Early Days
By William Dennis
Golden Maidenhairginko biloba
Quince Street’s all-male clone plantation senses
want of balance latent in blonde page-boys fallen to the tilted flags in menses, senseless: scentless, to the shoe no noise. Old moon’s odd blues befall our dark-age street, reversing this one his dioecious slant-- her autumn drop, now luscious, indiscreet, in stinking violation of Thou shan’t. Next-door—both sides—disowns the stinking litter dropped beneath our feet, I grant safe-keeping. Though on this bounty, posted bounty glitter, diligent old age bends broom to reaping. The only one that thought to choose its gender-- it seems the good to be its sole defender. |
StereotypesTwo almost identical
images merged by the two different hemispheres of the brain-- perception never matches the actual object, the subject fails to apprehend complexity in the object-- that words express reality is a form of faith, innocent sophistication-- fidelity comes through analysis, savoring cynicism, and is anti-intuitive; common sense is always inadequate; just as well it's not common. |
Cook's Tour
When I came into Heathrow, it was time for tea--
the British kind you eat, not drink, you understand. Immediately, Winston starts to importune me, "You will give us a bit of the old 'ot-dog, "won't you, old chap?" Luckily, I'd planned and brought squirt-bottles for the condiments. His first time for finger-food, for me, the "bog." A red-eye flight then brought me in to Flughafen Frankfort where Werner, who is learning to speak English, comments, "You will make us to eat American Krapfen, nein?" "Ich bin ein jelly doughnut!" was my quick retort. Considering the place, I wouldn't risk the wieners. Touching down at Paris (the French one, hein?) I felt intimidated--cuisine and all-- but you obey, even when you think the queen errs, and Catherine implored me, "But of course, you must demonstrate the manner of l'âmburgèr traditionàl." I did. What could I do? Ketchup, mustard, mayo, pickle and a ruffled toothpick, the true mot just. One thing leaves me speechless--they have no French fries! Ancient Rome was one place I really wanted to go, although it sadly was not possible, not then-- but I thought mac and cheese would make us natural allies. So if I had the chance, I'd take the trip again; most foreigners are nuts to cook American. |
Variation on a line from RilkeHear!
Hear me! Who hears me? Who would hear me? Who, if I cried out, would hear me? Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the Angelic Orders? Who, if I cried out, would hear me? Who hears me cry out? Hear me cry out! I cry out! I cry! |
Dead Cat Bounce
And what could have been more unexceptionable,
I ask you,
than disemboweling, bear-baiting or serfdom?
Then controversy developed
around useful amusements
such as breaking on the wheel,
burning cats and even, for Christ's sake, drowning witches!
And then they came to look on as immoral
even things like hanging thieves
for violation of the sanctity of property,
keelhauling rowdies and the honorable practice of dueling.
What next? I'll tell you--
time-honored practices,
tried and proven over the ages,
became quite literally unthinkable, basic things,
like the burning of heretics, for God's sake;
the wholly salutary display of corpses rotting on gibbets,
or practically anywhere, really,
or flogging, good old fashioned flogging,
I will be switched!
And now, in these degenerate times,
no one even thinks about
holding public executions
or putting debtors in prison for their sins;
they really don't.
You can lay all this at the door
of bleeding-heart, classical liberalism--the L word.
I hold the Enlightenment to account.
If God meant man to be enlightened,
He'd've seen to it we were born with headlamps,
or any rate, pretty different than we are.
But there's some hope, there always is--
it does seem like slavery might be holding its own;
we might even see a come-back,
albeit, from depressed levels.
But I daren't let it get me all worked up--
even a dead cat will bounce.
And what could have been more unexceptionable,
I ask you,
than disemboweling, bear-baiting or serfdom?
Then controversy developed
around useful amusements
such as breaking on the wheel,
burning cats and even, for Christ's sake, drowning witches!
And then they came to look on as immoral
even things like hanging thieves
for violation of the sanctity of property,
keelhauling rowdies and the honorable practice of dueling.
What next? I'll tell you--
time-honored practices,
tried and proven over the ages,
became quite literally unthinkable, basic things,
like the burning of heretics, for God's sake;
the wholly salutary display of corpses rotting on gibbets,
or practically anywhere, really,
or flogging, good old fashioned flogging,
I will be switched!
And now, in these degenerate times,
no one even thinks about
holding public executions
or putting debtors in prison for their sins;
they really don't.
You can lay all this at the door
of bleeding-heart, classical liberalism--the L word.
I hold the Enlightenment to account.
If God meant man to be enlightened,
He'd've seen to it we were born with headlamps,
or any rate, pretty different than we are.
But there's some hope, there always is--
it does seem like slavery might be holding its own;
we might even see a come-back,
albeit, from depressed levels.
But I daren't let it get me all worked up--
even a dead cat will bounce.
Epitaph"Life is very long."— from The Hollow Men, T.S. Elliot
Death is no time at all — epitaph The dates tell nothing on this stone;
a life is long that's lived alone. I got a job; I got a wife, got my children, had my life. I lived forever, but it went fast; I had my time, now I'm all past. Life's long and weary for us all, know this: that death's no time at all. |
Party TimeFull of them
is the world, perfectly nice people of no interest whatever, making tiny jokes-- the schwartzes, don't I know? --where once there was a Camelot, Little Tel Aviv, their man, St. Francis, and how 'bout that quarterback? open-minded folk in re: global warming, evolution, and the Communist President's place of birth-- after all everything's possible, thank God. |
Turned CatThe cat, turned
fetal on my lap, love's thug, whose species' career imitates our babies, never caught a mouse in her life, while awake. |
Veena and Tabla
The veena and the tabla, beneath the players' hands
evoke the brilliant spark of sun on lily-padded ponds;
black buffalo, white birds on their backs, rising;
little boys who pelt ahead of kites;
the lilt and carry of India's voices
and Lord Shiva walking on Mother Earth.
