easy feat!

Not including the babies just sprouting and too tender

for his unction or the palm tree locked behind the cloister wall

of the home for unwed mothers,

from where he has never heard singing.

Yes thoughtlessly upon the rectory

but not upon the church itself

which would have been at least blasphemy and

probably a violation of the muni code.

& he passed the disgrace of crumbling graves overlooking

the hardware store covered in quaking grass and thistles

He could not add even an exclamation point

to the desecration of it.

But you cannot hold it against a dog for not holding it

& pissing.

7B

Pissing for dogs is conversation. My language.

It is a series of assertions

of a fact, agreement, contradiction,

ejaculaion or condolence. Just as smelling listens.

Everything speaks to them. Things shouting at them.

We cannot know what contrariness and annoyances

they deal with. Poodle can tell you:

When dogs are in government,

there’s a whole lot of sniffing and pissing going on

8.

Poodle knew a master of escape. His motto:

no leash strong enough to hold me.

Let’s call him Rex.

Rex got out of the draft by

pretending that war was evil.

Since then he has learned that a little:

violence carefully distributed

can be a reasonable prophylactic and a therapy of some benefit.

It can quell the disturbing insistences of our enemies

because even Obama knows the enemy never rests.

Of course that was when he was prone to outbursts

of incoherent barking

and refused to get a haircut.

digression:

Poodles recognize three haircuts in general:

1 fashionable

2 practical

3 disheveled

of the fashionable you know the drill:

Little balls at the ankles and a coiffed head,

that resembles Little Richard,

and a ball at the tail.

A lot of shaved places.

Remember that a poodle is a hunting dog

meant to be in water up to its arse

and beyond.

Ergo the puddle/ poodle asymptote.

(Yes I know what the word means!)

But back to Rex.

He walked in the holy land

and brought only peace with him wherever he went.

So he saw that the land was divided between

the haves and the have another falafels.

Sometimes peace required personal sacrifices.

And he looked upon his creation and said

Sweeeet!

No worries! It’s all good!

9.

Poodle notices

Everything is different now.

Now you can only judge a man by how he wears

his baseball caps.

It is all about the brim.

I do not want to say that it is phallic.

That would put too many ideas in your head.

But some wear it backward and some wear it

bent and some wear it perfectly flat and straight

and maybe a cocky sideways twist

with the diaphanous label still attached,

and some people cut off the brim altogether

and wear a beanie.

There are four stages of man and each has its own

brimitude. You can decide for yourself what these are.

Fortunately Poodles do not wear caps.

They would mess up their bouffant.

But it with the old man Hawaiian shirt look.

It shows how the jungle disguises many sins

as paradise perhaps.

10

Poodle dressed in his tightest tee and his shortest shorts

& stood with clipboard cradled in front of Starbucks

mingling with the aging hogsters and other exhibivalents.

a winning smile and he speaks: Have you got one minute

to save the whole flucking animal kingdom?

How could anyone say no to that?

They taught Poodle this pitch at the POODLEPEACE

marketing school for summer interns in Daly City,

where as they say: We can get you to Yes!

Actually they did not use the word flucking

in the course on sidewalk counseling and 0ouitreach.

Poodle added the word himself as his personal attempt

at rhetorical intensification and just that dollop

of edgy intimidation.

Well plenty tumbled. It was worth the drive

from Daly City to the City that never said No.

Only the evil could say no to anything.

Poodle knew that much about human nature.

He could say Can I pee on your shoes? &

people would hesitate not able to say NO. They needed

a ploy but never had a good comeback for this.

When Dante wrote the Inferno he did imagine

a passage through this kind of gauntlet of Eco-Hawkers.

But it was too cruel to the sinful but still innocent pigeons.

They could say please these are my holyday shoes.

If you could wait until I have my urine shoes on, then you could piss

to your heart’s content. But they never had even these feeble excuses and would only scuff or scurry by with an air of inadvertence. Were you talkin’ to me?

They should say: Oh sorry. I have to get my friend to the emergency room

and every minute counts. But Poodle never bought the desperate and extreme

excuses. He would bark in that low growl ruff ruff way.

Like those door-to-door religions, he just cursed them

and wiped the dirt from his biblical hind paws.

But if he got a squirmer, Poodle could be crazy cruel

and play them like a brook trout.

Do you have a minute for the beasts?

Do you have any friends who are beasts?

Can I be your friend?

You don’t have a minute to make a friend?

Or is it you don’t have a minute to make a poodle friend?

Have you done anything for anybody today other than yourself?

Oh you have?

Then I guess that poodles don’t qualify for your good heartedness.

Even the slightest hint that he had gotten into their heads and

into their nightmares could be as good as a sale.

People would cross the street and go to the Coffee Roasting Company

instead of Starbucks

and so Poodle had to mosey

down to the space in front of Urban Outfitters,

next to where the cinema line would queue up.

He always chose the coziest sidewalks.

11.

Poodle Surfs

Since he did not resemble the locals

—after all, a Jackie O wetsuit could hide only so much—

He always practiced in front of his iPhone 4G

before he went to the Lane.

You barkin to me? Then who the hell else are you barkin’ …

You barkin’ to me? Well, I’m the only poodle here?

Who the fuck do you think you’re barkin’ to?

Oh Yeah?

Okay.

12.

Poodle and the twilight of the gods

So to visit the gods

Poodle always trotted over to Sunshine Villa

in the Psycho house on Beach hill

where Dionysus was locked up

inside of a room which was locked up

inside of a room which was buried

under the ground

with windows that only looked out

upon the dirt.

He was the professor of Love and Shit,

so he was much admired in the poodle community.

Many watched the Gotterdammerung as he plummeted

into history.

So many thought that the fall of Bockus was unspeakable.

They could not stand to watch

as he happily plummeted into soft food and silences.

It was not the silence but the smacking of his lips

that embarrassed them.

We are all happy to feel our friend’s requisite shame

After all genius consists of more than a tweed suit.

No surprise that very few could watch this fall from

gracefulness.

Poodle likewise never wanted to see his father’s

nakedness. But he endeavored to break the lock

and to enter in.

Poodle brought some gooey meta s’mores

by Ovid from S’Logos &

the professor of wine and poses was

unspeakably hungry.

So here Poodle sat &

thought something about happiness

but what?

All the previous tenses are swept away &

here it is:the lovely body:

Nothing more than

little boy

on a dolphin.

B

Of course poodle only knew two kinds of history:

celebrating the sins of he powerful

or shaming them:

1. the apotheosis of tyrants or
2. the shaming of the omnipotent

and only one sort is acceptable,

but which one depends on whose ass you’re sniffing.

At this university now

we have had quite enough of the clash of the titans.

It is time for a new optics

and wouldn’t Newton be proud?

It all started in the spring, when Zeus had already

imagined Poseidon exiled to Long’s Marine Lab

and deposited the rest on islands of the lotus eaters.

But they would drink sherry and get dizzy and tumble into

conversations about whose fucking whose mortal and who’s

just fucking mortal. So hermay told me that poodle

was the shuttlecock of the gods as they flipped him netward

over the question: who loves humans too much?

Scribblers or Scratchers? and a polo said: Enough of your over much

warmed over human buggery!

Then just-try-n-ice-us responded: Don’t you sneeze!

This is the only poodle who is keeping faith with with with …

Unfortunately the moment passed.

But poodle never forgets

unless he is forgetting something

that he doesn’t recall remembering in the first place.