---Let this note dispel confusion---
Lee Klein is not Lee Klein. Despite identical name and shoe size, these two men are just that: two men -- they wish neither to be confused or confuse. The piece below was wrought by the Lee Michael Klein of Manhattan, not the one from New Jersey now living in Brooklyn. This is not a joke. There are two contributors to this site named Lee Michael Klein: the one with the poem below, and the one responsible for eyeshot's upkeeping. We apologize for presenting you with the truth. Lord knows confusion you need not. And so let this note dispel confusion.

***

Shopping Mall Poem #7
THE  SHOPPPINGTOWN DOWN UNDER
BY LEE KLEIN

   In the diving bell-Boschian eggshell
   This shopping mall poet descends-
   Into the eucalyptus forest in dream time
   So as if to be an under cover parker
   In an Oceanic "Shoppingtown"

   Donning a blazer,
   Sporting pins of pewter
   Sculpted to be as a bas-relief of a continent in releaf
   Purchased from purveyors of
   Plaques and memorabilia
   Commemorating the games of the twenty seventh Olympiad
   "The Olympic store"

    Snorkel in mouth sinking
    To the escalator
    Driving the hive
    Foot traffic converging
    During the Olympic fortnight surging
    Down on the ground
   Grownups dressed as mascots are waving
   Swimming through the atrium aquarium
   Aqueous torch burning
   Green and white of cask
   For the flame lit by jet action
   And through the microphone
   Comes forth
   These words

   Out in the Outback
   The Outbacks’ the Outback
   But out of the Outback the Outback's a steakhouse
   And down under they build Westfield Shoppingtowns
  from which you may need to backdown

   Back out to back down to be out of the Outback
   I might as well be back out or back out form the Outback
   Well at least I am out -out of the Outback

   And that's life in a shoppingtown
   Un hey un bamba and de night
    Na na nanna na
    Life in a Shoppingtown

     Paramatta, Sydney, Western Suburbs, New South Wales
    A sliding glass door through a parquet meridian
    Of a Thomas Cook branch
    Here in the commonwealth
    To punch up the numbers
    To take you on a round trip
    Round trip one-day only
    Round trip one-day only round trip
     Is the impish man formerly working in a travel agency
     Now presently working at another travel agency
     This Thomas Cook
     He has a chestnut head of hair and sideburns
     The latter graying
    And as he is saying
     But he is having difficulty
    With his computer
    And so he punches the keys grimacing
   Then he is up Walking to the exchange window
   To get change from travel fares
   He is showing them printed receipts
   From downloads on his computer portal
   Into the Thomas Cook hub
  Wearing yellow and blue
  What can he do? Flub!

   The medical center at Shoppingtown
   Either by walk-in or appointment
   It’s pistachio lobby
   Opened onto the street
   From the outface of the Shoppingtown
   With floral print chairs and couches
   And the receptionists behind
   A large polished wood front-piece
   And overhead canvasses in reproduction
  Of one of Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings of irises
   Here the diminutive female Chinese doctor
   Measures my breathing
   Prescribes dosages of steroids
  And puts me on sessions with the nebulizer
  I make an appearance after being directed here
   By Joseph and Wilhemena
  The property managing duo
  Who seem like a suspect and villain?
    Or suspect and suspect
    On an episode of “Hart to Hart”
    Or Shopping Mall Poem She Wrote.
    Accompanied by my father to this Shoppingtown
    But at the medical office alone
    Which I now leave to go back into the interior of the mall
    To purchase my medicines and a disposable camera from a pharmacy

    The disposable camera in hopes of taking pictures of myself with Cuban athletes
     Some of whom I have just spotted shopping, in order to recreate
    The William Jefferson Clinton and Fidel Castro handshake
    A few days prior at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art

    Now during Pax Shoporama-
                We were looking so forward
    To peace in the Middle East
    So we could visit the Gaza Strip Mall
    And speak these epic-ending words
    “The Greatest Peace in Western History
    was known as the Pax Romana
    should this one last any longer
    it might be known as the Pax Shoporama”

    Double Decker down under domestic doppelgangers
    Continents we would reinvent-chewing on the concrete hive
    But sitting at the mall to go onto the net
    A sliding glass door through a parquet meridian

    There is still time left to
    To back out
    Back out from a blackout
    Two porous gauzy starfish like cloud formations
    Light goes out in one in a flash
    Black
    The other one white
    The ground below
    A parched tan canvas

   There is still time left to back out
     Back out from a blackout

    How about a sub-moutainous McDonald’s
    Built upon an historic site
    And serving as it’s de facto marker
    With the shrine/photo gallery just by the bathrooms
    William Frederick Paddington
    Perhaps the most famous policeman in Colonial Australia
    Here after missing his coach a the inn
    ran after it
    and caught it
    but then got caught on it
    it being the coach’s door
    caught on it was his jacket’s interior breast pocket
    which held his service revolver within
    which then dislodged
    he suffered for weeks
    and finally died

