Civis Romanus Sum

The immigration man will let you through
Because you're white and smell okay, but not
So Customs, who keeps profiles on a lot
Of funny types, including some like you.
You will feel funny, if he wants you to.
You'll act as though your Henry James were hot.
That biro is suspicious. You forgot
All that old stuff, which looks like something new

When undeclared. So make a speech: I deal
In artifacts of the mind. I'm odd. I write
At painful and eccentric times of night.
I smuggle into books a way to feel.
I bear impediments of no appeal.
I am a citizen. I transport light.

The True Meaning of Christmas

Can we expect the box of books to come,
Pat by Twelfth Night and just in time to save
The meaning of Christmas from The Tartar Kings,
The Merovingian Mayors, and The Last
Of the Mohican Princesses in a brief
Deerskin corset, stiletto moccasins,
And arrows Nessus's poison painted pink?
Lebkuchen while we wait. You watch the door.
The FedEx guy's already late. He stopped,
I'll bet you anything, to sneak a peek
At Lord Jim on the Road to Mandalay.
He's cracked the spine of Christmas, Baby J
And paper, bound to tell the death of kings,
The sport of lepers calling round the world,
The time is right for reading in the street,
And we are dead and dying for a word.

Noel, Noelle

As I wrote here in April, 2008, I found this poem in a drawer a while back. I don't remember when I wrote it, but it must have been a long, long time ago. It's pleasant to observe that my facility with blank verse has improved: this seems stiff to me, and the blank verse I write now is more limber--it can do tricks up on the balance beam that this can't. On the other hand, I'm also pleased to find "Under the snow the dead are staying dead/again this year," lines I've often quoted without remembering that I was the one who wrote them. And "eponymous" found another, better home in "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard."



You claim that you live in Montana, somewhere
undisclosed but big, since it is Montana,
with dogs of course, under eponymous
big skies. It may be like The Ponderosa.
It may be just a little 50's house,
brick and right angles, all the rooms too small
for all the children's scheduled occupation.

Regardless, this is where you claim to be,
vacuuming dogs, shampooing your fiancé,
writing good prose, and waiting for the eve
of someone's savior's birth to change your world.
The eve will come, if not the savior.
Under the snow the dead are staying dead
again this year. Achieving the right tone

to talk about the still dead dead would tax
the festive certitude of anyone.
Your coming roster of visiting kin,
expecting nogs and cakes, presents and pizza,
won't want to hear about your doubts. They know
what Santa does and what he never says.
They like a creche. They like a mistletoe

above their heads, a Baldur's dart. You can
foretell what's coming, you and absent friends,
alone in your fashed kitchen, late late night,
toasting a yule, whatever yules may be.
The dogs asleep and snoring, dreaming dog,
you in your underwear and hoisting bourbon,
know what you know and not a nickel more.

I Thought of Mr Pickwick

Just then the phone rang. It was Tiny Tim,
Tiptoeing through the tulips for a goose
The size of Uncle Scrooge. He had a heart
As big as individual distress
In every house and hovel. He had news
Of trials and sponging houses, and his dad
Had totted up the reckoning again.
I thought of Mr Pickwick, who redeemed
A condominium in Venice Beach,
Where all the sunny blondes were wearing smiles
For Michaelmas. He beamed benignantly.
Remember Mr Fezziwig? he asked.
His claret was to die for, and he sent
Jacktars around the globe and back again.
He died in chains and walked the streets at night.

Empty praise

I had an email yesterday from a magazine which thanked me for my "awesome submission," then rejected it. I felt cheated. Will all the poems the magazine accepted be even awesome-er? Wouldn't it have been better if the note had said, "Nice try. Write us again when you have something good to offer"?

Old Kings and Things

Ignominy thwarts both
King Cyrus and his cook,
Whose name was Xx3.
I know, I know, you took

King Cyrus 101
and learned him in detail.
You had him for your tea.
You bought his socks on sale.

His bedpan holds your soup.
His cook is dust and hair
And someone’s sidewalk salt
And someone’s Dutch au pair.

Your Cyrus is an art.
His cook is a disguise.
It rains their blood and bones,
And slaves fall from the skies,

And children in their beds
Cootch up to ancient kings.
Old dogs on counterpanes
Bark at transparent things.

The Goön Folk

Their pilgrimage began before the light,
Before the squabbles of the little birds
Pilgrims forswore. And they were going where?
To where the road concluded. Since this was
Their latter days, that just might mean the sea,
The culmination, surely, of strange strands,
Pounding a plainsong once, twice, dot, dot, dot.
They’d rather it would end against a wall
Invisible to those of little faith,
Studded with jasper, joined without a joint,
And crowned with fire or with Dagon’s roc
In chains, something spectacular, without
Curios at the exit, something none
Knew substantives sufficient for. They brought
A change of shirt, a charger for the phone,
And water double-filtered to remove
Impurities. They sang car tunes without
The words, not all the words. They thought they’d left
The word behind, the first rest stop enclosed
By plastic fence. The map said, You Aren’t There.

The Pisan Pantos

The rain distorts my make-up, blue
The color of my hair and eyes.
(My nose is red, my heart is green.)
A scenist has prepared the skies
Ingeniously. I’ve come into
My own here--Look! A human bean,

A roly-poly in a cage,
The Widow Twanky on her walk,
Wishing the weeds would grow so high,
I could ascend my private stalk
And put all heathen in a rage.
This dragonfly my private eye:

He boos and hisses, laughs and cheers
As I perform the buck-and-wing,
Magic to find the state a spine,
Alchemy in chansons I sing.
I hope the ingenue appears
To change my homemade ink to wine,

To animate imagined books,
A smell of candy from the crowd.
This fence is higher than my art.
The roly-poly laughs so loud,
Guards come a-runnng, Demos looks,
And here is where my poems start.