The Poet Protection Program

 

    This appeared in Angle.

No more dactyls, never a dactyl, they

advised me. You must change your life. If not,

if you let on you know whose torso that

was hacked from, you're a goner. If you must,

be missed, then be prepared: you are a dead

poet, a name, your rep, anthologies

of what you said; and what you might have done,

you won't. You may observe the beggared moon,

the way it fits, entangled in the trees

midwinter sends at midnight. But say nothing.

I can write a different verse, a prose

of fits and starts. Hot taps, cold showers.

I'll bet I can do the sinuously mellifluous

periods, the byzantine gravity-free

construction of those whose libraries, like

their concubines, are kept for show, not use.

Formal gardens. Plumy tilth. I can be a

magpie daedalian artificer of crackerjack

miniatures, a head-lamped Faberge who

mines the thesaurus for uncut stunners and bodies

forth a facet for every season. I can do shopping

lists. 1 lb honey-cured bacon. 2 pkgs green beans

(frozen). Magical fruits, limp leeks, the nectarines

sent Hank J Jr in dreams as he associated the terrible

accident and dread vastation. Bran Flakes.

I tried it. Gave rhyme up. Pared. Mute, made all

my meters feet and inches. Read the backs

of jelly jars and fabric softeners.

Touched no one, no how. Celebrated love

with my mouth shut, like everybody else.

And moved. And moved again. I didn't say

where I was going. But they knew, who sent

an agent over with his standard contract

to stare at martial shadows, which I think

hide broken spondees. Or an anapest.

I shall wait here. The air is full of strange

motions and apparitions, all the ghosts

of rooms I shall not write in. I shoot blanks,

buckshot, wad-cutters, dum-dums. I have thrown

books through the windows. Let the bright sky in.

Seasonal Adjustments

 

In foot on foot of snow

The plant sang winter songs,

How spring plots to revenge

Deep-rooted wrongs.

Then leaves await the day

That sun makes brown things right;

But leaves that come and go

Burn sun at night,

And roots divide with branches

The plant.  Roots sing bass,

Grounded below ground

In a dark place.

School Days

 

The teacher said, My love is like a rose.

Aspirant students knew down to their shoes

Their loves were nothing rosy and their hearts

Clogged as river silt. When the teacher said,

I’m large, they hoped he’d prove ephemeral.

They wanted cracks in which to hide and dust

To camouflage the beating of the blood

Disclosing where they were. Only the small

Survive. The teacher claimed the just smelled sweet

After they’d gone to meet the Biggest Cheese;

But sweets were out of reach or out of stock

Or someone else’s. They loved honor more;

And iron bars made quite a nifty cage,

And stone walls kept them warmer than the wild.

Cardiac Arrest

 

When we were young, when we were less,
When you were poised and I a mess,
We were as we are now, apart,
Unequal portions of a heart
Broken for decoration, cute
As flowers trimmed above the root.
And one of us flourished. One did not.
But which was which, and which forgot,
I do not say. You do not know.
The flowers dried, the roots still grow.

Wolf Howls the Blues

 

The wolf remembers being big and bad.

Down comes the rain on trees penned in a park.

Dreaming of little children makes him sad.

So tasty, toothsome, in the woodsy dark,

The crunch of bones, the fellowship a pack

Affords: who, fed now from a keeper's cart,

Savors a salted girl, the perfect snack,

Some innard put aside, a treasured part?

Do not, thinks wolf, settle for metaphor,

The skirtchaser, the fairy's tale, the lone

Arranger who waits snidely at the door.

That kingdom lets a goose sit on its throne.

No, to be wolf is wolfkind's greatest good,

Here where the world is run by Riding Hood.

The Descent of Man

 

    This appeared in Poetry Proper.

In Abel‘s garden green prevails.

No. More than that. Green triumphs. Rules.

The handles of his garden tools

are stained. The moss is thick and slick,

and time has greened the very nails

that fix the trellis. Every stick

is smothered as it is tamely laid,

shaded while it is making shade.

Nothing of sere is sensed or seen.

Eden stood up and voted green.

The grass is master in this place.

The trees resist, but not for long,

where blackbirds wear their color wrong,

their rites revoked, each note, each word.

The bee permitted hides its face

in foliage, its dapple blurred.

Green, says the rose, and bends back down.

Sorry, says brick, for being brown;

I‘ll change, I will. The sun is gone.

It tried, and failed, to burn the lawn.

Whimsy, to think that man was meant

to rise above his verdant grace.

He raised, and he regrets, his face—

pink is not creature color. Vast

cities and tombs beneath the bent

blade: and he occupies them last.

Ask a man what the heavens mean,

he‘ll answer; ask him, Why is green?

he‘ll colorlessly turn away.

We‘re left no clue; we leave no clay

undecorated. In the mud

we build with sweat, we fail to note

the color builded thick by rote:

home is green. In the failing light,

the tide of green engulfs the blood,

thickens the pulse, promises night,

and keeps its word. Trees never go.

Grass does not leave. Leaves never show

regret. We are becoming less

than oak and shrub and fern and cress.