Dead Grandpa Chats Up Hosea's Wife in Heaven

Sabbath in Heaven. Again. Unlike Old Nick,
Grandpa may not walk up and down the earth,
smelling a harvest ergot has betrayed
or breathing the salt spray off an inland street.
He look for Hosea's wife for old time's sake.

"'Harlot,' I hate. King James's idea. A strumpet
Is what I was. You'd never know it now,
all sackcloth bustier and Eau d'Ash. No, I wasn't
no Pen-e-lope, stuck in the Spindle room,
fending off suitors for a minor profit."

Under the Tree of Life Old Nick unwinds,
his coils gone drab by sinful repetition.
Vice palls, as Virtue, novelty the need
of fallen natures. God says, "Nihilo,"
when asked, "What's new?" He took you back, says Gramps.

Hosea's wife is sure that she was wronged,
round heels in a square bed. It isn't fair.
"I know," she says. "I'd show you what I know,
but will has been redeemed and cannot form
the wish to sell you half-and-half." "I wish,"
says Grandpa. Old Nick, thinking fruit, recalls
how badly people do theology.

Where has all the prose gone?

 I used to post the occasional prose commentary here.  I don't seem to be doing that any more, perhaps because FB and Twitter have usurped that function.  After all, though I am chockful of poesie, I am only occasionally prosaic.  If you miss it, I can refer you to the appropriate venues.  Or you could read Macaulay's History of England instead.

Riding the Interstate

At night, half in a daze, I drive this plain,
And here the highway lunges through the town
Where you lie sleeping in your husband's bed.
Love and anathema rest on your head.

Lonesome Dove

The Lord of Hosts, less likely than he was,
Has trouble transubstantiating. Age
Diminishes the organs, ties a knot
Where ichor should run freely. There is smoke,
As much as censers will allow, but lungs
Plead less than full capacity. He wants
To walk with Abraham through burnished fields
And play at 4-square in a grove of figs.

When he told Zeus, Get out of town by dark,
This cosmos isn’t big enough for both
Us top dogs, when the 3:10 came on time
And brought the new girls in from Port Royal,
He wore his star with flair, the streets kept clean,
The inns full up, the livery swept free
Of dead wood, and the drinks were on the house
Each holiday. What if Apollo now

Came back with Clantons, Saracens, and Popes?
Boot Hill is full enough. Each rock has served
The faithful for a pillow. Though he knows
The sleep number of every broken back,
He must draw faster if he is to keep
Trying the souls as numberless as stars.
His feet hurt, and his beard is patchier.
He’ll make more girls tonight, perhaps at Belle’s.

Googling Myself

I am perhaps the 27th most

Famous Richard Epstein and only the 3^rd

Best-known poet with that salubrious

Nom de poesie.  How disheartening, I

Clear on their cantos, they born with a goose

As close at hand as pablum, porpentines

And crows prêt-à-porter.  And some splice genes,

Those better RHEs, the clones with Sir

And MBE and Friend of Man, the rich

And many-Googled.  Some are just mistakes:

Confounded with RHEtoric syllables,

They pass for Baudelaire and silver swans

And anadiplosis—anadiplosis for

The bogus Epsteins, hidden in the stacks

Of South Dakota junior colleges.

Somebody found me yesterday who meant

Me and no other me: he wanted my

Personal appearance at his most grave

Conclusion.  I was one of 49

CCd, but I was all the RHE.

This John Smith will be carried to his last

By 6 John Smiths, strong men on either side,

And none a pasta critic for The Mail

But he: he gets a plot all to himself.

The squirrels will celebrate: see, they will say,

We never needed any special name.

The Late Romances

Have you no toys about your person

Fit to pass the end of life,
Making the darkness tolerable--
Little colored lights and chimes
And woofs and Squeaks A Toot. The zing
Companionable? Maybe a tale,
So often told it coughs at times
And smoothes all blankets. Cup-o-soup

And grown e comedies,
The tragedies of pith and pride,
Chronicled kings and ginger maids.
Bears turn to brothers, sweep the skulls
Into the pit, the old oak breathes,
Remembering when he was schooled
In naughty songbirds. Stuffed plush toys
With little lights inside their tums,
Though powered up by batteries,
Send harbor signals through the night.

