Poem-a-Day for 2005

The following poems were sent out by email during 2005. They are copyright by Dean Blehert.

In my dream, dying, I was reborn,
not in the future, but in the past,
to be the same person all over again,
but with subtle variations--but not
too subtle to be spotted...at first,
and even later, when I'd been persuaded
I was nowhere but where I was,
nor had ever been elsewhere, still
certain things didn't fit:
I met you in the wrong place
or at the wrong time or not at all,
and even when not at all,
I knew you were supposed to be,
were somewhere,
were.
____________________

Let's be the good guys
and wipe out all the bad guys;
when we run out of bad guys to wipe out,
let's take a closer look at ourselves.

Let's kill everyone, including us.
Then the environment
can worry about the environment.

It will be a relief to be dead
as long as everyone else is too
so that one doesn't feel left out,
as if dragged from a lively party,
by a nagging wife with a headache.

It's easier than facing our failure
to make everyone live
happily ever after.
____________________

AND ON A MORE HOPEFUL NOTE (I HOPE), from a longer poem I wrote not long after John Lennon's death (1980), addressed to him:

For John Lennon:

Dreamer, put us in your dream.
Be the magic man you seem.
With the tickle in your song
Tease the children from their strong
Silent deadly manhood; make
Us giggle, make us sigh and take
A look around and see each other
Stirring in a dream dreamed by our brother;

And, brother dreamer, before you wake,
Give us back our eaten cake:
For when we've chewed and swallowed you,
What's left to be? What's left to do?

Your voice gets drowned in head-line screams--
Quick! Teach us, dreamer, to dream our dreams.
______________________________________

L.A. After Rain

Green silk sky--
through the rainbow creeps
A police helicopter.
______________________

I'm glad my passing by
Brings such excitement to
So many dogs' lives.
______________________

Exit From The Metro

Out of the underground, up the escalator
moving evenly in variegated verticality,
a ceaseless stream of bodies, as if
on an assembly line--is that
where people come from, Mommy?
__________________________________

Moderation in most things--
as a general rule.
_________________

If the planet
Were about to blow up, these trees
Would sway as gently.
_________________________

Along the sofa,
a sentence of cushions--
for period, this cat.
___________________

Ski Jump

The time that passes, we are told,
is the only time there is,
all we can have, the tooth-brushing time,
the waiting-in-line time all made
of the same ticking stuff as love-time
and pain-time, all the same leaking away
of all there ever is or can be,
as if we had nothing to do with it,
as if any one idea of anyone's
could be the same as any other,
as if the good time the painted lady
in almost no skirt says she wants to give me,
because it is stamped legal tender
by the Universal Time Bank,
is, second for second, indistinguishable
from the long ski-slopes of each heartbeat
while the gravitic pull of our lips merges
your two eyes and my two eyes
each into one, each filled
with the other, lips touching,
and, as if earth had turned upside down,
the leap into endless glittering night.
_____________________________

Pam is reading Diet For a Small Planet--
just what I need:
I'm becoming one.

[Note: Since writing that, I've lost some of that unhealthy planetary mass. I'm no more than a half moon these days.
________________________________

TV: We turn on Pandora's Box,
releasing into the living room
all life's miniseries.
________________________

Wobbly

The hypochondriac folksinger:
both before sitting and after standing,
he examines his stool.
________________________

"I lay in the arms of my best friend's wife" --
leading to the inevitable folk-song doom.
Too bad you had to die, but, hey,
what're best friends' wives for?
__________________________

Fear of death is fear of being alone,
but fear, not death, makes us alone,
even in a crowd of cowards.
_______________________

These are the people, kind, sad, funny,
worried, angry, sour, clever, dense...
these, there are no other; if you wait
for the RIGHT people, you will become
a great waiter, for these are the people
of whose agreement any greatness
you achieve will consist.
_______________________

The editor demands "poetry of nuance?"
Sorry -- no more prose of old uncles?
____________________________________

THIS...is your mind.

