Gene McCormick- Poem & Art

Venetian Blinds

Flimsy metal Venetian blind strips

can be grabbed and pulled down,

or apart, to see outside without using

the drawstring to properly open the blinds,

rash action not possible when they are                 

made of sturdy wooden slats.

Oak-stained wooden slats added panache

to Frank Capra’s luxury cottage suite

in Napa Valley where the writer-producer-director,

an Academy Award-winner when

many movies were black and white,

locked himself in seclusion to finish

the script for It’s A Wonderful Life.

Late afternoon California sun through

the open-slatted Venetian blinds in the

resort cottage creates a noir pattern

of black and white strips along the floor,

bending up the side wall

in the nook area at the rear

of the resort cottage.

Not a grid; parallel lines.

A person could spend hours opening

and closing the Venetian blinds

just to hear them clack.

Sturdy well-engineered and designed 

oak-stained Venetian blinds are made

of the finest materials and such repeated

use won’t damage them.

It’s A Wonderful Life was nominated for

five Academy Awards. It won one.

Brief Bio: Gene McCormick likes to look through

other people’s Venetian blinds.

Gene McCormick- Art

                                               "You're Late"

                        "Merry-Go-Round, Rue de Clichy, Paris"

                                              "Paris Gamin"

Gene McCormick, regular Dead Snakes contributor of poems and art, has established a custom line of women’s clothing in partnership with VIDA Voices. The unique and colorful clothing is based on McCormick’s art and is a reflection of his writings. View the complete line at www.shopvida.com/collections/voices/gene-mccormick. 

 

 

Gene McCormick- Poem & Art

Dead Man Walking

An energetic white Scottie

tugs at his leash as an

elderly man walks him by,

letting the dog stop and sniff.

The man’s younger wife,

fiftyish,

keeps pace beside them.

The man is dressed for the clear,

sunny day: broad brim straw hat,

Bermuda shorts, floppy sandals

and a dark green short sleeve shirt.

The three of them move along

the sidewalk at a brisk pace,

though the man is old.

Does he think of dying?

Old men should not think

of dying on clear, sunny days.

The Scottie hesitates at a

younger man on a park bench.

Want to visit, Murph?

the old man asks his dog,

but Murph pees and moves on.

The man on the bench,

sun on his face

and a dog’s curiosity,

stretches out flat on the bench.

First time he’s ever done that.

He doesn’t see the old man’s wife

look back at him, twice.

Brief Bio: Hawkeye McCormick is always observant of women who look at him, especially twice.  Not that it does him a damn bit of good.

Gene McCormick- A Poem & Art

Mandy

Mandy, here’s the deal:

if you don’t get downstairs

and do some work

we’re not going to do

your laundry any more.

But Mandy is in bed,

curled tight on her side

in a ball,

arms clutched about her.

Her eyes are open.

Mandy comes downstairs,

doesn’t speak, goes directly

outside, splashes soapy water

on the family car and briskly

rubs the same spot for five minutes

in a small circular motion.

Mandy tosses the washrag down,

walks into the street,

the middle,

and stands there,

straddling the center line.

Mandy gets hit by a car.

She’s dead.

Brief Bio: If there is one thing that annoys Gene McCormick, a/k/a/ “Mr. Road Kill,” it’s young women who stand in the middle of the street and get in the way of his front bumper. Actually, other things annoy him as well.

Gene McCormick- A Poem & Art

Bank Transaction 

For those using the unattended drive-up

banking facilities, a ballpoint pen (“Chase”)

is usually in the pneumatic tube to

facilitate transactions.

If the pen writes well and has a retractable tip

the man puts it in the car’s glove compartment.

He steals it, every time.

Drives off.

Brief Bio: Gene McCormick has 2,834 ballpoint pens

in his glove box, a bottle of Canadian Club and a little

black book that hasn’t been updated since 1976. 

Gene McComick- Poem & Art

How To Tie A Tie

(From Written Instructions)

Visual aids would make it more comprehensible, but here sans pictures is how to tie a four-in-hand tie knot. Drape the tie about your neck, pull the wide end 8-12” below the narrow end. Cross the wide end over the narrow end then turn the wide end back underneath the narrow end and continue by bringing the wide end back over in front of the narrow end. Pull the wide end up and through the loop around your neck then bring the wide end down through the front loop. Tighten by sliding the knot up.

This will work with any texture, color or pattern tie.

It will not work if role playing involves tying ones partner to, say, a four poster bed after a night of revelry. Use a simple granny knot, which is quicker and tighter and can be used with ties or rope (duct tape needn’t be tied; handcuffs are another matter altogether). If he/she begins to complain because the bondage is too tight and his/her wrists and ankles are swelling, getting purple and chafing around the bondage use your own judgment on the next step(s). And remind your partner that he/she is in a desolate warehouse loft at 4 AM on a Sunday morning.

Brief Bio: Gene McCormick likes to play games.