Nighthood in the Neighborhood

The chickens came back, the beetles and the bears,

The pigs and the pronghorns, ready for the spring

That hopes eternal life is just a fad,

That fruit must be explained by leaves,  and buds

Will never fill their ponds in dustbowl days.

Some of the chickens felt bedraggled wings

Would not make them an asset; but the wolf,

Famous for fairness, said that wings were meant

For wagon trains and truck stops.  They all bunked

By Union River, watched the sky, and said

How pleasant it was that stars came out at night.

In a Teapot

Still, in senescence, playing demi-monde,
he finds at last that even sex grows callous.
Besides, the tiny movements of his phallus
lately have made him reach for digitalis.
Prospero breaks his wand.

Hic Jacet

Like a commercial, death by quantity,
For that most dismal catalogue of names;
And we are pikers, grieving by low primes
And little stones on picayune display.
How dare we? asks the Russian winter. How
Now, this memorial mound of mismatched socks?

Have you not heard of Blutenwald? they ask,
Who populate the textbooks. No, by God,
I haven’t, but I blush, ashamed of 1,
3, a handful of minimum loss--
A butcher, a baker, an artisan of light
In watts too small for speakers on the Platz.

No one in history bears names like these,
Compiled like dogs and cats. They have no dates,
Vice-consular assistants; no pink rose
Tells aphids how they’re called, in Latin yet.
It snows on them in aggregate. It rains
On mockingbirds, on shrews and shrubs. On mine.

Wait Till Your Cow Comes Home

The winter cows are coming home
To roost. From fields of cinnabar
They file a-lowing. Near and far
They look the same and sound the same
And know their antecedents are

Preposterous. In barns tucked tight
They chaffer over wisps of hay:
O have you heard the news today?
LaToonya will be coming late
To tea, and why, no one would say.

They cannot hide and are not heard.
In dreams of petitpois they rouse
The King of Cows to build a house
Where he is warm and they are ward,
Where cats surround the shrinking mouse.

Lying in State

Once the day began, the full
English breakfast well disposed,
all was well, and all was well.
The doors and minds and blinds were closed.

The coaches glided by, a ghost
brushed and curried at every pane.
The pigs, two years before their mast,
policed the park; down Primrose Lane

a masked man with a bag marked Swag
scampered and capered, free at last.
There seemed a lout for every lag;
at each semi-detached a cast

of Nelson or dear Albert stood.
We shouted as the trees went by,
depeopling a laburnum wood.
The dwindling hedgerows filled the eye.

Now for a cuppa holy grail
and biscuit. Down the wet cement
parades of plastic bags, how frail
the castle and the elephant,

seeking lodgement against the cold
whose day is coming. Hear the late
cobblestones crack. Come sing the old
songs: our ladies lie in wait.

Elder Than Springtime

He was the elder. So he had been told.
He felt it, too. So much to take on faith,
But this, not this. He grizzled as he stared
Into the mirror recollecting zilch
Of what made him the elder. And of age,
A twist of this, a week of that, whole years
He called to mind in no detail, except
The colors of the calendars and shapes
There for memorializing the months, like May
Bedecked with buds and always breasts, but none
With heft or veins. A birthday cake of shrubs
And columbines like candles, and the wind
Which did not quite extinguish them, but made
Counting unlikely. In the dark he saw
The eyes of March, a fall of fallen leaves,
But no one younger, elder though he was.

Taken at the Flood

This appeared in Angelic Dynamo.


