In the garden groves of East Lancaster
Where Unicorn Street winds in from the abandoned fields
Of discredited cotton farmers, under the decaying concrete
Overpass of old Route 202, next to the burned out shell
Of Jose Fulcida’s tool and dye maker’s shop,
There, and only there, can the laws of arithmetic
Be abandoned, the rules of English grammar abused,
And the dreams of weary dogs be choreographed
With a new certainty previously unknown to
The practitioners of classical physics.

There are plants that haunt our collective memories
Like distant ghosts of vaguely remembered ancestors
Spoken over the third round of drinks, over the sweaty
Plates and pots of a family reunion, names with strange
Names and no faces; so be it; and such is the memory of
Figulla Vitae, the tree of life, the weaponless branches
Of a misbegotten creature in the days before the division
Of plants and animals, when trees roamed the nights,
And spoke in a soft, long language that only
Fireflies and snakes could hear; and so it seduced
Our primordial mother casting us headlong into
An eon of retribution and falling. Falling. Falling.
The great fall of mankind before the coming of light,
And so we ponder the meaning of ancient poems
Whose lyrics being close to the first age, echo still
In our hearts with the sounds of innocent rivers
Among the glades of Eden, before night fell.

Write when you decide you can no longer
Make sense of the world and you need
An interpreter of partially remembered daydreams
Who can still predict the coming of tides, and
The advent of Spring, and the names of
The five near-by Stars.

I had this vision of you
packed and wind swept
Waiting on a second hand trunk
for the midnight train from Georgia
Heading to Los Angeles
Out through the mountains
West of Taccoa
Beneath a springtime moon
Passing like a vaporous ghost
Along the gulf coast
While you sit in your cabin
Reading the lost love poems
Of Pablo Neruda.

And here am I
Under the chestnut skies
Along Via Rodeo
Sipping the dregs of thirty
Year old wine, while bewildered
young starlets
in pink overcoats and
too much mascara
Drop pennies on my table
And take pity on my life
While I listen to the music
Of street musicians
To the rumble of a poorly
Tuned Lamborghini,
To the whispers of secret lovers,
To the clatter of spiked heels
On the cobble stones,
To the sound of a soft night breeze
Through the colonnade of Egyptian palms,
And in my mind,
The steel on steel clickity clickity click
Of the midnight train making
Its way toward the
San Fernando Valley,
Under a brilliant navy blue
Sky alit with brilliant white stars
Past the deserted pueblos
Of ancient Navajo villages
Down into the Arizona deserts
Hurtling toward LA.

Another sip of Bollinger’s,
Beluga and crème cheese,
The midnight train from Georgia
clickity clickity click
clickity clickity click
clickity clickity
clickity hush,
the steam of hydraulic breaks,
the smell of oiled iron,
hot over the tracks,
The midnight train arrives,
And I am alone
Listening to
The nightlife
Of LA
Fade
Away.

Are you still out there someplace? You must let me know. Send smoke signals by night, and flares by day. Write to me in the hieroglyphics of easy living, send me a postcard from the edge of discontinuity (they have a mail box at fifth and irrational street), take luscious images of your hands when they were still unmarked, set up all night karma vigils among the yellow cattails down by Schadenfreude lake lit by the lights of carnivorous fireflies, sing forbidden songs, condemn the moon, feast on the delight of the bewildered, and make plans for an expedition to the Graveyard of Extinct Elephants down in the soggy bottoms of Arizona where you and your comrades can carve three sided dice from the last two surviving examples of their ivory tusks. And when you have finished all these tasks, when you fulfilled your quests, when you have seen the face of Ishtar, when you heard the voice of the morning wind like distant vespers, when you have done all these things, then you must sit down in the stillness of the night, alone among the emptiness of the house, and write me a soliloquy emptying yourself of your life and fears and hopes.

 As I climb upon Brazzukko, the Lion Bear,
Whose pearl white coat smells of fresh rain
After a autumn thunderstorm and
Who speaks to me in a language of
Extinct carnivores when I have him chained
During the night just beyond my campfire
Lest his Pleistocene mind, burning
With the memories of Neolithic man
Pouring across the Bearing Straights
Over throw our friendship.

As so
In the frigid
April days
We have wandered
Down the piedmont
Into forested towns and farms
Of a still innocent Georgia
Seeking your shadow
Among the women
Whose ferocious smiles
And bright eyes
And slender curves
Confuse me.

And I recite my seven evening
Prayers in the name of Nicholas,
The blind dream collector
Who swears he has never
Seen or touched
Miz Mitzy Ballentyne
But lacks confidence
And sustained eye contact.

So I feed him to Brazzukko
And we leave to wander down
The side roads looking for
The beautiful Miz Ballentyne.

IS THERE A PLANET SOMEWHERE
Among the southern constellations
Where the night sky is illuminated by a single star,
And no moon shines above the late autumn hills,
And only weeping orchids line the roads
And beautiful women have the gift of prophecy
And travel from their lover’s beds
On the backs of translucent horses
In the bitterly cold mornings
When the sun never shines
And mechanical men
Stand on street corners
Reciting wordless poems?


There is a legend, I am told,
Among the penniless astrologers
That such a planet is only visible
On the twenty-third day
Of April in the Year
Of the Stone.

