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.