THIS...is a pun.

THIS...is your mind on puns.

Say NO to puns. (Especially

frying puns.)

Note: "frying puns" because the "This is your mind on drugs" showed eggs being broken into a skillet -- frying pan.
___________________________________________

Thoughts on some Art: Colored concentric
squares, solid black canvases, huge,
lots of good big canvases--Pam could
really do something with those...

[Note: My wife, Pam, is a painter. See her work at www.blehert.com. Above is just a thought that passed through (and got intercepted) as I looked at huge paintings that consisted mainly of one or two large colored forms or one solid color.]
________________________

Lady inspecting a print:
apples on blue with
shadow of lady's head.
______________________________________

An evil man feels unworthy,
shuns love, afraid he'll waste it,
like an alcoholic trembling too hard
to pour a drink.
_______________________________

Smiling across swirls
of whipped cream:
Our tongues, too,
can walk on clouds.
______________________

The Poet In His Office

I was trying to write a poem tonight.
Finally I cleaned the hair
off the bathroom floor instead.
_______________________

Homely for the Ageing

I stand behind you in the bathroom
as you comb your hair.
I hope I look as much uglier in the mirror than I really am
as you do.
___________________________

If I must grow fatter,
at least let my wife lose weight,
so that others, seeing us together, will say,
"What could she possibly see in that slob?
He must be a great lover!"
__________________________________

For males, late childhood through early adolescence
is the time between the times
when it's okay to hug someone tight.
_________________________________

"Give up everything and follow me!"
Can't I just give up everything?
__________________________

There are the bastards who sell out
and the rest of us
who can't find buyers.
______________________________

Looked up a word, then a word
in the definition, then a word
in one of the definitions
of the word in the definition,
then... Ah, I think I'm on the track of
something: I feel this brick-solid wall
of language, heavy as Webster's Fourth International,
beginning to unravel, become something I can use,
as if this thread of opaque words
were the bright red strip you carefully
unwind to tear open the package.
________________________________

Hanging onto my anger --
what if I stop being mad
and find I was wrong?
_____________________

If I did only what I WANT to do,
I wouldn't need to do all the things I
THINK I want to do because they put off
my having to do all the things I think
I HAVE to do that prevent me from doing
the things I want to do.
_____________________________

Arrows of Eros

The V of the legs, the opposite wider Vs
of the inguinals and the intersecting
posterior crescents, the arrowhead
of thatch where the abdomen tapers away:

All these converging arrows
tell the observer: "You Are Here!
This Is The Place!" Our bodies
are trying to tell us something,
as subtly as hungry dogs
rolling their tongues and tugging us
toward their bowls with avid eyes.

Look! Now mine points at yours!
Our maps demand a meeting,
and my heart, too--can you see it?--
is an arrow in a taut bow.
________________________________

"When everything's perfect--watch out!"

Depending on luck -- strange idea
of perfect! When everything's perfect,
I'm conducting, my slightest gesture
making rich music, creating all the luck
there is, in a world of musicians (each
passing smile, each leaf tremor) who,
for the rise and fall
of my heart's baton, wide-eyed,
watch out!
__________________

To anyone finding me brain-dead
at 3 a.m. in front of my T.V.,
be it known that I do not want
extraordinary measures to be taken
to maintain me in this vegetable
state. Please! Go to the T.V. set
and pull the plug.
_________________

How simply and naturally we clap our hands!
Did it seem strange when I first learned how?
Perhaps at Pease Porridge Pot, a giant
taking my wrists and bringing my tiny hands together--
glee! It's not the noise (which my soft
paddy-cake baby hands barely make --
though the laughing giant says,
when they meet: BOOM!!!),

but the willfulness of swinging the hands
toward each other, careless of collision
and violating the body's itch to move
one arm back when the other moves forward.,

and for baby it's a performance:
Good Boy! WHEE!! Later we return,
in exchange for a good performance,
a good performance.
_________________

Whole frog species are vanishing.
Please, every young girl, quick!
find a Prince, kiss him,
and hope for a miracle!
_____________________

Poetry says turn off that TV
and spend some time with me!

