Suzanne Lummis The Perfect Man      For the men who've asked me,       "Why isn't there a perfect man       in any of your plays?"                  He's lonely. There is only one of him. He's like the last-of-its-kind someone captured and shipped back to the zoo.                   Except he has never been captured, only by the mirror which captures his image, speaks the same reassurance: you are the fairest... He sighs and straightness his tie. It's terrible being a myth. Why can't he do goofy ordinary things -- cruise down boulevards, be in a play?                   He turns and moves through his rooms, their identical fields of light, their curious absence of shadow. Why can we not find him?                   Late, very late, when the women of this earth lie asleep, he sighs, then packs up his costumes: the formal wear, leather jacket, the ski gear of a down-hill racer... You see? He's obliged to break into our dreams. Now he will begin his long run, through cities and provinces, from sleek condominiums to the Highway's last chance hotels. It's a delicate task getting in. If we wake we might catch the tapping of his small silvery hammer, its ping ping... We might think we hear for a moment,. just as it vanishes, the sledge of some convict, some far away prisoner, crazy to get out. From The Broken Rules series My Worst Poem      "Never write a poem that says 'words fail me'.       - Charles Webb Well you don't pay the rent, don't bring home the bacon, don't crown me the most celebrated aging poet-princess in the land. Words, you disappoint me. Right here, for instance, and now, in my worst poem yet. It's not my fault, I'm a conduit! You words march through me then cue up on the page like Depression era bread lines. For once, why don't you do it for me like you did it for Liz Bishop? (Or at least, can't we twist again like we did last summer?) And while we're on the subject, would it be too much to ask, pleese, for an image? I mean we're making this poem, see, so produce a man on a ledge, buttered toast on a serving tray. Words, give me danger, then gimme something to eat. And I want an end that surprises and matters somehow... I know, the poet Lummis goes down in battle and a monument springs up at the spot where she fell. Also, try to drum up the new real language, so this won't be some blathering, flatfooted thing like the poems I sit through at open readings. A good simile! Or bad one! His bright hair was parted down the middle like the Red Sea before the grandeur of Moses...! And muster some wit, will you, or failing that, plain, proletariat humor. A joke! Knock knock. Who's there? No one No one who? No one/der this house looks unfamiliar, I'm on the wrong street. But since I'm here, Stranger, may I come in for a glass of cognac with crushed ice? I should mention my name -- Nhowan Hoo, the private eye from the new Korean paper- back series, and this is my story... Damn, I'm digressing again! Words, you digress! You lead me on, astray, thither then hither down Primrose Lane past the statuary, past the cupid boy shouldering a platter of grapes, straight into a La Brea tar pit! Words fail me. You hear that, Words? I've had it with you. I'm severing our relationship. Pack your bags. Take a hike. Make yourself scarce. Hit the road, Jack. Blow town. Split the spot. Buzz off, push off. Get lost. Get thee behind me. Get thee to a nunnery Scram... I'm sorry! Sorry...! Words, forgive me. Suzanne Lummis's book In Danger was published by Roundhouse Press in their California Poetry Series. She has poems forthcoming in the Knopf anthology, "Poems of the West," edited by Robert Mezey and part of their Everyman Series, and in an anthology to be published by Otis Art School, Place as Purpose: Poetry of the West. edited by Paul Vangelisti. She's the director of the Los Angeles Poetry Festival and a founding member of the text based performance troupe Nearly Fatal Women. She teaches with the UCLA Extension and at Loyola Marymount University.