Old Kings and Things

Ignominy thwarts both

King Cyrus and his cook,
Whose name was Xx3.
I know, I know, you took

King Cyrus 101
And learned him in detail.
You had him for your tea.
You bought his socks on sale.

His bedpan holds your soup.
His cook is dust and hair
And someone’s sidewalk salt
And someone’s Dutch au pair.

Your Cyrus is an art.
His cook is a disguise.
It rains their blood and bones,
And slaves fall from the skies,

And children in their beds
Cwtch up to ancient kings.
Old dogs on counterpanes

Bark at transparent things.

The Levellers

 

They clobbered the delphiniums and turned

Them underground. They made the sedum pay

For blooming late and changeably--One Plant,

One Hue, they chanted as they beat them up

And down. We named the battered garden Mud,

The sit-in by the sundial, while the birds

Enjoyed the spoils of spoliation, Worms

For Everyone. And everyone a Worm.

They came back in the spring with bitter breath

And threw their rotten carrots at the gnomes,

The real ones, elder statesmen, not ceramic

Cutiepies. They pissed on the fallen leaves.

And they looked hungry, empty hearted, spent,

As though their gods just really hadn’t cared.

Wolves & Avalanches

After the wolves and avalanche subsided,

After some man was found encased in ice,

A quill clasped in his hand, a bowler hat,

Crown up, between his legs, there wasn’t much

To do but lay new shingles on the roof.

The goats were glad the wolves were gone, the dogs

Looked sheepish, and the bowler hat was blessed

By Father Tom, the light of rectitude.

We thought, though, that the corpse might be a poet,

One speechless as a Popsicle, and stiff

As Abelard’s one poem would have been,

An Orpheus of footless harmonies.

He wasn’t, it seems. The only one we had,

One Paul Verlaine, was eaten by a bear.

Not even the local Rambo made it good

By blood vengeance, monosyllabic death,

Or dada verse aboard a drunken sleigh.

As for the wolves, perhaps they have moved on—

No verse, no point, so late their country seat.

Meanwhile, On The Coast

         O heilige St florian verschon mein Haus, zund andre an

Maybe it's not exactly candlelight.

Stars are lights, too, and burning yews, and yours,

Fire consumes. Light kills a little bit.

Darkness is cool. It grows, They say, and Time

Chooses the side of nothing. Figures. Got

Nothing? Invest it. Darkness futures pay

Dividends, if some more of what you have

Is what you want. Or burn a little light.

See clearly what is going on for now.

Wood burns because it's meant to, full of ash,

The forest made of fire-stuff. The streams

Are water-soluble, the hills are hard

To fathom. Which old Greek said fire starts

Your day, your every day, your morning toast?

When wind smells like end of days, your house

Is green belt in potentia, the song

The sky is singing, Burn your baby, burn.

This appeared in Pens on Fire.

Jeopardy!

     Millard Fillmore

Fame is fleeting. A bubble. A male duck.
What is that green head, shining in the sun,
doing here on this inland parking lot,
carrying on like some deaf alto, crying
as mournfully as Thomas Wolfe in flight
and waddling to boot? Oh, ghost, come back,
be lost again. What is obscurity?

    Babe Ruth

The summer you remembered me you ate
candy bars like—like candy, sure. Oh, Henry.
We lay on that bed in that apartment maybe
714 times. When you
came up long on your period, you left
to take a walk. I am not waiting now.
I think that you aren't coming back. Who walked
and struck out more than any other player?

    The Venus de Milo

It was a dark and stormy night. We fell
back along the line. We walked. Some wept.
Jesus wept. The tracers lit up the dark.
I thought of you. I thought. I didn’t know
the name of the man on either side or if
they thought of beauty when they wet themselves.
Oak Park, Illinois is extremely distant.
And clean, too. What is A Farewell to Arms?

    The Daily Double/The Dead Sea

You can’t sink if you try. You have your own
specific gravity. Padlock and chain
will float like plastic tub toys, but, the smell
will certainly remind you, you are here,
awake and fettered, not because you are
rectitude personified and beloved.
What will occur on Resurrection Day?

    Browning

An alary formation, sounds of which
barely achieve us groundlings. Straight due north,
the last person who saw you said you were
headed. He told me, leaning on his rake,
trying to tidy up the harm he’d done
the grass, which only wanted to grow longer.
Point of view is everything. The absent
decline to state theirs. Have them, though. What is
a good idea before you cook your goose?

    Final Jeopardy/Julius Caesar

Eppie can be affectionate. Or not.
Tone of voice makes its contribution. Mal
grand, petit; but mal afflicts us all,
the seizure of the mind. The child is old
enough to have its own child now, if child
was there when you reached there and built Dun Roamin’.
The noblest roaming of them all, but we
who drew our cloaks over our heads and died
forever in one morning needed no
umpire to announce if we’d been fair
or brutish. Who, to poets’ betterment,
died at the hands of friends and made a name
synonymous with dynasty? Et tu?