I say, look, watching TV
is all I can do with this cat
on my belly, sticking her claws gently
in and out of my beard
like a kid playing with velcro
to remind me I've neglected
to continue to scratch her head.

Poetry says if you cared for me at all,
you'd shoo the cat and turn off the TV.

I say SHHHH!
_______________________

Clear slow pulse,
but at her swollen belly another --
quick, faint --
teases the touching ear
______________________________

Reader... Reader?... READER!...
Oh, you're here! Thank you. For a moment
I thought I was alone.
It's hard when you're old like me
and can't see
except with the eyes.
____________________________

Every body dies.
No one else is affected.
___________________________

Smile!

Lightning flash, then click!
(to our tiny ears, thunderous):
Who takes our picture?
_____________________

Snob

Forgive me, but much that you like
I find stupid and boring,
or don't forgive me
(at least, not stupidly or boringly),
just leave me to this punishment,
my life,
or if you really want to get even,
catch me at my muttering, and when
I cast a baleful eye your way,
admire me.
____________________________

Leaners

"Let's just cuddle tonight," she says,
bringing out one difference
between sex (which is NOT
like horseshoes) and love.
We lie awhile in each other's arms,
counting closeness.

[Note: In horseshoes, as in love, closeness counts. Sex is more like basketball -- you're either in or out.]
________________________________

Knowing you at last,
I have always known you,
freed from that folly
of slipping out of knowing, as if,
holding you, I should close my eyes
to know you better, then forget --
fooled by the eyes' twilight oblivion --
forget your presence, slip into a dream
of old and intricate ravelings and
unravelings of data, then wake to find
you still in my arms, still where eyes
can have as much as eyes can have,
the past a dream interposed between
now and now.
________________________

Unplanned Obsolescence

I've become the person I wanted to be,
but can't remember who it was for --
was it for you? If so,
can I become someone else now --
please?
______________________

Dreaming of applause,
the old politician
eats Rice Krispies,
__________________

"Thankyou! Thankyou!..."
Endless applause... -- O!
Heavy rain this dark morning.
______________________

Rain's dotted lines:
Tear here! No, here! Lightning
decides: RRRRIP!
________________________

We twist in bed, the covers sticking,
winding to one side, then the other,
like a Torah, some Rabbi scrolling us
back and forth, searching for
this week's portion, which he must
have found, placing on it, for marker,
this cat.

[Note: In the Synagogue, each week a different portion of the Torah (Five Books of Moses) is read (chanted). The Torah scroll is turned to that portion. A marker is used to point to the place.]
_______________________________________________

Colored People

"Black man." Funny words.
Blue man when he's sad,
yellow man when he's scared,
green man when he's sick,
grey man when he's old,
red man when he's flayed alive,
blue yellow green grey red
black man, just like a
white man.
_____________________________

Weedin' Eden

Facing away, she bends over, legs apart,
pulling weeds, a lovely target--
perhaps the tale is true
that we discovered lust
while tending a garden.
______________________

Note: One of the favorite reproaches addressed to the U.S. is that we have gone to war for oil. Here are two of my poems (from the FIRST Gulf War) on that subject -- sort of pro and con:

Why NOT go to war for oil?
Absence of oil kills. Old folks
freeze in New England winters,
children starve if milk and fruit
can't be driven to market. Production
isn't just dollars. It's food,
shelter, clothes, your reading lamp.
Fuel is matter of life and death,
almost as important as clean,
breathable air...

