Where the Woods Stop

Whose tale this is I think I know,

That darkness where the daydreams grow.

All made of gingerbread and cream,

It’s not a place I want to go.

I don’t like a collective dream,

A much attenuated meme.

Out here at least the air is gray,

And people only what they seem.

They think they’re more and sometimes say

A better world with better pay

Would treat them like the folks they were

And compensate them where they play.

There’s little cake and little myrrh,

Simplicities I much prefer.

Hamlet--Monarch Notes

Your arras, that's a dicey thing.
It keeps the damp away, the chill
old ghosts convey.  A curtain ring
moves by no wind and then hangs still,
though spirits pass on either hand.
A toast, a toast.  A rheumy dude
is run through unannounced, unplanned,
helped on into his desuetude.

Outside the sky in winkled shades
promises much, delivers few
from evil.  Here be younger blades
who row, who row, the sort of crew
no castle keeper does without.
The Prince himself prefers to doubt.

Ripe for Recruitment

Under the bridges, then, where can be found

Men lost, bootless, unready hands on fire
And hair they use as lockpicks. Or The Last
Piazza, where the contract killers meet
Their lawyers, to insert a venue clause
And limits on assignability.
Down by the tracks, it’s far too popular,
Crowded with scads of housewife-realtors
Who need time off to study Avila.
The Polo Club will take an application,
But not call back. And Kitty’s 24
Prefers you dazed, emetic but aroused.
Or there’s the crossroads. Sandwiches and smokes
Purchase apparent assent. Fruition is
Another matter: these are not the deans
Of Mayhem College; often they forget
Objectives, falling asleep on wiry doormats
Stamped with cardinals and black-capped chickadees,
Right at their victim’s feet. Such tasseled shoes.
Nothing says loving like a drunken bum
Sprawled at the doorstep, hunting knife in hand,
Asking, if kicked, for dollar bills and beer.
Try beneath bridges. Covered in newsprint there,
Soldiers with stories, drumheads fast asleep,
Forage for excess, settle for skinny sweets.

And This Was Only Monday

What do you say when trees begin to dance –

I see you, though I don’t know what you are?
Look at the starlings fall out of the trees,
Indignant anyway, now mortified.
There in the moonlight, starlings on the grass,
What will they tell their mothers? I was mugged
By Terpsichore? The world is just as strange
At Adam’s desk, where the blue screen of death
Devoured a fortnight’s work complacently,
And he has organized Consuela’s name
In paperclips. A pigeon on the ledge
Begins to sing a Kindertotenlied.

Balance Sheet

If you are such a big deal, the real thing,

Where are your merit badges, where your stars?

Where are your fancy crockpots and your cars?

I fear you are not such a sichy ding.

Have you appeared at late night, on a stage,

Drunk, vexed, and barefoot, hooting like an owl?

Have you been told by witches, Fair is foul—

And put that robin back into its cage?

I didn’t think so.  When the big black van,

Equipped with no restraint, no jaws of life,

Waves bye-bye to your trouble and your strife,

Try to remember when you were a man.

Before you had a credit history,

You had a rock, a jackdaw, and a tree.

Modus Vivaldi

This may not be the moment you propose
To change the world, to bring it budding on.
I can't remember anyone who chose
A season: this became the house of sun
Without you. It will fall. These are the days
Of rain and roses. There the clover lies,
Bumbling with bees and ready to be mown;
And if now cut, then what? It will come down

Soon enough. Happens, where the lift of birds
Desperate to get it on, is just the place
For acrobats who do not know the words
To set the songs they sing. They interface
And separate and scold. And when the price
Is to be paid, these are their bids, these bards.

Fabulist

My mother died before I was born,
My father before I was conceived,
All recorded on pages torn
From books not meant to be believed.

Raised in a house by an ancient aunt,
Who planted something new each day
And fed and watered me like a plant,
Until the night she went away.

Learned to read from a lexicon.
Learned to write in ink I brewed.
Saw dogs, saw snakes, saw jays at dawn
Who called my name, as though too shrewd

To let me pass. I burned it down
And let it lie. I took a stream
That floated me on past a town.
I found it flame and left it steam.

And then a path. And then a road,
And then another, till today.
This is the route the fire showed.
This is what works, the right of way.

The Exclusionary Rule

"Newton's apocryphal apple"

I swear it wasn't. When the core decayed
on Eden's floor, the seeds took hold. The bole
blossomed and stained the air with pink, a whole
spectrum effect inferred from sin. It made
an atmosphere of perfume. And more trees.
They propagated emigres, and these

pinked England, and the apples fell and fell.
They rolled. They bounced. They made it into verse.
The bobby bowed and handed one to Nurse.
At all times they claimed sweetness led to Hell,
but emblematically. It was a nap
in symbol as he sat there. And his lap

bore stains which he could show you, because all,
at fruited feet per second squared, must fall.

