Do You Doha?

A river of milk flows gently down the Howard Street gutter
Because it's a fine warm day in Sag Harbor
And someone upstream is washing a car.
I picture a Texan—Christian name Lamar—
Who snips off the end of a Cuban cigar
And lovingly lights up in Doha, Qatar,
Which young oilmen like him pronounce Doha, Cutter.
It's the Salt Flats of Utah in the Persian Gulf, but utter.
The emir is richer than melted butter.
Bumps and bubbles of white snot in the bone marrow look like an ice flow of hot
The way the universe was just before it expanded a lot.
You never know what disease you'll get, or you've already got.
It's your asteroid coming to get you, only for now it's smaller than a dot.
I'm an aging boy. I never grew up. I'm glued to the spot.

Adam in Eden is summertime Gloucestershire,
But riding to hounds in winter is really the glory here.
If it's strictly speaking illegal these days to chase a fox, they do not care.
If life is a matter of daring to do, they dare.
Lamar flies like the wind on the one he likes, the fiery mare.
She jumps a fence.
She doesn't care if it makes sense.
She leaps a ditch behind the pack.
Her thundering insolent brilliance will only attack.
I am thinking of your bad back and the stunning diagnosis.
I google multiple myeloma. I brace for the prognosis.
Yesterday you found out.
The sun rose today and the birds in the trees woke with a shout.
The Sag Harbor Tree Fund will plant many more memorial trees, no doubt.

I wouldn't recommend Stage III multiple myeloma.
The patient ends up screaming or in a coma.
Yes, the remissions can be quite exciting.
The question is, who is doing the accepting and who is doing the inviting.
Irrepressible plasma cells chitter-chatter away on their cell phones
While malignantly breaking your bones.
I personally would rather have non-small cell lung Ca.
Isn't that a wonderful name, itself a medical-language holiday?
Here's a pun—It took my breath away! Lung cancer? Breath away?
Outside, I can see through the window it is actually a nice day.
In the American manner, a visitor leaving the Visitors elevator says, Have a nice day!
I think of the Stradivarius fiddle I held this morning that made me want to pray.
I used to play.
That's what I'm trying to say.

Act your age!
I don't have to. I won't. You can't make me. I'm in an absolute rage.
I walk on stage.
The other ELVES are Gentry Shelton,
Raymond Sunderman, Harry Monteith, Harry Mathews, Alex Netchvolodoff,
James Hearne, Monroe Roberts III,
Paul Chandeysson, John Neiger III.
BEARS are Henry Pflager, Neil Horner, John Curtis, John Sutter, John Lewis,
Jan Bosman, Norfleet Johnston, George von Schrader.
BUNNIES: Teddy Simmons, Billy Crowell, Walter Shipley.
BLUEBIRDS: Nat Green, Joe Larimore.
ROBINS: Hord Hardin, August Busch III, Ralph Sansbury.
DANDELIONS, VIOLETS, ROSES: Little girls in various poses.
Titless teases and their diseases.

Boys and girls in Pakistan,
Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan,
Are sweeter far than marzipan,
And that includes the Taliban.
Sunni and Shia fulfill God's plan.
Afghanistan, Iraq,
Children on timers go tock-tick, tick-tock.
A boy is instructed by his parents, who are not peasants.
They pray with the child and give him compliments and presents.
Their son is sweeter to them than honey.
The parents receive martyr money.
We are ten thousand miles from my childhood in St. Louis.
St. Louis didn't do this.
St. Louis never knew this.

I know it was you who vomited on the chintz, Seidel.
You will never be invited to this house again, and just as well.
My wife and myself wish you well.
It will not end well.
She will follow you to hell.
The butler has gone to answer the front doorbell.
We are gentlemen here. No one here is a Jew or a queer.
I value sincerity: I know you are sincere.
Warren Beatty told Mary Kirby he liked candor.
Mary Kirby told Warren Beatty she gave good candor.
I remember dirt roads for the horsemen and the maroon perfume of summer roses.
Little girls grown up, and little boys, in various poses,
My music shows ye have your closes,
And all must die.

La Cina è vicina. China is near.
The butler returns to say the hearse is here. The ushers for the groom appear.
I give a toast, so brief that I sit down before anyone knows
I've given it, to no applause. God knows
It's odd to cry, with no one listening, my seagull cry.
Children wonder why one has to die.
It doesn't mean gulls are really crying when they cry in the sky.
Lamar can try to live forever. It's a poem. Why not try?
I flip a switch. The flowers wake with a shout. The trees immediately turn green.
Night dives like a submarine
As day breaks through the surface with its conning tower and power to preen.
On all sides of Sag Harbor Village is water—my little darling Doha in the desert!
Do you Doha? Do you knowa how to Doha?
La Cina è vicina. It is time to say Aloha.

Frederick Seidel