The Dickens, You Say

 

In smog at dawn, such as it was, a man,

A little young to be so stooped, retrieved

With pious care the aitches which were left

From yesterday's conversations. Horses dropped

As well, but letters glitter, even mucked.

He put them in his gunny.

                                                       Another man,

Maybe a boy, polished the anecdotes

Piled on each corner. His blue camisole

And tawny trousers, stained with riverweeds,

Implied how long the stories had been passed;

And still they mirrored, rubbed with spit and hock.

The fog smelled of cabbage. Atop St Paul's the cross

Bobbed to the time daws kept. A little girl

Invited passers-by to take her home

To tell their missus what she ought to do

With all them stays and crinolines. She wore

Chapter and verse, and not too much of either.

A constable suggested she might make

The lilies of the field her chaperone.

She didn't seem inclined to heed the call.

In the damp thoroughfare a printing press,

Strewing its papers, signalled for a turn.

Genre Friction

 

Latex, the private dick opined, but whether
he’d noticed wall paint or the lissome pants
which clung to her like wall paint, I don’t know.
When he said Dames, I guess he didn’t mean
a thespianette once sanctioned with a gong;
but, really, only every second line
he uttered, like a water-damaged page,
registered. He was grousing about hollow
points. Perhaps Quintilian had reentered
his recollection. Sometimes from a dark
outcrop of fiction odd things clamber up,
with strappy shoes, peroxide hair, and net
shielding the violet eyes. Probably not
Quintilian, though. Psyche with a quirk,
trysting the night away, seems far more likely.
He offered rye. Who now drinks rye? The flask
restored him for an exit, nothing more,
and soon the transom, last light left, went black.

The Village

 

In that kingdom, it is written,

birds do not sing: they hum, show tunes
mostly, though records and radios
are unknown. Overseas travel
is a bird’s hobby. They have seen
mermen; they’ve been to the far side.

In that kingdom, whose king does not
touch the ground, birth to death, for soil
that knew him would have to be burnt
(and who, of that thin stratum, spares
any centimeter gladly?),

the yaks dance in their fields at night,
shaking their horns, and the stars faint.
The marmots whistle in the aisles
between rows of quaking blue pines.
In the skin dormitories sleep comes

when light fails. Mountain Edison
won’t string lines here. The yaks strike sparks
when hooves tap stone, on cloudy nights
looking like mountain glow worms.
Dreamless, love is an act of sleep.

What If The Evil Twin

 

What if the evil twin prevails?

What if the Count of Darkness jails

The better half? And pulls his testes?

What if the loyal troupe, his besties,

Good and fidele as earth and salt,

Are swatted away? Then, oy gewalt,

There is the end of fairy tales.

The kingdom falls. The black barge sails.

Maybe a thousand years of briers,

Of root decay and stagnant fires,

A new-fledged bird will take the air

And chirp because there's no one there.

Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard

 

    This appeared in the British magazine Candelabrum.


I started a list of what you never saw,
dead before Epsteins lived, dying while yours
wore roundheads, dead a long time, dead so well
your stones look more like sponge. I gave it up.
Who wants a list of cars and compact discs?
Who could explain epinephrine to the dead

and chronically short of breath? Still in their spheres,
the stars were not impeded by your lights;
but lacking National Geographic, you
never pinned up the Horsecrab Nebula.
It says here you’re not lost, but G N B RE.
Someone has trimmed this turf 300 years,

and still it wants to grow. The River Wye
asks no eponymous questions, flows while green
returns to grass, which is the epitaph
other grass grew. That they’d be picturesque
in increments of centuries would make
the dead rise, if they could. I wait. They can’t.

Boxing Day

 

I wrote this down in perfect confidence

And cannot read a word of it. It was

Etruscan, maybe, or the speech of mimes

Running against the wind, their lips sewn shut.

It was the scent of peaches when the trees

Have been uprooted, pulped, and turned to tales

Describing a girl converted to a peach.

Apollo took her home. Artemis ate her.

I made this up in perfect confidence,

While walking the dog. I don’t recall a word.

Something about a peach, miming the fate

Of man in late September, while the rain

Didn’t feel like the fall of man, but might

Come to that, with some mulching in between.

A Little Learning

 

Only a woman’s hair, he kept repeating,

Proving that erudition didn’t work.

Precedent wasn’t a cure; it wasn’t then,

And repetition didn’t make it so.

And anyway, the dresses weren’t. The shoes,

The winter coats. Or little socks. A hair,

Now that was synecdoche, which, it was known,

Couldn’t be traded on the heart’s exchange

For love or money, blood or Latin verse.