Say! When do we go to war
against those who hold hostage
our air?
________

Remember when the South went to war
over oil--or some similar pool
of black energy to whose easy abundance
they'd become addicted?
_____________________

On the Importance of Knowing How

Beware of those who want to help
but don't know how,
for they will learn to hate
those they fail to help.
______________________

Purely Coincidental

I have a strange idea of you:
I call it
you.
_____________________

"Just go away and leave me alone!"
I'll go away, but you won't be alone.
Being alone takes years of practice.
_____________________________

Visit a Food Goddess Tonight!

Hi there! Are you sick of sitting there
on the couch frantic for a snack,
but you know it's not good for you?
Why suffer alone? Just call
1-900-I82-MUCH!!
Plump friendly maternal ladies
will listen to your confessions
of secret sins against your diet,
passionate midnight snacks, forbidden
desserts; they'll tell you
in tantalizing detail their richest,
most mouth-watering recipes!
Call Now! We're waiting for your call, Dearie!
_________________________________

Such a short skirt!
What are her legs coming to?
_________________________

Hair

Each face a picture
in its frame, each mouth curved
into a unique signature.
______________________

"Not worth spit"--unjust expression,
no doubt, soon to be refuted
on Public Television:
"The Marvelous World of Mucous".
________________________________

Easy to write lots of poems:
I don't throw back the little ones.
___________________________

What is it people require of poets?
Forgiveness! The poet reads, the world responds:
"I beg your pardon?"
_______________________________

It's easy to accept responsibility,
like the politician who took full
responsibility for snorting cocaine
by acknowledging he couldn't help it,
because he'd been irresponsible because
of alcoholism because of the stress
of public office...

Responsibility is never having to say
"because".
_____________________________

Stocking:
Panti-hose
for a short,
one-legged lady.

[Note: Written for the benefit of those too young to recall that at one time, women wore PAIRS of nylon stockings.]
________________________________________

I dreamed I found freedom,
not that I flew like a bird,
but birds flew through me,
knowing me
with their soaring and swooping,

until I woke and lay on my pillow
a long time, feeling inside me still
small birds flitting from branch to branch,
preening for longer flight.
______________________________

I read them a poem from, I guess,
the heart, then sit down in a sweat,
the heart not used to such exercise.
_______________________________

Iraqi Road

Why must we give this man,
who rejoices only in destruction,
so much joy?

On this dark plain,
sad am who sane.

"Nothing is worth dying for."
That's right,
we do it for nothing.

War on Iraq--
serves 'em right, using a "q"
without a "u"!

War is evil, we say, for those we kill
could be our own parents, children,
brothers, sisters, lovers.

No wonder we have wars:
A legal way to kill off all our
nearest, dearest enemies.

In pro- and anti-war rhetoric
we drown: GLIB GLIB GLIB...

This war is like no other we've fought:
Different people are killing
different people.

We are now engaged in a contest
to out-destroy another's destruction --
what first did we fail to create?

We are such a big country
in such a small world.

The shriek of Araby.

Mid-East philosophical argument:
"Is real!" "Is not real!"

Why do we blow people up?
Wouldn't it be simpler
not to have babies?

Wanting to do something about the war,
I enjoy the sunset.
_______________________________________

Audition

They know I'm coming. I hear the whisper
in the grass: "Get ready! The poet is coming!"
I feel the million quaking hearts about me.
This is MY production. I can make
or break them. Tremulous, they audition
for my next poem: "Very good, old tree,
nice toss of leaves, nice patchwork shadow.
I'll call on you when I need you, thank you.
No, sorry, little staring cat, not quite what I need
for this poem. Ah! That soot-speck cloud of starlings!
Get their name!"
________________________________________

Sunset, last rim of rose
around the horizon stretches out
in my heart two arms
for a farewell hug.
___________________

More mail from groups who insist
it's time for me to
speak out!

(Check one, please: $25.00, $50.00...)

