Congress is Happier Than Your Hand

1.

It isn’t death, whatever princes say,
Not when I dreamed of sandwiches, and kites
Fell on us all, like panicked meteors,
Leaving us naked at the first alarm.
These sheets don’t wind. These covers aren’t for keeps.

2.
Conceive of dirt as history, says Prince.
If you don’t dust, you’re worth a Ph.D.
In Native Studies: who you were Way Back,
Who was the Who before you were, and who
Taught grease stains how to kiss my lady’s hand.
It isn’t Alexander in a bung,
Not necessarily, but someone’s some
Distance away now, never regretful, made
A building block, like calcium or beets.
Don’t sweep: it might be love. It might be sense
Of history in Bag Type H, sucked up.

3.
We are not quite immune. This ham was once
A pig among his peers, a Gadarene,
Alliteration challenged, equaller;
And now a sandwich of most perfect gist,
Chap-fallen, cheesy. We shall all be toast.
If better not to be done, then pourquoi
Are pillows only broad enough for heads
Solus and undistinguished in the dark,
Though full of these dramatic congresses
With faces blurred? You know it isn’t death.

Born Under Our Bed Sign

Under my sign are born the hard of hearing,

The hard of heart, the hard-up double-clutched
Investigative annalists. We act
Out conversations with ourselves, until
We’ve polished every line to silken splendor,
And who cares if they never happen? Lust
Is academic, omnipresent, pent,
But not exactly personal. A tale,
Worth more than actuality, is told
In Roman periods, by steel dip pen,
To pages not intended to be read.
That is my sign, not her sign. Where she walks,
Firelilies blossom and bombs explode
In anthills underneath the path. The toll
Is glorious among the hoplites. Drones
Behead themselves in homage; cynics rise
Buck-naked from their tubs and bow. She lies
Like rivers flow, by nature. She observes
The holidays of vegetable dyes,
The saint-days of the unredeemed, the last
Rites of Pompeii. The birds all wish they were
Self basting in her wake. They know the signs.

An Ad for Astra

To what are we fastened, luv,

As if you didn't know?
A woolly mastodon of pain
With braces on, for show.

A dancing clam, a rhyming slug,
A logarithmic cow.
Oh, set your sights on shiny stars
By night, by God. But how?

I think not, luv. The rain it rains
On aching necks and backs.
And what will come will come. For now
You'd better not relax.

The Norman Inquest

     This appeared in Plainsong.

King Harold had an arrow in his eye,

Which made his princeps difficult and gauche.

It bumped the mirror when he tried to shave

And hung up on his undershirt. His thralls

And churls inclined to sniggers as he passed—

Those bobbing feathers. Polity declined.

He bore sharp pain, like megrims, and he'd miss

The stirrups, if they'd been invented yet

(1066--he couldn't quite recall

If Saddler had made stirrups, though Clyde's Dale

Was large as life), and distance was too hard

To calibrate--he fell into a well

And had to be winched back up like a bucket,

A frog stuck in his jerkin. And the rot,

Decomposition in his nether parts:

How difficult to saunter like a king.

Then language withered like a hag-hexed crop.

Most third-declension verbs were hard to follow,

All Norman now, as if the iron head

Had tweaked all 3 bones in his inner ear

And no more freemen could decline a king

And field was just as hard as fealty.

  

But no tote bags

I am considering a pledge drive for RHEpoems.blogspot.com. The goal would be to raise readers, not money.  Perhaps I could raise some minor Cavalier poets, although they're probably afflicted with I'll Read One of Yours, If You'll Read One of Mine Syndrome, and theirs are all about ale and girdles.

Ideal for Ferns

Last time I went out on the town they didn’t

Just rent my room or box my books downstairs,
Pamper a pauper’s feet with my worn socks,
Or give my parka to a banker’s brat.
They sold my dog. They shot my desk. They dialed
My radio to Sister Carmen Todd,
The Bride of Pop. My mom declared me dead.
“He’s dead,” she said. “I do declare.” They made
My car a planter: somehow, they observed,
A hatchback is ideal for ferns. They mist
The ferns. They painted my pine bedstead white
And hung some Jesus where I used to sleep.
His eyes will track you if you try to rest
There now, but no one will. They mist their ferns.
The air must turn the color of balloons.