And a kite catches in a pipal tree's branches,
Lord Shiva’s eye on it, waking the demon,
who has been for three hundred rains in that form,
sucking madly, fiercely at Mother Earth
insatiable with lust, terrible in avarice,
and with a grasp that had crushed stones of Vijayawada’s temple
in the seizure of centuries' greed.
Teeth and claws, fire and scales,
bulge to bursting from belly to eyes;
turned-up toes and sharp heels, serpent tongue and long, pointed nose,
spurs, writhing genitals and a windmill of arms
manifest in a flash of changed idea.
Quick, a pink-collared parakeet flies into the sun
and the demon's flicked eye follows that of Lord Shiva,
who steps like a dance,
and is taken with the being of Alexandrian parakeets.
And burst into feathers, where bloomed shocks of flame,
and launched in flight toward the catchable sun
and an age in the furious green of a torrent of wings,
chewing holes in brick walls and tearing neem
and screaming psittacene hatred at farmers who throw clod from ripe fields.
Looking up, Lord Shiva walks in Mother Earth
as he watches himself looking down on the world
that passes as mist.
The veena's vocal strings still hum
in the final flourish of the drum.
The veena and the tabla, beneath the players' hands
evoke the brilliant spark of sun on lily-padded ponds;
black buffalo, white birds on their backs, rising;
little boys who pelt ahead of kites;
the lilt and carry of India's voices
and Lord Shiva walking on Mother Earth.
And a kite catches in a pipal tree's branches,
Lord Shiva’s eye on it, waking the demon,
who has been for three hundred rains in that form,
sucking madly, fiercely at Mother Earth
insatiable with lust, terrible in avarice,
and with a grasp that had crushed stones of Vijayawada’s temple
in the seizure of centuries' greed.
Teeth and claws, fire and scales,
bulge to bursting from belly to eyes;
turned-up toes and sharp heels, serpent tongue and long, pointed nose,
spurs, writhing genitals and a windmill of arms
manifest in a flash of changed idea.
Quick, a pink-collared parakeet flies into the sun
and the demon's flicked eye follows that of Lord Shiva,
who steps like a dance,
and is taken with the being of Alexandrian parakeets.
And burst into feathers, where bloomed shocks of flame,
and launched in flight toward the catchable sun
and an age in the furious green of a torrent of wings,
chewing holes in brick walls and tearing neem
and screaming psittacene hatred at farmers who throw clod from ripe fields.
Looking up, Lord Shiva walks in Mother Earth
as he watches himself looking down on the world
that passes as mist.
The veena's vocal strings still hum
in the final flourish of the drum.
Gopi EyesAnd young Lord Krishna dwelt among the gopi,
maids who tended cows, and so is called, Govinda. Govinda’s girls make eyes like these– deep, welling, magnifying lenses, clear as insight, deep and bright as thought, a cipher spelling out the soul they turn to every light– blackberry chill gathered to its drop in shining drupes and globes of sweet and mellow, a brimming drip of fruitfulness that calls each equally, deft tongue or lipping grip, all savor’s truck, heart’s odd hooks and bellows; none dare, until some sleepy thing below makes languid reach and touches once for all. Things as large as bears would halt and terrible old men return that stare, such sudden damp within the beard that youth seemed one steep hill away, if days were longer, one brief tramp. A careless cane now plucks the cord that bears my cow-bell heart– it thrums like summer filled with cricket love– and berry-sweet again, it bites my praising lip; the pull that tears me free must leave its little plenty spilled along the cheek. I wish where once I willed, but, though I’m wiser, I was younger then. And what does all religion dare?– a voice for what is always true, and in this case, I always fall, when not by luck, by choice, in vision’s pools, that swallow up your face. Then in the morning gather of the herd, you take the braiding way, as go you must; that you are looked on by the god must be; and who can doubt Govinda’s heart is stirred, but we have touched and you bear home my trust dead ripe; arriving light at hour of dust, among black, berry eyes, yours turn on me. |
On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Springin memory of Frederick Delius
Woah!
No way! Didja...? Man, wow! Awesome! Lissen! Hey! Tubular! Hark! B'jeezus! OMG! Scha-batta-creppy-crotty-grad-dagh-p-kon-p-kot!* One o'clock, already! *Much obliged for the loan from James Joyce |
Autres Mondes, Autres Mœurs...in other words, on other worlds red lips
mean nothing to strong men, whose thoughtful eyes would never sink where bosom swells or hips make much seem possible, but rather, rise. We know young women lounge on liquid shores of powder seas, alone, on one far world, rejoiced that each man passing by ignores their sun-bleached skin, dark teeth and bronzed hair, whirled. On other worlds, those merry celibates live long; but here, through stronger gravity, the eye grows grave and, downcast, celebrates the end drawn near with love’s false levity. On other worlds, I’d take no note of you; but, oh, here, now, believe, that’s just not true. To others, you, as you would have them, do– let kisses be predictions; glances, glue. On certain planets though, brevity is purity; no floor contaminates until six seconds lapse; severity in sin is temporal, they calculate. One entire nebula keeps furled it’s bumbershoots of worry and deplores no little lapses, say, E=MC twirled, for as your lips have often lisped, it bores. But here, with us, the worried are the wise, aware time likes to snack on un-cashed chips. I, from what I know of gravity, surmise: love, nothing seems so human as your slips. |
The Second Inquisition of Galileo GalileiYou insist, nature is not persuaded;
no circling sun is centered on our earth; spoke loud, one’s faith does not increase in worth; you found, among the stars, these three thoughts braided? |
Revenge of Sparrowsfor the Dusky Seaside Sparrow
Its extinction in 1987 caused by the destruction of its only remaining habitat
in order to build a highway connecting Kennedy Space Center to Disney World. www.bagheera.com/inthewild/ext_sparrow.htm
|
Carnival Barkfor Carla
Come on, come all–
drei groschen, one brass farthing, any penny that’s gone bad or any yen, though large or small, to see an artist starving– starts sad, ends glad. Yo, joey-face! Your make-up mouth turned down can’t hide that crooked smile you’ve grown. Those drawn-on drops just can’t erase these eyes no tear dares drown. But, yet, you moan. No, joey-face! Your grease-paint grin can’t hide its turned-down corners any more; though, so far, diamond-drops out-race the hot, dissolving tide, that’s still in store. Hey, joey-face, let’s see you clown your way through this, and all the pretty paint you hide behind, as if disgrace were something people say love is or ain’t. Poor joey-face, we probably will all laugh when you fall down and get your bruise where lovers touch when they embrace. When old hearts need a staff, it’s you we use. It’s Punch’s hunch he’s good enough for joey. The watcher’s gasp: oh, wash his paws! Bloom on, poor rose his big mitts crunch, as sweet to smell as showy. Punch breaks all laws. But look at Punch, whose elbow bends to harm his nose at sight of any glass– no appetite, won’t drink his lunch. No tad, a prince–alarmed, he checks his ass. While Punch ‘n joey play for broken hearts, we rummage through the puppet-chest for some straight-stringed and much less doughy lad to take the part..., but Punch is best. Ol’ joey’s Punch (she’s wa-a-ay to fine for him) cuts capers in the sawdust ring (his smiles now blossom by the bunch). Love gleams where hope glowed dim and makes us sing. |
If a Woman AnswersWhat’re you doing?
