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.

Algernon Swinburne Dreams Of Going Out

 This appeared in Angle.

The king is dead. Oh, no, he's not. He's resting,

What with his busy week, dissolving monks

And roasting papists with a garlic clove

And celery stalk apiece. He raised the tax

On gingham. His monopoly on dust,

More valuable than mail, he auctioned off

to the new Chancellor of the Campanile.

The belles, the belles: they're gathering out front,

Leaning against portcullis rails, in wigs

As high as cotton candy and as pink.

Teased and tormented in the cages above

The gate, the entertainment, curled like shrimp,

Moans, and the would-be guests whistle and stomp.

The ball begins with Taffelmusik. Bits

Of quarter-note-shaped ice bob in the punch

Just long enough to clarify the king's

Intentions: he would dip the band in tar,

The perfect pitch a torch unto the blind,

And all be spared who buy a savings bond.

Not In The House

 

The galleries of art

Keep paintings far apart

From dining nook and bath.

Jupiter's splendid wrath,

The tart's décolletage,

The twilight of the Raj—

Too vain for your garage,

They loom there on the wall,

Silent gilt, grown small.

King of the Old Frontier

 I have not written much about the Fathers,

Davy Crockett and The Cowboy G-Men,

Those on whom my constitution’s based,

University City and all the state

Houses of Colorado. They left trails

Which I have managed to convert to ruts,

The roots of routes, I almost said, which might

Demonstrate all you need to know. I can

Remember Alamo Park, an old and staid

Neighborhood with a centerpiece of fleurs.

It is still there, though I am not. This happens

A lot these days. There is somewhere a box,

Green and rectangular, if I had to had to guess,

Which holds the GOATS, who once were kids, which saves

Cobwebbed issues in colored ink, which waits

For No Man, who is never going to come.

Occupy Christmas

 

That was some night.  The world went black.

We never got our feelings back
Below the waist. The frost descended.
All of the stars were apprehended,

But not by us. The cars refused
The roads. The birds of prey, confused,
Flew into clouds, and there they stayed.
The householders were sore afraid.

Since mangers would be closed this year,
A sensible wise man would appear
On other stages, baggy pantsed.
And all the stars in Heaven danced.

Body Count

The average of all the dead was 6—

Hundreds of infants and some fogies. Mix

In young adults, a couple spawning males,

And do the math. Disaster never fails

To be absorbed by numbers. Science saves

And sanitizes. Just count up the graves.

Eppur Si Muove

My fellow Americans, I come rehearsed

with lies. I have prepared a tableful
of whoppers for you; if they are consumed,
the presents of your enemies are yours.

Knowledge is numbing. No one talks about
the right and muscle of the full deception.
I bring you what-you-will: turn it around,
read it upside down. It still will be true.

I've decorated it with cloth rosettes.
I've loaded every rift with anecdotes
for which there is no cure. I'll make you sick
with longing never to be undeceived.

The earth is round. The earth is flat. It swings,
it jitterbugs beneath a smoky heaven.
The angels shimmy to be heard at last.
God is because we say so, and he moves

funky, but we are sutured to the spot
provided, swaying, cervically up.
The world is waltzing very, very slowly:
we are because we say so, but we move.

Pleasure Comes In

  

     from These Denver Odes

Pleasure comes in short supply,
grace and favor, bit by bit.
Who promises contrariwise
tells innocently blue-eyed lies,
believing she's believing it,
Philpot. Celinda made me cry

that once, but that was yonks ago.
Today I merely miss some sleep.
If this one tells you you are strong,
and she will love both sweet and long,
that little bit of pride you keep?
Kiss it goodbye. I ought to know.

Ruly, Really

 

You are my sunshine. Break of day,

You rise in the east and move across

The house, setting your sites to match.

Night spreads without a sense of loss.

Though light and heat both fade away,

And parallel lines don't care to meet,

We stoke our own invested heat.

Don't tell me nothing gold can stay.

Don't say a word. Let's wish and watch.

The Autumn of Troy

  

Imagine growing up in Troy,

N.Y., and Helen is your name.

You have no choice, obliged to find

A Menelaus right next door,

Or who'd be spurned? A Joe? A Ted?

I don't think so. In Paris, Mo.,

Abscond with some old mogul's wife,

Hide her behind your stuccoed walls,

Crouching for years and years and years,

Until she has grown hoarse with scorn,

All attitude? The men of Troy

Hector their bonne wives endlessly,

The voice of Nestor wafting in.

This House No Longer

  This appeared in Poetry Proper.

This is a house without chalcedony

Or Andamooka opals, and it deems

Its seizure insecure. Hawks veer away

To overfly somebody else's house.

This house is what it is, is what it is.

You want to meet us? We share a single bath,

Not privacy. Our calendar misquotes

In scarlet letters Make your life sublime

Use Rapid Sands. We never leave the room

For grave emergencies. Our motto is

A tramp stamp on the lady of the house,

Her fine embroidered sacroiliac,

Hunker Down, which seems not to overstate,

And understatement is a way of life.

Why, there is a bone here after all; a mole

Has left his skull, a warrior's helmet toy,

For Spike to crunch and play with. This is a house

Without a porphyry tub or sisal strings

To anchor it, and someday it will leave.

A Babble of Green Fields

 

County after county,

green field after rain,

land of good and plenty,

filling in the rain—

who knows what the people,
blessed by county airs,
do to keep them simple?
Up the wooden stairs,

they are what they should be,
common-like and poor.
Of the woodlands woody,
moorish of the moor.

We of course admire
simple little lives.
Bless us, if we spare
a glance for graves and wives,

prior to our mansion
flats and massage showers.
Older than our fashion,
these the little hours

and ceremonies lost,
like counties in the rain.
Green fields like a ghost,
passed and passed again.