Foundation Myth

Leastwise, they said, they had a proper book,

With “thou” and “withal.” Under a fruity tree
They read and didn’t understand a thing.
She had her hair--her tresses, she was told;
He had the muscles God might give a goose,
Were He so minded. They thought they looked swell.
It rained, but not so they knew wet from warm.

One day the sun went elsewhere, and the leaves
Showed them no comfort. One day she was sick,
Of nothing, really, and then she was gone.
He blamed the varmints, critters in the dark
Who laughed at her and told repulsive jokes.
He said he would remember who she was
And what they did, but what they did was made

A part of where he left, and who she was
He told so many times that he forgot.

Casual Labor

Later they claimed they hadn't known the truth.
It might have been a train, a didgeridoo,
A kid bleating across a bottleneck,
And not a woman trying to break free.
Gods are capricious. When he let her go,
He hollered Boo! and farmers in their fields
Puckered up tight and drew their flocks in close.
The woman cried herself into a daze,
Humming and shaking, giving prescient birth
In 24 hours to a superstar
Who grew to his full self in a couple weeks,
Released the hounds, throttled a blatant beast,
Then took to the road, a casual laborer,
Beating up bachelors, just for fun, at night.

Please Take a Moment to Locate the Exits

King of the Night, he is.  He doesn’t like you.

He doesn’t like your backstory.  Your charm,

Like Bottom’s bottom, isn’t something special.

The mists of midnight blow away.  You stand

In the Aisle of Target, looking for your shoes

On shelves of mouthwash, rodent spray, and cans

Of 3-in-1.  King of the Night, he says,

“Wet cleanup on Aisle 7, where the lute

And zither sale  has just concluded.   Please

Exit the store, and, listen, don’t come back.”

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.

In for a Penny

In for a pound, the centaur died.

His rusted cage began to curl
Away from its anchors. Ants fried
On the concrete floor. That's a pearl

That was his eye, whose setting failed.
The better men and calmer bards
Have winkled out, have not been jailed,
Kings of their graven calling cards.

The mistress primps her painted bones.
The Greek is wrong and the Chinese
Opaque as Pocatello. Loans
Sustain the fingers as they freeze.

Off the wet page the hand-set words
Scarper. The night men clank and shift,
Marley in chains. From ill-kept birds
Onto the Thames the adverbs sift.

Motley Carew

This appeared in Iambs & Trochees.


As far as I know, no one knows,
When August leaves, and leaves the rose,
When leaves turn pale and fall, and fall
Replaces flesh with down, and all
Your fallen friends are raked away,
Who's going to go and who to stay.

Ask me to find where fall bestows,
Week after week, la vie en rose:
Where sun is weak and hope is faint
And even dawn would chill a saint,
It's sacked and set aside and waits,
Before cold comes, till cold abates.

Generations are each the same.
They sport; they sun; they look to blame,
On frosted fence, the smitten vine.
It will be their tale. Now a mine
Is set of seeds: without a sound,
It plots resistance underground.

Summer Blockbuster

Summer didn’t differ all that much from spring,

Not the first day. The sprinklers and the dogs,

The blossoms where the bees crawled, and the night

Which wasn’t quite the day because I saw

Less of myself, which didn’t bother me.

Then it grew hot. And windy just the same.

The tree of knowledge only bore dried fruit;

The columbine flourished, and the chiles made

Mad bombers of the wasps. A chickadee

Drank all the water in the collie’s bowl

And fluttered like a wiffleball. I mailed

My manuscript To Whom It May Concern,

No one yet having been; but this had heat,

A love triangle, scalene, sweat and skin.

