Sonnetina

A sort of summer cabaret
Performed by girls in little more
Than skin, just like the dress they wore
When they dropped in. A small hooray
From men with lawnmowers and shears,
Indrawn disdain from proximate wives,
Both lots of whom resume their lives,
Unaugmented by wishful tears.

Not girls in skin, not now, this late.
Good girls go by. Old ladies pass
This way at noon. They touch the grass
With shadow. They are gnarled of gait;
And yet without their clothes, within,
Concealed consent, they carry skin.

Active Spirits

We stowed our spirits underneath the bed,
To ripen in the dark. There will be bits
Of unexplained detritus on the necks
And bitter accents, something like a stain,
Floating on amber surfaces. Some day
They might be fit for use, oily on bright
October afternoons and nicely keen
When darkness undertakes our management,
But only if our lives go well. We trust
That chemistry will not betray the heart
Which counts upon her. There are still inert
Elements to be heard from and the sweet
Aftertaste of hydrangea leaves and mint
And complicated resins, close enough
To life to be electrified by chance.
The spirits might just walk, depart their glass
Panopticon and take to love and crime,
Go skulking through the streets. We'd see them turn
Unshaved faces away, ashamed to know
The jailers of their lightless infancy
And corkscrewed adolescence. We have turned
The bottles lately. Maybe we can drink
What we have brewed. Lord, we can hardly wait.

And Drift Away

There’s fire in the hole, but I have lost

The hard endeavor in the smoke and spark.

For whom and whence was written I knew once,

Boss hog gavotting just in front of death,

Illumination in the margin, sky

The color of Crayola never glimpsed

By god or inamorata. Have you seen

The hole I filled with powdered air and notes

Of sherry, Spanish flies, and cherubim?

I thought not. Let it burn. Maybe the ash,

On such hot air, will land on something green.

And the Last Lost Adit

Conceivable the bitter parts, the twa'

Derbies you never brought back home nor wore,
The spats unpurchased, only acted out
With objects made affectional by law.
The piles in which the birds Arabian
Nested during the months of cinnamon--
Them you never saw, the pellucid pools
Wherein begins the mighty Zamazon,
Crocodile-worshipped, head-huntered, and blue
Beyond the sapphires of Mozambique.
(Well, to be fair, you read about the last
In Newsweek, and the children made to serve
Dark lords with hand grenades and empty guns
On pain of death, both fort and dure. They're dead
And nothing like the poster of Seville
You bought in the Rive Right, as faded now
As that brocaded vest you used to wear
To absinthe parties, fond of spongy hearts.)
Still, you have read, the absent elephants
Of Pukkastan--they sparkle like the dew
And trumpet like a glee club in the heat
Of frond-oscura sun--may have been traced
To Adam's Lair, tickets for sale, online.

Alone in the Afterlife

At least the leaves are crispy, and they smell

Of cinnamon. Kick them aside, they float
Like butterflies and settle on the trees
Who held them last. There are no promises
Of stars beyond the stars I see. The fox
Rolls on the patio and shakes himself,
A Canis Minor. Everyone I know
Still loves me -- better, loves me now, at last,
At once. The fox trots back into the woods,
His little dance insouciant desire.
My coffee smells like it was made from leaves.

Odysseus Leaves the 7-11

Odysseus stopped, turned to the monitor
The clerk was watching. “Odysseus,” she cried,
The black Calypso, as she wrapped her legs
Around the Italian claiming he was he.
“Damn all these pronouns!” said the wily hero.
“Say what?” the clerk enquired, with what passed
For courtesy among a swordless breed.

His shipmates looked to have been coifed by nymphs,
Or Ganymede, maybe. A talking pig appeared.
“Some pig,” said Circe. “All you guys are swine,”
The wired clerk said. Odysseus believed
The gods who sent him here did not make change,
Except for sport. He thought Penelope
Entitled to a break from his attentions.
“Some pig,” she told him, just the other day.

