Aere Perennius

 

If they commingle when we die

The dust you make, the dust that I
produce, maybe the dog’s, and that
clump of leafmeal, perhaps a scat
and clippings, in a year or two,
who’s going to know which dust was you?
Most glorious of all who share
the stage tonight, of every stare
the subject and the hope, to claim
more of your birthright than a name,
it cannot be. You are a weed,
a metatarsal, or a seed
on fallow ground. Not more. Unless
they shroud you in the golden dress
that sheathes you now, there is no place
which will preserve your present grace
to an agnostic, future age.
They might, of course, peruse this page.
How cheap is that, and how unfair,
if you are no-, this everywhere?
Patience does not reward the dead.
It pays them off in print instead.

Theseus & Antithesis

Crafty Daedalus died. He was amazed.

One string, and he'd have puzzled his way back

To hearth, a home with labor-saving gadgets,

Self-bashing bulls and wax-free candlelight.

The little ingenuities of less

Do just as well: the patent problem is

A property of all and everyone.

Somebody's master, Theseus was, the crazed,

Plucking his string with singing and a snack

To lull the bull. He loved his cutting widgets

And classy sandals. Daedalus was right

To leave: force made a master of a mess,

Cleverness for the little properties,

A princess coming, and the bull was done.

     This appeared in The Flea.

Critical Updates

 This appeared in Angle.  Such good taste they had.

I’ve changed the voice commands. The poem starts

When anyone says Artemis or swears

By Zeus's thigh.  It finishes when rain

Intervenes, the puddles ex machina

Providing an escape.  Between the prompts

Poetry sleeps.  Hollering Blood-dimmed tide

As your Camaro races by won't work,

Nor liquid-sifting nightingales atop

A satellite dish.  I have allowed for that.

Nor saying Venus when you really mean

The foam-born goddess who made Helen fall

For that blond curly-headed twit, then watched

A local Hector dragged around in dust.

You can't say whale-road, can't pretend that Danes

Are good for more than video games.  You must 

Burn your own child to smithereens to save

Earth from the sun when what it needs is rain.

The Expatriate

For extra credit he remembered much
That wasn’t worth remembering, forgot
The kinship he had promised to except
From discharge, and demurred at growing up.
It made him charming, like a short-term loan,
Lots of interest there, so he changed his name
To Amaryllis-in-the-Shade and wept,
Or said he did, at auld acquaintances.
The Times that try men’s souls, he did not read,
Other than archived, knew that butterflies
Were thinner on the ground than yesteryear,
But worms more frequent. Mr Lowly Worm,
There was a name for next week, if he made
Next week as Amaryllis-in-the-Shade.

Alliteration In My Mother's Milk

This first appeared in Angle.  They had very good taste, those Anglers.

 In fall the flowers fail. The faeries fly

To Boca Raton and the Winter Wings Buffet,

The Bottomless Shrimp Bowl, Boundless Salad Bar,

The Seminal Seminole Margarita +,

And flash floods in your dreams. The flowers pray

To be dismembered in your orisons,

A Home of Unsaved Sepals in the Hills,

A past of pollen all their future now.

No cherry pie. No Anna Baptist Bread,

Dunked in The Living Chocolate Wonderfall.

No Date Night Date Nut Pudding in the spring.

The faeries book their seats for further south.