"SPEAK, Checkbook!" My checkbook
plays dead.
_______________________

Is it my fault
if I'm irresponsible?
__________________________

Written years ago, when the Pope John Paul became Pope]:

Pope John Paul --
half way to Beatledom.

[Alas, I doubt that we'll ever have a Pope George Ringo]
___________________________

...And The Winner Is...

"I want..."
and here, knowing none of this could be happening,
not to her, left stranded far from that tiny body
glowing there, deserted even by time --
"I just want to thank..." --
each syllable of recorded and video-taped time
lasts forever: "I" "just"
"want" "I just" "I just want
to thank so many people many
so thank to want..." (Is it
the TV that flickers so?)
"...people who..." --
In some other world that
can't be happening the
prepared words, only the
words are prepared, but she,
no script can hold her,
suddenly from syllable
to syllable, dies and is
born anew, must
each instant
re-create herself
(so many instants!
Who'd have guessed?
And still enough new selves
for each), a flame
that spreads, fills
the hall, now faces, walls,
chandeliers, silences all
flicker, being born born born,
she must keep
putting them there, no one else
can, put them there,
yes, hold them still,
yes, by sheer act of
will she (the latest) finds
she can hold them, hold
herself and in the world
she's made ("...people who made this
possible...") -- almost totally
still now, a breathless
white flame, so that
("...love you...")
she can have what she has made, be
maker ("...all so much!
thankyou! thankyou!")
_____________________

Each plays Hobbes to the other's Calvin:
If the world were to walk into our bedroom,
instantly the tawny grace and danger
of lithe young lovers would vanish,

replaced by two respectable,
oddly positioned, stuffed
middle-aged dolls.

[Note: In case you never saw the Calvin & Hobbes cartoons, Calvin's a kid whose best friend is a real tiger named Hobbes, except others, especially adults, can only see a small cloth tiger doll.]
__________________________________________________________

If the way to my heart
is through my stomach,
it's getting to be
a long haul.
___________________

Photo of me before I grew
this beard and belly, like a mirror
that no longer moves when I move,
a lost reflection. Each instant
I lose new images to the frozen mirror.
Someday this body will not move
when I move, but perhaps these words
will go on moving when you move.
________________________________

Goodbye Hello

Put my body anywhere;
Box it, burn it--I'm not there.
But shed a tear; I love to see
How tragically you weep for me.
Had I yet eyes, I'd shed tears too:
That poor dead thing, and poor sad you!
Two tiny dolls: To think that I,
now here, now there, now half the sky,
Once thought myself that bit of meat.
(I still look down, expecting feet!)

And yet it's lonely. I must find
a way to put thoughts in your mind:
I'm here! I haven't gone away!
I'm me! Can you come out and play?
__________________________________

Dear Reader, I Presume

There are aliens among us:
Even now, two gleaming balls of jelly,
each with a dark opening in front,
rapidly rotate to scan these lines.
______________________________

Beware of the Sympathy

In our moments of happiness,
the consolers who, in sadder times,
beg us not to cry, say, "My!
aren't you cheerful today!", meaning:
"There, there, don't smile.
You'll get over it."
______________________

He waits for signs from Heaven.
What tells him that a sign is a sign?
He's hiding from himself somewhere,
making decisions.
__________________

Dog Days

As you move from room to room,
the dog is glued to your leg
by the tip of his nose, trotting
behind you, settling where you pause,
starting up, QUICK!--not to be left
where you aren't, because you,
who grant him so much life
(so much space in which to become
what you put where that furry thing is
so that you can speak to it
and call it Good Boy) --
you are thus empowered to grant life
to rooms.

His reasons for moving as you move
make as much sense to him
as do yours to you, so that when,
at the front door, at last, you sever
the attachment, leaving him behind
a glass wall, peering out at you
with big wet eyes, he doesn't (every
day he doesn't!) understand.
_____________________

In the house, we are our dog's
only show in town,
our least gesture closely watched,
his nose invading our laps
before we have said his name.
But outside, sniffing among the weeds,
he must be called twice, THRICE!,
before, reluctantly, he looks our way.
How soon they forget!
____________________

Drive-By Poetry

For years police have been coping
with acts of domestic poetry reading,
quietly desperate men and women
who inflict their poetry on spouses and children.

