John Greiner

John Dillinger Dreamt

Sunburnt in America

on the eve of Dillinger’s

death day;

July.

Chicago is somewhere

as much as somewhere

is here.

There’s nowhere else to be

when it comes down to

a red dress lost

myth.

It’s the occasional

unmaking of Americans

that Gertrude Stein

far off

never caught.

This

is the summer state of things;

the president is so

bat shit crazy

that he makes King Lear

look like Voltaire.

In the middle of the poem,

in the middle of the page,

in the middle of the day

he is going,

he is going,

he is gone.

We ran out of options

when our Roman candles

ignited in the box,

that was long before

Independence Day came.

Lord save me

from the lamb chops

that Betsy Ross

wants to serve me

on the Monday

of the full functioning

sabbath

of the post-mechanical age

media made.

We’re off to the races

incensed by the memories

of Santa Anita Park.

Willie Shoemaker

has gone the distance

of Hermes Trismegistus.

This mayhem is magic

to my fears

as the Jehovah Witnesses

step onto the scene

with Christmas disdain.

Gene Autry,

come back for us

with Trigger and Rudolph

and salvation

tinged

with a bit of that old fashioned

holiday cheer.

Lord,

give us back our legends,

let us fall star struck

in front of the big screen

with our measly TV dreams.

John Dillinger dreamt

somewhere,

Chicago,

as there now

as there then,

on the dirtied memory page

of this July night

remembered

by me

in this poem

on the eve of the ending

anniversary.

John Dillinger dreamt

the film flicker

of black and white

in the Biograph

turned to technicolor brilliance,

the red dress sweep,

the want for ecstasy

in the agony of endings.

John Dillinger dreamt

of heaven hunkered

down

between the grandeur

of the sheets

of the midwest

and of the bankrobbers

of the islands

of the mind

dressed in the sacred garments

of Jesse James

and Billy the Kid.

John Dillinger dreams still

of the emblazoned eye

set on the ideal

locked in the bank vaults of America.

Gallery 644

(Hey, Richard Brautigan, look at that Canaletto,

it’s the Fourth of July)

Sky lost in the blue room;

                        clear,

not a drop of rain

in Venice,

though a doge has drowned.

It’s a minor matter,

he is a footnote

in a fantasy

that historians refute.

I sift through clouds

disguised

as Wednesday haze;

mass ends.

I’m not sure

if the weekend

should come

or go.

I’ve decided to abandon

the woman looking

for Washington

wading

the Potomac

with a patriotic adamance

at the Metropolitan Museum.

She is another victim

of the American education system.

She wants to go to the food court.

and have a good look at The Last Supper

while having a burger and fries.

She’s a real American art loving

            Jesus freak.

I can only imagine how kinky

she must be on election day,

or when the Biennale

                        rolls around.

Everywhere

tourists

are taking pictures of themselves

in mirrors,

the bathrooms are packed,

no one can make their way to the sinks.

I refuse to shake hands.

It’s the Fourth of July

and I wish I were back

in the blue room,

or taking a dive in the Delaware

with D.C. dreams tossed

about in the breeze.

Already I have an erotic

                                    twinge.

Richard Brautigan

I’ve found your cowboy

Kafka hat

sitting tall on the top

of my head.

Mother Goose

Mother Goose

my faith is lost.

I do little more

than sit by the cupboard

with Mother Hubbard

starving.

My shadow roams

with Wynken,

Blynken and Nod.

I fear that their

wooden shoe

has sunk to bottom

of the sea.

Without shadow

how will I find

solace in the light?

On Sundays

I visit Struwwelpeter’s

grave

where I scatter

Harriet’s cinders,

longing for the far off

cigarettes

of the sixth arrondissement

where Huysmans died.

On occasion I answer

whispers with inexact rhymes.

Mother Goose,

I have flown the coop,

leaving

without a happily

ever after.

Sardines

Cheap motels on the Pacific coast

offer up their abandoned ashtrays

to the Varanasi dust collectors.

De Chirico’s shadow chain smokes

cigarettes

unconcerned with their demise,

dropping butts in the sand

while Ariadne slumbers.

The sardine cannery, far off,

is the reward of heaven.

In Monterrey, three men

take long drags off of Cuban

cigars,

none of them are De Chirico

who is a pleasant shadow

in far off Carmel

and who prefers Gauloise Blondes.

Ariadne will take Fidel Castro’s

phantom as a lover,

it is an inevitability,

he is intricate in all of her

sleepy fetishes where ghosts

strut about in dog collars

and top hats.

I book passage to Lisbon

while drunk on the best

Douro wine

I could find at the corner

liquor store.

I will avenge murdered Magellan.

He, too, was once Ariadne’s

lover.

The sardines are said

to be far better in Portugal,

some say the best in the world.

John Greiner is a writer and visual artist living in New York City. Greiner's work has appeared in Antiphon, Sand Journal, Otoliths, Survision, Sein und Werden, Empty Mirror, Sensitive Skin, Unarmed, Street Value and numerous other magazines. His books of poetry include In An Attic Palace Beneath a Slaughtered Sky (Arteidolia Press), Circuit (Whiskey City Press), Turnstile Burlesque (Crisis Chronicles Press) and Bodega Roses (Good Cop/Bad Cop Press). His collaborative work with photographer Carrie Crow has appeared at the Tate Liverpool, the Queens Museum and in galleries in New York, Los Angeles, Venice, Paris, Berlin and Hamburg.