Later the yard boys dyed the new growth green.
Nobody knew it wasn't grass but ants,
And who were they going to tell? They didn't speak
To other hills, impossibly soigné.
The trees were propped back up, the roots tied down,
The stream was re-recorded and the wind
Instructed not to blow its obligations.
New men arrived. They never guessed a thing.
If told that they had been replacement parts,
They'd have discovered fossils and designed
Evangelists to praise the status quo.
It wasn't said that apples used to taste
Preposterously sweet, that knuckleballs
Danced polkas on their way up to the plate,
Or that the dogs would talk about the day's
Prodigious hunt. The brand-new women wore
The chic fall fashions, still a little damp.

The Spoils of Colby

He says he has the Eagle of the Ninth
For sale. He says he bought it secondhand
At Wagonwheel Collectibles in Colby.
It doesn’t come with provenance, he says:
He can’t afford to DNA the stains,
Though you can, if you want, on your own dime.
They found it in a yard sale up in Vail,
Where folks have follies, know about the used,
And might speak Latin. That’s the bit that sells,
He tells me. I said, empire is dead.
It’s only lost, he says. Eagles can last
Longer than vandals wearing furry suits
Who pocket pillage. They can transfer wealth,
But not create it. I bought used CDs.

Burying the Survivors

They buried the survivors in a hole
Just big enough for almost all. Waste not,
The adage of the moment, after years
Of blood extravaganza, seemed all right.
The one left over got a monument,
A roundabout about him, and a sign
Pointing the way to Points of View and All.
Homies broke down there every day, from age
And penury and flats, with rubber bands
Holding their hearts together and their clothes.
Lucky the Caravan sold cups of joe,
Premeditated burgers, cannabis,
And shortbread local mommas wept upon.
Somebody blew him up one summer night.
He fell back to the ground in bits of spud.

Milk of Amnesia

It covered up my recollections, some
Oobleckian, obliterating ooze
Memories couldn't penetrate. It took
Her name, their numbers, all the horses' men,
The time and dates and instruments of debt;
And where it came from, plumbers wouldn't say
And politicians promised not to learn.
Unkempt, unkept, I cried, ringing my bell,
Making my way down North & South, well past
The point where anyone I knew had lived.

The Ottoman Empire

I occupy this couch and think about
Decline this fall. For nearly 30 years
It ruled the room, and now its springs have passed
From mountains into gorges, great depressions.
Where are the wales of yesterday? I bought
A book, and all the change clattered away.
I changed a child, and look what that has done.
The subject people wanted to engage
Was war. Well, sometimes love. And never death.
Not on a couch, which framed all matters thus:
When we subside, how can we rise again?

Early Onset

Lordly dinners and waistcoast made of fust,
Gold, and the kind of glue schoolchildren use.
Gardens of flowers chosen for their names--
Verbena and wisteria and rue.
Cigars and women and women and cigars.
And ice cream, said the little boy. You do,
His father said. And so the women, too.

Yet I’ve forgotten everything that counts.
Without my mother’s maiden name I can’t
Access my bank account or climb the tree
From aunt to cousin, cousin to The Manse
Wherein the steamer trunk of crowns and pounds
Is kept for an emergency of love
Or kidnapping. It never will be missed.

Congress is Happier Than Your Hand

1.

It isn’t death, whatever princes say,
Not when I dreamed of sandwiches, and kites
Fell on us all, like panicked meteors,
Leaving us naked at the first alarm.
These sheets don’t wind. These covers aren’t for keeps.

2.
Conceive of dirt as history, says Prince.
If you don’t dust, you’re worth a Ph.D.
In Native Studies: who you were Way Back,
Who was the Who before you were, and who
Taught grease stains how to kiss my lady’s hand.
It isn’t Alexander in a bung,
Not necessarily, but someone’s some
Distance away now, never regretful, made
A building block, like calcium or beets.
Don’t sweep: it might be love. It might be sense
Of history in Bag Type H, sucked up.