I done told you and told you, don’t call me here. Never. Don’t! All right, baby, I love you, too, sweet thing. You’re going where? Oh, yeah, with me? Then... Who? After all I done, you won’t...? Late-ly? Hey, what about.... No need to shout. Well, Saturday, how ‘bout last Saturday? I meant the one before, hang on! It ain’t an easy thing to get away. I’d be there day and night, if I had my way. If she shoots off her mouth, I’m gone– but now, she’s on hair trigger, worse luck. Go figure. I’m sick in love, man. You’re my onliest bad habit, babe. Love’s like them cancers growing all the whiles you’re thinking of the good times, never mind about the rest. So don’t call, and if a woman answers– no mind why you rang up– hear? Hang up. |
Take CareYou just don’t know–
you can’t; I don’t, I’m sure, and them that claims they do...well, shoo’! Prayer works, but quiet-like and it don’t show; just take on faith your troubles must be fewer and you might feel worse. I do. That’s just the way things go, when you be poor. Don’t look-up trouble; trouble look-up you. You stay in bed all day? Maybe the house burn and they find you in the rubble. You tell your neighbor dog’s years, “How d’y’ do?” then he calls you an SOB. Pay-back’s always double, that much is true. God is good, or so them say that know. Don’t bet that He’ll be interested in what you are, that’s all. It’s understood that medicine is bitter; so it goes, that some folk always have insisted, nastiness is good. But they don’t know What tears me up and tears me down is love. Water’s good, but people drown. Money’s fine, let coins spill out your cup. Don’t let me start on booze, good Lord above! But temperance sins, when love comes ’round. The heart’s one friendly pup we all take care of, I’ve found. |
Wasting Time on Walden PondYoung David Henry,
the pencil-maker’s boy, comes in to eat his mother’s food from out on Walden pond, where he takes what he says is joy in solitude. To pay his tax was more than he could manage, so he spent some time in jail, and took the loan of Bronson Alcott’s axe – he does no actual damage out on bail. A while back he spent the summer boating and he swapped his name around; gone middle-first, the Merrimac must’ve made fine floating – I’d kiss the ground. Since school let out, he never steadied down, though he’s a decent lad, more’s shame. A perch of land to care about, or girl to make him frown might make his name. A handy friend, him and Bronson fixed up Emerson a strange gazebo from limbs of trees, just as they bend. We’re proud it still stands up– they write, you know. What nettles me, and may be his ruination, is where’s this different drummer from? He don’t mean God, nor you and me, so who in all tarnation beats his drum? |
Mímus PolyglóttosNessun dorma;
it is the moon and it is the moon, the moon, the moon and I just met a girl named, oh, I just met a girl, a girl, a girl named this town ain’t big enough for the two of us may be ragged and funny, and funny, funny but I also like children, also like children, too, yes, I do! I do! Whyn’tcha come up an’ see me, an’ see me, see me, see your ugly face around here again, an’ the livin’ is easy, old timer, easy, easy, this is gonna hurt if you break my heart, no, I ain’t misbe’, misbe’, mus’ be, misbe’, mus’ be the school marm, ma’am, marmalade, ma’am? Marmaduke’s my John Henry was a steel drivin’, a steel drivin’, STEEL drivin’ he’s still ridin’ on the, ridin’, ridin’ an ancient mariner he was, he fuzzy wuzz, fuzzy-wuzzy was a worm, oh, was a worm, was a worm, Ol’ MacDonald served two billion, served two zillion, too reptilian ee-ay, ee-ay, my ran-tan lie-do, lie-do, lie down you head Tom Dooley, tom-DOOley-tom-DOOley for Nessun dorma |
Sermon on
|
RainOld-Harpstrings-Little-Girl,
Komatsu, her name-sake, lifts spring-wet eyes from the lined tablet she turned sideways, the water-stain a spreading tree, over-written in links of her printed hand, to stare through old harp-strings – her hair, the writing-brush of famous eye-lashes, to where the willow bends, weeping, reaching under laundry-weight, still disbelieving, to touch baby hands of thread-leaf maple. Dry spaghetti in a shaking jar; a fist of bamboo skewers, thumped; strings of harp that play the sound of zippers; piano’s springs, humming endless after of an unheard blow; warp for carpet bearing tales of love in gardens; watered ink in haiku-chains down sides of ancient art: drenched baleen bristles cloud-whale swallows the mountain– minnows dart The growing forest of rain pushes aside green leaves. Beads slip the grass abacus for all ways bars form staves to catch the sliding tones, shirring sound, as cross-winds plaid the pin-stripe day laminations of the willow’s lamentation, throwing hair's lank strings over her clouded sight. |
Joculator Iterumfor Jon T.