Farmer Brown's Village Play Set

This appeared in No. 1.



The world is not constructed as it might be.
A clever set of brightly colored blocks
could fix a lot; given a Providence--
a child's bad temper, adult salary,
carpet enough and time--the houses would
show smoking chimneys in July, a fence
a cow could lean against, and portable
tulips, which would display themselves where put.

And when the circus tumbled into town,
the teachers would be clowns, down at the Bank,
old Mr. Wheeze be wearing saffron robes,
have shaved his head and changed his name to Harry.
The cutglass parking meters could dispense
one shining nickel per velocipede.
The ringmaster and his lion would walk by,
talking of spangled tights and tenderloins.
A bigtop makes a 3-ring barn. The ewes
can pile pyramidally for the careful.

Our insufficient, firmly rooted world
needs pigs and saxifrage in every closet--
hang the expense. The roofbeam would be fine.
Poppies are just as good as coffee tables,
and better dyed, if tea-time is pretend.
The elephants, like schools, have principles:
give them an office, let them read announcements.
Take them apart to be put away at night.

From the Homefront

No, not a mansion, an estate,

Nor a chateau.  It’s just a house.
The taxes here are second rate.
No pheasantry.  The famous grouse
In the odd cupboards never call.
We have a lot.  Who has it all,

He works downtown.  His hands are clean,
He’s made of iron, cap-a-pie.
He is a gent we all have seen.
The women claim he ran away,
Just at proposal.  We are sure
His kind is weak and won’t endure

A liberal incumbency,
Yet there he is.  And here we are.
We mow our own.  And you can see
The oil which needs a newer car.
We have a vision: Saturday
We’re going to scrub those stains away,

Uncreak the door and love our wives
And make our children sweet and smart.
Life after life, lives after lives,
We barely finish where we start,
Exceptional in no detail,
Tepid and permanently frail.

The heat increases.  As we sink
Beneath our debts, the clocks explode.
No one has asked us what we think.
Our recent bills have come in code.
It’s later than it used to be,
We translate one.  But there are three.

A civil servant with a broom
Is dancing.  There’s a gravid fox
Has moved into the rumpus room
Where cellotape obstructs the locks.
Lawyers assumed to boardrooms rain
Upon the gold and fruited plain.

An organ grinder plies his trade
At 6 o’clock: This is the news.
We waltz in the diminished shade
Between our house and Duncan’s Mews.
The children write, We have been lent
By LSE to Parliament.

Thus we, content, replant the mint,
Repaint the windowbox, and wait.
My wife takes off her clothes.  Her hint
Is good enough.  We shall be late,
We shall be last.  We shall be saved,
Our names erased, our dates engraved.

The Midnight Train

A lantern on a lanyard on the last

Train out of town to Anywhere at All,

Which happens to be east of Little Jugs,

Gives more illumination than you’d think.

A carrot and a stick and several shoes

Piled on the platform where the caboose becomes

Thin air; and you, you weren’t expecting that.

The elegance of emptiness does not

Include a carrot or a pair of heels,

But Anywhere at All will be amused.

A milliner’s, a pool hall, and a new

Patisserie, in case the gentry come.

A Church of Holy Holiness, a cow

Walking the streets, and then, of course, a bank.

Life can be fruitful, Anywhere at All

Instructs its children, who are dreaming of

A better world, offered in Somewhere Else,

To those catching the midnight train, which leaves

Tomorrow afternoon at 6:15.

The Likely Lads

This appeared in Life & Legends


Elegant we, the eidolon of eyes,
Superior to the threads we bear, the hope
Of parents or custodial trustees.
We are the ones on whom the trees shed leaves
And amber bugs; we are the likely lads
Who hear the bushes when they conversate.
For us the swans make valentines, the dogs
Balance their cans of beef heart on their noses.
Nobody knows us, records our pithy mots,
Or sees that we are flexing in our skins.
Never you mind.  The day advents when trolls
Will serve us lemonade in stainless steel
And maidens wish they weren't.   The days will come.

Passing Strange

This appeared in Blood Lotus.

Here we are in Oklahoma, the next
stop Strange, where no one you know ever lived
and popsicles are served up for dessert,
wrapped in serviettes, where the dogs are bred
never to bark until they're spoken to,
and finger puppets entertain the kids.
Look quickly. Strange won't last long. Kresge's there,
one story, is the tallest store in town.
The 7-11 locks its doors at 10.
The newspaper is trucked in out of Enid.
It's gone, Strange is, you can see it behind,
an El Dorado, full of dust, the home
of unwed girls, pretty, each one, so briefly
their hearts grow dense, like cherry crumble squares.

