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    The Photo On The Website

                                Outside time--replicable

                                off the web--so easy to alter

                                but obscured by remote

                                electronics from revisionist

                                biographers--how can anyone

                                "revise" a cyber text, disestablished,

                                never to be established,

                                as a "text' at any point in time?

                                        Nothing in syntax to provide

                                definitive location, lacking

                                even descriptive details--except

                                of course, now that this poem

                                is talking on its own, a present-

                                able image, acknowledging

                                at the least the photographer

                                and a date--always subjective,

                                never the Poet, never the Real Me!--

                                still needing to write a first line.

                                                          25 February 2004

The Method Actor at Rose and Main

  Venice Beach, California

                I layer myself: four of them

            to create a dusty red hat; one

            smiley, blue-eyed head of clown--

            white and gray and brightly red nose and lips;

            long, white-gloved hands extended;

            Hermaphrodite blue, bosom-breasted leotard

            with frilly-gray skirt; long, fleshy-pink legs

            and darker red ballet shoes

            over a Pandora's box, in front of a faded

            purple, spot-lit curtain.

            Sometimes, with fog blowing overhead,

            my right ballet toe moves--

            maybe the ball down field, over a post,

            a rugby penalty kick, or an all-American three pointer.

            It's always a matter of method acting,

            life styles with an attitude,

            a Marlon-Brando kind of niche

            that doesn't have to cry out, "Stell-lah!"

            killing me softly with his song.                                 Beyond Modesto

Translation Transitions

                                              for Carola Gehrke

    You should work within your legal limits:

    letters of permission, non-advancing

    royalty agreements, applications of support

    abroad, which get "misinterpreted" as "AWARDS!"

    because Hollywood don't understand

    any other word.

                           Then nothing happens; a long, long

    while remains suspended. Those words aren't worth

    the air expended, unless they appear "placed,"

    "labeled," "bound" and "stapled" in a documentary

    file, which might be certified by the Superior Court:

    articles of partial conservatorship, Disability, missing

    the special needs of a care-giving trust.

                                                                  Barely

    conscious, try substituting a more persistent

    attorney, who can improve on grammar, make those

    courtly sentences flow on forever so smoothly.

    Back home, it's the end of the day. And tomorrow?

    Not another scheduled appearance! Not another

    Individual Educational Plan with the Santa Monica

    Unified District! Not more legalese to fry!

                                                                    It's so

    much easier to collapse into bed and to translate

    bit by bit from the Swedish.