November 13-19, 2000: Larry Colker and Jeff Heath

Ambivalence I knew you wanted me to be your Paris (get it right this time, the apple business) but I could only be your Amsterdam, where earth and water commerce equally, where it is best to be amphibious You said you would not kiss a salamander, however lush its skin .would not abide anything “amphi;” I would have to choose Maybe it will be better for us apart, though I will miss you in the fragrant silt. An Anthropologist Gazes Into His Lover’s Eyes During Sex All our ancestors did it doggie style until some deranged or dim-witted male tried to take a mate from the front It might have been an accident Imagine her initial look of revulsion and alarm How did it catch on? This must have been before articulated speech- did she return to her sisters in the tribe and gesture ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod It must have taken ages for anatomy to catch up, as the mammary glands swelled to resemble the protruding, cleft rump, which until then had been the main attraction Having created the male’s resistance to change, Nature must have known he’d need a sign: This Side Up But how did they learn what to do with their eyes? Apologia Pro Sua Velveeta It may be I descend from ruminants, Disposed to graze and rest, graze and rest, And digest, and digest, And digest, and digest (Deliberateness in all things is no virtue: To wit, in wooing, too plodding a pursuit Can hurt you ) To stand beside the fence while others pass May not appear to you like happiness Or like a life at all, but I confess My dreams so far surpass What I could hope for from reality That in the end you must imagine me Happy munching grass.

Jeff Heath
jeff-h@WEISSINC.COM

Bio (auto)

Jeff Heath is a poet living and dreaming in West Palm Beach, FL He is a regular reader at the Dead or Alive Poets Society and the Underground Coffeeworks Poetry Slam which are housed at opposite ends of a busy downtown street He recently made his theatrical debut in the poetic play Manchild and is currently working on a book of poetry entitled American Drug Poems He and his wife, Kimberly, were both cats in their former lives.

The following work is Copyright © 2000, and owned by Jeff Heath and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsover without written permission from the author.

Three towns down America I One I stood at the edge of America, three towns down from its northern border, waiting for packages of marijuana to be delivered from Vancouver I stayed for a week, under cover, fighting the subtleties that bring about recognition, with a young couple, more educated, than I Their home was modest, there was a greenhouse attached to the east side filled with sage, salvia divinorum, mint, various other plants, herbs, a small plot of hemp, enough for fibres, lamp oils, seed for birds Further on, there was a lake, a small beach, a number of well-built benches and tables painted in old reds and greens Also small chairs coloured with blues mirrored on the lake I took a pebble from the beach, skipped it across the water By the time it reached the center, sank into the bottom, unspoken ripples floated across the surface, pulling memories back to the shore to meet me II Two Memories are the dictation of training: The majority of runners are teenage boys in search of quick dollars The border between America and Canada is nothing more than a ditch Officials are not necessarily bought, as along the southern borders, just scarce For twenty minutes’ work and sixty to eighty pounds of labor stored in black bookbags, a kid can make almost a thousand dollars, and the man behind him can make a hundred thousand And anybody in the Pacific Northwest will tell you: British Columbia pot is the best So the deal is: we supply the Mounties with helicopters in exchange for extradition The choppers see in infrared, well enough to watch a couple having sex in their own home They sniff out the growhouses What does this mean to me now? Nothing not anymore- I don’t think so anyway It’s hard to separate memory from fact All I know is that I’m leaving It’s a sick trade We use to pass this around for free III Three sleep : morning IV Four plain, grey on dark cloud filtered light : the sky rising up to meet the sun as pre-dawn birds sing an elegy to the night An illumination? A thought, an idea, a rise into another waking hour I stepped off the edge of America, into a separate country I watched it trailing away in the side mirrors of automobiles that driving past: A car on an overgrown lawn, it’s own rusted wheels bringing it to a stop.