     Traveling the world
     For the ultimate
     Integrated experience
    Cairns, Port Douglas
    Queensland- North Queensland
    The Great Barrier Reef
     By catamaran
    Tropical rain forest
     By Hummer
     Here on quicksilver
     Out to the outer reef they have had
    World leaders aboard
    Including
    Jiang Zemin
    Helmut Kohl
    And
    William Jefferson Clinton
    The last of whom
    took out some time to flirt
    With some of the waitresses in blue-green getups
    (As if for mermaids)
    And one girl in particular
    whose birthday it was
    while aboard
    At least, so says one of the waitresses I ask

    These boats are megamalls
    Upon the Coral Sea
    As was the Titanic upon the Atlantic
    Fictitiously salvaged in Newfound poems
    The explorer names what he will,
    As he will
    Charters granted
    In “Megamall” the novel Doris Lessing excepted
    The great liner extricated and replanted
     In the specially constructed pool
    In the atrium of a “Megamall”
    Forward
    To
    Melbourne, Victoria
    The conical atrium rising out of a center city shopping center’s food court
    Placed to house a shot tower hence
    Were we to sit and sip a cappuccino?
    We would need a pocketful of six pence

    A double dash of down under
    Doppelgangerism
    A double down on Darwinism
    A debut for a debut
    A double up on the downside
    on the upside of a back out from the Outback
    back out on the outer reef
    not out back at a seafood house or back out at the Outback

    You can lead a poet to water
    But you cannot make him pay

    I visit my recent poetic past
    It’s a superstore
    “If you don’t say so yourself”
    There’s a Wild West theme area
    and the Satanic umpire look
    Vermilion like a lobster
    The Financial Surrealist top hat department
     and for those financial surrealists about to take the field
    The dollar bill pinstripe suit

    I dream that the poet T.S
    Gets arrested
    For being
    A passenger on the wrong side of reality
    And gets community service
    (so as to stay out of jail)
    Which he wants me to help him complete?
    I refuse

    I am the victim of a weird pattern
    As if the deep end of a dismount
    At the finish of a gymnastics routine
    is indicative of a freefall of momentum
    in a carefree no risk taken economy
 

    Why are we beset
    By these Octavians of pride ?
    In a sport of quiet grace
    I think the humiliation is mine
    But it wears another’s face

   Every sport, every desire, every passion
   Is a slow white burning coal

   Pastries, quiches, soups, and rolls
   Why not a standing sign advertisement
   for the Dead Sea Scrolls ?

   Some of the Dead Sea Scrolls
   Lent by the Israeli Antiquities authority
  To the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney
   For the games of the XVIIth Olympiad
   And to help celebrate the hundredth anniversary
   Of the Australian federation
   As I gain the Sydney unaccredited media center’s
   Non-official; official, Olympic, unaccredited, media; accreditation

   Speeding on curves kills
   Use advisory signs
   Speeding on curves kills
   Use advisory signs
   Speeding on curves kills advisory signs

    A tanker with a checkered back tank
    Passes me on a pass
    Passed on an incline pass by a checkered tank
    passed by a checkered past on a pass
    Oops! there goes my checkered past
    Passed fast
    My checkered past has passed

    Be careful that your download
    Does not become an overload

    Give people a little more room
    And watch how much happier they become

   Hightail speed glider tree flier
   Variegated night rider
   Speed glider feathertail glider variegated fairy wren
   Nightgliding feather writer

    Never before have I been alive
    To live through a living airline infomercial
    What once appeared to be superficial;
    Should I now agree is beneficial?
    What is passed off as beneficial
    Does it remain despite its paradisical backdrop
    that much more superficial ?

    Oh! Sydney harbor
    Giant jagged lozenge
    Or depths of the deep in bas-relief
    To find something remaining
    When there is nothing left at the end of art
    Aquamarine emerald gold leaf
    Shimmering seas of paint
    Of unequal depths,
    Or to say an unplanned, watery alchemy

     Here the enclosed Shoppingtown
     Encroaches upon Paramatta’s old pedestrian Mall
     Shopping on the street plan
     Leading us think
    That current shopping
     is in part leftover from an elaborate
    Conspiracy hatched by the old British order
    The empire is gone
    But that does not mean by any means
    that the shopping is done

    The Sun Never sets on the Shopping Mall Poem

    An Anglican Church
    Faces the pedestrian mall of Paramatta
    Face backward it gains a whole separate existence
    Achieved in its layout
    Conjoining the plaza
    Into its arched gate’s edifice is carved
    This Latin phrase
    “Pro tanto quid Retribvem”