AngelBug271: A Retrospective in Perspective

 

The things left out would fill an armory:

snow mattresses made out of fresh-cut spruce,
cross hatched, Air-Wicky, noisy in the night;
the thrum his pulse beat the last hundred yards
of a 440; locust shells on trees,
adhesive, alien, empty; new Keds.

Some themes, though do emerge, and many words.
Seven poems begin with moon & stars;
and "tears" appears in every single one.
The word for Love.  The word for blood.  The word
made ink, but never flesh.  Not even chance
makes miracles.  The moon.  The stars.  The moon.

The grout between the bathroom tiles.  The wind
unrolling the awning.  Look: they are not there.

Pleasure Comes In

 

     from These Denver Odes

Pleasure comes in short supply,
grace and favor, bit by bit.
Who promises contrariwise
tells innocently blue-eyed lies,
believing she's believing it,
Philpot. Celinda made me cry

that once, but that was yonks ago.
Today I merely miss some sleep.
If this one tells you you are strong,
and she will love both sweet and long,
that little bit of pride you keep?
Kiss it goodbye. I ought to know.

An Advent Calendar

 

The austere plain is only my front yard

At 2 a.m., and me without my glasses.
These are not angels, drifting in the wind,
Browning and brittle skeletons, the shape
Of feathers, strings of light, and Christmas stars;
But they will do. The lawn is edified
And passes on its wisdom. In the genes
Of adjectives the flexible is made
Customary, a quiff of clothes for skin
Which cannot bear the touch of falling leaves,
Of fallen princesses, of yellow bones
Made into grass, made into trees, remade,
Remade with no trick ending while it sleeps.

The Complete Henriad

This appeared in Angle.

Henry has disappeared, a man who mowed,

Unleaved the gutters, recovered falling trim,

Unturned no stone, and left no hole behind.

Everything takes his place, whose clothes were grit

And grass, and there is sun enough for all.

Hence scant despair.  The Henriad is made

Curtal; the solo myth of sorts is saved

And spent on robins, maybe, and the brown

Spinners who walked out of his new-trimmed bush,

Patient and outraged, made to start again.

The past has passed.  They spin a yarn so fine,

Henry may be inside, in visible

Distress.  He's moved.  Or Henry is just gone.

L'Envoi

This is what I made.

I made it all myself.

And now that it is done,

It’s no good, I’m afraid,

To stick it in a drawer

Or stack it on a shelf.

And there are plenty more,

Dark and all alone.

Why, sure I can attest

And swear by Mars and Jove

That art and bronze are best,

That nothing lives but love:

And make myself a home,

Safe in my metronome.

And worms will not protest.

And grass will not complain.

And some protagonist

Will do it all again,

Good, better, and best,

All washed out by the rain.

So read this if you would.

It may do me some good.

The Company He Keeps

 

The Irish Tower in LA

Has all the Greats, like Keats and Yeats,

Who sing for all and sing for aye

And stack up rhymes like dinner plates.

And every one is good and true,

Except, as it happens, when they ain’t:

So what’s a simple man to do

When told the truth, but told it slant,

But trust in angels, saints, and Yeats

(And Keats)? For as his recompense,

He wants his high and mighty mates

Pungent and true as frankincense.

So he listens hard, and he takes good notes,

And if in company he is dumb,

Every hundred years—and he quotes—

Some things wonderful this way come.

Mr Jarrell's Fairy Tale

 

Mr Jarrell's fairy tale will begin

With German, where he found Gemütlichkeit
And Heimat, but which makes you think of Stürm
And Kindertotenlieder, not the Nacht
Where wolves leave calling cards, like furry salesmen.

And then come maidens—no, not little girls,
But maidens, singing Schubert, braids and busts:
Like bodyguards, they ripple, and their eyes
Are blue as glass. Their fingers smell of milk.

And next march files of small misshapen men,
Named many things; they all are phallus-shaped
With hoes and picks and axes. They are chanting
Bass songs of conquest over Mutter Earth.
They clear the ground and build transparent coffins.

And here at last comes Goethe. Rise for this
Interminable harbinger of Höch—
High everything, immer and eloquent,
So sound and sane our longhorn cattle flee
Their frontier spreads, the coyotes disavow
All knowledge of their German kin, whilst he—
Randall, not Johann—broiders in the dusk
A tale so full of Old World charm, you think
You'd die, just die, to have the chance to bleed
In märchen woods, watched over by black trees,
A coverlet of ash, made from good Völk
And rosy children, still before their time,
To warm you as you snuggle down to bones.

A Watering of Lawns

 

"What if the stream should rise and overflow?

The setbacks here, our little yard—we're goners,

all just like that."

                                "It's not a stream, you know.