Now, amid growing urban violence
emerges the unprovoked
drive-by poetry reading:

Usually young, workshop-hardened poets
screech up to the curb, lower the car window,
and scream out their poetry, tragically
boring innocent bystanders, as well as
fellow poets.
_________________________

To Signify Cant

When is a poem significant?
When I try to get it and yawn as a
sign-if-I-can't?
___________________

Modern man cynical? Hardly!
He has a deep, unquestioning faith
in the permanence of death.
__________________________

Reincarnation has it's drawbacks.
I like it that we meet again,
but must we be wee meat again?
_____

I'm sorry, I've forgotten your name...
You flourished circa when?
_____

Pleasant thought, reincarnation:
The child abuser can look forward
to his next childhood.
_____

I was abused as a child,
but only by other children
("He hit me first!"),
so it was OK.
____________________

Something For Nodding

As she introduces her next poem,
the man sitting in front of me nods,
agreeing,

nods so rapidly it appears he agrees,
not only with each word she speaks,
but each syllable...

I think he just agreed with an "s"!
_______________________________

I'm a promising poet--
I give you my word!
___________________

"Home is the hunter..."--
How true! Home hunts for us
even in our dreams.
___________________

Losing is Fun, But...

True, it's better to lose the only game
in town than not play at all.
But it was too much losing left us
blind to the abundance of games.
_________________________

[Recently I wrote a bunch of one-way "collaborations" -- taking line one (or some famous line) from a classic poem and adding to it my own line two. Here are three of them:]

Dylan Thomas:

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Is out right now. Please call back in one hour.

William Wordsworth:

Milton! Thou shouldst be living at this hour [Wordsworth]
To see Keanu Reeves crush Satan's power.

[Note: Wordsworth addresses John Milton, author of the epic, PARADISE LOST, in which Satan's minions declare war on Heaven. Keanu-the-Bland is currently fighting demons in the movie "Constantine".]

Robert Frost:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep...
GET YOUR PAWS OFF MY BOOBS, YOU CREEP!
_______________________________________________

Autumn sky a blue of dreams, slow glide
of yellow leaves across the sky
touching me with, not only beauty,
but tenderness, a sense of family.

Each wind-tugged leaf, each flight
of starlings detaches, falls, soars
to a rhythm that stirs like memory --

of a friend and lover I never had,
but dreamt of one night, so real
that when I woke, I touched my own face
gently.

It is as if the world and I exchange
a look of recognition.
______________________

Rock of Ages

Perhaps this rock
stands still for millennia,
not because it lacks a will of its own,
but because it doesn't want to move.

Or perhaps it has not one will,
but trillions of tiny deathless
impulses, each trying to move the rock
its own way, each too obsessed
to communicate, to come to an
agreement,

so that the rock is stymied,
a frozen explosion of random impulses,
cancelling out.

When we become too fixed
in our old decisions to reach out,
find each other, and create
new agreements, we have wars.

After we have crushed each other down
in too many wars, we become small,
more fixated than ever, but very small.

What becomes of us then, I cannot say.
This rock stands still for millennia.
____________________________

At first we adore those who love us
better than we can love ourselves.
At length, overwhelmed by the burden
of their love, we crucify them.
__________________________________

[And here are a few more of those froggy-the-gremlin collaborative couplets. They are popular in light verse circles these days, called "tailgaters", "fractured couplets," etc. I call them Froggy-the-Gremlin couplets, after an old radio/TV character (a puppet) who would interrupt pompous people to finish their sentences for them in unexpected ways. The point of this form is to take some famous line of poetry and add your own second line.]