One reads one’s bit of Kant and Vauvenargues;
when contemplated deeply, as one ought, there’s pleasure in the rigor of old thought; and exercise, as singers’ fa-so-la. The Perfect and the tertium quid evoke their futile, “Quid facendum?”– Don’t exult! The classic question, “Quid hoc sibi vult?” may not be fully answered with a joke. Precepts the perceptive once laid down are taken up, laid point or pommel first, to weigh the best, since all must try the worst, and maybe, with a flourish, brandished ‘round. The question’s not, “Quid rides?” don’t you know, but rather, the amoral, “Quid pro quo?” Crib– Joculator iterum: the joker again. Tertium quid: a third something, a conjectural medium between two opposites; hence, a nondescript. Quid facendum: what is to be done? Quid hoc sibi vult: what does this mean? Quid rides: why do you laugh? Quid pro quo: something for something; this for that, an equivalent; as interrogative: what is this for? |
Modest Reform in the Perfect CityThe list of things time takes is small, encompassed
by that brief word, “all.” The register need not be tall to score what’s left to last. A plenty still, this least of times, to stir a soul that stoops to rhymes, let fall again among glass chimes’ involuntary divestiture. Take this New York penny here (since when did verdigris bring cheer?), over-run in mid-career by half Manhattan’s denizens. Of many disunited cents, this one is scorned for lunch and rent by even homeless souls so bent beneath their life’s privation. When taken up and brandished well, this “bless- me” wealth could, maybe, spell enlightened sense in seeming hell that lights this great metropolis. What percent of all these souls, police to perps, miss pauper’s bowls on these broad pavements, dropping rolls of bread and dough and grease? When measured out statistically, the sense emerges mystically that scattered things realistically may bear significance. Some few per thousand, gathered up, such gleanings, beads saved in a cup, make necklaces of far Egypt, when drawn upon a string. The earls and princes of the town give largess where best thanks is found, but think whom random kindness shown by lost coins might impress. From Broadway crossed by Forty-Sixth on plumb to Central Park, a burst of brooming well might spare a working girl the worst the whilesome. Columbus Circle to Times Square, swept fell through all the theaters there, from toffs to marks, makes one aware for whom tolls every bell. From Herald Square at Thirty-Forth, the blocks grow short as one goes north and copper-strewn for all they’re worth up to the Park’s pond’s locks. How many homeless could find homes (if rent control were left alone), on what lies loose upon the ground on Avenue of the Americas? And corner boys in Brooklyn Heights might choose Fifth Avenue and its lights, from Madison Square to the Plaza’s brights, if loose change made the news. To give efficiency a face as fair as charity unlaced, Hizonner (that jay-walker) sweeps with his embrace both sides of any thoroughfare. Where runner-boys and stop-light ladies creep illicitly by shady ways that lead in time to Hades, they could besom streets. The open air and sunlit places need, quite clearly, no more praises; there social ills in all their phases, fade and then recede. Though once the poor crouched on cathedrals’ sills, or weighed upon the roles of government, this random dole drops freely– without frills. The New Jerusalem cast in cement still nurtures citizens by Rule of Love ...and virtue in a shining New York cent |
The Asparagus Festival Herald’s CryThat slender reed, asparagus, we hope
will serve to prop our trestles one more time beneath a night of pleasure’s weight and scope and gratify your taste in food and rhyme. It yields the shamrock nothing of the green; the slender, bending lily is close kin; and Cupid’s tender points are seldom seen; but annually asparagus looks in. Planted by the peering moon, which light is said to draw the stems, we harvest most of friendship in each other’s blurring sight, in crossing harmless lances for a toast. We ask you bring your laughter and a buss, in pay for which we’ll serve...asparagus! |
Corner Call– after Dowland
Cheap thrills here, gaudy trinkets for the girls!
Snatch pretty handfuls from my shallow tray. I stand in rain to catch what heaven hurls. Inhale the dust I line out fresh each day. Breathe out, your smile deserves the extra pearls. Sure things are hooks to draw you deeper in; My rhinestone glitter may be thrown away, As cheap to end as easy to begin. Often plainest paper wraps the stuff most gay. From others get your gear, from me a pin. My bundle holds bags, rocks, tokes and fine smokes, And all those games, such as the young ones play. I give my love to all deserving folks, Cowboys and dudes, queens, maids– matched any way. Good is the love that laughs at life’s old jokes. |
One Crying Baby
One crying baby;
Two young, pregnant mothers;
Three crack houses on the same damn block;
Four generous, garrulous gun-dealers, giving cash to prosperous pols;
Five sibilant, Christian reasons not to seem supportive of the man who seeks Assistance;
Six emaciated, constipated, young men with just one needle that they stick into their arms;
Seven listless and laconic, diabetic, old men, who can’t afford the doctor, ‘cause before they pay the rent they get too big a check;
Eight jive-rappin’, jumpy home-boys, who don’t look like they’ll live that long that they could raise a baby, talkin’ trash to teen-age girls;
Nine irrelevant, elegant, fast-talking entrepreneurs, dressed to over-kill and selling something from electric, tinted Lincoln windows;
Ten mischievous, mistaken little boys wearing logos of the Bulls, being shot to get air sneakers that they’d rather die than lose;
Eleven bulimic, barefaced, bachelor Baptists, who love electrocution but can’t stand the echo of an empty womb.
Twelve positively lovely, brand-new pristine prisons put up purposely to process perps, with proceeds from the public playing bingo.
One crying baby.
