Those Were the Days

We found the Nordic wallets more challenging,
the way their flippers shook
when we opened them.
The blood wasn't as bad as with those
we abducted from the Argentine Mission
while all of the mothers were praying inside.

They were small but we cleaned them anyway
in the tidal pools along the coast of the Tierra Del Fuego
while enormous jackrabbits watched
through the cataracts of their sun-damaged eyes.

I remember Bertrand singing sea chanties
he had learned from slavers on the Ivory Coast.
Viscera flew from his hands
as he accompanied the lyrics
with lewd gestures.

They don't make money like that any more.

Pissed Is Nothing
after "What's Going On" by Pamela Gemin

It’s spring, it’s 1970
and we’re on our way
to Janis Joplin. Careful with
that water pipe or you’ll
burn a hole in the buckets
before this yellow bug gets
to Oklahoma City where Janis will
be drunk and yell pig
so the security cops drag her
off before she really gets started.
With a bridesmaid and a best man
in tow, this marriage is as new
and destined to fail
as I-35, cheap concrete already
buckling under them from shady deals
and kickbacks. The bridesmaid
passes the Ripple back and says
pull over I’ve gotta puke while
a grasshopper the size of a clothespin
guts itself on the windshield
and thunderbellies turn purple
then green to the west, churning
up their spring tornados. The new bride
holding down the smoke squeaks Dad’s
pissed we’re moving to Dallas.
The best man says pissed is nothing.
Mine won’t let me in the house
after he found that hit of windowpane
in the glovebox. We all know Janis will
make it o.k. with “A Piece of My Heart,”
so the groom guns it down the off ramp
and the world tilts just so for the
seconds it takes for someone to
turn the war off the radio,
turn up the Jimmi Hendrix
and keep the heat off our tail.

Wordsworth Parody

Daffodils

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.


Big Yellow Flowers

O.k., so I was wandering, I was lonely,
and I felt like a cloud I was so wasted when I saw
these big yellow flowers. I mean not only
were they big, there was a bazillion all
along the banks. The wind made 'em look like they
were dancing. I mean it was so awesome it
was hard to take it all in on the spot. No way
was I gonna remember such a buzz. But shit
man, later that night when I crashed, I thought about
'em again, and I mean like it was even better.
And I wasn't even wasted. It was fuckin' far out.
It's not like I remembered the whole thing to the letter,
but more like lying right there on the bed
with a wide-screen TV inside my head.

Carolyn Forche Writes Billy Collins

The cabin attendant has noticed
that I can't open my miniature
bottle of vodka. The surface
of her smile says that she

would like to help, but
I have seen much the same
smile on other Chilean women
in the service of men.

It is a smile born of mud
and tin but worn like
Victoria's Secret.
She now sees the lid

come free in my fingers
and she turns to her
other duties: a mother
who needs a pillow for

her child, a business man
who needs a refill for
his coffee, a young couple
who both want another

packet of peanuts. Below us
pass the juntas, the bloody rivers
of her country that no smile
could conceal from my own.

Jim Harrison Writes Billy Collins

Peeling an onion in my kitchen,
I'm taken by the way the birds
just beyond this window

blur into each other's names
and become gods of time and place--
the finch in the bush behind

that Italian model in Paris,
the swallow I found still alive
on the concrete of the L.A. River

and that hurt girl who wanted
to take it home with her.
Now that I'm finished

with the onion, I see
more clearly that each
bird has its own god

because here in New York,
even in a garden illuminated
by April, this is a necessity.

Dr. Suess Writes Billy Collins

Suess Writes Collins

I surveyed what dogs were traversing my lawn
From the old wooden deck chair that I sat on.
Some dogs were fuzzy.
Some dogs were not.
Some dogs had noticed the biscuit I'd brought,
So I thought and I thought and I thought and I thought
Whether to offer that biscuit I'd brought
To the fuzzy dogs first
And then to the not
So fuzzy ones who had all started to trot
Toward me, their noses all sleek in the air.
They snuffled and huffed,
They puffed and they ruffled
Like readers for meanings
Or pigs after truffles--
As if they all knew what I had in my duffle.
More biscuits, you think as you guess the next line,
But no it's not biscuits,
Nor tiskets nor taskets,
And now that you ask, it's
just poems.

Mary Oliver Writes Billy Collins

Mary Oliver Writes Billy Collins

Perhaps you've noticed how dark
this pool has become, how it
makes these cattails look

like silly flags the frogs
ran up to surrender
their evening voices?

I'm asking you this question
in my notebook, though
I don't even know

who you are
or how you came upon
this pool with

its darkness,
its frogs, its flags
of surrender.