In That Great Gettin'-Up Morning

They came in caravans, like mushy peas

Lined up on a table, stuff you wouldn't eat,
No, not for anything, not even if
You had to sit there till your plate was clean--
It was, but moving peas onto the wood
Surface, which doubled back globular green,
Didn't much count--and you couldn't go out,
So there you sat, and they came on in files
And filled the fields in rows, one after one,
As if for concert parking; but the songs,
Sweetest when never heard, made dead birds fly
And unseen eagles fall out of the clouds
Onto the roofs of Minis. As they sang,
The caravans, of John Brown's Body Wash
And Vengeance is A-Coming Like a Go-Go,
The smell of sacrifice, the trampled dust,
The blue smoke of electrics ill installed,
Rose over hills where harts skipped and the roe
Carried their heads like trophy wives and posed,
The ungulate mission. Psalms of praise abound.

Losing the Thread Count

The world is not asleep, though you may dream

It dreams of you.  It’s busy with the bus,

Running late, and a list of shepherd’s pie’s

Constituents.  It doesn’t even snore;

It doesn’t toss.  It turns a blinded eye

Half of the time. You’re looking for a mitzvah,

Kissed from the dark side, full of hugs and zzzs.

You get an email, Jewish Singles Hot

& Holy Hurry Hurry.  Now’s the time

To turn your hot cheek to the cool percale

And hope the dead don’t know what’s going on.

Tomorrow in a While

Tomorrow, or tomorrow in a while,

After you lay down secateurs and pause
To watch the housebirds swoop, and when you smile,
Thinking of what a wilderness it was,
This little eden, when the warmth of order
Makes of fatigue a friend, when you install
A sense of fence along the gravel border,
Carving out here and here and here from all,

Remember that it was not always so.
Change uproots comfort, stains, then shatters, glass,
Packs up a house in boxes, hands to weeds
Their lasting triumph. All disaster needs
For flowers to be overcome by grass
Is one small crack through which the wild can grow.

Surprise, Surprise

From a long time ago. This appeared in Poetry Ink.

They say that at the house right down the street,
the one looks much like ours, they ran a brothel.
Actually, a whorehouse is what they say,
a word that people like, when they can manage
to poke it somehow into the conversation.

I haven't pictured anyone who lived there,
although I've tried, no woman who might be
the siren of our cul-de-sac. The cops
led two kids and a chocolate lab away.
I hadn't seen a one of them before.

At my house we were busy with the closets--
you take this, no I want that--mementos
of incidents we couldn't quite remember,
except of you, young in your wedding dress.

Desert Island Discs

With nothing to eat but Kettle Crisps and Spam,

Salt on a salted sea, open always,

I floated along on the wreckage of a Spar,

Partly hydrogenated, like the waves.

What is this shore on which I’m beached? What are

These alte cocker spaniels doing here,

Beyond both bath and bed? I know the sound.

It’s 50s rock n roll up in the trees.

Chestnut is what I think, but I’m not sure.

I hope it lasts. And me. The saints preserve

Berry and Little Richard. Little I

Know of nesting among the spanielled crowd.

Never too late, doo-wop doo-wop, I pray.

Mr. Bones & Attendant Flights

I was thinking Bones, probably thinking
Like Henry. Happens sometimes. And I'm sure
A stewardess is falling, falling, now
A flight attendant, now a slight depression.
They talk back in patois. They have their ways.
They're violent and clinically unsound
And deader than a deaf door jamb. They're closed.
I think of them, though, waiting in the dark,
Collectedly insentient. Such bones
We use for soup, grow strong & tall 12 ways.

When I became a man, I took such bones,
Plucked free of noodles, cast them in the street,
And read my riddles, almost knew the truth,
Although a blue Imperial, false spare
& painted whitewalls, ran them down like dirt.

Spread Sheets

The cash alone was not enough.
It made the flagstone terrace slick
And all the shutters red and bright;
But consciences are black at night, 
And cash does not afford a light
When even sheets and spreads are rough.
The dead are still, and eke the quick.

Gelt not so much. The dead forgot,
The live forsworn: but in the dark,
Where they go on, but you would not,
You can't buy room. There is a lot
Of that in Zion Perfect Park,
Home to the absent. They were all
Live on the margins. Came the call.

Whither Fled?

I:

No, I will not plant this ground
With mace or betel, this a sound
And normal garden. Get thee hence.
I think I need a taller fence.

