Timepiece

 

The clock knows way too well

Just what I shall be doing

At each bespoken bell

And what I'll be eschewing.

Taking out the trash.

Remembering your breasts.

Converting leaf to ash.

Reordering bequests.

The elm tree knows the time

Just fine. As do the grasses.

I've blown all mine on rhyme,

And still the winter passes.

The robins have returned

With noisy tufted tits.

I wonder what they learned

And where the big hand sits.

Commencement Exercise

The world at once congratulates

You thus and shines your shoes of clay.
If you had thought adults would stay,
Now you were one of them, no way.
They have their fine and private fates.

The mail is waiting for you now,
The bills for what you sort of learned
Come due. The boy next door has turned
Into the B.Sc. he earned.
He is somebody’s coming cow.

Under the spreading money tree
A place is laid, a bowl is set.
Next to a replica Corvette
The wineglass is already wet,
The truth, they said, thrown in for free,

But not quite yet. Maybe next year,
When Milton is a funny name,
Like Shelley, and a sense of shame
Attaches to the rhyming game.
The aging profs are staying here, 

As out of life as buggy whips. 
The cars depart. The swans take wing.
The ugly ducklings stay and sing
A dirge to Intro Everything,
But offer no investment tips.

May you grow stout and just and long
Of patience. May your muscles ache
From all the sanctioned loot you take
Off citizens whose contracts break.
Now disremember every song.

Speak only prose, and cadence that
With small affect. Here comes the sun.
It shines on you, and everyone
Believes your day has just begun.
They know the world, your world, is flat.

Our Little Princess

 

What she bought on the cheap,

Fairy tales and briers,

Taught her lying friends

What they meant by liars,

Burned her childhood down.

A matchless house of stone,

Filled with hollofill,

She lived in it alone,

Until the ides of spring

Pumped birdsong into blood,

And then she kicked it flat,

Split rock, torn clothes, and mud.

Reflections on Coriolanus

 

Some suffixes get laughter and applause—

One play, one planet, playing to the back,

The peanut gallery, the groundlings' den,

Gins its own giggles. Maybe a full moon,

Heavenly body, always good for grins.

And why not here and why not now? This snob,

This long-nosed, weak-chinned, double-breasted buns

Of steel and flexing mama's boy deserves

Banana peels, which hadn't been invented.

His sword is rubber and his cod. Tonight

The noblest Roman of them all except

For him and him and him and even her.

Tomorrow night will be Malvolio.

And Pigges Bones, Too

    

Here we have St Francis' tooth,

Extracted when He was a youth.

    How do you know?

It must be so—

Look at the label: "Behold the Truth."

Here is a taxidermied bird

Who peeped to every holy word.

    I disagree.

No faith, I see.

Under the dewy Dismas tree,

It stood, it chirped, it lent its song

To Good St Francis' fuzzy throng—

    God, what a crock!

—Until His holy waterclock

Said, Move this gig to Little Rock

And then to Pierre and Battle Creek.

And here's the mike with which He'd speak.

    Oh, I believe.

Now Saints be praised.

And here's some grass, on which they grazed,

On which whole multitudes were fed,

Church Live, Church Militant, Church Dead.

    Oh, that I were.

The proof is Love,

Which motivated stars above

To send the rain St Francis felt.

And here's a vial. The smells he smelt—

    Are bottled there.

If anywhere.

The world's a relic. All things melt

To one thing, Faith and Hope and Bees,

Kine and Kin, Foals and Fleas—

    and Fools.

Who would believe is none.

St Francis is not meat for schools:

He is the voice of everyone,

All shaved and sheared. Thus here—take these—

    I'd rather not.

    I'll be the man the Lord forgot—

His Greatest Hits on 2 CD's.

Love Poem

 

After this bitter row,

Things are worth fixing now,

The rosebush propping up, 

The shutter bolting down.

Time that I learned to know

All that I had let go,

The gutter's steady drip,

I might need them again.

Assuming you will stand by,

The wood can be piled high;

We needn't count on hap.

I'll  be bringing the chilled plants in

To spend this bitter night.

Things still could come out right.