Two young, pregnant mothers;
Three crack houses on the same damn block;
Four generous, garrulous gun-dealers, giving cash to prosperous pols;
Five sibilant, Christian reasons not to seem supportive of the man who seeks Assistance;
Six emaciated, constipated, young men with just one needle that they stick into their arms;
Seven listless and laconic, diabetic, old men, who can’t afford the doctor, ‘cause before they pay the rent they get too big a check;
Eight jive-rappin’, jumpy home-boys, who don’t look like they’ll live that long that they could raise a baby, talkin’ trash to teen-age girls;
Nine irrelevant, elegant, fast-talking entrepreneurs, dressed to over-kill and selling something from electric, tinted Lincoln windows;
Ten mischievous, mistaken little boys wearing logos of the Bulls, being shot to get air sneakers that they’d rather die than lose;
Eleven bulimic, barefaced, bachelor Baptists, who love electrocution but can’t stand the echo of an empty womb.
Twelve positively lovely, brand-new pristine prisons put up purposely to process perps, with proceeds from the public playing bingo.
One crying baby.
Paeanfor Dana Garrett
Things a poet worth his salt must know:
remuneration is a distant chance; renown comes tardy and is quick to go; the best that one may hope for must be grants. All jealous praise and pricked congratulation to him whose ink-stained hand first seized the ring; and nothing more than Christian consternation would fear how brass may tarnish what you sing. Full many foot-prints lead to California– its work-shops, flesh-pots, sweat-shops...and chagrin– which, wishing well, one feels obliged to warn you, fewer stride away than shuffle in. Plato’s world was shadows, dark and light; you show us not the perfect, but what’s bright. |
The CrushVintage where great battles fought is changed
with fallen brass, with powder waste– a meal of men laid to the root with lead and steel. Though stock out-lasts the palate in the end, a few old books, most valued for their bindings, a few old men, least valued for their windings, recall if difference ever was a friend. Some sour bottles, tasting dagger rust, laid down behind the tuns of new, sweet stuff, now seem the cause man first disturbed the dust. We are the vineyard, vintner, vine and stock that others cellar to refine the rough: we are this land with its long-quarried rock. The next inheritor to wake this boast will startle at the tannin in his toast. |
The Camelfor Teddy
The nomad, I’ve read,
prefers females instead of male camels for riding, in deserts abiding, because it just seems the boar camel deems sufficient enough when walking gets rough– too long between drinks of water, he thinks. He’ll throw himself down to pout on the ground and die with his master to spite the disaster, and no kind of beating, supplication or pleading, sarcastic remarks, no high-jinks or larks or sadistic prodding with violent rodding will move him to rise or to open his eyes, for he’d rather not be there, rather never have come where he is, but he’d rather not leave the place either; when pride is the stakes: guy camels are sheiks. Now, the lady’s a ship from her nose to tail’s tip and she’ll sail in the teeth of the wind up a reef, down a dune or a basin and never ask raison d’être if it doesn’t seem seemly or wasn’t entirely convenient. The work keeps her lean, yet she’d never complain or loose thoughts entertain or rebel at the whip or the goad on a trip, and if tea is not served or time-outs observed and endless waste is not worth the oasis she may speak her mind, say she feels it’s unkind, but she never refuses whatever confuses or declines a verb one might think would perturb, but bears both her jockey and self over rocky terrain to the end, where the earth and sky blend on no food and less drinks than anyone thinks is possible, right or dignified, quite, allowing herself to be worked to death, too, not liking to fuss to decline the unjust, and may-be, just perhaps she’ll make those last laps. Extrapolation yields the notion wives and mothers more than others can be given or be driven to perform beyond the norm, hopeless tasks– one need but ask, like hauling water by a daughter with a sieve or by your leave, up-loading sand, pitch forked by hand to fill up carts which lack such parts as sides and bottom– wheels? Don’t got ‘em. Any project lacking object, where it’s said the sooner dead the blame comes quicker, if not thicker, one really oughter give one’s daughter, wife or mother, aunt or lover; they’ll wear on when hope is gone, where males all grumble and soon tumble on their faces in their traces. The nomad trammels female camels; scarabs pursue their ball of grue; administrators, all fourth-raters, have their traitor’s habits, too. The Moral: To be a mild, obliging person is something you could not do worse than. |
Balkan Pantoumfor Lenko
This formerly young person strolls
cemetery paths in Belgrade, sunny and cypressed, furnished by souls with benches endowed for the sad. Cemetery paths in Belgrade, formerly capital up in the mountains, with benches endowed for the sad and young people wreathed by the fountains. Formerly capital up in the mountains, one more of those victims of failing divorce, and young people wreathed by the fountains, portraying lean Cupid, wounding and hoarse. One more of those victims of failing divorce, Balkanized, formerly Yugoslav, portraying lean Cupid, wounding and hoarse, veridigrised, cold and resolved. Balkanized, formerly Yugoslav, sunny and cypressed, furnished by souls, verdigrised, cold and resolved, this formerly young person strolls. |
BerrymanJohn was one right sport,
thought lives important– a landscape of personality, sculpted from works by eroding will. God, his drinking buddy, sponsored AA. He lunged toward religion, to fall (compliments to Bunyan) to the Slough. He tried to be grateful, believed nets could catch passion’s shape. Looked up, alone of his age, to Petrarch. Had a thing with women, really; made him very sad and lonely. Gem in correctest setting, stellar scholar of the Bard, driven himself to barding; bearded eczemic upon his petard, among the merrimeades of Elizabeth; portraitist in miniatures of frayed ropes, breaking cables, knotted lines, weak links, nooses..., tortion ...that spiral fracture, deconstruction, leading to the fall. |
Chicagoan
for W D Gorman
(to be read straight down; straight across; zig-zag, starting top left or top right;