The Dainty Dishes

 

The End Is Near said every sign

Every Saturday. They came,

Forecasting death and sometimes rain.

Their name was Legion, just the same

As ever. If you had a home,

You wouldn’t come, predicting rain,

I thought, but that was foolishness.

One wore a bed sheet, one a kilt,

And you a tablecloth or lace.

You warned of blood which would be spilt

And drank your chocolate milk, a fault

Indigenously out of place,

But loveable. The girls displayed

The follies of their fashioning,

And gawkers liked the sight they made

And joined in on the final sing.

Death advertised its local sting,

Picturesque and a little lewd.

The sting was in your parlor, stuffed

With bread and money, left a card

There on the mantel, never left

The doorway where it knocked too hard,

As if no one had ever heard

Or ever wept or ever laughed.

Othello: Crib Sheet

 

When they say Moor, they mean a lad 

Of color.  Black like pitch or coal,
though multi-colored in his soul.
Polka dots.  Paisley.  Tartan plaid.

His wife is white.  As pale as whey.
She has a hanky bleached with salt.
The dark chap has a Tragic Fault.
(He likes to fight.)  (She likes to play

at wifery.)  His sword is keen.
His adjutant is keener still.
At peace, there's beaucoup time to kill,
and we all know what that can mean:

the blackamoor is dead as dirt.
The pale-faced squaw is stiff as stone.
The villain rules the room alone
and will not speak and will be hurt,

which he minds not.  Oh, what a waste.
The colors of our rainbow run
red everywhere, black as the sun
behind the moon, perversely placed.

The Power of the Pen

 

I sharpened my pen, attacked the bad

Bad men. They were still standing when
I finished. I would make them sad,
I thought. They would be sorry then.

They weren’t. I gave them bitter names;
I called their mamas out. They kept
On being what they were. In flames
I sent my pages. Jesus wept,

But they declined. They were afraid
Of neither noun nor nib. My room
Was lit by indignation, shade
Of Johnson’s inspissated gloom

Hooting from where the restless go
When weight has fled. They did such deeds
As penmen perish not to know
And burned the barns and ate the seeds.

Nicene You

 

When I’m a bishop, I’ll communicate

With anyone who wants a wafer, mostly

Vanilla, but not requisite. If sin,

If stainless as a watch’s crystal, same:

Remission if your substance is like mine

Or if it’s not, if con or trans or bland

As angels fallen and they can’t get up:

But not till I’m a bishop. As a dean,

An 'umble shepherd, pastorally blue,

A spelunker who lost his ball of twine,

I am not worth attending to: I bleed

And count my corpuscles. We are too few,

Too scattered, and too thick about the ears.

I’ll call some Council, maybe. But not yet.

Boyz II Men

 

They softened us up first with comic books

of Bible stories. God, our God was mad

a lot of the time—flood and frogs and plagues.

He had it all, and used it. No one said

just why a pillar of salt. When condiments

were made (on the third day?), did salt act up?

I know. I know. I missed the point again.

Today a boy becomes a man: more Jews

to keep the covenant, to pass along

the stories we cannot forget, the rules

we cannot understand or like and yet

have graven on the bedposts in our sleep,

all because in sweet Crayola colors,

the comic books were clear, He made the rainbow.

Lordy, Lordy, I

from These Denver Odes

Lordy, Lordy, I can't believe I heard
   you dredge up that old line last night.
     So, did it work?  Never mind.
I'd hate to hear an almost matron,
   almost popping her bustier, bit
     that chestnut.  Time flies, my ass.

When Quintus said it, I don't know, maybe
   it already had a Bronze Age
     sheen to it, Buck.  Antique rose
petals fell for Herrick to gather,
   and the cartwheels creaked Marvell heard.
     And this mother of three swooned?

Well, we can understand, old thing--the flat,
   bubbleless glass of warm champers,
     and the wilting gray canape,
and the laddered hose.  Women despair
   for less, have fallen far further
     than you, Buck, on a bad night.

And maybe you were right, Quintus no fool,
   and the lady's sensors wide
     and wise to pull in the last
cupidous excitement she'd ever
   glom on to, even in the arms
     of an old anthology.

How Green

 

In valley towns the elder ways

hang on like dad’s chums; they struggle

to pass their habits on, their genes

long since committed, best they can.

And if the kids, and the kids’ kids,

break out into docklands and loft

flats and little gated enclaves,

the valleys shut up.  Keep mum mum,

keep dad, too, ligature thin, hope

he doesn’t speak, he’d only cough,

a lucky strike, a lost best hope.