3.
We are not quite immune. This ham was once
A pig among his peers, a Gadarene,
Alliteration challenged, equaller;
And now a sandwich of most perfect gist,
Chap-fallen, cheesy. We shall all be toast.
If better not to be done, then pourquoi
Are pillows only broad enough for heads
Solus and undistinguished in the dark,
Though full of these dramatic congresses
With faces blurred? You know it isn’t death.

Born Under Our Bed Sign

Under my sign are born the hard of hearing,

The hard of heart, the hard-up double-clutched
Investigative annalists. We act
Out conversations with ourselves, until
We’ve polished every line to silken splendor,
And who cares if they never happen? Lust
Is academic, omnipresent, pent,
But not exactly personal. A tale,
Worth more than actuality, is told
In Roman periods, by steel dip pen,
To pages not intended to be read.
That is my sign, not her sign. Where she walks,
Firelilies blossom and bombs explode
In anthills underneath the path. The toll
Is glorious among the hoplites. Drones
Behead themselves in homage; cynics rise
Buck-naked from their tubs and bow. She lies
Like rivers flow, by nature. She observes
The holidays of vegetable dyes,
The saint-days of the unredeemed, the last
Rites of Pompeii. The birds all wish they were
Self basting in her wake. They know the signs.

An Ad for Astra

To what are we fastened, luv,

As if you didn't know?
A woolly mastodon of pain
With braces on, for show.

A dancing clam, a rhyming slug,
A logarithmic cow.
Oh, set your sights on shiny stars
By night, by God. But how?

I think not, luv. The rain it rains
On aching necks and backs.
And what will come will come. For now
You'd better not relax.

The Norman Inquest

     This appeared in Plainsong.

King Harold had an arrow in his eye,

Which made his princeps difficult and gauche.

It bumped the mirror when he tried to shave

And hung up on his undershirt. His thralls

And churls inclined to sniggers as he passed—

Those bobbing feathers. Polity declined.

He bore sharp pain, like megrims, and he'd miss

The stirrups, if they'd been invented yet

(1066--he couldn't quite recall

If Saddler had made stirrups, though Clyde's Dale

Was large as life), and distance was too hard

To calibrate--he fell into a well

And had to be winched back up like a bucket,

A frog stuck in his jerkin. And the rot,

Decomposition in his nether parts:

How difficult to saunter like a king.

Then language withered like a hag-hexed crop.

Most third-declension verbs were hard to follow,

All Norman now, as if the iron head

Had tweaked all 3 bones in his inner ear

And no more freemen could decline a king

And field was just as hard as fealty.

  

But no tote bags

I am considering a pledge drive for RHEpoems.blogspot.com. The goal would be to raise readers, not money.  Perhaps I could raise some minor Cavalier poets, although they're probably afflicted with I'll Read One of Yours, If You'll Read One of Mine Syndrome, and theirs are all about ale and girdles.

Ideal for Ferns

Last time I went out on the town they didn’t

Just rent my room or box my books downstairs,
Pamper a pauper’s feet with my worn socks,
Or give my parka to a banker’s brat.
They sold my dog. They shot my desk. They dialed
My radio to Sister Carmen Todd,
The Bride of Pop. My mom declared me dead.
“He’s dead,” she said. “I do declare.” They made
My car a planter: somehow, they observed,
A hatchback is ideal for ferns. They mist
The ferns. They painted my pine bedstead white
And hung some Jesus where I used to sleep.
His eyes will track you if you try to rest
There now, but no one will. They mist their ferns.
The air must turn the color of balloons.

The Hesperides, Such As They Are

The Raintown Review for this one.

Here there are no rough winds, and here no snow
Disturbs construction: twig by twig they nest,
The birds of summer. Here we have a plan
For wasting time, not spending it; the gold
And lilac spring dissolves in pools so brief,
The grass absorbs them like a sponge. We sing
Like blackbirds; but without the gift of song,
Soon forgetting what we were singing of.
Our trees are wrapping pits in juice and flesh,
Dressing them up for going underground,
Absent of light, flowering memory,
Ready to take one for the common good.
Within the hedge our fledglings ask, How long?
And even birds don’t dare to say, Forever.