There is a tree named Avicasa
Old as rocks and wise as wizards
Sitting on the pathway that I walk
Every evening in the cool moonlight
When the owls are gliding like shadows
Across the meadows hunting voles
And the western winds ruffle my collar
And the sky is lit with ten thousands sparks
And Hugo, my spaniel, lost in his thoughts
Is dreaming of the days in his youth
When I would sit beneath Avicasa
In the warmth of the late afternoon
And read him my stories
And stroke his head,
And tell him the adventures
Of Odysseus among the shades
Beyond the great River Oceanus;
And tonight as we did in old days
I lean my worn hickory stick
Against the great weathered bole
And I sit, my back against the bark,
And he curls beside me in the
Damp grass and waits;
A meteor on its way to perdition
Flies across the heavens,
And I hear the gentle creaking
Of Avicasa as he also waits;
And I tell them a story
From my life when I was
Young no more, and plump,
And bearded, and my hair was
Steel wire grey.

"So," I say, drawing a warm sip
From my flask, "there she was
In the morning..." And
Above us the bright lights of
The Pleiades whirl across the
Southern skies and I tell them
The tale once more, as Avicasa
Sways in the wind
And Hugo
Is sound
Asleep.

And here I have on good and reliable evidence is the last known sighting of Mandy Blazentine, who many believe is, according to the folk lore of ancient Georgia, the elusive and secretive and apparently invisible Mitzy Ballentyne, one time promising adventuress, who now has eluded all attempts by THE SOCIETY OF MINDY SEEKERS, to learn her ways, speak her language, and memorize the color of her eyes.

My search continues.
Now I am going to call on the breadth
and power of the World Wide Web.
I am invoking the collective mind,
The sixth and final degree of separation
Between you and me and the cosmos.

I am calling on all those who read
Fables by the quiet of the night
Who imagine themselves
Partners in a great mythology
Whose magic centers on
Women who have
Disappeared in the night.

I am weaving a parable
Of a time not so long ago
In a town not so far away
On a summer day not so distant
Among strangers not so indifferent.

I am a believer in Kismet,
The vast river of fate,
On whose tributaries we are
Carried until fate no longer matters;
And I believe that some who journey
Down this river will recognize
The mythological woman
In my fable and they will
Say to themselves,
"My Gud! Dat iz Mitzy, iz’it not?"
And they will send me your
Secret digits so that I
Can once more
Make a complete
Fool of myself.

PROLOGUE

Princeton, New Jersey.
A late afternoon in August, 2005.
Warm and humid. I believe it was a Monday

She was young and beautiful and wore a blue
homespun dress. She bounced into the hotel
elevator said "Hi!" and shook my hand.
Her name was Mitzy. Ballentyne.

Even before I met her, I’d walked by her
ancient station wagon with dirty Georgia
plates parked at the far end of the lot under
a cluster of wiry evergreens. A dark blue Ford
in need of painting, it was covered with dust
and yellow pine needle pollen and its back
piled with clothes, cardboard boxes covered in
grey electrical tape, and a cracked brown coffee
maker without a pot. She was in love with Karl,
a computer technician of dubious competence.

The two of them were heading out on their Great
Adventure, on their way to New Orleans or Kansas
City or Santa Fe to open a bar and restaurant where
Karl would serve up exotic and spicy dishes from
his grandmother’s ancient and difficult to translate
Hungarian cookbook. Over dinner one night, she
scrawled her phone number and email address on a
crumpled place mat. Then one day she was gone.

I wonder what happened. Are they running a tortoise
farm along Highway 66 just outside Barstow? Are they
serving fried sushi pancakes to bemused wayfarers in
an old industrial mall outside Toledo, Ohio?
The quest begins.

 SEEKING MITZY. And so here I am in my secret
Study pouring over the Lost Book of Ballentynes
(Volume IIX, ME thru MI) in whose ancient pages
Written in the alphabets of now sunken civilizations,
Can be found the destiny of all Ballentynes as such
Things are written in comets, the morning meteors,
And the stars of the southern constellations. And if
Only I can find the alchemy of your wonderful face
Among the silver symbols of missing women,
I will soon have your current direct dial prefix
And the last four digits of your social security number!

PART ONE

On the bridge of Antigone,
over which passes the misbegotten
Road of Thebes (or is that Thieves?),
where Creon the blind toll collector
passes out day tickets to the Kremlin’s
west annex, we can follow the tradition
of Yuvesko and Eddea, his Tuesday lover,
who cast their shadows into the river and
made wishes to unnamed Soviet Commissars.


PART TWO

Even today, on cloudy Friday afternoons when
the din of traffic and the sounds of unenlightened
firing squads and the calls to prayer by Islamic
bodyguards have all passed away, we can look
into the river and count the silver rubles of the
fortune tellers, agnostic torturers, and silent
phrenologists who seek out their redemption
on the very stones where Yuvesko
betrayed his lover


PART SEVEN

(as foretold in the Book of Foretellings,
whose first lines, written by a drunken
Cassandra in the darkness of time,
predicted that Eddea would be handed
over one Autumn morning to the Moscow
Street Ballet by Clytemnestra and forced
to earn her daily bread dancing year in
and year out to Eumenides, the mime
opera written in unmetered Greek
by Aegisthus, the alphabet thief.)


From my new book,
Experiences of a Classical Tourist
In the by-waters of the Kremlin