The kids spread, their new jeans low slung,

vaunting how they quite disavow

vernaculars, forget the terms

for tucking in.  The valley mouth

shrinks.  There are runes hidden inside

cereal boxes, bottles filled

with elderflowers.  The kids come

for funerals; haply they praise

famous men, the powerful wind.

The Boy in the Iron PJs

 

Older by seconds, thus the King of France,

A wig so big the star can’t constellate.
(He hath decreed and fears nor scorn nor sneer.)
A lettre there, a duc by title here,
Leave to wear lilies on his velvet pants:
A little one, whose priors are his fate.

Pent in a donjon, eating mexicorn
From a melmac plate, his eyes like metal dust,
His prayers bouncing off the crumbly mortar,
He waits for the interminable porter
To celebrate the day when he was born
And let him dawn the elder, only just.

We Do Brown

 

Since you would be in Britain in the spring,

The states must suffer. Here we only have

The toughest daffodils, the snowdrops who,

More thew than delicacy, make a swift

And wan appearance; there, there is the show

Of countless flower, gaudy garden, green

Of glib variety. Here we do brown

In many ways. It does not tempt you, here,

Since you would be in Britain in the spring.

Remember us, who cannot tell the weed

From scrawny flower when we try to pluck

The memory of you. We cannot grow

What will not bloom. We cannot fertilize

The misplaced and misplanted; but we find,

Whatever we may look upon, the face

And color and soft scent of the Welsh rose.

Sow You Shall

 

I planted carrots; jawbones grew,

fitted with teeth, hinged as if fresh.

I planted onions. Inching up,

electric cord. I cut the plugs

off and saved them in a dark drawer

till fall. Meanwhile the copper wire

exfoliates. I dug a hole,

hoping to find a broken pot

breded and lacquered, lost and found

and lost again, the art of house-

hold detriment. But what I turned

up on the sharp point of my spade—

just anecdote and parsley flakes

and cumin-scented calendars

and rubber bands. I turned them down

to fertilize. The coming storm

will make my bed a slough of mud

and battered silt. These are the grounds

I use to justify my lines—

chile and radish and runner bean.

The Judgments of Paris

 

If Aphrodite has the sweetest voice,

Athena’s song is written best. What tunes

The smitten sing teeter towards the silly,

And they don’t care. Athena crams her songs

With polyglottal, multivalent stuff

The other goddesses cannot even spell.

(Hera never sings. She will whoop and gloat

In victory and smirks at fealty,

If other than coerced. Her hawk-like eyes

Half the time fail to see you and don’t ask

Whether you like her song or not. You won’t.)

Towards whom do you extend the golden apple?

Skin buckles, loses elasticity.

The most tyrannical grow old and weak,

Leaving to other brokers all their vassals.

The vessels even of the wise constrict,

And they forget their shoes and Mother's name.

So where do you trust? You ought to know that war

Ensues from every possibility,

Slaughter and carnage, orphanage and rape

And plague and wholesale urban extirpation.

So choose now, if you please. It’s what we do.

2 Epigrams

 

      from The Greek Anthology

It must be dirt that keeps me quiet.  Weight
     like this no child should have to bear.
     I cannot move.  They do not care,
Who bore me early and have left me late.


     Reciprocity

I learned to write these epigrams
from reading J. V. Cunningham’s.
I know that I should be too proud
to witness such a debt aloud,
since he has never shown a sign
of learning much from reading mine.

If You Go Out in the Woods

 

Our bread crumbs didn’t last and did no good,

Except to fatten teeny birds of prey,

Waiting for us. So we just ate the bread,

And berries from whatever bush we passed,

Thinking that every mouthful was our last,

And there we were, Hecate’s Hideaway.

The sign said we should walk right in; the birds

Had fallen back and shut their eyes. A door

Marked Either Push or Pull in steaming words

Was decorated with a rampant bear.

We changed our minds, my little sister said.

There are more pleasant ways we could be dead

Than eating eaves and downspouts and veneer.

The windows showed a shape behind. We spoke

Never of Deadly Stepmother, who broke

Our daddy’s arms and will. We turned the knob,

And every bird of prey began to sob.

Get over it, I said. At least we’re here.

Exercise equipment and jars of pills,

Portraits of cats and pollywogs en croute,

These the nefarious accessories

They feared? These spooked the spotted peccaries

Who trampled children? Home without a doubt,

We hung our sweatshirts in the polished halls

And settled for adulthood and a style

Of limited means. We paid the local tax

And mended squeaky hinges. In the loft

Were comforters and all the clothes we’d left

Behind, outgrown now. From a metal box

We drew a deed written in blood and bile.