The Hesperides, Such As They Are

The Raintown Review for this one.

Here there are no rough winds, and here no snow
Disturbs construction: twig by twig they nest,
The birds of summer. Here we have a plan
For wasting time, not spending it; the gold
And lilac spring dissolves in pools so brief,
The grass absorbs them like a sponge. We sing
Like blackbirds; but without the gift of song,
Soon forgetting what we were singing of.
Our trees are wrapping pits in juice and flesh,
Dressing them up for going underground,
Absent of light, flowering memory,
Ready to take one for the common good.
Within the hedge our fledglings ask, How long?
And even birds don’t dare to say, Forever.

Not Far Behind

Spring on the horizon, the nightbird says.

I’m here, you know, not going anywhere.
It’s in the offing, spring is. Blackwing says,
We’re here for the duration. Longtemps is
Our middle name. Now bring the car around.
We’ll soon fill it with primroses and peepers.
We feed when you’re asleep, the jetblack says,
And never seem to get enough to eat.

When you just can't get enough

You know, if my posts here don't suffice to fill you up, you can find more of me on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/richard.epstein.3) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/rhepstein1), even, rather more infrequently, on Ello (https://ello.co/rhepstein).  But if you are pressed for time (or not all that interested), it's the poems which really matter.

A Trick of Perspective

This appeared, with very slight differences, in The Melic Review.

We haven’t an excuse. Across the black
Perspective gimmick of the bay the boats
Are barely visible, yet here we are,
Watching and squinting, as though we were ernes
On holiday. (Ernes live in puzzle books,
A figment of the crossword, curtly vowelled.)
We do not see the fish beneath the white
And roiling surface, nor the lords who live
Over the curvature. (Borneo is
Speculative: though editors assert
It ought to be Brittanicaed, you can’t
Prove that by me.) Out here our stars are shaped
To sell cold drinks. Our room begins to sound
Like home, but with more towels. (There is a robe,
But we are going to dis-. We can’t afford
The cost of clothes, not with a moon like that.)
On such a night as this Jessica changed
Her faith for ducats. Our Discover card
Embraces lands beyond the curvature
Of thigh, where light and heat both are induced
By friction. And the dolphins leap to light.

Security at an Exhibition

We stand where we are stood, assigned to fill

A vacuum till the posh begetters come.
Trust us for that. The portraits say their names,
Whereas our labels are not blessed with art
Or opulence. From pockets we spill keys
And gummi bears and Zippos from the war,
Absent the ruffs and velvet hats. Our skies
Are free of putti, pennies in a jar
Betray no pudgy burgher here. We stare,
But are not scanned. We are the dragons now,
Extant beyond the borders of the frame;
And look at this one, gilt and dark and grime:
The demigods are falling from the trees
Like caterpillars, waiting for the change.

The Good Die Young

The good die young. Will you not try

To be good temporarily?

Epstein's Constant

This also appeared in Orbis.

I’ll call this Epstein’s Constant.  It implies

the angle of the vision from the man.

It imports paraendrocrinology

into aesthetics via sense of touch.

It makes all macroeconomics just.

By Epstein’s Constant all girls understand

all boys, and boys occasionally know

something about one girl, if they apply

themselves.  And Epstein’s Constant.  When you view

the stars through Epstein’s Constant on clear nights,

Magellan’s Cloud will match both Decalogue

And the Decameron in tone and luster,

measured against whatever scale you like.

It never changes. (I said it was constant.)

It knows no history and yet applies

To what your mother told your father you

told your teacher.  Although it will not bend,

applied to love it usually finds

the path most sinuous between two points.

Dead Grandpa, He Dead

from The Complete Dead Grandpa

Goose, gander, ducat, duchess, dead dead dead,
and nothing you can say will bring me back,
nor cumulo-nimbus fleece floating atone
for birthday candles blown or naked gifts
on disco-lit parquet. Dead. Dead is croaked,
frogs on a spit, Achilles in the pit,
and ordinary Me blue in the face,
a little while at least. The high-toned art,
allusive and annoying, leaves me cold.
I'd rather be a butcher in Portales
than talked about in Paradise, where odes
are picayune accomplices of dirt.