It's just the wet a hose makes in the curb,

a watering of lawns, not quite the brown

rush of current an atlas might pick up.

I wouldn't worry too much about a flood."

"Our tree, you know, it thrusts--what? quite a hundred

feet up, that flood would snap it like a stick

and use it to beat time on Shady Lane.

It's all so vulnerable. We build a hedge

and put in burglar proofing for the night

some guy decides he needs our VCR

to round his little day. We buy a dog

and aerosol the ants out of the driveway.

All that it takes is one efficient storm,

a little wind, a couple clouds, and someone,

gray suits we never voted for, decides

we are disasters in the technical

and economic sense."

                                    "The sprinkler ran

a little long next door. They went away

this weekend and some valve stuck open. That's

not Noah, and the elephants are still

down at the Zoo. You see them on the way,

a pair of them, trying to climb aboard

our station wagon? One, one coffee cup

came floating westward down the curbside towards

the California culvert, and you're checking

the median to see if trees still show

their topmost twiglets mirrored on the sea."

"I worked so hard just training that clematis

to climb where put. I hate to see it wash

"downstream, a meal for some bright-stickled fish

who doesn't know the lubbers in the house

who made the dirt mature enough to bear.

A man moves landwards when he thinks an oar

would make a trellis."

                                    "Look, there comes the truck

of sprinkler repairmen. Look, dear, we are saved."

"You're making fun of me."

                                            "Disaster comes

to every day the sun comes up. Sufficient

unto that day are dishwasher and bath."

"Let's go out back and check the runner beans.

They don't need much to burn. It's all so quick."

My Grant Application

 Another poem from the pre-Cretaceous era.  This one appeared in Plains Poetry Journal.

They asked me for a line or two, to show

what I could do, poetry-wise.  I gave them:

"Though snow-bound now, I knew the spring before";

"the silver periphrasis of the moon";

"Amo, amat: the pilgrims cry, 'So what?'"

But they were not impressed.  The Guggenheims

looked elsewhere for their beneficiaries.

I'd filled out every square on every form;

I even knew my mother's maiden name

and what the book after my next would be

called, if they ever gave me time to write it.

"Sorry," they said.  "The volume of our mail

precludes an individual response."

It Takes a Villeinage

      This appeared in Plainsongs.

In high dudgeon, as horsehair crests exude
Manliness and confidence and ye olde
Tyme-iness, the warriors produce speeches,
Spontaneous and metrical and crammed
With tropes, the bridge across Antiquity
To Meriwether Lewis Junior High.
It doesn't span it, quite. Into the cleft
Fall sleeping children, doomed to curse and rail
Like Thersites and feofor-princes. Better
To be a live shoe salesman in the Loop
Than eloquent in school libraries, pent
On clammy shelves in dusty inglenooks
Where Edie strips and Bobby Millstone waits.

When It Was New

 

This house when it was new

was mine. Now we have aged

past midpoint. When I grew

that elm, I kept it caged

a year or so. It soars

and crowds the house beside,

as if the out of doors

were one great neighbor wide.

I guess we haven’t altered

because I went away,

nor would these roots have faltered

if I had chanced to stay;

and yet it seems it bided

until I turned my face,

like someone then decided

to let it have the place.

Bedtime Stories

 

Watch out for the ogre, guys. I can hear him

climbing the stone stairs, trailing his nailed club

as he limps up and up. At the wrong door

you all kept vigil. He has got behind you.

He's closer now. His boots scuffle and slide.

The upshot always is, "He's going to get you."

They gasp, if the timing's right, and are content.

Those stupid bears. Those damn fool pigs. Wolves. Mice.

Bears and oatmeal? Perfect. Talking chickens?

Fairies and trolls? Let's have a story called

The Wicked Jogger or Three Billy Goats

and Their Tax Auditor. "Forget it, Dad."

Stick to what's unseen. What never could be

Plunks them the deepest; pulses thrill to beanstalks;

the house of twigs still stands, as green as summer.

Mom's gone. She was enlightened by a genie

who's granted her three wishes and red shoes.

"No, Dad. Come on." Well, then, there was this frog

who kissed this princess who wore golden slippers

and never met a prince she didn't like.

The Gentle Scansion

 This appeared in Poetry Ink quite a long time ago.

Of all places for me to be, I am

driving into West Virginia. Suddenly

the smell of pickles is everywhere,

ignoring the rolled up windows, pouring

through the twang of heartbreak and divorce

on the AM station, which is all I have.

It's a paper plant, I think. Or chemicals,

maybe. They are about the same,

paper and ink or clot-dissolving solvents.

Somehow the pickle smell of West Virginia

opens the way, foreruns the gentle scansion,

lyrics that tell, pastel, how much I wanted

to open that pale Magdalene's long legs.

The Last of the Elephant Jokes

 

This appeared in Freefall.