It’s all yours, and it always was, we read

On the appended Post-It. We fed the birds

And omnivores who visited in squads

And raised a ruckus when somebody tried

The wooden gate. No lawyers came to call.

Our footprints, first obscured, were gone by fall.

Final Exam

 

The fractious verbs, the adverbs soppily

Lagging behind, explaining as they weep—

What good are they to those like you and me,

Schooled by an inkhorn buried by the sea,

A preposition long since put to sleep?

Announcing that you are a proper noun,

A little rusty from a lack of use,

The adjectival nature of the town

Laying its nosy hands on Cinder’s gown,

An oxymoron cooking its own goose,

You are the part of speech making a speech

Superfluous, a body proving rest

Is myth and metaphor: the teachers teach,

And back behind the church, the preachers preach.

The final sentence is the final test.

Among School Children

 

I was invited here to speak
About the labyrinth of art,
The darkest places right in here
(I tapped my fist upon my heart),
The places where the adverbs seek
The mortises which disappear.

I haven’t got a thing to say.
(They didn’t look a bit surprised.)
All I can do is write and read
And keep my heartbreak supervised.
That lights, but can’t provide, a way
To where the joists and tendons bleed.

Monks are men as incomplete
As soldiers, chaste of blood or soul.
How long must half a world compete
With half a world? How long the toll
Of promise must deception meet?
We are dying to be whole.

Questions? (But they were all asleep,
Each head upon a floppy stem.)
Someone? You in the back, perhaps.
(But I was not disturbing them.)
I was that public man who’d keep
Impinging on their private naps,

Dreams of the Dairy Queen, the Slut
Of Winter Park or Hollywood.
Dreams of the Motorcycle Man,
With 6-pack abs, and far too good
For others. Every eye had shut.
I say, The heart’s an empty can,

Drained of a dram and pissed upon.
(Somebody heard one word I said
And tittered.) I’ll be going soon.
When all of you are good and dead,
Be grateful for a Denver dawn,
And praise the stars which ring the moon.

Later the secretary sent
A thank-you note they each had signed
(Though printed with the class PC).
Ensconced in my establishment,
I was embarked on sonnetry,
And books brought other books to mind,

And other books. I had not told
The class about the unblent yolk
Or dancing trees. I had not said
That art was not like growing old,
And no one ever got the joke,
And I too late, and likely dead.

Fair play it was, and just as well.
Brave lads who never shed a tear
And girls repining for a glance,
They speak in tongues I cannot hear
The lessons they were made to tell.
I write when I have half a chance.

Two Door Bye-Byes

 

Not one hey-nonny-nonny no,

No episode of Dynasty,

Nor timbery wood substitute

Will make you shine or make you see.

Down the plug-'ole straight you go,

Too late for sharp, too late for 'cute.

Too late to make a mystery

Of why the boy-&-rustic show

Is still in syndication, while

Your up-to-datest magic style

Won't even make the groundlings smile.

It isn't fair. Hey-nonny-no.

Our wisdom does not make us grow,

Bang the tambour, thump the lute.

The G. & G. R. R.

The local railway ran on time, but who

Saw what they chucked into the boiler? Palm

and coconut and feral cow—the balm

that Gilead & Goshen found to choo

us on. Mahogany the shining track,

mysterious the effervescent rail:

they served. At least I never saw them fail,

though Clementine and son did not come back.

Some long-pig entrée, maybe. Maybe not.

Maybe she is the Queen of Some Grass Lodge.

Perhaps she was the pudding, giant stodge

the product of a caramelized pot.

Anyway, when the whistle sounds, the birds

rise like a raucous rainbow, and the rain

stampedes the unseen multitude. The train

cuts through them all, invisible in herds,

and we arrive to stinger and relief.

Much is made of our fortitude and skill.

The audience about us, never still,

closer yet, professing disbelief.

Fable

 

    This appeared in The Deronda Review.

Don't be an ass, the donkey said.

What with Balaam dead, and all,

No one will hear you if you call.

How will you know if you are dead?

I'm used to being, said the stone.

It's all I know, and, yes, it's hard.

I only have this self regard

To let me know I am alone.

So each one spoke, which may seem odd,

Had any been there but the tree,

Which said, O I move beautifully,

Regarded as I am, by God.

Love. With Textual Apparatus.

 

When I was young, as yet the apple of
Nobody’s eye but Grandma’s, I awaited
The fabled coming of My Own True Love.
I am no apple now; and I am mated
With me and with the man I have created
[Cf. ll. 1-1.5, above].
Unlikely to be wed and wend together
[Var.: to be wed in such wet weather],
I lead the life which fits—one hand, one glove.
[N.B., as source, The World Well Lost for Love.]