Dorothy's Emerald Hammer

Oklahoma City

It’s 5 a.m. and I sit
here in a nicely
appointed suite at
the Marriott Residence
Inn next to susurrant
freeway interstate which
cuts through Oklahoma
City, the soft whir of
the air conditioner
playing pale ostinato
to trucks sliding past
in heavy flourishes
of whirling tires -- a
purposeful freeway,
not frenetic like the
chortled arteries
which slog through
Orlando, but steady
and clean and fast,
intent on purposes
not found in the
landscape which
is hammered flat
& eternally brown, the
quintessence of “plain.”
It’s as if despite the
hardtack desperation
of its years
the folk-soul keeps
on keepin’ drilling
for invisible dreams
like those lone derricks
I espied from our jet
chugging pints of
Oklahoma crude,
whatever that’s worth.
The signs for restaurants
and gas stations are
all pitched very high,
vying for the eyes I
guess, but maybe that’s
how high the snow
packs when blizzards
roll down from
the Rockies. Well,
it’s spring now and
those signposts look
equally impeccable
and nude; everything
is brown but you
sense something
virginal afoot,
Dorothy perhaps,
the redolent one
struggling to open
the locked cellar
door with the wind
whipping her plain
dress this way then that.
In the distance
a rude pagan god
lolls a long thin
penis this way then
that across ever-
foregrounding fields,
explodings farms
& silos into so much dust.
Spring ravages
Oklahoma
with the howl that
cries Yes as it lifts
our hearts in a spin
over the rainbow
to Oz. My boss and
I are here to talk
weather, trying to
name the deal we’re
inking, a partnership
to vend weather
services through
a devious desktop
device which intends
to keep users streaming
back to a newspaper’s
website -- we flew up
from Orlando on
Monday (my
departure backgrounded
by tender misery
as I kissed my wife goodbye
at the back door -- she
refused to move from
it as I waved goodbye --)
to visit one partner
and ready to meet the
other (later this
morning), dining at
“the best restaurant
in Oklahoma” with
the weather guys,
telling our business
histories over ossa bucca
and swordfish, booze
or water. Things are
going well, we think,
though one partner
is throwing a curve,
changing his desired
distribution strategy
where we give the
thing away rather
than license it, picking
up the revenue from
hits on the search
engine which comes
bundled with it. It’s
certainly intruiging
in the way opportunities
form, rousing the mind
to possibilities which
may deliver or not.
Maybe that comes with
this eternally flat
territory, where dreams
are groined in the fury
of trying, this
town both its nightmare
and its possibility,
a bowl alternately filled
with dust or gold,
fruit sometimes bursting,
other times dried
like prunes, Dame
Fortune spinning
the University of
Oklahoma football
team this way then that,
Texas-stomper one
year, Longhorn bee-yoch
the next. Dorothy in Oz
is surely the archetype
here, dust dreams in
full color the way only
the soror of youth
can dream, the dizzy
capital of emerald
phalli straining up
at the coined sun,
there just beyond
an undulant poppy
veld of luxury’s scent,
like perfume twixt
the boobs of
cinema queen.
What is there
to go home to
but what is deepest
in the heart, beyond
such green noise?
It’s been a good
trip for us, so far, as
far as I can see,
but there’s always
a witch in the woods
on the way, the
devilled twist swirling
its nails into the
details. My boss
has launched and
lost a dozen ventures,
he’s a true entrepreneur,
hopeful now as ever
with this next cleave
between Fortune’s thighs;
but he’s weary, too:
he’s building a house, has
a employees to pay,
turned 60 this year.
And I’m the more
the savage bought
for front lines,
a shut-down poet
suiting up for the fray
with great needs
at home both financial
and emotional. Bliss
bears a price in
romance and finance;
it’s what must be
paid after LaLaLand’s
long harrowing when
you find the fool
curtained in back,
moving the levers
which fume and roar
the visage of greatness.
There’s no yellow
road behind him
to point a way to
the bliss secreted
behind him--no, under--
no ruby slippers tapping
their toes three times
for that descending
back-swastika of
air down the twister’s
old oubliette
as I write these lines.
Still I close my
eyes invoking that
sacred formula
for the whole of
American life.
There’s no place
like home though
its everywhere, even
here, as I sit on
Marriott-appointed
furniture staring
through faux-lace curtains
onto a night not yet
warmed by any hint of
day, out into a courtyard
of strangers’ cars parked
under icy white lights
& trucks whizzing
the freeway like surf
on a shore I forever
walk down here, between
the pen and its home.
I’m eager to get on
with this day, labor
the next vendor visit,
ask all of the
questions and
write down all
of the answers, then
head for the
airport & board
those jets which
ferry my bright
and darker purposes
back to Florida.
The second plane
get in at 11 p.m.,
which means I’ll
hit my little town
around midnight
and my driveway
thereabouts. I’ll climb
in bed with my wife,
God willing this
day, fit myself snug
up to her and the cat
and the rest of my life,
sleeping a short while
before racing back
to the world where
dreams lift and fall
and the work’s utter blue
umbrage is nothing and all.