Here It Is

 

Here is a list of what I can't remember—

I'm kidding, of course. No, wait. Here is a list.

What time it was. How old I was. Who came

And what she brought. The capital of Chi.

The publication dates of What's-His-Name

And when I hit him. All the horses' men.

Pringles & Funyuns. All the rabbi's girls.

The Queen of Hearts and Blackjack Mulligan.



To few of these have I been reconciled.

I shall not steal your money, and your wife

Is safe if I'm awake. A coral reef,

Teeming with spirits, angelfish and clowns—

Did I see that, or was it someone's book,

Lost in the fires of '71, the last

Post just before the world grew up and left,

The bitter end of something bittersweet? 

Over Land

 

What is the sound of Puget in the fall?

It seems to be an owl who doesn’t show

What or when or why or where. Below

His wings no squeak escapes the wood. The call

Of the meek, the gently terrified, the bland

Seed-swallowers, is wishful in the dark:

That they had never occupied the land,

But joined the doves escaping from the ark

To anywhere. None of the toothsome tots

Asks for a story. Tell me nothing more,

They say. We already have lots and lots

To share. Pray with us to the predator.

The owl is looking at the looming shore

And pivots towards a land of limbs and knots.

Changing the Sheets

 

There is a part of me that can’t explain

Why I don’t see you when I make the bed

A better place. Unoccupied, of course,

By armies of the night and model men

Who pose in airbrushed attitudes, but me,

I lurk there, looking down, on rumpled quilts

And foolscap sheets, when percale would have done.

A foreword and an afterward, but you

Escape the text of time, the asterisk

I loved, for which the bottom of the page

Could not suffice. Erasure. Foot notes. Grace.

A sequel which the star declined to make.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Another Cup of Tea

 

The Nazis drove through Paris,

Elvis got fat and died.

Babe Ruth was supplanted by Maris.

The President lied.

    I have survived a number of shocks.

You were young, you were beautiful, you said

My heart is a halo of flame.

I haven't heard if you are still dead,

But no one knows your name.

    Backwards reel the clocks.

Our trees are green again this year.

The drainpipes drain to the sea.

Somebody pops a Mexican beer,

But love was your cup of tea:

Till the stars collapsed and the sun burned out

And everyone learned beyond a doubt

    Love is a plate of cold rocks.

You & Me & Rain on the Roof

 

When you were young, I was already x.

My son is y, but you are only z.

You glow in tones designed to charm and vex

Our pants off. As mine are. Here. Now. My bed.

What does that make me? One decrepit drooler,

A humbert in his head? You are a bird

Of paradise. Our years, marked like a ruler,

Measure me for subtraction. Word by wordplay

I find me wanting. Wanting you, but wanting

Not to be young again. To have to be

Feathered like you. A tit. I should be planting

Saplings, so someone else can have a tree.

It is raining. It is raining. I'm relieved

In what we are not doing. In the night

Paradise is a roost. I am deceived

Because you are not here. Take heed. Take flight.

Rising 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?)

Terraculture

 The mulch is ready. Earth contains

All earth requires, the blood and brains

Of trees and flowers, to make with weeds

The soil that terraculture needs

For moly. On the primal tree

Hung harbinger and history,

Both fast asleep in yeoman mud.

The mulch is making bark of blood.

ABC

 

In Sumer love kept lovers warm;

And from a distance cuneiform
Sufficed to substitute for flesh.
It was the same in Marrakech,
Where swirls and loops conveyed the sense
Of sworn and forsworn innocence.
It was the same where love idyllic
Begged to change in Old Cyrillic
Blush for a satiated sigh.
Even in rebus, with this eye
I name what I hope soon to see,
Writ in a language new to me,
The legend of the Holy Grail,
Spelled out for touch, composed in braille.

A Dream of Fair Women

 

Come winter, we shall learn the ways

Of women, young and wanton, run

Amok in books, which we shall praise

For literary merit. We

Shall substitute them for the sun

And make believe they’re history.

Juliet is not much like school,

Nor Guinevere like Mrs Beale,

Who is not golden, nor a fool

For chivalry. The cold and snow,

Unlike Isolde, is not real.

And where did all the Helens go?

Not to our school. Not then. Not yet.

I looked and then returned to read

Where princesses glittered jade and jet.

The janitor died of smoke and flame

Down in the boiler room. I need,

But cannot quite recall, his name.

A Christmas Colloquy

 

Shepherd Lad: I bring to you my oaten flute,

A pile of dried and winter fruit,

A lock of my beloved’s hair,

And videos of Fred Astaire.

Me: Thank you, but I already gave.

I don’t believe the gods will save

Me, if I let you pave my roof

Or flush my pipes with 90-proof

Corn-founded hogwash. Be you gone

Before you’re fired by the dawn.

SL: You have mistaken me. I’m not

Some Adventist whom time forgot.

I’m not the ghost of yokel past.

Here at the end men love me last.

Me: Because nostalgie pour la flock

Replaces your initial stock?

I think not. With the wolf you go

To see the hayrick hung with snow

And blood a part of being fed

On chines of the unrisen dead.

SL: And me on Ginger’s treasure chest.

Me: A stock show.

SL: And a Winter Fest.

Me: It is not so. I cannot be

A man before color TV,

The laurel garland on his brow,

But every tense the here and now.

SL: Your loss. No gain. I pray you, sing

Of ewes beside some purling thing

(As well as Ginger). Be you eld,

And time will slow and measures meld.

Me: Only in dreams, and I awake.

Now here’s a twenty. Please, Sir, take

Yourself away to Grecian shores

Where acorns taste like melted ‘smores,

And all the cattle dance in line.

You are a dream, Sir, but not mine.

Arabica Nights

 

Scheherazade called last night, with a tale

Of buffalo and bitcoin. I hung up.

Her name is Scam; her voice is far away

From Rocky Mountain vowels, her face as pure

As real-life happenstance, as blank as pie.

Next time she calls I’ll ask her, Have you more?

More rocs, more executions, warranties,

Or current offers? I am Old King Cole

And full of expectations unfulfilled;

But I can see the chambers where you toil,

A studio walled in silk, and those are pearls,

And these are bread and swine, Scheherazade.

Meet the Beetles

 

When I was young, there was abundant time,

The local trees insatiable, the bugs

Bigger than classmates. I remember names

Were things, as permanent as furniture.

Now I am not. Sequoias come and go,

And monuments are jittery. I see

What I have seen. I tell a bug, I knew

Your family. I made a Science Fair.

He is not much impressed, and he is dead

Or playing dead. And April's grass is green.