Leaving Pascagoula
so the captain’s ghost roamed
the victorian brownstone
where legend says
he’d plastered the walls
with his aubrey double-
barrel 12 gauge before
the bank could foreclose
every night he reenacted
the scene firing round after
round across the divide
parting or perhaps the part
dividing this world
from that every morning
english muffins served
with sweet creamery
butter & homemade jam
waited by the door
how lovely I thought
Matt Morris__
_______
Anecdotally
this guy a professional
house painter once fell
it could only happen once
from an nth story apartment
when his scaffolding
came undone
as he flew toward
earth his life or what
fleeting bits he thought remained
clouds shingled rooftops frightened
swallows flashing past
his eyes refusing to shut
he caught the outstretched
limbs of a pine god or bob
ross wet brushed there by happy
accident & bounced
from branch
to splintering branch
slowing his descent
just enough so he survived
he died a few months later
it’s worth noting not
due to the fall itself but
from what doctors termed
complications point being
you must simplify your life
Matt Morris__
Psychotherapy
jung put his dreams on a plane
with his wife & kids
watching from the runway
as they took flight then back
to work or so he thought caught
in the violent airflow lifted
by his coattails he flew
outside the plane
zu hilfe he shrieked clinging
to the wing with one hand
propeller whirling like a clock
gone completely out of whack
banging on the window
with the other zu hilfe zu hilfe
he howled over coughing
clamoring engines
up the sky’s ladder he slipped
through fishlike clouds
into the sun crying yet no one
not emma with her beads franz
with his pencil puzzle nor
helene with her secret diary noticed
only his dreams wild-eyed
paralyzed heard him but they
speaking a language
all their own couldn’t
quite grasp what he meant
Matt Morris__
___________
On the Day of the Book Fair
binx called at the last moment to beg off
a movie was playing in town he had to see so
I went alone but alone inside the funhouse
as the warped mirrors reminded me again
& again misses the point of the funhouse isn’t
that what ambrose said right before he vanished
on the fairgrounds an ink freak asked if I wanted to
ride the merry-go-round with him just to get away
I shelled out ten bucks to watch a hunger artist
very slowly fast then washed down elephant ears
with soda pop as steve the sideshow robot sat
smoking between shows madame sosostris
gave her reading I moseyed over to the game
booth to toss old bakhtin through pennywise’s
gaping plywood cakehole far & wee the little goat-
footed balloon man whistled when I won the stuffed
whale I wondered if mangan’s sister would like it or not
Matt Morris__
