Ripe For Recruitment

 

Under the bridges, then, where can be found

Men lost, bootless, unready hands on fire
And hair they use as lockpicks. Or The Last
Piazza, where the contract killers meet
Their lawyers, to insert a venue clause
And limits on assignability.
Down by the tracks, it's far too popular,
Crowded with scads of housewife-realtors
Who need time off for Botox and mojitos.
The Polo Club will take an application,
But not call back. And Kitty's 24
Prefers you dazed, emetic but aroused.
Or there's the crossroads. Sandwiches and smokes
Purchase apparent assent. Fruition is
Another matter: these are not the deans
Of Mayhem College; often they forget
Objectives, falling asleep on wiry doormats
Stamped with cardinals and black-capped chickadees,
Right at their victim's feet. Such tasseled shoes.
Nothing says loving like a drunken bum
Sprawled at the doorstep, hunting knife in hand,
Asking, if kicked, for dollar bills and beer.
Try beneath bridges. Covered in newsprint there,
Soldiers with stories, drumheads fast asleep,
Forage for excess, settle for skinny sweets.

Bardolatry

 

There at the Federal Courthouse they love Shakespeare.

They quote him often, and they quote him wrong.

“The quality of mercy is not stained,”

A PD said. “This kingdom is no horse,”

A prosecutor pled. “In every hamlet

They know the great clichés.” I have an itch

To stand and rectify, but I do not,

Suspecting that the local lockup holds

Good friends to friends of bards. The judge looks down,

His lifetime tenure harbored in his gut,

And quotes, “Victims have died. Why, even worms

May have their day and turn. But not for love.”

It’s hard to argue with a thought like that.

I don’t know any worms who disagree.

Decomposition

 

Scraping away their sod, you find--

The time-intoxicated dirt,
Rich in polysyllabic orts
And nutrients, like red roe deer
And tallow chandlers--roots and bones.
We have those here. Around a shrew's
Skull you can see the withy threads
Of something growing somewhere else.
Our soil is fed by little songs
Of composition: Here lies one
Whose name was never writ at all,
Genius and species, gone to seed.

Civis Romanus Sum

 

            This appeared in Plainsongs.

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.

Where Autumn Succeeds

Alder by day, by night the sort of wood

Rubs up against the awning in your sleep,
Good for nothing, except to take up space
Otherwise occupied by fungal gnomes
And fey minutiae sharing golden worms,
It has its dignity. Comets announce
A change of almanacs, a column more
For bloggers who keep track. While children sleep,
Meteors fall on empty fields, supplant
The local germs and breed a race of clear
Benign progenitors of etiquette.
This drops a couple leaves and calls it quits.

The genealogy of accidents
Is difficult: we trace a tangled tree
Back past a pleasant baron, out for larks,
Who never gave a by-blow any name,
And what do we know, who only wedlock know?
The leaf exchanges its petiole for dirt
And is what fed its fruit, itself its self.
Meanwhile, the awning, all percussionist,
Sends a princess her pizzicato dreams
Of ponies, pirates, chaste droits du seigneur,
Exploding firebirds, and the unborn.

Dawn Over Trees

 

        from These Denver Odes

Dawn over trees, over roofs

over jogging dogs, toting their own leashes.

Dawn over coeds in too few clothes

for the chill.

Dawn departs quickly,  Affairs

called to conclusion, sunlight's gold coercion,

coffee perked, forecast scanned, all the scores

doublechecked.

I have immotile longings,

the dying semen announces to the sheets.

I have it in me to be no one,

to make new

none. Percale covers it all.

Dawn is gone.  Late runners occupy highways,

their bunched lovers'-knots trained to forget.

Dreams of flesh.

The Books of the Dead

     for Stuart James

Jesus, Stuart, look
What we have come to, thick
And tired, brought to book,
Brought to ground, and sick
With authors. I had read
Every single one—
Recited them in bed
And taught them to my son.
Now they look away.
It’s just as they had said,
They never meant to stay.
Jesus, they’re all dead.