Apocalypse Now

This first appeared in The Shit Creek Review

The end of things may have come yesterday,
When frozen sparrows dropped from budding trees
And spectral hordes on smoke-stained ponies rode
Suburban streets. With swords. And women gave
Birth to stones. When red anacondas hung
Like plastic icicles from guttering.
Those all seemed predicators. Like the voice
Who spoke out of the sewers, “Be ye not
Amused. This is an actual alert.”
And yet the network news provided live
Detail about absconded brides and junk
Bond status for GM and Ford. I watched
Game 6, and no one said the final match
Was cancelled for Apocalypse. I spread
Fertilizer, clipped a forsythia
Whose day had passed, but which will bloom again
When spring returns and all these frogs are gone.

That Voodoo You Do

The recipe is principally blood
And Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix, stirred till
All bubbles have been beaten out, then fried
To burnt beyond description in cast-iron.
Cooled and crumbled and sprinkled on a brush—
Tooth or hair, macht nichts—it can be observed.
Debs may grow blue and die, Associate
Professors watch all hope of tenure fail,
Children shift into Senior Homes. And still
None of them finds a hint of consequence.
Sometimes, however, conscience gone on break,
The air will fill with lust and violins,
Like soundtracks at an old Italian dive,
Ladling the night with syrup. There is hope
For magic, then, and sweet unlikelihood.
But, geez, you would have had that anyway.

Geoffrey, P.I.

Just moments ago the kings and princes left;

Priors pleading engagements to buy and sell
Indulgence futures, they commanded peals
And hautboys to blow them off. I drank my beer.
Pale enough, sure, but nobody would mistake
Moi for a prince, me for the high command,
The stuffed lark on my mantel for a hawk.
I ate some pretzels. Somebody's dead duke
Had fucked with the wrong archbishop's piece, employed
A crucifix between his jersey legs.
You shouldn't ought to do that on a nave
Made shiny and kept clean by novices.
I missed my lunch, and nobody seemed sure
If dukes were to be solved or disappeared.
My ex had opted for the latter, left
For some deer park outside St Smithereens,
And me and Buster sifted through the clues
In ashpits, huts, and shabby priories.
I could tell tales, but then I'd have to leave you,
Springtime or not or cherry-staining skies.

For Two Nights Only

Left me the day before the opera came

To town, a Fledermaus for bellowed love,
Its banjo on its knee, and would not stay,
However grievously implored. It went,

Trailing a cloud of bosoms, a mist, a wake,
Heaving the way Valkyries do. Left me,
And took up with a drummer from down South,
A treadmill salesman fit to be untied

And smooth as putting greens. Left me just as
A pitcher of tequila sunrises
Mysteriously emptied. Left behind
Headache and backache and cocks without a crow.

These are the days the market crashes, boys
And girls beneath the stripèd awnings; clay
And scalded dogs are everywhere, the heat
Like Tristan, broken kneecaps, broken heart,

And me without a woodwind to my name,
Ensemble on my own. The holidays
Are coming, leave me with a stocking, lumps
Of coal, and acappella, myrrh and myrrh.

Occupy Christmas

That was some night. The world went black.
We never got our feelings back
Below the waist. The frost descended.
All of the stars were apprehended,

But not by us. The cars refused
The roads. The birds of prey, confused,
Flew into clouds, and there they stayed.
The householders were sore afraid.

Since mangers would be closed this year,
A sensible wise man would appear
On other stages, baggy pantsed.
And all the stars in Heaven danced.

Major Bear

Although I'm cracking wise and quoting Yeats,

explaining all the voices Kant can't do,
the damn bear won't look back. He has a den
accessible to meat- and berry-men,
but not to those whose popcorn-covered cates
feed just themselves. He may live in a zoo,

which is his loss to bear: but one must buy
goodwill from prisoners. He can smell my heart,
so fat, so crowded, from this far away.
When I go home to betty, he will stay,
a bear among men, a bear who will not try
to rise above his nature. Take your art

to some museum, where a red Matisse,
resigned to gilt, rectangularly framed,
hangs. Never shuffles. Never craps or roars.
Blinks not. As squares dance in the in-of-doors,
my bear is moated by such white police.
Die, will you? Do. The bear will not be blamed.

Outgrabe Days

A fire on the staircase,
The body in the pantry,
A woman in the confessional
Reading Elmer Gantry.