and chess-knight-wise: two lines one side and three on the other)
(to be read straight down; straight across; zig-zag, starting top left or top right;
and chess-knight-wise: two lines one side and three on the other)
The lake the great lake
The green flat cold wide deep still Lake draws down the sun Smoking on its lip there hang Great stubs of architecture Coat tie and sneakers Taking bids on the ‘60's In a buyer’s market Still skinny and liberal He feels Lent should bother him more Reparenting A group of torture survivors At the school clinic Cruelties of humor selfed And back-crossed filial 3 Not just some fat girl Whose Dad burned her vagina Over and over Through lifting cloud days are short To look as far as the sea What’s the difference Fish loaf and cathedral There for all to see Nectar in the throat promises Browsing forward to clover Cafeteria Catholicism suits just Like the old country Nickel spigots warmly gleam Beyond the clatter of coin Chipped alphabet blocks Used to spell things out again A forgotten name Fish sex son wife mother and Father death praise wish and shame Though the keel run deep And broad the beam to bear– still The lake-side manner Breeds a fatal weather eye And in the ropes ties tell-tales |
Coughed up blue and white
Morning dead on the sidewalk Kingfisher’s body Hieroglyph smudged plumage Reflected in glassiness Going condo but Retaining mineral rights Trying to sell out Pogo’s enemy sues him For peace and reparation Avuncular With one foot in and one foot out Clog dancing Those welcome in by the window That are shy of using the door Not just that white male PhD who smokes cigars Fringed vested Irish A climber on the high slopes Yodeling at the valley Virgin Mother Speak from religion’s bright bush Against abortion Flocks wander in off the down To graze shamrock by the saint’s well Connelly’s Tap where It’s Herself downed as a shot Sip by precious sip What barmen buy for themselves From those who remember best The whole kit unboxed Wind-up man with rubber band Alpine clock with weights Gravity increases the Acceleration of time A ballast of iron Pigs and ore coke lime pork brawn Lures to the compass Sailing circles over dark bottoms That home may lie straight down |
The Gay Ninetiesfor Kathy and Doug
Chimney sweeps need love;
not trying to seem a saint, he gives them his now. Up behind the carny lights, forgotten, the moon grows thin. The other bank’s not where it was to make stepping off the easier. Broad Ganges plaits and braids the whole man in his chignon. A proclivity for north shores sands your keel smooth, brightening the nails. Forged ahead with the women, the household, the dog and the boy... All glances look back from the irrigated field when the world is round; Can’t keep house in Berkeley, what with all the salt in the bay. Gentle Pacific tides surprise an old hull still thought sea-worthy; Sailors always saying their farewells to lovers and friends– Whistle buoys, children and wives, crying goodbye to captains in their coats. The ocean accounted for less may be made of the barque. (Phoenician passports, keep them close to your vest and never get them wet.) Poling home a heavy bag from the crap shoot– well, that’s life; A real liberal, war and peace, on land and sea, eating what he’s killed. The bridge to Sausalito, a troll-booth at either end; It’s a pretty drive up the coast to the Northwest; it could be longer. Married men don’t live longer, it just seems to them that way. Many out-riders lost crossing the prairie stayed with friendly tribes. Next Christmas what may we write with no forwarding order? Varanasi fine– mist from the warm water is joined by smoke from shore. |
MIACalling through weed fields,
fooled by the mockingbird’s cry, for her lost cat– From some impenetrable heart of bramble thorn and vine. Cutting Queen Anne’s lace and mullein bouquets for keepsakes in dry vases, November above the road offers no Thanksgiving crows. Some house down the hill may have bound his wounds, thinking surely she will come; A pretty cat has more chance than a whiskered grandmother; By now he may have his accustomed place by another fire. Beneath crossed limbs uneasy leaves fly up with every sound. *** His granddaughter’s sons waiting for that railroad man to come home from work; All detectives ever found was his wife, child and pay check; Cosh, knife and river (this was Newark, New Jersey) worked together before; Surely murder, not some part of herself, drove him away; Every phrase he spoke, the words to woo taken back in silence, a lie; Fruits of this lie called children; her life as a ruined virgin.. Or...laid clutching himself, condemned by her silly doubt, though she knows she feels. Or...lost in a forest of legs, afraid, clutching at dark skirts... And...the love-crossed palm learns, hand over hand, to be saved by another line. But...a Columbus spares crewmen sight of him staring back over the stern. Or...mirthless and wakeful, he drinks to remember his dreams. *** A hatband of herl backfires the pigeon hunter’s brim with parakeet green. Seminole made bad masters; their slaves had nothing to do. Finger that door-pull, daughter, the press and the draft retain their old use; On the chain-gang they spat when born slaves would stare from the fields; Volunteer armies stay small and volunteer navies sail after cod; For wet work in trenches they want volunteers...and get them. What was graveyard grass before the war, bears figures on the ground after; Wide pampas have been called for, and many fragments of stone. *** Their fairy child, twenty-seven years enchanted, as she conceives it, A small pumpkin skipped over by harvesters’ quick red hands. Split-up weathers empty out the park-land near the tiger cages. Spritzing its bars, the big cat marks out home territory. Chased into corners, the curators of his dreams yield up all their power. Would he have been encouraged to mate for form’s sake– some girl...Dolores, maybe Consolación, who never owned shoes? GOD, DON’T LET YOUR FIRE GO OUT! BURN DIARIES IF YOU MUST. ...to be told over and over, the missing pages, the dog ate them– Spot, Red Rover, Rinty, Buck, Argos, Cerberus, JoJo... *** Brier rose jungles, weedscape allotments lost in the real estate war, Seeming colder than something– deciduous, hard bud and thorn; Twigs hook bare elbows in long sleeves of windbreak, unraveling thin air. Oceanic, this sighing, the great valley heaves with it; Old hands from the mews, doves and nets cast down, sway up nodding oaks at night; The greater raptor, love, gladly accepts a kestrel’s claw; Poking in ditches for the spot where it will be all right to go home. Empty stems shaking above fat roots of the daylily; Winter mockingbird is a slender reminder among gray perches; Bestirred trees reflect muscled torsos to the hunting eye. Church bells ring hollow; the faithful congregation feels called nonetheless. When wind blows across her, she makes a low sound of her own. |
