Now About Those Crusades

 

At first I thought I should work "hauberk" in

and "Holy Sepulcher" or maybe "paynim."

But as I tried, they grew less glittery,

less Coeur-de-Lionish, being as they were

mere bloodstained souvenirs, like pigges bones.

Instead I told the Stations of the Cross

of Peter the Hermit, who made Europe shift

eastwards, and who today, on 16th St.,

would be a menace to himself and others,

thus thorazined and forcibly confined.

With such tools is the course of Empire shot.

And all those little paynim nippers who

neglected to be born as French Provincials

may hope a Savior comes to save them, too.

The Pastorale

 

This appeared in Angle. I have altered it slightly since then.

Down by the river the trout are laying bets

Per croquet hoop. They swear like Fielding fish--

Damme this and Bloody that. They're old ones

With cheeks that frogs would eat. Here unafraid,

They list to port and pass it to the left

And praise the neighbors' sheep and curse the day

Electric lights infested county skies.

Crooks, not hooks, still in the adverse flow,

They praise monogamy, but that's a joke

Told when women go the separate way

Appropriate. They do not fear the fly,

A thumb upon their scales, or lemon sauce.

These are the myths told small fry. They are men.

I Love It When She Talked Like That

 

I threw the golden apples all at once.

I might have hit her once or twice, but mostly

They landed where I meant them to. She stopped

And picked one up, glistening like the sun

On cutlery.  The apple looked good, too.

You think I’m Eve, she said, and passionfruit

A golden bauble wrapped around a core

Of propagation and distraction? Run,

You fleet-foot son of Adam. I got far

Enough to watch her curve around the curve

The highway made, the fruit of all my labor,

Some knowledge maybe—Good, Better, and Gone.

Hit or Myth

 

He flew it higher than you might have thought,

Beyond the reach of Sense or Cymbeline,

Headed for higher office, like the Earl

Of Eyrie or the Alderman of All.

Beyond reproach he flew it, though unmanned,

And woman, too, if only she would listen,

However first impressionable that.

I can't make headway here. A ducal debt

Is nomenclatural and nothing more,

And yet he flew it higher than you thought

He could, a prince among the aspirants.

Fate and fatuity are oh so close,

Wax wings and a ball of twine at either end.

Cherry Blossoms

 

Focus, they say, and Bof'us, someone laughs;

But crocus is what they mean, and inching through

A yard like iron, just before the daffs,

They make a spring. The spring remembers you

Under the cherry, blossoms in your hair

And dress too small to make a handkerchief.

It's you, and you are never ever there.

Some jocund flowers beggar all belief.

Let summer burn them down. Let the sweet grass

Give itself up to desiccate and dirt.

All memories decay, and cherries pass.

Bof'us, they say, and laugh until they hurt.

The ice is melting, all that broken glass

A spring in motion and the past inert.

Ballad

 

What did they get with their rope of grass-o,

What did they get today?

What did they nab with their pastoral lasso?

Quickly, take it away.

He had a gun with a silver barrel.

He had a wife and a child.

He did a turn in his gray apparel,

Waved at us then and smiled.

There’s where he lies, I sing you one-o,

Green as a dandelion.

Will he be back? Oh, I dunno.

Ask me again in Zion.