A rosy-fingered Dawn was fingering
The donuts filled with wine-dark jelly, hoping
He’d speak to her. She was prepared to boil
His clothes and give him shelter. No man looked
Past her like that; crafty Odysseus,
Accustomed to being No-man, took his change,
His Lotto ticket, and his Diet Fresca,
And thrust into the night, seeking a storm.

A Poem Unrequested

The mice knew first, the crickets and the small
Wrens, who muted their music in respect.

The Bigguns had no reason to expect
A coming, first or second, so they all

Went to the circus, laundry, or the mall,

To buy some smoke detectors could detect.

And then they bought a family to protect.

The beetles sang, We shan't shut up till Fall.

Somewhere the news was posted. In a paper

Of general circulation, someone read:

Death shall have no dominion, being dead;

But he was only someone, not a shaper

Of big opinion. Big opinion heard

Interruption and said, Shut up that bird.

Winter Leaves

This appeared in Poetry Proper 3.

Look, have I mentioned how the winter leaves
Resemble bronze? That statue of a tree,
It is a tree. The art of standing still,
Of keeping still till everyone forgets
The name you had when swords were haute couture,
When bronze was for an age, and dryads slept
With bark for blankets, that you still possess.
Have I not watered you when it was dry
And promised that the birds would love you, too?
Some day a god will build his nest from hair
He took as a trophy. Some day he will kiss
Confusion into legs and roots, some day;
And men will cut themselves on winter leaves
And swear eternal love, day after day.

The Sparrows' Fall

from These Denver Odes


At this week's yard sale
sparrows swap husks and hulls,
dry, but not amusing,
and they soon move on.

Next door's seed is new,
the last word in millet.
They beat each other up,
first doing no harm.

They will return. Ice
will dam their best bedrooms;
the cold will not comfort
their minuscule down:

and I'll fill their bath
regularly with hot
water, regularly
frozen in seconds.

A hard little life,
sparrows'. Precarious
hearts, what can they recall?
Listen how they sing.

Dumb little bastards.
Dry seed, cold empty beds,
taut untutored lifelines.
Listen to them sing.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

Crossing at night the Straits of El Kabong,

I saw the Pillars of Persephone,
Half the year there and half in Florida,
A moving destination, once two girls
Of 17, turned to obsidian by
A randy god who had eternity
To kill. His name is lost. His victims here
Said, No, and migrate now from sea to sea.
I saw a stormy petrel detour round
The pillars. I saw fish leap between waves.
I drew no closer, though the ship was swift,
The winds complaisant. As the moon declined,
I took her home, towards picture books and bread.

Lente, Lente

As old as Moses, balm from Gilead

Can’t touch this, more like stale Rice-Krispie Treats
For knees, when I remember they’re my knees;
And still the angels whisper numbers, like
Da-dum da-dum dum-da da-da dum-dum.
I can make English of it, only barely.
Slowly, slowly, the horses of night arrive,
Tacked for a king in black, with golden reins,
The stirrups folded up across the saddle.
Believing that the fairy tales are true,
I bow and wait for one to speak, but can’t
Quite straighten up. Dum-dum dum-dum dum-dum.

Evening Soap

She wasn't even pregnant when she bore

Her brother's child (step-only, thus genteel).
What she had concealed, though, never was made clear.
She named him Topsy, he the ickle heir
To Gallantyme, the biggest ranch around.
(They hired their own weatherman and sent
Over to Ft. Lupino for their boots.)
Paterfamilias, he pitched a fit
And sent her out into a thunderstorm,
Where Little Escobar saved her and hers
And made them warm in simple peasant ways.
It took three days to track them to his hut.
Never was quite the same, some people said,
What with his herky-jerky gait. Not once
Did she look at PF. He took to drink
And fisticuffs. And that was the premiere.

Garden Plot

PHYLLIS
Come, leave your tools, those blades and hoses.
There have been daisies, will be roses,
Whether you feed and clip and spray.
Sufficient flowers strew the day
In which we laugh, while overhead
The sun approves when clouds are bred;
Gather you hoses: now I stay.
Tomorrow I may be away.