Not Far Behind

Spring on the horizon, the nightbird says.

I’m here, you know, not going anywhere.
It’s in the offing, spring is. Blackwing says,
We’re here for the duration. Longtemps is
Our middle name. Now bring the car around.
We’ll soon fill it with primroses and peepers.
We feed when you’re asleep, the jetblack says,
And never seem to get enough to eat.

When you just can't get enough

You know, if my posts here don't suffice to fill you up, you can find more of me on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/richard.epstein.3) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/rhepstein1), even, rather more infrequently, on Ello (https://ello.co/rhepstein).  But if you are pressed for time (or not all that interested), it's the poems which really matter.

Security at an Exhibition

We stand where we are stood, assigned to fill

A vacuum till the posh begetters come.
Trust us for that. The portraits say their names,
Whereas our labels are not blessed with art
Or opulence. From pockets we spill keys
And gummi bears and Zippos from the war,
Absent the ruffs and velvet hats. Our skies
Are free of putti, pennies in a jar
Betray no pudgy burgher here. We stare,
But are not scanned. We are the dragons now,
Extant beyond the borders of the frame;
And look at this one, gilt and dark and grime:
The demigods are falling from the trees
Like caterpillars, waiting for the change.

The Good Die Young

The good die young. Will you not try

To be good temporarily?

Epstein's Constant

This also appeared in Orbis.

I’ll call this Epstein’s Constant.  It implies

the angle of the vision from the man.

It imports paraendrocrinology

into aesthetics via sense of touch.

It makes all macroeconomics just.

By Epstein’s Constant all girls understand

all boys, and boys occasionally know

something about one girl, if they apply

themselves.  And Epstein’s Constant.  When you view

the stars through Epstein’s Constant on clear nights,

Magellan’s Cloud will match both Decalogue

And the Decameron in tone and luster,

measured against whatever scale you like.

It never changes. (I said it was constant.)

It knows no history and yet applies

To what your mother told your father you

told your teacher.  Although it will not bend,

applied to love it usually finds

the path most sinuous between two points.

Dead Grandpa, He Dead

from The Complete Dead Grandpa

Goose, gander, ducat, duchess, dead dead dead,
and nothing you can say will bring me back,
nor cumulo-nimbus fleece floating atone
for birthday candles blown or naked gifts
on disco-lit parquet. Dead. Dead is croaked,
frogs on a spit, Achilles in the pit,
and ordinary Me blue in the face,
a little while at least. The high-toned art,
allusive and annoying, leaves me cold.
I'd rather be a butcher in Portales
than talked about in Paradise, where odes
are picayune accomplices of dirt.

And Beets and Pickled Okra

The pantry is a cool and cedar-lined

Room in the basement where we keep the jars
We do not need right now, but someday might.
(It hasn’t happened yet, but who can tell.)
Preserves, we call them, as if that would keep
Them biohazard-free. I think they wait
For evolution. In the night I hope
To be preserved, but I know better now,
Awake. To be a boy of 17,
A damson plum with paraffin on top
To save me from my nature—-string beans grow
Pale in their darkened room: they will not turn
To tap dancers or unicyclists if
They do not break their seals. Though tubers chant
The virtues of sequestered, reddened roots,
They do not grow, and if they did, they’d drown.

Raising Expectations

Given some rope, they've torn the statues down

To piss on legendary heads, the groins
Bedecked in amaryllis and ablaze.
(Who would have guessed that amaryllis burns,
And colorfully?) The shoppers fill their carts
With freebies. (Who'd have guessed they wanted phones
Far more than sandwiches?) The songs they sing
Are short on lyric wordplay, long on scat.
We made no plans to emigrate, but have
Our havens in the hinterlands, where treats
Are plastic shoes on Sundays, where delight
Is puddings made of pigs and doughty men
Pray to the forest just because it's there.
(Who knew that gods had green cards or that wolves
Wanted our wives for bon-bons in the smoke?)