Me:
It is not normal thus to be
Enmired in normality.
Peas and squash. And butterbeans.
Petunias, maybe. What it means
Is you have died while standing up.
Might as well plant these, buttercup.

I:
No, take them back. I have my seeds,
And they sufficient to my needs.

Me:
Do they draw girls? Do dryads fling
Themselves about your trowel-y thing?
Do garden nymphs, with pansied skin,
Invite your stamened self within?
They do not feed on beans and peas,
Who court with pollen dancing bees.

I:
A pandar of the flower bed.
What kind of shit is this you spread?
I grow to eat. I eat to grow,
A bit of flower there for show,
Mere decoration. Here I till,
Repository of my will.

Me:
And what a way. Spirit will not
Indefinitely be forgot.
Plant coconut whilst still you can.
Vanilla saffron. Be a man.

I:
So I can watch them die and sink,
Mere bitter herbs who would not drink?
My soil's more fit for summer squash
And dirt for annelidic nosh.
I'll make my beauty out of use
And not descend to plant abuse.

Me:
Except for chewing. Your recruits
Salute you from their martialled roots.
Meantime the spirits all have fled,
Your gardens grown from gardens dead.
I fear your dull capacity.
Do grow this pekoe for your tea.

I:
My beets require service. Move.
Their lives need water more than love.

Me:
As the world turns, it turns through black
As well as brown. Here hide your eyes
With this.

I:
A lettuce-leaf. Surprise,
Surprise: you scorn the nutritive.

Me:
You breathe. I do not think you live.
You speak.

I:
I do not think you know
Where nymphs and vegetables go,
Together compost, likely lost,
And do not feel the common cost.

Wet Work

They are not of the state.  They homestead here
Privately, adjunct piddling field of corn
Too shiny to be spent on ethanol.
Deprived of pensions, with a family tree
Ruined by mountain pine beetles and burned,
Not for the fuel, neither for decoration,
Their saints declared fictitious, they accept
That they are spooks, discharged without a mandate
Or ammunition. Yet they hone their knives,
They oil their sheaths, in case the Lord should find
Them home at the last, stalked in their empty yards.
They scan reflexively. The gate is shut
Because it squeaks, as useful as a song
To keep raptors at large, repelling goons
And toothless hitmen, hired by the day.
Don't never write down nothing, they were taught,
Though mostly they ignore what they were told.

An Affection for Battered Objects

More duct tape. In his Weimar he cries out 

For his repair. The rents reach for the sky;
Mere tatters are not held by paperclips.
I had this elephant when I was young.
Look at him now. The light is sicklied o’er
With blinds, the last Venetian charity
This man performs in darkness. He knows if
You ask, but in between he is a boy,
The brightest of his class, a lower form
Than he has yet acknowledged. I had these pants—
Envy me, envy me. I think I heard
That this had happened once or twice before,
To Adam and Erasmus and a Doge
Desperate to recall flesh on demand.

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.

As Numberless As the Stars

Hagar didn’t care for the manchild much,

The one whose dam she wasn’t.  In the star-

Personable nighttime sky she reckoned

The number of descendants he’d been promised,

And every one an uninvited guest.

Me, I try to avoid the sin of counting.

It leads to lust and envy.  I have named

More women than I knew, and they are glad,

Or so they say, when they imagine me.

They think about the child who isn’t there,

The period they never missed, the pain

Promised them, that they passed on, and they smile

And smooth their hair and think about the days

When boys would gasp because they happened by.

Laird and His Manner

The word is out that Laird is back in town,
Or maybe not-—he doesn’t advertise.
Cagey as always, full of little bits
Of wisdom-lit and recipes and still
A handsome highwayman, he’s double belted
With bullets, bone-knobbed pliers, and a compass.
He sings too loudly, talks too loudly, eats
Peculiar combinations. He won’t lodge
With those who need him; he won’t go away,
Not before night. Or autumn. He makes rules
As need requires. Once he wouldn't budge
Until the last pin-oak leaf had detached.
One of us climbed the tree and shook it down,
Unable to face any more of Laird.