I packed the family trunk--and, no, it’s not
Elephantine, it’s mine. Beneath the lid
I hid my tattered grey epistlery,
So I would not forget. (All right, it is.)
A ruff of many colors for the pit,
In case I met my masters, and the hat
They gave me for becoming Little Man.
I’m bigger now. I packed a razor, tunes,
A toy piano, and my ivory bowl.
(It sings when stroked.) I can go anywhere.
By early light I sway, but what I want
Is the imagined graveyard of my kind--
In Tuscaloosa or the floral Keys,
In Agincourt or Lower Slaughter, last
Pacific places, where no one will look.
I am almost extinct, but I have room.
You’ll know me by my footprints in the Jell-O.

October Roses

 

It’s cold at night, or didn’t you know
This isn’t when the roses grow?
Under the hawthorns, in the shade,
The birds have gone, but you have stayed,
Underdesigned for taking flight.
Color cannot put all things right.
And now it snows, at which the frost
Declares that delicacy is lost.
And still you bloom, and for today
Keep ice and emptiness away.
So Keats, who failed, and failed in youth,
Let Beauty claim that it was Truth.

Big Day In A Small Town

 

Later the rhino slept on the main street,

And all the cars drove scrupulously around,

Even though no one knew its christian name

Or where it had grown up or gone to school

Or went to church or who its people were.

"Please let me sleep," the sign beside it said,

Which seemed little enough for one so big.

The children liked it best, of course, and made

A kudzu hat with daisies for a brim

To keep its gentle dermis safe and sweet.

Somebody said that we should call the cops,

So we threw rocks at him until he left.

The next day it was gone and took the sign.

A shonda it was, or so the elders said.

Theseus & Antithesis

Crafty Daedalus died. He was amazed.

One string, and he'd have puzzled his way back

To hearth, a home with labor-saving gadgets,

Self-bashing bulls and wax-free candlelight.

The little ingenuities of less

Do just as well: the patent problem is

A property of all and everyone.

Somebody's master, Theseus was, the crazed,

Plucking his string with singing and a snack

To lull the bull. He loved his cutting widgets

And classy sandals. Daedalus was right

To leave: force made a master of a mess,

Cleverness for the little properties,

A princess coming, and the bull was done.

     This appeared in The Flea.

Critical Updates

 This appeared in Angle.  Such good taste they had.

I’ve changed the voice commands. The poem starts

When anyone says Artemis or swears

By Zeus's thigh.  It finishes when rain

Intervenes, the puddles ex machina

Providing an escape.  Between the prompts

Poetry sleeps.  Hollering Blood-dimmed tide

As your Camaro races by won't work,

Nor liquid-sifting nightingales atop

A satellite dish.  I have allowed for that.

Nor saying Venus when you really mean

The foam-born goddess who made Helen fall

For that blond curly-headed twit, then watched

A local Hector dragged around in dust.

You can't say whale-road, can't pretend that Danes

Are good for more than video games.  You must 

Burn your own child to smithereens to save

Earth from the sun when what it needs is rain.

The Expatriate

For extra credit he remembered much
That wasn’t worth remembering, forgot
The kinship he had promised to except
From discharge, and demurred at growing up.
It made him charming, like a short-term loan,
Lots of interest there, so he changed his name
To Amaryllis-in-the-Shade and wept,
Or said he did, at auld acquaintances.
The Times that try men’s souls, he did not read,
Other than archived, knew that butterflies
Were thinner on the ground than yesteryear,
But worms more frequent. Mr Lowly Worm,
There was a name for next week, if he made
Next week as Amaryllis-in-the-Shade.

In Adam's Autumn

 

Where we first sinned was probably upstairs

And not for long; but now the color changes,

The detriment of summer. I shall miss

All of the sounds that naturally make

Our natures sweet. And bitter were the days

Succeeding, red and orange, perhaps, but not

How we had planned our progeny. We went

Our solitary way, best by ourselves.

We’d hoped for Nod or Canaan, but we found

Naked trees and a furred rapacity

Of gathering and storing, and a scent

Like Nuits d’Hiver was everywhere at once.

What did we have? What did we have to lose?

Those were our final steppes. We took them all.

The Girl In The Red Honda

Knights fell a lot.  And there they lay,

Lumps on the grass or in the mud,
Their armor like a suit of clay,
Rescuing maidens, giving blood.
The dragons chuckled, and the maidens
Planted cherries in their gardens.

Cherries ripe, but very wrong
For knights encased. Whenas they ride,
They sing, but every note of song
Is lost to echoes deep inside.
The ladies listen, if they can
Desist from planting pits for man.

We leave our dragons in their caves.
We watch the maidens drive away.
The knights are cool, but agile thieves
Thrive in the distance. Dawns the day,
And knights are bold and old and gone,
Cherries ripe in the subtle dawn.