Monday, December 17, 2018

The First Hotel

The first hotel
Where the angels did stay
Was a Holiday Inn
On South Broadway.

They brought their own myrrh.
They brought their own gold.
The frankincense was
The stories they told.

They phoned out for shepherds,
They prayed for an ox.
It’s a Wonderful Life,
They watched on the box,

But the straw in the manger
Projected a blaze
They could see from their room.
And it burned days and days.

They never got close.
They sang from afar.
And they spent all their myrrh
On drinks at the bar,

Till their halos dispersed
Like the peal of a bell,
And the stories flowed out
From the First of Noel.

Wednesday, December 12, 2018

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.

Thursday, December 06, 2018

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.

Saturday, December 01, 2018

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.

Saturday, November 17, 2018

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.

Monday, November 12, 2018

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.

Friday, November 02, 2018

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.

Sunday, October 28, 2018

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.

Wednesday, October 24, 2018

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.

Sunday, October 14, 2018

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.

Monday, October 08, 2018

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.

Wednesday, October 03, 2018

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.

Friday, September 28, 2018

Their Widened Apertures


Girls in dresses on bicycles with baskets,

Streamers from the handlebars. A wet April
In a dry year, and they pedal warily
To market, to market, to buy like a lamb
Their new décor, more than observers deserve.

Higgledy, they head home here and there, thither,
If that may be permitted, stilled by the eyes,
The boys’ widened apertures, the precursors
And post-. Into the sun with them, pink streamers
Streaming, spring girls the headstones of the winter,
The corpus of the fall, where they wend, ridden.

Sunday, September 23, 2018

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.

Saturday, September 08, 2018

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.

Wednesday, August 29, 2018

My Unravished Bride

Medusa’s head above the door

Has stoned the crows and salesmen, too;
But no one ever rocked me more
Than igneous, impassive you,
Though permanent now as headstones cut
With mottoes, there beside my walk,
So poets can imagine what
Art would sound like if it could talk.
Medusa once was fair herself
And drove the bright boys wild with lust.
Like you now, from her warden shelf,
She flakes in petrifying dust.

Friday, August 24, 2018

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.

Tuesday, August 14, 2018

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.

Saturday, August 04, 2018

A Tide in Their Affairs

I checked the tub for tides. The ducky rode
Bravely as ever, jake a duck as Drake.
Clearly the surface, clear of Spaniards, sent
A message to all pirates, blackguards: Make
Your bones in other bathrooms, the abode
Of breeds without the law. They pitch a tent
On bathmats, oilcloth, on a naked floor.
I scuppered them. Here you will find no more

Than Ivory, almost completely pure.
The tub was calm. And yet the drain was waiting
To suck and spiral all that came away.
Calm is a fury, still anticipating
The quack of terror. What poor ducks endure
To save the surface, even for a day.

Sunday, July 15, 2018

With These Beans

With these beans I could plant an empire,

The conqueror of conquerors, the suave
Rapier, the diligent seabee, fat
Alcades, and persnickety CFOs.
I lack downtrodden populace, but those
Are everywhere, a litter at the curb,
Ripe for the patting. Grow No Paving Stones
Will be the motto of my beans. If tanks
Are what I offer, they can chant, You're Welcome
Between siestas and the native pulque,
A cardinal in each town to lead the cheers.

My fighter planes write Phantom on the sky,
While street urchins must reason out the weeds.
Salt beans, they'll grow with tears. A few will do.
A palace and a harp, a grand vizier,
A minstrel and a harem of the few,
The proud, the pink, the hopelessly obliged.
Let them grow pancakes out there in the sticks,
Aged fathers trying to tell the tales
Which make young people strong. They won't regret:
There never was a time to call Before.

Tuesday, July 10, 2018

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.

Wednesday, June 06, 2018

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.