    That’s life in a Shoppingtown

   There are other malls in Aussie
   In Sydney besides shoppingtowns
    Like Harbourside in Darling Harbour
    Where fields of opal sprout
    Or opal fields grow
    Of sparkling blue tint, pink, gold, silver, aquamarine
    Starshine form the entry to magic
    To escalators and curving levels of ellipses stacked upon ellipses
     In a world of collapses
    Collapsible windbreaker architecture and those who shop in glass houses
    Shouldn’t throw opals

    Stadium on the half shell
    Rainfall in the lobby bar
    Gold lame semicircle
    Stare into the saffron of the shimmering light,
    Sheathed in ribbed glass simulating silk
    the hanging necklaces of glass bubbles bespeaking a midair reef,
    the wall unit aquariums off in the far reaches
    the wall unit aquariums in the far off reaches
    the crevices the hideaways around and below
    volcanic escalatoriums rising off tiered street megaplexes
    wraparounded with curved facades galore

    New York and Sydney are now sister cities in cheer
    Oi!
    Oi!
    Oi!

    Aussie!
    Aussie!
    Aussie!
 

    Oy!
    Oy!
    Oy!

    Sorry!
    Sorry!
    Sorry!
 

    Hoy!
    Hoy!
    Hoy!

    Aussie!
    Aussie!
   Aussie!
 

    Uey!
    Uey!
    Uey!

   Coffee!
   Coffee!
   Coffee!

   Major funding for this poem provided by
   The Sheldon Klein institute for extravagant guilt ridden travel
   The American airline frequent flier program
   The American express Platinum card rewards program
   The Australian federal government
   The state government of New South Wales
   The International Olympic committee
   And its constituent NOCS
   (National Olympic Committees)

   My eternity rests in this work
   And I intend to keep working

   As convicts lined up in the barracks for hygiene
   In order to fight the never-ending battle against grime
   Sydney Siders will now have to line up
   In order to fight the never-ending battle against Starbucks

   Hoy!
   Hoy!
   Hoy!

   Aussie!
   Aussie!
  Aussie!

   Oi!
   Oi!
   Oi!

   Coffee!
  Coffee!
  Coffee!
 

    Book 8 Australia & New Zealand & Australia again
 

    Here down under
    There is the Olympic site of Homebush
    And back at home in the United States there is George W. Bush
    Over here they are running for something
    And over there he is running for something
     We move over to Aeotearoa/New Zealand
    Now with a wide angle shot
    And where ripping off a roundabout for an offshoot
    To a Burger King creates another roundabout drive thru line
    Whereby you are unkowingly neutralized
    Into to queuing up for French fries
    No other choice but to stare blankly
    As you pass the random representative of polyunsaturated on by

    Chrome encased diner redo
    Coercing traffic into fast food ordering
     Like the impish travel clerk
     Formerly working in another travel agency
    But now working in the Paramatta Shoppingtown’s Thomas Cook
    What can you do…………

    When the United States team wins,
    You win at McDonald’s
    When the Australian Olympic team wins,
    You win at McDonalds
    When the New Zealand team wins,
    You do not win at McDonald’s
    Because the Kiwi team does not have enough medalers
    For the nation to have big Macs and soft drinks wagered upon

    In Shopping Mall Poem Book Six
    A Consumer fell from Grace  with God
   “Through the superstore’s atrium”
   Well, now here in Auckland, New Zealand
   At an entertainment center Imax theater nightclub
   Shopping complex Cineplex called “Force”
   A boy falls over the railing from a higher floor,
   A railing which people had insisted
   should have been raised before
    Then only after the boy dies, Mall bosses say
   “Obviously changes should have been made”
    It is then pointed out by someone in conversation
    that never would such a comment appear in the newspapers
    in the hyper litigious United States

    An entertainment complex called “Force”,
    An Imax emporium cineplex
    With a tubular atrium building onto itself
    As its’ centerpiece
    Containing a nightclub lounge called Cirque Bar
    on it’s upper floors
    and a Planet HOLLYWOOD
    on its’ lower ones

    Stadium on the half shell
    Stadiums on the half shell
    Bungee jumping
    Now the “Sky Screamer”,
    A three person carriage
    Attached to a giant chord
    In turn attached to two cranes
    And whooppee
   Taking the rubberband industry
   To a whole new plateau

   What lies beneath Suburb Street?
   One chair lonely,
                                In the corner window
   A lawn uprooted
                                with boulders strewn
   and Cotswold stone
   does Frank Lloyd Wright effect?
   canisters of disaster
   a sub-polar Rouseian Columbia
   never was a street called suburb before

   A birdhouse leans up against a tree
   A ranch style house crests the next plot higher upon the hill
   I begin my ascent up the face of Suburb Street

   As I drive by a mountain dome
   I,
   wonder,
           Why have they never built a shopping dome?
    In Providence, Rhode Island during “Water Fire”
     I see a half moon by a full rotunda dome
     As opposed to lensman Ansel Adams
     Famous “Full Moon and Half Dome”
    Shot at Yellowstone
    Or here is a full moon by a full dome
    Or is it a full moon by another half dome
    Or another half finished poem
    No its another book signed sealed and delivered
    From the author of all of the World’s Biggest Shopping Mall Poems

    If the ice cream industry had a face
    It would surely melt

    A tarot card reader once told me
    “Don’t worry about others
   They can take care of themselves
   Take care of yourself”
   Later on someone else said
  “You happen to be with someone who single handedly changed
   the face of the ice cream industry”
   if the ice cream industry had a face it would surely melt…………………………..