CORYDON
You will be gone, like every she
Of every plant and every me.
Each flower fades; no flower cares,
Caught by the frost and unawares
That frost took Mom and Pop and Sis,
Took first that neighbor, then plucked this,
And will take you. As well you know.
If you must leave, well, all must go.
I shall come later. Come I will.
A garden grows where we keep still.

PHYLL.
You unappreciating drone.
If I be gone, and you alone,
I’ll find a mate who strokes and clucks.
Your hand is empty. When it plucks
A rose, the rose dissolves. The dew
Runs by your fingertips. Me too.

CORY.
Alone God made the gardener first,
His rising state, and not his worst.
I’ve been alone with these before,
Not less with you. Not any more.
If you push on, then I must turn
The water on. My roses burn.

PHYLL.
O little man, you spray too much.
Kid gauntlets on, you lose your touch.
Plants love like us; earth claims us all:
Rise with the spring, in autumn, fall.
You’ll make a fine mulch, fat and pure:
But love comes late, and death is sure.
Come straight inside: be quick, be bent.

CORY.
The roses speak: I hear the scent;
And I shall come before I go.

PHYLL.
How sweet the prick

CORY.
When roses blow.

Sonnet

Across the bay there must be people washing
And cleaning bathroom grout and drinking tea.
There must be pastors painstakingly crushing
Hormonal eloquence; but I can't see
Through all that fog and curvature. Despite
Long reading in patristic poetry,
I'd rather they were stomping on their fate
Than knitting bills and purling dirt. Like me.

Let them smash windows. Let them all eat cake
And fart like camels. Let them swive like heroes.
I've had as much of me as I can take,
The careful serrying of ones and zeros.
Let them dance jigs. Let them curvette and break
Upon their shores like Abelards. And Neros.

Manifest Destiny

So difficult, the stones keep changing sides,
And the path gets lost, ambitious, but confused.
Like immigrants in flannel shirts. In Texas.
Once knowing where it was, it was The Way
To Grandma’s House or Candyland or Memphis,
A Middle Kingdom where the blues were born.
It took them to the library; it led
A dick to be a mayor, sometimes birds
In talking trees; and it was Far from Home.
Now, it declares for tessellated mud.

Around each other, kids in pjs, dark
Where light should be, all damp instead of cocoa.
They miss their path. They were supposed to be
Mapquested to a city on the hill,
Where brioche stands and wiener carts and sweet
Ravioli salesmen advertised life.
This is more like the Chiller Double Thriller,
Without the ads for English, She Is Simple.
This is a nightlight, cold, with extra teeth.
Not every little boy can be a prince.
Not every waitress wants to marry up.

Plots and Sods

Older than all of us, they say,
The little blades of grass. They'll wait.
Concrete may spall and roots expand
And fire hydrants blow away.
Smaller wins out. And ain't it great,
They say, that they are quite unmanned

By frost and promises? They brown.
Or they're lopped off, sometimes refaced
By maisonettes, by diamond shops,
And yet they farm. They go to town.
They have seen cenotaphs replaced
By plots and sods. Time never stops.

The 7th Avenue Historic District

Up and down the street,

Committing daily errands,
Jogging, biking, joking,
My proximate gerunds.

The neighbors. They look busy.
So much ado to do.
I sit out front and read
Of romance and virtù.

But stay when I am placed.
I do not jog or joke.
Deflecting passion's flame,
I do not burn. I smoke.

Of that they disapprove,
Although they never say so.
They move along. I sit,
Half like them, and I stay so.

Shangri-La

If you’ve observed the IT ants prepare

Their toolkits, then it’s time to take a hike.

The summits where the spectacled bear holds forth

On Can’t & Kant, where wild bees value most

Black honey, jelly royals, and labor laws,

They’re good. Caves for a cloister, that might work;

But there, above the clouds, there are no gods,

No nymphs whose every kiss is percocet.

