Kit & Wally

  This appeared in The Listening Eye with the title "Kit Talks Back to Wally."

First Kit

If still, in spite of age and pain,
parental dust and winter rain,
love conquers all, or conquers some,
if by the grave, where love is dumb

and all young roses limp and wan,
the lovers pass, and, if they can,
disport themselves in sun on grass,
the time they cannot stop, they pass.

Else we were not. And here we are.
This is the backseat of the car
Young Andy hears behind. So prove
that what we are, we are for love;

and if you will not live with me
and be my love, then let us see
what temporary kisses do
to put death by, a breath or two.


Wally Replies

The Land of Nod is very nice,
but deportees can't live there twice,
not free like waves to come and go.
The sun departs, to let us know

it has its ups and downs. No kiss
can make it stand. We live with this
and die without. She whose embrace
extended youth and glozed with grace

day, night, and all, looks old. Poor you.
Comes noon, grass will forgo its dew.
And yet it grows. And covers all.
Your summer swears it will not fall.

If love came back, if love stood still,
if men loved long, though looks could kill,
I'd live with you, no caveat,
and be your love. Or maybe not.

Non Plussed Ultra

 

Something’s not right--the dog has too many legs,

The poet is rhyming punch with anaconda,

You in an iron mask, a gun in hand,

Thought balloons overhead. Alarming stuff

For those not yet acquainted with the dog,

Whose genial nature only wants to please.

A centipede for love. A friend in need.

But why not a sword, which better suits the mask,

If not the miniskirt, balloons so full,

They’re raining everywhere, the proper nouns

And action words. The poet is nonplussed.

Nevertheless, each sun must have its day

To shine on its constituents and tell

Its tale, or maybe that’s the comet, come

And gone, not to return, until next time.

And, no, conclusion has not come. Not yet.

Not while an aunt is upstairs rhyming fish

And threatening to wed the chest of drawers.

Something will come of this, something sublime,

Like peonies or chifforobes in flames.

News Break

  This appeared in The Poetry Bus.

Iffy, but rain more likely than disaster

Tonight. Disaster later in the week.

Volcanoes on the cities of the plain,

A flood and instability to follow

Cold, like the primal disengaging wind

Across the surface of unlighted skies,

Empty and without hope of being filled,

Expected, as is promised every year,

Delivered rarely. Make your reservations.

Eat first. Say ‘bye. Dress for adversity.

The cormorants are coming. They bring news

From Iowa: new prairies have been found

Studded with galleons, like golden nails

On inky beds. Wind freshening, the east

Surprised by dolphins. Three old men walked out

Of an abandoned mine in Agate, late

Last Tuesday morning, asking for a beer

And word of Good Queen Bess, fetters around

Their ankles. More on this if there is more.

Nostalgie Pour La Boue

  

Naive to think the upturned earth

Disgorged the spoils of the Spanish mains.

We’re landlocked here. For what they’re worth,

Wormcasts abound. Rewarded by rains,

Robins rejoice in booty, loot

They’re engineered both to digest

And to expect. With wormy fruit,

The unimaginative do best.

Tough to play pirate with these clumps.

Compress them into diamonds, sure--

I did that every day and proved

Mountains by increments were moved.

Nothing comes easy but the pure

Projected source of perfect dumps.

The Likely Lads

 This appeared in Life & Legends

Elegant we, the eidolon of eyes,
Superior to the threads we bear, the hope
Of parents or custodial trustees.
We are the ones on whom the trees shed leaves
And amber bugs; we are the likely lads
Who hear the bushes when they conversate.
For us the swans make valentines, the dogs
Balance their cans of beef heart on their noses.
Nobody knows us, records our pithy mots,
Or sees that we are flexing in our skins.
Never you mind.  The day advents when trolls
Will serve us lemonade in stainless steel
And maidens wish they weren't.   The days will come.

My Grant Application

 Another poem from the pre-Cretaceous era.  This one appeared in Plains Poetry Journal.

They asked me for a line or two, to show

what I could do, poetry-wise.  I gave them:

"Though snow-bound now, I knew the spring before";

"the silver periphrasis of the moon";

"Amo, amat: the pilgrims cry, 'So what?'"

But they were not impressed.  The Guggenheims

looked elsewhere for their beneficiaries.