Near EastAnd Sarah always brings him little things:
savory bits, with wild thyme, of lamb and bid her serving girl await his need. With her own hand and privily, an egg; In trembling as beneath her God at night; And aging Sarah brings him little things. Deserving wives their jealous God sends labor, sacrificed in duty to their lord; she sends her serving girl to wait his need. Limber at the grindstone, Hagar, nimble on the hill, submissive to mistress and master; Sarah always brings him little things. Hers to give, the tendered womb, old Sarah, the spotted lamb and dam still hers to cull; she bid her serving-girl await his need. Come-to-ill, from which no good may come, a feral kine abandoned in the desert; she had her serving girl await his need, for Sarah always brought him little things. |
The Poet, BarrettWhen I think how the poet, Barrett, wrote
about her years, supposed as kindly uncle magi, come on holidays to dote, and Atropos, a maiden aunt, whose needle might brocade life’s sequent misadventure as essential dun about a peacock’s eye upon some intricate cloth corner of coherence from the Weaver’s stock, then I feel it as a secret fox, consuming by permission my heart’s root, that time’s thin kine can over-step all locks, devouring years, with all their gifts to boot. Not to be the Portuguese, and young, is cold– or even him to whom she sung. |
Single LoveWhen my mistress was my single love,
the sun’s unbroken light drew strength in shoots of bud-green longing, long since broken out in apples, foliated to the root. Such bees! All pollen-touselled females, sown, it seemed, by cultivating keepers’ hands, tart curates in my springs of honey flow. Then coronary crystals of life’s sweet grew prism powers, dividing beams to bars and breaking out of focus points from shafts until my tangled aster, come some Michaelmas, shall all hoar over points of annual bloom, which draw the later, lesser butterflies, the reaping praise of fat, untutored hands. |
TrawlerIn the deep trenches
of the sea, where no light comes, lie nodes of rich ore, subterranean processes emerging in the blind depths, mantle and magma, bits of the just cooled core, suggestive fragments. We stand in the boat, which floats on the sea, which holds depths greater than ours, and finger the prize, incoherent to the touch– part of something big. |
Water Ice ManTurtle of commerce, Old Red Bandanna shaves
his fifty-pound block of last winter, cart-wheeled all day daily, every summer-long, afoot, alone with wry-stub, pale-splotched hands, white-leached by berry reds and tutti-fruitti, delicious as School’s Out! brief as recess, quick, cool, rice hail kept in a foolscap, fool’s cap cup; a ragweed mace as common badge and staff of Mohawk union: The Lost Tribe’s Report. Chingachgook no more alone, surrounded; how rustling tongues of crops of cheat-grass boys tie stumpy bugloss bitter in the shade. DIME di’ mi, cries a double-clappered thumb-bell high in the sycamore dome of summer. Dun birds and downy crowd the motley limbs, their droppings’ brief purpose a curlicue on a mystery of twittered alarms; fainting embarrassment of tiptoe elms and sly Zelkova, with their pebble cheeks, sighing joint ill about the stout plane tree. Mom made shy by so railroad a relic, home more in gravel beds with hose water than parsing dialects, all ignorant diagrams and dirigibles sky-writing, trailing banners cross-stitched, EXCELSIOR! but brailled behind suspicions of the Jews and, since the war, of Einstein, Marx and Freud. This mister must have had an earth somewhere to shield his toad-flesh hand and clothes of damp, drawn from pond ice, perished by degrees in its house of sawdust by a siding. But wheeling sky turned down his star in mal- occhlusion before, mannagg’! he found his virgin, child or dear despiting love; Columbus knew chilling influenza and an empty manger in his later days. Was it tired Valentinian, marched the Lost Legion over all horizons, to end selling esquimaux granite in east Cathay, exporting the eagle to cobble with bones; hunch, hard-shelled; sweating, melt; if not, at last, as gathered rain drops run, with stalagmite patience—whorls of onyx? |
Haibun
drifting for night blues
surprised
a squid glides into the light
“Mate!” had not been heard this time out. He slouched on the bench and put his rubber boots up on the middle rail. Night was too deep for the strength of the big catamaran’s lighted canopy. Lines spun down into clear dark, all at the same angle, and he would even offer to help with the occasional tangle.
There was one pretty girl whose hook he would have baited, but she had a boyfriend, so he stayed aft. Men at their stubby poles weren’t even using up bait very fast. One thing the overheads did do was cut out the stars, so there wasn’t very much in the way of scenery. He never noticed the boat’s wallow as glassy hills of sea passed beneath. He took customers’ halt and stammered gait pretty much without noticing, too. A pair of cheerful young men walked too fast and too slow, reaching for the large cabin bulkhead over the coolers and tubs of bagged ice, which reproached the peace of the night. He took down his legs for them, hooking a thumb toward the head, and propped himself right back on the rail.
“Gar,” he said, when a boy spotted half-a-dozen croc-beaked forms snaking across the surface. It was a mistake to read too much into their presence. Mainlanders wasted time acquiring lore of the sea, peering intently into the dark, studying the angle and rhythm of the ocean’s dimple, adjusting their lines for the moon. They always asked about the bottom and interpreted the bounce of a sinker at the end of fifty yards of stretchy filament. They had paid to waste time in this fashion, and resisted efforts to keep them from it. Generally, no one wanted to hear about sonar.
