A Muse Bouche

 

Least of all scruples, failure to remove

The restless ant by well-shod squashing, will

Refrain from formicide, grammatically.

So said the Muse pro Forma, who declined

Explaining further. Comme d'habitude, of course.

Bestowing roses, all the asters gone,

She smiled my way and spat, which must be something.

I sang her "Autumn Leaves," but I said "Auden,"

And she dissolved, bequeathing a hill of ants

Shaped like a castle, right there on the rug.

"Remember when we all were friends," I said;

But ants don't laugh or break into applause.

If they were singing, none of it would rhyme,

All of them buzzed by unison. They're not.

L'Eau Riders

 

"Il pleuve" is not the same

As rain come banging down.

The Seine is not the Strong

Brown God who came to town,

Arousing local song.

The worms rise, not the vers

De terre. It's just the way

Things are. The rainbow is

Our arch of triumph. Mud

Is everywhere the same,

The protein shake of blood.

Independence & Resolution

 

            for Douglas Wilson

Listen, he said, the sound of flies

Above the riffle, that bodes well.

The old man sat, in sad surmise,

And thought of revolution. Hell,

He told us, when the world was new

And we ran guns and gerunds sang,

I watched the mountains turning blue.

Ecclesiastics never rang,

And girls were disappointed I

Moved them along. Now I can hope

That when my grey habiliments die,

The Queen will wear a dab of crêpe.

The music of satiety,

Which has no wings and does not grow

In memory, plays endlessly

And only strikes the notes we know.

The Age of Gold

          This appeared in Angle.

And then, when the obliging sheep

In colors grow their ready wool,

And knickers fall like ripened fruit

Upon the shaven grass, and crêpes

Suzettes extend until we're full

From bramble bushes, and the flute

Sonatas of the shepherds toot

The flocks in file, the wolves will cull

The weakest for unconstructed suits

And long-johns knitted with extra legs.

Welcome the Age of Martial Bands

And Paperclips and Glitzy Digs

And Varnish on Arthritic Hands.

Mores and mores. Rustic now

Invites the wolf to buy his plow

For peanuts, and the Opus Coots

Disperse small crowds from roadside stands.

Chains They Forged In Life

 

The poems no one heard of populate

This verbosphere, invisible and bleak,

Dottering incoherently in dry

And crumby cupboards, turning bedsheets gray

On sleepovers, making little girls pale,

Afraid that they have accidentally bled.

Elegiac, embarrassed, and full of tropes

Disparaged by Seleucian kings, they tell

Stories of unrequited jealousy

Engraved on stone with sponges, vetted by

The underappreciated and the fat

Recipients of Golden Books and schmaltz.

A few are goodbye letters, never signed.

A few are tax returns, unaudited.

Some lisp. Some swoon. Some have these wild ideas

About the immanence of outer space.

They drool. They belch. Complain. Complain. Complain.

They like a mirror, write they backwards verse.

Walking Home in the Dark

 

    This appeared in Life & Legend.  I have changed it a bit since then.

Some nights I can't get home before the dark.

I can't quite make it. Some nights I brave the streets,

And I'm afraid. Who isn't? There are ex-

Acquaintances, role models, and the police

In every hole, the shadows of themselves

Awaiting the day when hair loss is reversed.

Arise, I tell them, and I say, Not now,

But after I've passed and left you where you were.

I hear them rustle in the deep-down beds,

Less than they were, more than they ever will be,

Until the day when fallen arches rise

And all their triumphs, mute so many years

Still in the gladstone bags they kept close by,

Rise to the surface, fried by benignant sun.

Things In Bloom

 

The peckerwoods are blossoming—this heat

Is perfect for them, clears their rosy limbs,

A scent of gravy with a hint of lime,

Creaking with all the weight of special sauce.

Me, I just can't transport a whole lot more

Compressed into this stringy frame, a touch

Of spirit in a wealth of this-and-that.

I'm thinking chastely of a new frontier,

Out where the rumpus rooms are naugahyde,

With attic vases all the way downstairs,

Where Indians bear cobras in their packs,

And landsmen dance the shabbos hully-gully.

It's just a myth, a brackish aspiration.

I'll choogle to the fridge, but nothing more.

Next year the Thousand Islands and a hope

At long last I can be consumed with relish.