Raising Expectations

Given some rope, they've torn the statues down

To piss on legendary heads, the groins
Bedecked in amaryllis and ablaze.
(Who would have guessed that amaryllis burns,
And colorfully?) The shoppers fill their carts
With freebies. (Who'd have guessed they wanted phones
Far more than sandwiches?) The songs they sing
Are short on lyric wordplay, long on scat.
We made no plans to emigrate, but have
Our havens in the hinterlands, where treats
Are plastic shoes on Sundays, where delight
Is puddings made of pigs and doughty men
Pray to the forest just because it's there.
(Who knew that gods had green cards or that wolves
Wanted our wives for bon-bons in the smoke?)

Travelling Exhibition

appeared in The Shit Creek Review

Room by room they packed up the museum.
They filled the armored suits with porcelain,
The urns with lesser urns. They wrapped the busts
In bubble paper, squeezing now and then
Mini-explosions, just for fun, like Queen
Victoria's little wars. The paintings posed
A problem. Smaller ones in plastic sacks,
That would just do; but 19th-century
Gigantists--lacking room enough and twine,
Necessity made them inverts, hauled them out,
Hoping for fair and fine. It took a while.
The Judgement of Solomon, a red and gold
Simeon Smythe, took 12 old men to tote,
Curators with post-docs and 3 rosettes
Amongst them. When they propped the painting back
Against the mini-van to rest, it glowed.
A minion in the right foreground held out
A scimitar, prepared to bisect babes
On the command. One of the old men said,
Where is a minion where you really need one?
They left a head of Nero on the roof.
It sneered and skittered as they took the turn.