You’re on your own. The bear says, If you can,

You must. (He speaks in German, but you get

His drift. Where there are flowers, we must fail.)

His spirit leaves no footprints in the stream.

Against the Wall

All that remains, the beasts having declined,
Is chum and chow, the wrinkles on one's feet
Smoothed by contraction, the lively little girls
Gone blonde from red, then white from blonde, at last
Telling lies of yore and splendiferous
Kindergarten snacks. It was a bad time.
We ate our ration cards. We had for sex
A kind of contempt. I saw a skeleton
Banging another up against the wall
And was not tempted. When our hetman sought
My vote for alderman, I told him, Once
I rode a horse across an undulate
And singing field, which he wrote down as Yes.

Before the Prologue

They rode on palfreys or on mules. He said,

It’s April. When it’s April …showers. None
Impelled, he let them fall asleep, to prompt
Them further, with a look at cherry trees
And battlements and rivers full of geese.
Remember March? he asked. It was so dry–
So how dry was it? asked a tubby priest,
Greatly indulged. Not quite the point. He thought
About the robin on a hawthorn branch,
Its breast as red as Christes blood, now dried
And efficacious only by a hymn.
He had no hymns, the diplomat, but stories
Flowed out by art arterial and blessed.

Good Cheer & Local Color

There’s been an incident at 5^th and 6^th

And 73^rd and 58^th and Elm.

I see dead people everywhere, except

On S. Lipan and Penny Lane and Stout.

I don’t know why. Rellenos on the wind,

The sound of magic flutes, the frail red duff,

Oranges and lemons: still the bones pile up

Just above Congress Park, on Ruby Hill,

And where the Carpet Warehouse has been closed.

Come home tonight. I found some bottles of

Whatever could be bottled up. Not these,

However emptied out the scuffed-up rooms,

Annoyed to be anonymous. Here come

The incidents of Christmas Past passant.

Speckled Stuff

appeared in Lyre, Lyre.

God likes speckled stuff, says the manly man.
He must have since he made so much. The straight
And simple are pulverized by the weight
Of odd and complex. There must be a plan,
And not a manly plan--something divine
Or outré, which means both. A freckled chick,
Violets wrapped around a mossy stick,
Villages built where earthquakes draw the line:
The quirky and the deadly and the spotted.
Whole romans fleuves have dammed themselves upon
Civilizations where the men are gone,
The dogs abducted, and the bookstores rotted.
He loves it all, the hoorah where the gleaming
Stipples on the bright stainless steel are steaming.

Second Thoughts

This is a very old poem. It's the title poem from my second collection, which was accepted, once upon a time, by a publisher who went out of business immediately thereafter and was never heard from again. It appeared in Whiskey Island.


If only I had gone to school in Boston,
flown east instead of west. If only I
had studied medicine instead of English,
dressed for the day in tie and stethoscope, 
if only I had let myself be drafted
and seen the bodies stacked up at Pleiku,
if only this, if only that, if I
had let that first pregnancy go to term,

today I should be sitting in a room
like this, my head not clear, my hand alert
to what it holds, and I should hear the cardinal
calling the late June morning to observe
that he's already up, and I'd be thinking

if only I had gone to school in Denver,
flown west instead of east, if only I
had been a novelist and not a doctor,
then I should say, hearing the sparrows chirp,

it would be all the same, even if I
had gone to school at Cambridge, learned to say
"shed-ule," and come to like my lager warm,
till, feeling a sudden numbness in my shoulder,
I'd wonder how it would have been if I
had only gone to school in California.

Pursued by a Duck

Edge of the edge, the ducks explore

Duckitude.  They don’t know it, though.

They nibble at the sludgy shore

While we call names and say we grow

L’homme qui criat canard.  That sedge

Is served them there so we can chime,

We should admit that.  If they cadge

A breadcrumb, panic.  A loup in time,

The ground subsides, the ducks retreat

Like Muscovy.  Here, let us count.

One duck, two ducks: this life is sweet,

When wild in just the right amount.