Gene McCormick- Poem & Art

Blood Orange

The blood orange shade of a decorative

table lamp, a foot tall, if that, wraps around

a low wattage bulb, shedding dim light in its

desolate far corner of the restaurant table

set for two. The stem is a gilt metal pineapple,

standing on end, the base a solid square,

as the lamp illumes a basket of bread, butter,

silverware and two glasses of wine

on a white tablecloth.

The restaurant is not far from the house.

Her face is in shadows, away from the lamp.

We don’t connect anymore, she says.

Brief Bio: Gene McCormick frequently does table-top dancing wearing a blood orange lampshade. 

Gene McCormick- A Poem & Art

Baseball. Opening Day.

He sits shakily on the sofa,

his body sinking two inches into

the cushion and back pillow.

He nods off, thoughts of baseball,

women, an old dog or two

and he will not be disturbed.

The television is in front of him,

remote control nearby.

His wife is dead.

All his wives are now dead.

His lady friend is the one who

set him down on the sofa

and she has gone elsewhere.

He is neither hungry nor thirsty.

Baseball.

Brief Bio: Gene McCormick holds the single season home run record in the American league.

Gene McCormick- Poem & Art

David’s Balancing Act In A

Cleveland Bar, the 1970s

Three days out of detox makes it

an even more amazing balancing act:

David stands on top of a barstool

shouting at a waitress while tightening

his tie to go back to bank clerking.

He’s dead now, but it was quite

a balancing act.

Not because he was drunk or a drunk

which was obvious to all,

but because he stood on the slippery

red leather bar stool seat shoeless,

in his stocking feet.

No one helped him up, or down.

No one paid attention to what he was

shouting, least of all the waitress.

He was a statuesque marvel,

an unappreciated drunken Adonis

(could he have stood on one leg?)

but he is dead now; one night he simply

drank beyond capacity and died.

He didn’t die from a fall off a

red-leather-covered barstool in

The Grog Shoppe in Cleveland, Ohio,

in the 1970’s.

The waitress is married to a UPS driver

and lives in Erie, Pennsylvania.

They have two children, Kara, 5, and Max, 3.

Kara resembles her father;

Max has no reason to.

Gene McCormick- Three Poems

Great Expectations

He was sitting to himself, reading, in the public library when a young woman came next to him wearing tight, winter-weight black leggings and a down jacket. She hovered at his right side, pulling a book from a shelf and then casually returning it. She bent down to pull a title from a lower shelf, then scratched her knee with vigor at some length and the outrageous question is Should he have scratched her knee for her since it was just inches away from his face and hand? As he thought this through she stood straight and moved a few feet away, undoing her coat with a loud zip but the moment had passed. He sat there, still, for another ten minutes but she left.
 

 * 

He was mistaken. She returned, her back to him, perusing a different shelving of books and he looked at her a bit more closely. She wore her hair pulled back and knotted, plain silver earrings and stood with her legs slightly apart in a challenging warrior stance. Her sneakers had a pink rim around the top, much like those of a young, young girl, but she was at most thirty. After a minute or so she pointed a toe in first one direction and then another. Had he made her impatient? He now thinks that he should have scratched her knee, scratched it hard until the legging material frayed and her skin showed through.

*

The next day he returned to the library at the same time and of course sat in the same chair. To no avail. No fairy tale: no leggings, no down jacket, no itchy knee.

*

On Thursday he tried once again, choosing a current magazine to read. Nothing. Now he finds himself going to a library of hundreds of thousands of unread books yet with no expectations.

*

- - - - - - - - - -

*

Fifteen months, almost to the day, he was standing at the library’s elevator when his elbow was inadvertently jostled. Excuse me, she said and he immediately looked at her knees. She was not wearing leggings, but it was her. I haven’t seen you in a while he said and she said No, I have not been here but am back to do some work in the research department. The elevator doors opened and closed and he joined her on the second floor. He sat next to her at a study table and put his hand on her knee. Her skin was softer than the black winter legging material would have been. She said she remembered the last time, she said You wanted to scratch my knee, didn’t you? And he admitted as much. Go ahead, she said, go ahead. He said he wanted to scratch her knee until it reddened and nearly bled.

Black Velvet

It is a room of solitude, empty of all

except a few furnishings and shadows cast.

A length of heavy black velvet material

going grey with dust of the ages, at one time

a drape or curtain evident by sun damage

on the back and by the frayed bottom edge,

casually drapes across a sofa though it

was never meant as a coverlet.

The sun had to have been persistently bright,

the window or covered area

—French doors, perhaps—

quite large and the material cut too long.

The bare hardwood floor would only require

vacuuming and a decent size oriental rug

to make a presentable appearance though the

black velvet is beyond its serviceable time,

past a higher calling.

A woman stranger to the surroundings

enters the room mid-evening

feeling along the wall to the light switch,

pushing it with a mature forefinger

ornamented with a bright red nail.

Flipping the light switch changes everything.

