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.

Algernon Swinburne Dreams Of Going Out

 This appeared in Angle.

The king is dead. Oh, no, he's not. He's resting,

What with his busy week, dissolving monks

And roasting papists with a garlic clove

And celery stalk apiece. He raised the tax

On gingham. His monopoly on dust,

More valuable than mail, he auctioned off

to the new Chancellor of the Campanile.

The belles, the belles: they're gathering out front,

Leaning against portcullis rails, in wigs

As high as cotton candy and as pink.

Teased and tormented in the cages above

The gate, the entertainment, curled like shrimp,

Moans, and the would-be guests whistle and stomp.

The ball begins with Taffelmusik. Bits

Of quarter-note-shaped ice bob in the punch

Just long enough to clarify the king's

Intentions: he would dip the band in tar,

The perfect pitch a torch unto the blind,

And all be spared who buy a savings bond.

Not In The House

 

The galleries of art

Keep paintings far apart

From dining nook and bath.

Jupiter's splendid wrath,

The tart's décolletage,

The twilight of the Raj—

Too vain for your garage,

They loom there on the wall,

Silent gilt, grown small.

King of the Old Frontier

 I have not written much about the Fathers,

Davy Crockett and The Cowboy G-Men,

Those on whom my constitution’s based,

University City and all the state

Houses of Colorado. They left trails

Which I have managed to convert to ruts,

The roots of routes, I almost said, which might

Demonstrate all you need to know. I can

Remember Alamo Park, an old and staid

Neighborhood with a centerpiece of fleurs.

It is still there, though I am not. This happens

A lot these days. There is somewhere a box,

Green and rectangular, if I had to had to guess,

Which holds the GOATS, who once were kids, which saves

Cobwebbed issues in colored ink, which waits

For No Man, who is never going to come.

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.

Body Count

The average of all the dead was 6—

Hundreds of infants and some fogies. Mix

In young adults, a couple spawning males,

And do the math. Disaster never fails

To be absorbed by numbers. Science saves

And sanitizes. Just count up the graves.

Eppur Si Muove

My fellow Americans, I come rehearsed

with lies. I have prepared a tableful
of whoppers for you; if they are consumed,
the presents of your enemies are yours.

Knowledge is numbing. No one talks about
the right and muscle of the full deception.
I bring you what-you-will: turn it around,
read it upside down. It still will be true.

I've decorated it with cloth rosettes.
I've loaded every rift with anecdotes
for which there is no cure. I'll make you sick
with longing never to be undeceived.

The earth is round. The earth is flat. It swings,
it jitterbugs beneath a smoky heaven.
The angels shimmy to be heard at last.
God is because we say so, and he moves

funky, but we are sutured to the spot
provided, swaying, cervically up.
The world is waltzing very, very slowly:
we are because we say so, but we move.

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.

Ruly, Really

 

You are my sunshine. Break of day,

You rise in the east and move across

The house, setting your sites to match.

Night spreads without a sense of loss.

Though light and heat both fade away,

And parallel lines don't care to meet,

We stoke our own invested heat.

Don't tell me nothing gold can stay.

Don't say a word. Let's wish and watch.

The Autumn of Troy

  

Imagine growing up in Troy,

N.Y., and Helen is your name.

You have no choice, obliged to find

A Menelaus right next door,

Or who'd be spurned? A Joe? A Ted?

I don't think so. In Paris, Mo.,

Abscond with some old mogul's wife,

Hide her behind your stuccoed walls,

Crouching for years and years and years,

Until she has grown hoarse with scorn,

All attitude? The men of Troy

Hector their bonne wives endlessly,

The voice of Nestor wafting in.

This House No Longer

  This appeared in Poetry Proper.

This is a house without chalcedony

Or Andamooka opals, and it deems

Its seizure insecure. Hawks veer away

To overfly somebody else's house.

This house is what it is, is what it is.

You want to meet us? We share a single bath,

Not privacy. Our calendar misquotes

In scarlet letters Make your life sublime

Use Rapid Sands. We never leave the room

For grave emergencies. Our motto is

A tramp stamp on the lady of the house,

Her fine embroidered sacroiliac,

Hunker Down, which seems not to overstate,

And understatement is a way of life.

Why, there is a bone here after all; a mole

Has left his skull, a warrior's helmet toy,

For Spike to crunch and play with. This is a house

Without a porphyry tub or sisal strings

To anchor it, and someday it will leave.