I'd filled out every square on every form;

I even knew my mother's maiden name

and what the book after my next would be

called, if they ever gave me time to write it.

"Sorry," they said.  "The volume of our mail

precludes an individual response."

The One and Only Spring

  

Spring left a note. It is not coming back.

Another spring, impostor, may be here,

May look and sound and smell like spring, sincere,

Display the right credentials, have the knack

Of daffodil and cuckoo, but it won’t

Be spring. Which left. Which took its green away

And said it loved us, but it could not stay.

They say they are forever, but they don’t

Make promises, the crocus and the leaf,

Or mean to. By Be patient, they mean Grief

Comes in a wicker basket, every day.

Dinner At The Dog 'n' Suds

The devil at the Dog 'n' Suds was hot,

But he was down with that, and he took long
Views, eternal darkness, and blah blah blah.
There wasn’t much imagination blessed
By Heaven. Here, though, he found beer and red
Hots, which helped the hopeless to feel at home.
Nor was it such a bad world, fallen grit
And unarticulated anger. Back
At home a pit for every sin and points
Deducted. Here the dry winds ate away
The names of everything and everyone;
And at the last were rock and gray and mud.
Why, then, would he mind dinner at the Dog
And acid reflux for his angel food?

A Muse Bouche

  

Least of all scruples, failure to remove

The restless ant by well-shod squashing, will

Refrain from formicide, grammatically.

So said the Muse pro Forma, who declined

Explaining further. Comme d'habitude, of course.

Bestowing roses, all the asters gone,

She smiled my way and spat, which must be something.

I sang her "Autumn Leaves," but I said "Auden,"

And she dissolved, bequeathing a hill of ants

Shaped like a castle, right there on the rug.

"Remember when we all were friends," I said;

But ants don't laugh or break into applause.

If they were singing, none of it would rhyme,

All of them buzzed by unison. They're not.

The Poet Protection Program

  

    This appeared in Angle.

No more dactyls, never a dactyl, they

advised me. You must change your life. If not,

if you let on you know whose torso that

was hacked from, you're a goner. If you must,

be missed, then be prepared: you are a dead

poet, a name, your rep, anthologies

of what you said; and what you might have done,

you won't. You may observe the beggared moon,

the way it fits, entangled in the trees

midwinter sends at midnight. But say nothing.

I can write a different verse, a prose

of fits and starts. Hot taps, cold showers.

I'll bet I can do the sinuously mellifluous

periods, the byzantine gravity-free

construction of those whose libraries, like

their concubines, are kept for show, not use.

Formal gardens. Plumy tilth. I can be a

magpie daedalian artificer of crackerjack

miniatures, a head-lamped Faberge who

mines the thesaurus for uncut stunners and bodies

forth a facet for every season. I can do shopping

lists. 1 lb honey-cured bacon. 2 pkgs green beans

(frozen). Magical fruits, limp leeks, the nectarines

sent Hank J Jr in dreams as he associated the terrible

accident and dread vastation. Bran Flakes.

I tried it. Gave rhyme up. Pared. Mute, made all

my meters feet and inches. Read the backs

of jelly jars and fabric softeners.

Touched no one, no how. Celebrated love

with my mouth shut, like everybody else.

And moved. And moved again. I didn't say

where I was going. But they knew, who sent

an agent over with his standard contract

to stare at martial shadows, which I think

hide broken spondees. Or an anapest.

I shall wait here. The air is full of strange

motions and apparitions, all the ghosts

of rooms I shall not write in. I shoot blanks,

buckshot, wad-cutters, dum-dums. I have thrown

books through the windows. Let the bright sky in.

The Girl In The Red Honda

Knights fell a lot.  And there they lay,

Lumps on the grass or in the mud,
Their armor like a suit of clay,
Rescuing maidens, giving blood.
The dragons chuckled, and the maidens
Planted cherries in their gardens.

Cherries ripe, but very wrong
For knights encased. Whenas they ride,
They sing, but every note of song
Is lost to echoes deep inside.
The ladies listen, if they can
Desist from planting pits for man.

We leave our dragons in their caves.
We watch the maidens drive away.
The knights are cool, but agile thieves
Thrive in the distance. Dawns the day,
And knights are bold and old and gone,
Cherries ripe in the subtle dawn.