Cutworms on the salad.
Bats below the eaves.
On the doorstep pamphlets
Claiming Jesus grieves.

Children in the parkway,
Placards held on high,
THINGS WILL ALL BE BETTER
When the piggies fly.

When the door is opened
And the stairs ascend.
When the teller flaunts his
Tales at either end.

Exterminator 20:2

The rodents in the wainscoting
Are singing: Praise to God on high,
By which they mean--I've no idea.
The cat, perhaps, the Man of Pie

And Edam. Or a giant mouse
Who takes no shit and never begs,
His tail contorted by a trap
And dying from his broken legs.

A little song, a little dance,
A little seltzer in the pants:
Not for the pious mice who keep
An eye on life and death. The chance

To be a better mouse is not
High on To-Do. They settle for
An Oysterette, some sour rye.
Their god and appetite are more

Than any mouse can bear. They go
Gently, and they do not return.
Some life, some death, some little guys
For owls to eat. They never learn.

Foundation Myth

Leastwise, they said, they had a proper book,

With “thou” and “withal.” Under a fruity tree
They read and didn’t understand a thing.
She had her hair--her tresses, she was told;
He had the muscles God might give a goose,
Were He so minded. They thought they looked swell.
It rained, but not so they knew wet from warm.

One day the sun went elsewhere, and the leaves
Showed them no comfort. One day she was sick,
Of nothing, really, and then she was gone.
He blamed the varmints, critters in the dark
Who laughed at her and told repulsive jokes.
He said he would remember who she was
And what they did, but what they did was made

A part of where he left, and who she was
He told so many times that he forgot.

Casual Labor

Later they claimed they hadn't known the truth.
It might have been a train, a didgeridoo,
A kid bleating across a bottleneck,
And not a woman trying to break free.
Gods are capricious. When he let her go,
He hollered Boo! and farmers in their fields
Puckered up tight and drew their flocks in close.
The woman cried herself into a daze,
Humming and shaking, giving prescient birth
In 24 hours to a superstar
Who grew to his full self in a couple weeks,
Released the hounds, throttled a blatant beast,
Then took to the road, a casual laborer,
Beating up bachelors, just for fun, at night.

Please Take a Moment to Locate the Exits

King of the Night, he is.  He doesn’t like you.

He doesn’t like your backstory.  Your charm,

Like Bottom’s bottom, isn’t something special.

The mists of midnight blow away.  You stand

In the Aisle of Target, looking for your shoes

On shelves of mouthwash, rodent spray, and cans

Of 3-in-1.  King of the Night, he says,

“Wet cleanup on Aisle 7, where the lute

And zither sale  has just concluded.   Please

Exit the store, and, listen, don’t come back.”

Non Plussed Ultra

Something’s not right--the dog has too many legs,

The poet is rhyming punch with anaconda,

You in an iron mask, a gun in hand,

Thought balloons overhead. Alarming stuff

For those not yet acquainted with the dog,

Whose genial nature only wants to please.

A centipede for love. A friend in need.

But why not a sword, which better suits the mask,

If not the miniskirt, balloons so full,

They’re raining everywhere, the proper nouns

And action words. The poet is nonplussed.

Nevertheless, each sun must have its day

To shine on its constituents and tell

Its tale, or maybe that’s the comet, come

And gone, not to return, until next time.

And, no, conclusion has not come. Not yet.

Not while an aunt is upstairs rhyming fish

And threatening to wed the chest of drawers.

Something will come of this, something sublime,

Like peonies or chifforobes in flames.

Light Concludes in Lightning Bugs

When the sky was a vault, the stars were stuck

To the underside. We wished for luck
On falling decals. First the sun
And then the moon blinked off for fun,
Relit for entertainment. God
Was merciful, but very odd.

Grounded, alfalfa didn't care;
And cherries ripened in an air
Closer to home, where pigs agree
That slop is their theology.
The decals slipped and fell at night,
Yet there was no decrease of light.
Piercing terrestrial disguise,
We brought them home as fireflies.

In for a Penny

In for a pound, the centaur died.

His rusted cage began to curl
Away from its anchors. Ants fried
On the concrete floor. That's a pearl

That was his eye, whose setting failed.
The better men and calmer bards
Have winkled out, have not been jailed,
Kings of their graven calling cards.

The mistress primps her painted bones.
The Greek is wrong and the Chinese
Opaque as Pocatello. Loans
Sustain the fingers as they freeze.

Off the wet page the hand-set words
Scarper. The night men clank and shift,
Marley in chains. From ill-kept birds
Onto the Thames the adverbs sift.