Populist Politics

 

This is the country where a commandant

Discovered persiflage and flavored it,

Enlisted Cherokees for crowd control,

Good local color, founded an orphanage,

And called it Huxley on the Hill of Beans.

A modernizer, they say now, who stored

The name of every voter in a barn

Shaped like the Trianon, then burned it down

To prove he was sincere. From the insurance

He bought a trotter and a Brahma bull

With erysipelas and crooked horns.

They wouldn't get it on. He claimed a spread

Deeper in Texas than he ever went,

Who spent his twilight out on old Cape Cod,

A victim of the Zeitgeist and detente,

An advocate for antinomians.

Miracles & Wonders

 

Adventure-free, Odysseus

Amusement Park. The sirens sing

To la-di-da policemen cars

Surveilling everything in sight.

The vendors have been turned to swine,

And dressed in kale and collard greens,

A one-eyed guide eats hot dogs whole.

A madman in a sandwich board

Proclaims an epic fail, predicts

The fall of toys, a wooden hearse

To ferry us to Neverland.

The line advances one by one,

Extended to the violet hills,

Towering braggadocio.

Pie Are Round

 

I wanted to use perpendicular,

But settled for hypotenuse. I know.

Euclid is an old street in my home town

And Archimedes was a wry old owl.

This didn't help much, not in plane or solid,

Distinguishing which was my chef d'oeuvre. Right?

Jump cut to way back. You know Archimedes

Was slain, yes, whacked, while doodling in the sand.

Slow fade to years uncome. I cannot add

Quaint quiddities to peonies and mums,

Just so a sonnet seems to terpsichore.

I tried fried pi. Oh, it went on and on,

And never, like me, proceeded to conclusion.

Crisps for dessert. I am too square for pie.

A Little Delivered

 

Nothing more gorgeous than her gardening,

Which needs no barge or poop, just steer manure

And leafmeal crumble. Mulch is promised us,

Not always promptly. What we grow takes time,

Then flowers in the night. Conservators

Have failed their catalogues; Linneans weep,

Knowing somehow they've given it no name.

Ignis fatuus, some pink scholar said,

But he cared more about the Amazon,

One-breasted warbler, clear cut first, then mute.

She works the soil, not knowing if the fruits

Will see her, call her by her name, or care.

At Canterbury Gate

Beside the Canterbury Gate
Starbucks offers up caffeine
To pardoners and well-bathed wives
And those who've flown from other lives,
Guilt and pottage on a plate,
To worship where a Lord has been.

My host explains that caramel
And latte make a lovely pair.
And an anti-oxidizing scone
Will help me keep on keeping on.
He patters his tale very well,
Better than Mr Clark can bear:

“My, aren't we posh. Those charabancs
Of spivs and chavs just bought a ton
Of stuff they never read nor will.
So put you sweetener in their swill—
The inhumanity of gangs—
And offer them a Cinnabon.”

He’d smoke, but it is not allowed.
He’d drink, but it is half past eight.
His sallow fingers touch his nose
And Geoff’s his uncle when he goes
To worship in a bumptious crowd
The spivs and chavs who died in state.

The same stone that his father walked
Bears his weight now. The changing chimes
Tell the same time his father heard,
A very parfait gentle bird.
He talks the talk Old Adam talked,
Grimm’s Law excepted, crops and crimes.

Dinner at the Dog

 

The devil at the Dog ‘n’ Suds was hot,
But he was down with that, and he took long
Views, eternal darkness, and blah blah blah.
There wasn’t much imagination blessed
By Heaven. Here, though, he found beer and red
Hots, which helped the hopeless to feel at home.
Nor was it such a bad world, fallen grit
And unarticulated anger. Back
At home a pit for every sin and points
Deducted. Here the dry winds ate away
The names of everything and everyone;
And at the last were rock and gray and mud.
Why, then, would he mind dinner at the Dog
And acid reflux for his angel food?

Inspiration

 

The spirits circled high above the house

And dropped surprising words like fennel seed.

Never before, he thought, and could not write

Fast enough to keep up. There slipped away

An observation on the rites of men

With women and a pun on Little John,

And still the spirits strewed the house with verbs

He did not know he knew, until, at last,

He called it finished, although it couldn’t be;

And then the tutelary angels left

For Calgary, by typo drawn away.

Not one agreed to read a word he wrote.