The Gorko Gazette

Ode to Frank

Do your work, then get your hat
and a shoehorn to ease it on.

How it makes you feel is what
your future lies beneath.
Or hang it up today
cocking the elbows
flashing a smoking purse
like a ripe pope
like a V.I.P. vampire.
Pull a number out of a miter—
pistachio and chocolate the choices.

The world draws its hat over your eyes.
A million rabbits hide in mine
in the home that is the bright cave inside it.
Who wears the white?
Who wears the black?
I’ll go with the black.

An American collapsible
also works as a frisbee—
sitting on a dock in a straw boater
barely awake
torn tomato can full of worms
same splintered way of thinking
under the yellow sun
like Curious George
tipping his shadow
to acknowledge you
as a conversation piece
as a man with his hat on—
then he in a dark room looking
for a black hat that isn’t there.

---

Swans

Double beauty on the mirror blue,
and a music of white violins
refute no conclusions of purity.

Sunglasses on, sunglasses off,
nothing ugly glides down the lake,
nothing untouched by a light vanity.

Silence shunned, silence feared,
silence desired, there, save a plash
and showy ruffle of snowy whiteness.

Maybe too much, maybe not enough,
to while away the day brooding over
words exchanged in anger earlier.

Who was right? Who was wrong?
They could not care less. They exist
beyond the frame of my depression.

Mythic, perhaps, if not celestial—
better than crow in the morning,
better than crow in the evening.

---

The Skeletons of Imelda Marcos

Bees in your head,
toes in your shoes
like a girl wearing a crown
or the truth putting on its feet
a pair of ruby mules.

Thinking about the slick kicks
I had to rock on a ship
with the sealing wax
side of my body language—
I liked the way I walked.

‘I had the blues because
I had no shoes until I met
a dude who had no feet.’
Tarzan never wore them.
Every day I wear the same ones.

Outgrow the loafers of your expectations.
but keep them buffed till then.
Many a pair wear out between
saying and doing,
or feeling this or that.

Every shoe is like a song.
But they won’t make you rich.
They won’t make you beautiful
They won’t win you friends
or lean in when you’re miserable.

Only she who sees takes off her shoes.
‘High heels differ from sneakers
and sandals unless you understand
what is motivating them.’
I do and I don’t. I do and I don’t.

About the artist

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