“Mother Carey’s Chickens,” one of the men told a child when the lights drew dabchicks. They fluttered and pattered with their feet at the water’s surface, as if looking for something solid on which to rest. Their familiar mastery of air and water looked to be incompetence. The boy wanted them to land on deck, since the petrels seemed too weak to fly strongly. For ten minutes they made City hall out of the head-boat, pigeoning about on busy wings, frantic at failing to land on the water. Then, to prove they were no more drawn to the light than frightened of it, they lifted and petreled away into night. The world seemed full and busy, to the unseeing men who leaned out from their drift-boat. They felt they had gone deaf at a concert, blind in the market place.
Customers came out of nowhere themselves, to dabble not so adroitly about and then disappear in new, powerful automobiles. Storms they weathered never reduced their numbers, but only the Captain knew how to set his lures so they were drawn to the boat. Their competence lay elsewhere. He unhooked his daydream to get some ground mackerel and start a chum slick.
everything there is
about catching and eating
--spider spins her lines
drifting for night blues
surprised
a squid glides into the light
“Mate!” had not been heard this time out. He slouched on the bench and put his rubber boots up on the middle rail. Night was too deep for the strength of the big catamaran’s lighted canopy. Lines spun down into clear dark, all at the same angle, and he would even offer to help with the occasional tangle.
There was one pretty girl whose hook he would have baited, but she had a boyfriend, so he stayed aft. Men at their stubby poles weren’t even using up bait very fast. One thing the overheads did do was cut out the stars, so there wasn’t very much in the way of scenery. He never noticed the boat’s wallow as glassy hills of sea passed beneath. He took customers’ halt and stammered gait pretty much without noticing, too. A pair of cheerful young men walked too fast and too slow, reaching for the large cabin bulkhead over the coolers and tubs of bagged ice, which reproached the peace of the night. He took down his legs for them, hooking a thumb toward the head, and propped himself right back on the rail.
“Gar,” he said, when a boy spotted half-a-dozen croc-beaked forms snaking across the surface. It was a mistake to read too much into their presence. Mainlanders wasted time acquiring lore of the sea, peering intently into the dark, studying the angle and rhythm of the ocean’s dimple, adjusting their lines for the moon. They always asked about the bottom and interpreted the bounce of a sinker at the end of fifty yards of stretchy filament. They had paid to waste time in this fashion, and resisted efforts to keep them from it. Generally, no one wanted to hear about sonar.
“Mother Carey’s Chickens,” one of the men told a child when the lights drew dabchicks. They fluttered and pattered with their feet at the water’s surface, as if looking for something solid on which to rest. Their familiar mastery of air and water looked to be incompetence. The boy wanted them to land on deck, since the petrels seemed too weak to fly strongly. For ten minutes they made City hall out of the head-boat, pigeoning about on busy wings, frantic at failing to land on the water. Then, to prove they were no more drawn to the light than frightened of it, they lifted and petreled away into night. The world seemed full and busy, to the unseeing men who leaned out from their drift-boat. They felt they had gone deaf at a concert, blind in the market place.
Customers came out of nowhere themselves, to dabble not so adroitly about and then disappear in new, powerful automobiles. Storms they weathered never reduced their numbers, but only the Captain knew how to set his lures so they were drawn to the boat. Their competence lay elsewhere. He unhooked his daydream to get some ground mackerel and start a chum slick.
everything there is
about catching and eating
--spider spins her lines
Raise Your Hand (Child's Song)If you’re stupid but don’t know it, raise your hand If you’re stupid but don’t know it raise your hand. If you’re stupid, but don’t know it, your politics will show it. If you’re stupid, but don’t know it, raise your hand. (Just one, dear.) If you’re stupid, but won’t show it, raise your hand. If you’re stupid, but won’t show it, raise your hand. If you’re stupid, but won’t show it, don’t let anybody know it. If you’re stupid, but won’t show it, raise your hand. If you’re angry and you know it, raise your gun. If you’re angry and you know it, raise your gun. If you’re angry and you know it, let your bump stock show it. If you’re angry and you know it, raise your gun. (What a darling bayonet!) If you’re racist, and you know it, raise your sheet. If you’re racist, and you know it, raise your sheet. If you’re racist, and you know it, rest assured great God bestowed it. If you’re racist, and you know it, raise your sheet. If you’re KKK in secret, change your shoes. If you’re KKK in secret, change your shoes. If you’re KKK in secret, light-up sneakers make you leak it. If you’re KKK in secret, change your shoes. If you’re racist, but don’t know it, hold your nose. If you’re racist, but don’t know it, hold your nose. If you’re racist, but don’t know it, a saliva test will show it. If you’re racist, but don’t know it, hold your nose. It you’re a Nazi, proud to show it, raise some cain. It you’re a Nazi, proud to show it, raise some cain. It you’re a Nazi, proud to show it, tattoos let people know it. It you’re a Nazi, proud to show it, raise some cain. If your Nana was illegal, raise your hand. If your Pop-Pop was illegal, raise your hand. If the old folk weren’t legal, grab yourself an eagle. If one time your folks were foreign, raise your hand. If you love the Constitution, raise your hand. If you love the Constitution, raise your hand. If you love the Constitution, but you can’t stand evolution, If you love the Constitution, raise your hand. If abortion looks like murder, raise your gun. If abortion looks like murder, raise your gun. If abortion looks like murder, shooting doctors looks absurder. If abortion looks like murder, raise your gun. If women ought to know their place, then raise your hand. If women ought to know their place, then raise your hand. Women who don’t know their place deserve a smack right in the face. (Now, let’s look up “irony,” in the dictionary.) If women ought to know their place, then raise you hand. If you can’t say LGBTQ, raise your hand. If you can’t say LGBTQ, raise your hand. If you think that that’s one syllable, please grasp that it’s not willable. If you can’t say LGBTQ, raise your hand. FINALE (all together): If you’re stupid but don’t know it, raise your hand. If you’re stupid, but won’t show it, raise your hand. If you’re angry and you know it, let your bump stock show it. If you’re stupid but don’t know it, raise your hand. Tra-la! (presto fortissimo) |