Tonight we wait for resurrection men.
We’re told the sod will open in the park,
And frontier mamas, babies dead of croup,
And gambling dudes in rotted vests will rise.
There are agnostics, certainly, but Laird,
He has his ways. Leastways, he keeps things warm.

Even the trees have changed since these were laid
In certainty of dark and dank. I shall
Fulfill some promise, Laird says, or I’ll bear
Witness to unfulfillment. There are new
Stones since then, most likely trucked in from Creede.
Do you believe in Everlasting Life?
He asks me. I do not. What I believe
Has not changed much since I was 17,
When I first said that absence was a gift.

There is no sound, except the trucks that leave.
The park is closed. The turf lies still. And Laird
Is nowhere you can find. He’s been and gone,
The cartilage of stories. What a waste,
The scent of pine borne past us on the breeze.

Sonnetina

A sort of summer cabaret
Performed by girls in little more
Than skin, just like the dress they wore
When they dropped in. A small hooray
From men with lawnmowers and shears,
Indrawn disdain from proximate wives,
Both lots of whom resume their lives,
Unaugmented by wishful tears.

Not girls in skin, not now, this late.
Good girls go by. Old ladies pass
This way at noon. They touch the grass
With shadow. They are gnarled of gait;
And yet without their clothes, within,
Concealed consent, they carry skin.

Active Spirits

We stowed our spirits underneath the bed,
To ripen in the dark. There will be bits
Of unexplained detritus on the necks
And bitter accents, something like a stain,
Floating on amber surfaces. Some day
They might be fit for use, oily on bright
October afternoons and nicely keen
When darkness undertakes our management,
But only if our lives go well. We trust
That chemistry will not betray the heart
Which counts upon her. There are still inert
Elements to be heard from and the sweet
Aftertaste of hydrangea leaves and mint
And complicated resins, close enough
To life to be electrified by chance.
The spirits might just walk, depart their glass
Panopticon and take to love and crime,
Go skulking through the streets. We'd see them turn
Unshaved faces away, ashamed to know
The jailers of their lightless infancy
And corkscrewed adolescence. We have turned
The bottles lately. Maybe we can drink
What we have brewed. Lord, we can hardly wait.

And Drift Away

There’s fire in the hole, but I have lost

The hard endeavor in the smoke and spark.

For whom and whence was written I knew once,

Boss hog gavotting just in front of death,

Illumination in the margin, sky

The color of Crayola never glimpsed

By god or inamorata. Have you seen

The hole I filled with powdered air and notes

Of sherry, Spanish flies, and cherubim?

I thought not. Let it burn. Maybe the ash,

On such hot air, will land on something green.

And the Last Lost Adit

Conceivable the bitter parts, the twa'

Derbies you never brought back home nor wore,
The spats unpurchased, only acted out
With objects made affectional by law.
The piles in which the birds Arabian
Nested during the months of cinnamon--
Them you never saw, the pellucid pools
Wherein begins the mighty Zamazon,
Crocodile-worshipped, head-huntered, and blue
Beyond the sapphires of Mozambique.
(Well, to be fair, you read about the last
In Newsweek, and the children made to serve
Dark lords with hand grenades and empty guns
On pain of death, both fort and dure. They're dead
And nothing like the poster of Seville
You bought in the Rive Right, as faded now
As that brocaded vest you used to wear
To absinthe parties, fond of spongy hearts.)
Still, you have read, the absent elephants
Of Pukkastan--they sparkle like the dew
And trumpet like a glee club in the heat
Of frond-oscura sun--may have been traced
To Adam's Lair, tickets for sale, online.

Alone in the Afterlife

At least the leaves are crispy, and they smell

Of cinnamon. Kick them aside, they float
Like butterflies and settle on the trees
Who held them last. There are no promises
Of stars beyond the stars I see. The fox
Rolls on the patio and shakes himself,
A Canis Minor. Everyone I know
Still loves me -- better, loves me now, at last,
At once. The fox trots back into the woods,
His little dance insouciant desire.
My coffee smells like it was made from leaves.