The Poems of Max Kleinman

Max Kleinman is a Korean War veteran, a long-time resident of downtown San Jose, California, and the author of 30,000 poems.


HOT SHOT

I pulled up to her in
My ’57 Nash
The sun beat down
On my shrapnel
She got in (and I got lucky)
Opening the door to Korea
Opening the door to cheap wine
Opening the door to my apartment
We settle for Mantovani
And candle light with the curtains drawn
The heat is unbearable as we
Jockey for position
And race to beat the dawn


MY HEART SKIPS A BEAT

Down that narrow street
Away from my life
Away from my money
Away from my fine talents

Her body is concealed in a skin
That hides her heart
That hides her birthmark
That hides her blue-eyed soul

She turns the corner
As a priest races to the rescue
With an act of Extreme Unction
Trailing out from his mouth


THE SKY IS WHISTLING

I kiss her goodbye at the
Doorstep
Of the abortion clinic
Dead babies
Mean nothing
When the sky is whistling


ATOMIC BREATH

If only Rilke could have been
Alive
To see man scampering about the
Moon
Like poets without college degrees
Trying to get in print
He might have opened up a
Workshop
In the Santa Cruz Hills
And taught
Astronauts
How to describe the smell of
Daisies
After a heavy rain
When the breath of
Hiroshima
Gargles with Listerine
And auto mechanics
Contemplate suicide
In the vaginal dawn


MY TANK AND WELCOME TO IT (#1)

Augustus is nothing
Aquinas passes into air
The host is spilled
Steel is your communion


MY TANK AND WELCOME TO IT (#2)

Let loose the dogs of war
Said Caesar
He didn’t have to push
The shovel after them
Once in a tank
You never leave it
Except for occasional
Rinses in the john
And quests for the one good beer
Wine dribbles down your lips
Or is it blood?
You clean the barrel with your words
You grease the wheels in your dreams
You pry bullets from your shell
And scrape gooks from your treads
Do they scream?
Only in your sister’s dreams
She creams on them
Let her lie
The cigarette burns low
The ducks are dying
The dogs of war have had
Their run
The shovel comes to scoop
Us all away


MY TANK AND WELCOME TO IT (#4)

I built a tank in my living room
I thought it would bring you back
When you saw it you let your Proust
Fall to the floor
And your sprouts turn brown
You spoke the words to me
I had waited twenty years to hear
You spoke them in French
And I did not understand
You left again
At the usual time
Like Kant
I thought
And, like Kant, I saw
Life turn to ochre in your eyes


A HAIKU MISCELLANY

Screeching brakes and thumps
A backpack on the sidewalk
Has been disemboweled

The bottle shatters
The eight ball falls to the floor
The nun lies bleeding

The two dogs eat meat
The have both eaten their fill
The nun is now gone

The shrapnel has come
To the grey Korean dawn
The neck awaits it

A black sparrow falls
Who will smear it on the street?
Kenji Shibuya


TWO ROSY BEADS

Her habit’s become a habit
The habit she inhabits
She used to be inhibited
But now she’s unhabited

She prays for me, I prey on her
The prey I used to pray for
She used to be prayful
Now she’s playful

And the rosary beads
Come tumbling down
Tumbling as they fall
And the crucifix
Becomes a cross
When Christ turns to the wall

The con crawls through the vent
And hence out of the convent
She used to be a nun
But now she’s on the run


KENTUCKY NUN

She’s quick to flare up
Like a rear-ended
Pinto
“How can you imply that the
Bible
Was wrong?”
She demands
Applying her prime time
Psychology
To the world at large
Only to lose it by
Gaining her soul
She claims to throw pots
But she refuses to
Designate
Where she threw them
“What’s a Zen Buddhist
To do during a
Gasoline shortage?”
I ask
Her eyeballs roll up into her
Head
And her eyelids flutter
Like a freight train
Thundering
Across the plains of
Afghanistan


TAKING THE BACK SEAT BY STORM (#1)

You question my existence
But you cannot question
My protuberance
As it dissects
The lobes of your
Tripartite being


METAL SOUP

The transmigration of a soul
Any soul
Mankind takes a sleeping pill
And pulls the shades
The alarm is set for 7:30 p.m.
But the morning is frozen over Korea
Like metal soup


THE FOUR HORSEMEN RIDE ON A RAINY NIGHT WHEN ALL IS DRY AS DUST

The sun goes out
And there you are
Still in your living room