The Age of Heroes

 

Unrolled, the ball of twine will reach from here

To Sunday next, maybe a little past,
As strong as faith, and supple. Place such string
In hands like yours, you could subvert a world
Of passageways. The monster has to smell
Both us and exit. That’s a lot to ask
Of demi-men and semi-livestock, see?
Somewhere along the way it will sense grass
Or wind on open water, then forget
Its murderous intentions. Clover makes
It sleepy; birdsong, and it drops its guard.
You, with a chunk of rope, a .44,
And proper shoes, could be back home for tea.

And then what? When the monster has been foiled,
The maiden slaked and handed back to dad
To foist her by-blow on a little prince,
The whitecaps braved, the Welcome Home endured,
All speeches, leis, and fatty bullock thighs,
We’ll frame your twine and hang it where Aunt Vi,
The Tutor, and your nubile cousin Daph
Can hardly miss it. What then? There are new
Monsters, of course, but, really, they’re not much
But bags of bone and teeth: blood is a bore,
Philately in person, so to speak.

Virgil & the Bees

 

appeared in Angelic Dynamo

we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax;
thus furnishing mankind with two of the noblest things, which
are sweetness and light.
--Swift

A flat gray stone absolved of dung and schmutz,
Warmed by the sun and near, not in, a grove,
Proximate to a meadow, not to sheep,
Unthinking sweaters on the hoof, at hand
Running water for sound effect: then sit,
And you will find the bees. Theirs is a mind
Unfit for your accommodating self.
Like physicists, they are absorbed by thoughts
Too pure and rarefied for you. They work,
The autumn ever coming, honey from
The dandelion, and excrete a light
So fine it makes divine commedias
A piece of cake, a holiday of dusk.
He listens: you can see him move his lips,
No buzz, no hum. Hexameters like glass,
The shape of cells, coincidentally—
They were invented to store wisdom, wax,
And pollen effluents. Thus you have flowers,
He thinks, stung by the notion Dido walks
Amidst gray flowers she can never touch.

When Nighthood Was In Flotsam

 

The staff has snapped; the flag has been misplaced.

The Coconino County Bar & Grill

Breaks both its windows, locks the doors, and posts,

Send me a kiss by wire. Bourbon flows

Through the arroyos. Canteens burst with beer.

The news does not report. Tequila leaks

Upstream. The fish are dying for a drink.

No, sir, my realism is not an art,

Says Jenny Wren, the brickbat in my pie,

The neon in her undies, my patootie.

She shines from both sides now. The Bar & Grill

Has set cane chairs out on the promenade

And pointed them with seashell, which it sells

By the seashore, if only it were there.

About Mucking

 

Roses do not dissuade

The fall, no petal stayed

For what it has displayed.

The leaves, believing dying

Superior to trying,

Prefer the dun drab lying

Of mulch that they have made.

A Way, A While

 

When winter came, they were not ready. No
One is. And though they'd seen it all before,
They never thought of winter any more.
That time had gone, and no one heard it go.
What did they have? A leaf or two to show

Succeeding generations, who would smile
And think how quaint the Old Ones were, who never
Took off their clothes or painted something clever
Or died for love or died for peace, whose style
Was okay in its time, away, a while.

Loaves & Fishes

 

Abacus to zygote: this is just what

The god has ordered. Feed the multitude
On infinite combinations from a rude
Inception. C begins with Cookie, not
A tiddly crowd, made crummy with the bread
Recently risen. Read what we have read,

And you can bake your own. A dictionary
Portends all saints every witness each,
Erects more ladders than a man can carry,
And will not learn. We accidentally teach.
Mud is in our middle, and right before,
Mattress, the word that you were looking for.

I have one in my pocket, glad and good
Together. What I've spelled, I've understood.

The Men Who Would Be Kings

 

We were a caravan, the score of us,
Camels and dogs and rugs. We infidels,
We passed for what we were, a flea-brained bunch
Determined to be wise, and if we failed,
Experienced at least. We heard that the sands
Turned ruby when they were wet, but they were dry.
Advised that the womenfolk were glorious
Beyond appraisal, we saw only men,
And they saw us and were not over pleased.
Far, far too many stars for urbanites:
We missed our meals and thought that we were brave.

Perhaps we were. A little foolishness
Is necessary for the gentle born.
Four of us returned, we four who returned,
We held our tongues and spent a year or two
Deciding what was dream and what was not.
It all was dream, the four of us conclude
And watch TV and nod our grizzled heads,
And some of them were probably attached.