Inside Of Moab, It's Too Dark To Read

 

Outside of Moab, they’re replacing Time

With sidewalks. Rolling either way, they pass

Monuments, which will never now occur,

First heart attack which ended with a kiss.

In Kingman they are stocking all the bars

With Mexican beer and tulgey wood, in Page

Nothing but churches and the refugees

From Old California missions and next spring,

The spring after that, and pools in desert towns.

Nothing sets like a sidewalk laid on Time,

Fossilized bugs and palm prints. Over in Brush,

The Mayor declared that Time was just a myth,

Some immigrant’s invention. He pronounced

Chicken-fried steak the plat du jour; he drank

A Nehi Orange, and Time just washed away,

Like fiddlers on a flood plain in the rain.

Two Traditional Exercises

 

1. The Same, Only Different

Roses bloom today, and then
Tomorrow roses bloom again.
Cut the grass, then rest: you find
New grass with roses intertwined.
Grass must be great, and roses strong,
To bloom and flourish, thriving long
After the gardener, planted, made
Under the grass, a thinning shade.
Yes, that rose is rose is rose;
Every blade of grass that grows
Is Grass. When you have tilled your plot,
Girls will be, though you are not,
Some with that shape, some with her name,
Some fit for love. Just not the same.

2. First & Last

Dead the first is pretty dead.
You'll be pretty, dead a while.
You watch the service with a smile,
It seems so quaint. The dead, you say,
Must have enjoyed their hymns today.
That ought to help them get ahead,
First through the gate, well on their way,
Or not so well. She's mighty dead,
You said this time. Some time, instead,
Of her, it will be me. Your style
Is going live. You mean to stay.
Dead the last is pretty dead.

Classical Gas

 

Diana does not care to know
What makes an apple blossom grow
As long as apples still are sweet
And she has more than one to eat.

Adonis does not mean to learn
What makes Diana blaze and burn.
She looks at him as though he were
An apple peeled, and just for her.

They are, they vow, as they were meant,
As satisfied as ignorant.
Their teeth are good, their fruit is firm.
Whence comes the rot, who made the worm,

And why Adonis looks when he
Sees peaches on Niobe's tree,
They mustn't ask, not till the day
Their frightened fences run away,

Until their blood runs dry, and sun
Does not shine down on everyone.
They haven't that much time to kill,
They say. But, oh, they will. They will.

Now What?

 

A little late for art,
a little weak for song,
I try my best to write,
and still it comes out wrong.

I looked within my heart,
I ate a peck of dirt.
I asked for extra light
and never shaved my shirt.

For every ancient blight
I found acoustic cure,
then shared it. Every part
of me was sound and sure;

but now it's late, and night
concludes a damaged age.
I guess I ought to start
to fill this empty page.

The Golden Corral

 

Mercurial Mercutio sits down,

His periodic table piled

With goods. The psalms and protocols

Have been concluded, vast

Salad bars looted, even the grill

Of his dreams expired, scrubbed and lapsed

Into the arms of sticky buns.

Ice cream, he says, and asks for more.

Nothing forthcoming. What if this

Is sold as is, a scruffy tail,

The end of plot and narrative—

Just some of this and a bit of that,

A chapel stew, a pot of mess,

And love a scant gratuity?

The World Lacks A Regular Scansion

 

Mr Keats, he dead. And Mr Marlowe.

I get the two mixed up. One had TB,

The other lost an eye, but did not write

To urns or psyches. Neither lasted long.

Marlowe, at least, he got to tell a tale

About a heart at dusk. Crepuscular.

Keats worked at CVS or some such place.

Apothecaries have their place, prescribe

And fade to black. I think they hail from Porlock.

Coitus interruptus. Some such thing.