Chrome Hood Ornament On A Red car

One supposes they don’t make

chrome hood ornaments like they used to

back in the thirties, forties and fifties,

nor as many, nor as often. 

The shiny decoration (a sleek animal or

nude female muse, as a rule) is an

after-market add-on; nowadays

no car manufacturer would append

such a garish-yet-glamorous fixture

to a production model but they are

in their own way compelling.

Looking at the chrome, a rational image

morphs into a barely recognizable face

distorted like a funhouse hall of mirrors

and better yet if you want to ride flat across

the car’s hood after a bit of partying

while Larry the driver tries to spin you off

doing figure eights, you can get a firm grip

on the chrome and hang on at least as long

as a rodeo bull rider.

Gene McCormick- A Poem

Burnt Toast

Coming down uncarpeted stairs to the landing,

turning right into a lights-off kitchen

on an early winter evening—similar

to walking down a street at dusk,

an indecisive time of neither sun nor moon.

Her favorite time of day, not his.

The oven, like the light, is off; vision limited,

scents too faint for human sensitivities

and the only sound beyond stucco walls, a wind.

A car passes, tires audibly intruding.

He punches down the toaster lever

despite no bread in the toaster,

knowing crumbs at the bottom will fill

the kitchen with the comfortable aroma

of burnt bread. The lever makes a clack

as it is plunged to the dark toast setting

and a similar clack, unique to toasters,

when the automatic timer expires

and up pops virtual toast.

Two clacks and burned bread crumbs.

The kitchen has a pulse.

Merry Christmas.

Gene McCormick- Two Poems

A Bottle Of Mateus

At four o’clock in the afternoon the low sun

casts a triangular shadow along the side of the building

diagonally from the top NW corner

down to the lower SE corner, while the rest

of the wall remains sun-bleached yellow stucco,

a pattern repeated every afternoon

until the sun seasonally moves on.

A man walks by the building, an older man

with white hair wearing an oversize white t-shirt,

black walking shorts that were suit pants

until he cut them off just above the knee,

black ankle socks and black wingtip shoes.

The t-shirt and shorts emphasize toneless

white stick arms and legs as he walks at a rapid gait,

his upper body leading the lower half so his head

casts a shadow across his black shoes.

If it were raining, which it is not,

the leather soled shoes would have trouble

getting enough traction to maintain such a pace.

He looks odd, dressing like that to take a walk,

close to the building, scraping against its warmth

on his way to buy a bottle of red wine. Mateus.

Play Autumn Leaves For Me

Slouching on the worn piano bench he uses his

left hand middle finger to hit the white keys

one at a time, each of them successively,

then with his right thumb taps each black key

again one at a time going from west to east

while his feet trundle the pedals in a

left-right left-right rhythm as though

in a chain gang prisoner march.

The sound doesn’t hang in the air for long.

His fingers are neither long nor elegant

like those of a born pianist.

They are short, squat, and his fingernails

are clipped too close, partly because

he wears heavy-duty gloves when shoveling coal.

Brief Bio: Gene McCormick thrives on burnt toast, gorging on it, dipping the blackened pieces in buttercream icing and washing it all down with jugs of Mateus while playing Chopin’s Polonaise in A-flat (Jose Iturbi’s variation) with his left thumb.

Gene McCormick- Poem & Art

Escape Route

To the side of the restaurant foyer, left

and down a plush carpeted dim-lit corridor

lined with reproduction German Expressionist paintings,

past an alcove housing gentlemen’s and ladies rooms,

beyond banquet room number one, turning right

into banquet room number two and then, to the far side,

there is a locked storage room, empty,

that has an exit to the rear parking lot.

It is a small room, about 10’ x 12’,

walls and floor painted industrial grey,

with no windows or shelving, no paintings on the walls,

no telephone, not even a fire extinguisher.

The maître ‘d shuts the entry door, opens the exit door

to the parking lot a crack and pulls a soft pack of Camels

from his side tux pocket. It is unopened,

and he firmly tamps the pack against the palm of his hand,

pulling the gold tab around the pack but leaving

the cellophane covering on for protection.

He has limited time but takes care to lift the foil

with his fingernail, tearing just enough of the

top edge for a couple cigarettes to show.

He never refers to them by any derivative name

nor by their brand name. They are cigarettes.

The front portion of foil is removed, crumpled,

but the silver that wraps around the cigarettes in the pack

is retained for freshness and armor against the hazards

in his jacket pocket. A soft pack is susceptible

to damages but has a feel, touch and history

that a hard pack lacks. The cellophane feels refreshing

to his uncallused palm as he runs his fingers around

the Camels, tapping out a cigarette, hoping they

never change the design of the camel in profile,

pyramids and palm trees in the background.

A flaring wooden match from a vintage

Diamond match box lights the tip, smoke

immediately drifting toward the exterior door.

The spent cigarette arcs into the rain-soaked parking lot

like a lone firework, a moment’s pleasure. Back to work. 

Brief Bio: Gene McCormick has smooth but macho hands,

does not smoke but occasionally smolders.