Barbie's Been Arrested

Well, finally, Barbie's been arrested
on charges of terrorism
and as a threat to Homeland Security.

I could see it coming years ago, like
when she let me undress her
and rub my body against her tiny nudity.

The bait of passivity.

So human in her hardness
and the excessive concentration of big hair
restricted to her scalp.

She said she didn't shave,
but come on!

And so, I cheered when they led her away
in shackles and the orange jumpsuit of guilt,
as ill-fitting as all her clothes always were.

It's nice to know
one more agent of subversion
is off the streets of the suburbs.
Nice to know
that one more thing I fear
is hidden away.


jerry gordon

Self-ish

surf culture
on my life
--a woman's t-shirt


I've said
the surface of self stares us
into surrender. We see it in all
we fail to forget,
and in that
leash the languid beast
that breathes us inside being.

We do not bay or howl or grunt
but when we do we call it
singing: to create, to express,
to shape the freedom we contain.

Constrained,
we play as many stops
as we have fingers. A human song
to/too long for what's
beyond the world
all
that is untouchable
inside the surface of our lies.


jerry gordon
5.21.6

Between Dream and Concrete

Things hint this is
the way I will end up,
surrounded by beasts
of fur and feather and iridescent carapace.

Friends

A single bowl.
A single scroll of alphabets
to follow
lost
back and forth between dream and concrete.

Amidst the thistle of memories
and a life-time of wrinkles in my clothes,
my beard will become
as wild as any bamboo broom.
It'll sweep the air,
cleaning it before and after
I speak the words for
nothing and silence.

Things hint this is
the way I will disappear,
becoming invisible
enough
to go nowhere.




jerry gordon
5.21.6

Woman beneath the Map

A woman at the end of the room laughs,
her face flashing through a sequence of masks
like a pantheon of gods
whittled into wood by knives
and man's other fingers of inspiration.

But this isn't sculpture.
And this isn't dance.
It can only be called, emotion.

Beneath the rusting map
of mountains I followed to arrive, here
underground within this decaying sky of sound,
she sits and becomes the crisp completion
of all the world's appearances.

She laughs
and at times like this,
there is enough pause surrounding each moment
to see the stillnesses
building an afternoon.



by jerry gordon
cafe independants
5.4.6