   You’re a four-lane townhouse project
   A play shed upon the crest
   A Japanese glass deck
   Atop a parking lot
   And sided by a hedge

  “Applique”
  A tailoring service
  Set into one of the landings
  Between parking levels here at Paramatta Shoppingtown
  Levels dropped off by sliding escalator drifts
  The skewed thread
  Flowing forth from the “appliqué “ signpost
  The skewed thread flowing forth

   I sit down at “Iconic”
   The Plexiglas and stainless steel
   Middle of the mall-hall café
   With such a literary title
   Laid upon this place

   I sit down at “Iconic”
   And not to be Byronic
   Having realized personal growth
   The title spoiled brat returns
   To this writer an icon idle,
   Here at Iconic servers are housed
   Within a stainless steel and tinted glass bunker
   Making lattés and filling croissants with pates
   Scrambling eggs
   Then, behind a perched blue and white seating area
   This level of the mall drops
    into an open air portal
    rounded by a glass enclosed perimeter planted with ferns

    Now back to “Applique”
    By the escalators or slanting drifts
    To the rental car, the white ford falcon
    emblazoned
    in which my father sits
    controlling the movements of sucking candies or cough drops
    with his tongue
    and when he purchases a diet coke
    sipping it in measures
    with or without a straw

    Pastries, quiches, croissants, and rolls
    How about a standing sign advertisement
    for the Dead Sea scrolls ?

    Walls of water
    Become the hulls
    Of designer cafes like “Iconic”
    Where if I were to sit down and order
    Would I thus become an iconoclast?”
    Or an icon with a glass
    Or were I to sit down and not order
    Would I still be an iconoclast?
    I would certainly be an icon or not an icon
    In either case without a glass

    “Home art”…………Home is where the art is

      A person can take you with them to paradise
     Which does not mean they are or paradise becomes them

    An outdoor parking area
    On the top level
    Of a shoppingtown’s otherwise covered carkeep
    And out of this top level rising
    Is a multifloor department store
    With tinted windows come upon now by late afternoon light
    And plates of fine china- their gull wing backs to the sun

    For the closing ceremonies of the Olympic games
    Sydney’s harbor bridge was into a pyrotechnic xylophone turned
    Now two weeks later
    I depart Oceania
    To cross an entire ocean
    To recross an entire ocean
    From the shallowest depths
    To the deepest deeps
    Extra shadows- roll the film onto the water
    The turquoise translucent the paint applied
    To the symphony so far beyond aquatics
    That it carries us to the point
    At which we recognize our own minds
    Standing walls of water become café architecture
 

    In a newly built shopping dome
    Where a face of ice cream perpetually melts
    In the half light of a half moon
    By a half dome
    Or the full light of a half dome and a full moon
    Or in this a newly finished shopping mall poem
    I drive by a mountain dome lit by a full moon
    Listening to a house tune
    It is here now; not coming soon

     For the closing ceremonies of the XVIIth Olympiad
     Australian icons on floats
     Greg Norman
     Elle McPhereson
     Paul Hogan
     Bananas in Pyjamas
    And atop her private coach bus
    In full silver lame and up to an aria
    Priscilla Queen of the desert

    Spun sugar
    Fancy restaurant fantasies
    Macadamia nut parfaits
    Bananas tiered off into the terraced levels
   Of palatial gaming facilities
   The Spun sugar
   Of fancy restaurant fantasies
   Caramelized action figures
   Sculpted with the precise instruments
   Of an Epicurean engineer
    To place a super confection atop a layer cake
    Rounded by white chocolate buses- double Decker
    It’s PRISCILLA:Queen of the dessert

      Returning to my room on west 86th street
     The animated mustachioed Latin American doorman
     Of a few doors down
     Who has stood outside the large apartment building which employs him
     As steadily as if he were a street light
     Who regularly rolls and contorts his features into strange faces
     To produce amusement
     Suddenly appears to be a Maori warrior
     And a post war building at the far end of the block’s stonework
     Where husks of cornucopia wreathe or necklace it’s porthole windows
     Goes decoratively aslant into carved friezes
     By the Polynesian people people of Aoteartoa/New Zealand
     So that I am not here
     I am over there