What Do The Old Men Say?

 

What do they mean, who say
The world has gone awry?
The trees leave every day.
I saw them in July,

As green as the heart of man.
I see men stiffly clad,
Colored in gray and tan,
Calling our summer bad

For insufficient shade,
Damning our leaves as small,
Making their wrath a blade,
Hurrying us to fall.

If only our lives were sad,
If we saw that we had
Outlasted our summer stay,
They'd happily love us all
And tidy us away.

Weight Watchers

 

Let them eat cake.

Their teeth will break.

Let them eat bread.

They still will be dead.

They might not eat.

Their dust will be sweet.

Just ask the germs

Inside the worms.

Craftsmen

 

The general says, This is caviare,

Nor am I out of it. Inside the shed

The power tools warm to themselves. They drill

And flatten on the notion that the meek

Outnumber nails and must be driven home,

A smell of revolution in the air,

Like cuts that will not clot, like missing men

Who families have given up and watch

Ice-skating shows in April. It is June.

We have a chance, the general opines,

If taken at the tide, and he retreats.

The skater falls. She bounces up, her sequins

Prisms on a revolving stage of light.

A mitre saw is humming in the shed.

The Shores of Light

               This appeared in Angle.

When on the tepid shore

Of the great and greasy lake,
We greet each other, which
Weapon will you take?

Reproach is never failing,
Forgiveness always new.
I fear the most no light
Dawning between us two,

No pain of recognition,
Nor shock grown frail and old;
But bitter light extinguished,
Unspecified and cold.

When Dis Is Done

 

Nobody thinks about Persephone

That much, though here she is, a normal girl,
Stolen away and raped in Hell by Hades,
Betrayed by fruit, although her mother is
The goddess of breakfast cereal and toast,
Dazed, dim, and bleeding in a sooty place
Even the iron heroes couldn't stomach.
6 months off for good behavior, and 6
Back, was the best deal even Zeus could cut,
And you tell me you have no time to think
Of Proserpine (you see, even the name
Is changing), and the innocent's allowed
A line and a half of Milton, which is more,
My dear, than you and I are due for Hell,
And we were not that innocent, besides.

The Woods Within

 

In woods within the city

The woods pretend to be

More than merely pretty

And decorously twee.

We have an owl and chipmunks

And squirrels and a fox

And almost massive tree trunks.

Mocha Man's two blocks

Away. Falafel King

And Conoco sustain

The needs of those who bring

Both brunch and hope, if rain

Muddies not the footpath

and wetteth not their feet.

The titmice, in mild wrath,

Fall silent, lest they meet

The programmers, the lawyers,

The botanists in clogs,

and eco-tested warriors

With large and tubby dogs.