A Babble of Green Fields

 

County after county,

green field after rain,

land of good and plenty,

filling in the rain—

who knows what the people,
blessed by county airs,
do to keep them simple?
Up the wooden stairs,

they are what they should be,
common-like and poor.
Of the woodlands woody,
moorish of the moor.

We of course admire
simple little lives.
Bless us, if we spare
a glance for graves and wives,

prior to our mansion
flats and massage showers.
Older than our fashion,
these the little hours

and ceremonies lost,
like counties in the rain.
Green fields like a ghost,
passed and passed again.

Garden Gods

 

Leis festoon my Queen Elizabeth

this morning, so she is both pink and coral,
one unexpectedly. Who would do

such a thing? The contractor next door,
him with the hemi? The SEC lawyer,
retired from niggling? A stranger,

hell bent on whimsy. Saints preserve us
from the drunken fey, the determined oddball
hoping to go Wilde and run to fat.

I think it was Zeus himself, eagled
as he has been bulled and pissed, leaving a gay
reminder that gods are not solemn,

except when they want something special—
grilled bones, sobbing virgins, grim obedience—
and prefer a boner to doctrine.

Bees back off from the paper hanger,
annoyed by mimesis and crude deception.
They own a queen way too fat to care.

Prematurely Wise

 "Sex is explosive, Woman.  Understand—"

And while he talked, it went off in his hand.

Seasonal Adjustments

 

In foot on foot of snow

The plant sang winter songs,

How spring plots to revenge

Deep-rooted wrongs.

Then leaves await the day

That sun makes brown things right;

But leaves that come and go

Burn sun at night,

And roots divide with branches

The plant.  Roots sing bass,

Grounded below ground

In a dark place.

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.

Fade As A Leaf

 This poem is probably older than you are.  Whoever you are.

This time of year my life is leaves,
Trees their own compost. So are we.
They can do this indefinitely.
Like us, I guess, though no oak grieves

At loss of oak. They just make more.
Like us, I guess. If seedlings know
The august stock from which they grow,
They do not say. They have in store

Leaves of their own--great oaks, the sound
Thin and bird-high in autumn wind.
Like us, they fall, and, whether sinned
Or sapling, find the common ground.

Leaves are my life, this time of year,
Knowing there will be more, then more.
It doesn't matter. What they're for
Is why I make them disappear.

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.

Ballad

  

What did they get with their rope of grass-o,

What did they get today?

What did they nab with their pastoral lasso?

Quickly, take it away.

He had a gun with a silver barrel.

He had a wife and a child.

He did a turn in his gray apparel,

Waved at us then and smiled.

There’s where he lies, I sing you one-o,

Green as a dandelion.

Will he be back? Oh, I dunno.

Ask me again in Zion.

Notes For The Volume Left Unfinished

*Albinius says otherwise. He errs.
His sources for an ill-conceiving creed
Are elderly ex-chamberlains and eunuchs,
Village crones and plods deprived of the sense
Announced to a scarecrow, those who took their cues
From discount chickens, virgins secondhand,
And scholars from the farmhouse provinces.
As every schoolboy knows, the archers filled
His orifices with their arrows. Pray
For him, but do not emulate his art.
He burns in Hell and weeps black tears of ink.
(It is no sin to benison the damned,
Whatever El Chimayo says, the damned.)

†Persona Claus claims 273,
Year of Our Lord. Persona Claus, who loved
Boys best, then men, was skewered, a flaming bowl
Of apple cores inverted on his head.

°Albumen, King, who found that history
Irenic--they had lied, the scribal tribe.
The Church Pacific strewed its road, on donkeys,
With palms and psalms; and all its paths were peace.
Albumen, King was thrown into a pit
Of Bulgars, Albigensians, and Swedes.
No fragments of him ever were retrieved.

•It sounds absurd, and yet proved true. I went
Myself, with native guide, and saw the place,
A dog to follow and a wife to heel.
I touched the Rock, the Rock was warm. My sense
Of touch is unimpeachable. What else
Explains the errors of the Early Crypts?
Deceived by Occam’s Razor Blade, they shaved
A world away and found a Heaven there.
I recommend The Liber Book, ƒ. 2.

§Cf., op. cit., to-wit, to-woo. Tra-la,
The placard on the temple wall proclaimed,
In Greek first, Latin after, sing tra-la,
The angels have been with us from the first
And bless the martyrs in their shattered state
And bear their broken bones away and praise
The bearded monarchs who have made it so.
Nevertheless, Albinius was wrong.