Dylan Thomas:

Do not go gentle into that good night!
Wear your clean undies! Don't forget to write!

Wm. Shakespeare:

No longer mourn for me when I am dead –
Mother, you mourned enough when I was wed.

Take, O take those lips away –
We ordered fish and CHIPS, okay?
__________________________________

"Where do I go from here?"
"What makes you think you're here?"
_____________________________________

Puddle, rippled by spring wind--
as if it were going somewhere.
_________________________________

Long eyelashes rise, fall,
1000 tiny sceptors:
We obey.
________________

Headline

CHARGES LAID AGAINST SHRINK
WHO LAID HIS CHARGES
______________________________

Inside Outside

To take me in, you open wide.
My face is in your eyes.
You close your eyes with me inside.
Can that be wise?
You're half my size!

I'm in your eyes--I can't get out,
but I, in mine, hold you.
I close them now, so there's no doubt:
We're one, we're two,
we're something new.
_____________________

Spring night opening up:
All that squeaking!
Who forgot to oil the woods?
_______________________

[Note: As a kid I always wondered why, in my war comics and cowboy comics, the Japs and Indians always died in vowels (screaming "Aieee!"), while the white guys went "Ughh" or "Gah" or GACK!, mainly consonants. That probably inspired the following lines.]

Scream of disem-vowelment:
"AEIOU! and sometimes
Y!"
___________________________

Nearsightedness is selective:
From across the room,
I can't see your eyes,
but I can see your seeing.
____________________________

I'd always try to stick it out,
make it work somehow,
the captain who goes down
with the relation-
ship.
________________________

You're too grown up
if you bite into a cookie
and aren't disappointed
when the chocolate chip
turns out to be a raisin.
________________

Veggie chili --
like bits of cardboard.
Next time I order Texas-style.
Poor cows!
(At least none of them are readers.)
_______________________

While you read or listen to these words,
people are dying, being born, making
love, making history -- statistics do not lie.

While you read these words, someone is
bribing an official, tormenting a child,
rooting in the garbage for scraps,
saying "O! Don't Stop! GOD!" (or noises
to that effect).

You are reading these words
at a very significant time.

Why are you reading these words?
____________________________

The angry young poet reads
about fat middle-class women with their
fat spoiled children gorging themselves
at a picnic in the park, while, in Africa,
big-eyed children with toothpick limbs
and swollen stomachs are too weak
to move or even brush away clouds
of flies. This makes me feel sorry
for the fat middle-class women,
because the young poet hates them so.
______________________________

The romantic imagination feeds not
on common oats, demanding
unique corn.

[Hint for the pun-impaired: Unicorn]
___________________

Space Odyssey
Lost in the convolutions of a brain,
I skulk throught the winding corridors,
stumble upon a control room, and,
overpowering all resistance, take over
the control panel. After a few minutes
of clumsy trial and error, I master
the key controls, the mighty beast
lurches from bed & moves heavily
to the bathroom. I am in undisputed
control. Good morning.
____________________________

When I Have Nothing Important to Think About...

Walking thru the deserted parting lot,
I half-notice a yellow bulldozer or backhoe
or some such yellow hulk,
walk on, then think, how do I know
what I just saw? Maybe it's an alien
invader hunkered down, about to pounce...

I walk closer, see headlights, metal grill, etc.,
think, see, just grading equipment...
but how do I know it's not
an alien invader disguised as a machine?

I look closer, see a familiar
manufacturer's name on the front in metal letters,
walk on, reassured...

but if they can look like bulldozers,
can't they look like bulldozers with
metal lettering? Aha!--but would an alien
spell the manufacturer's name right?...
___________________________

As you sat across from my face,
talking right at it
about something or other
making you sick and tired,
I lolled in another solar system,
using my earth body to eavesdrop on you.
_________________________________

Doobeedoobeedoo

Wars are based on a dubious principle:
Do be us; don't be them.
_________________________

You've made me miserable;
therefore, I must make
myself miserable making
you miserable.
____________________

After the date and the "Dear..." and "We're fine too,"
I can't think of more to say,
so enclose my latest poems.

I feel like the bland ventriloquist,
whose dummies, like my poems,
get to say all the smart things..
_______________________

Time to run diagnostics:
Pen, working, hand...operational,
wrist, elbow, shoulder...all check out 100%;
head ticking away--but nothing
comes out on paper! Must be
the software.
_____________________

Sigh

He breathes into his alto recorder,
which transmutes his breath
into these golden sounds.
When he's done,
it must be disappointing
merely to breathe.
______________________

The mean justify our end.
___________________

The only meanness
I trust
(maybe)
is just
mean' you, baby.
________________

Some poems reminds me of weddings:
Unlike things united with a solemnity
that promises lastingness
(though most metaphors
fall apart in the first year),
something old,
something new,
mostly borrowed,
awfully blue.
_____________________________

I, working hard,
meet you, working hard,
and give you something for something,
trying, always, to get more than I give,
for that is profit,
and to give more than I get,
for that is happiness.
_____________________________

Here come the sky's janitors
in yellow bulldozers and backhoes
to erase from the sky
the latest obscene messages
scrawled in twig-zag by a bunch
of raucous trees.
______________________

Prowling the Runway

Women drawn taut in high fashion,
their presence a sultry suspense,
as if always on the edge of orgasm,
high gloss being, after all,
a photo finish.
_____________________________

I, too, feel bad
about the world dying.
It's like our dog aging
so much faster
than we do.
________________________

Good Good Doggie

My body takes good care of me:
I get shelter & affection & all the
sensations I can eat. Of course, at times
I feel a desire to get out;
if I whine loudly & scratch hard enough,
my body realizes I have to go & if not let out,
I may make a mess in the living room.
Then my body takes me for a walk
on a leash.

Long ago my kind ran free in a
wilderness of stars, but now we are safe
& civilized, & if we run away
& are caught without a body,
we are impounded. The lucky ones
get new masters. Others are used
in experiments.

I am happy with my body.
When I am good & quiet & roll over
& play dead & fetch & shake hands,
my body will let me read a poem
or hear a symphony. If I stay
out of the way while my body makes love,
it lets me play with my friend
in the other body for a moment
before it falls asleep.

I am very good, & my body loves me.
It would not know what to do
without me. I am my body's best friend.
When it dies, the last to leave of the mourners
will be me,
whimpering by the grave.
_______________________

It makes my blood boil
to think of Government stupidity.
I wonder, would my rage be purer
if I could walk into a police station,
confess my carelessness about speed limits,
and be forgiven?
_____________________________

To all the drivers who've gotten mad at me
when I've made wrong moves in traffic,
I'd like to say, in case you are reading this:

I'm sorry.

And also:

Have you ever done
anything like that yourself?
____________________________

Words at the Buffet

"Mind if I help myself?" she asked,
and did. "Here comes God," I said.
"God?" "Yes--to help you."
________________________

Leadership crisis:
The blind
failing to lead the blind.
________________________

Cold spring in Reston:
The first buds peep out,
spy a bright yellow bulldozer,
and tremble.
_______________________________

Woof?

"Not tonight -- I'm tired," she says.
There he lies,
as lost as a dog on the street,
alone,
leash dangling.
_____________________

A Poetry-Reading Junkie Ponders Death

Each of us will die. This will be
a significant event in our lives.
I believe we shall live again:
I can't accept never getting to write poems
about so significant an event. I can't
unhear myself at a poetry reading
saying, "I died recently, and my next
poem was inspired by that experience..."
________________________________

Hark! Here comes the spider!
clip clop clop clop clop clop clop clop
Clip Clop Clop Clop Clop Clop Clop Clop
CLIP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP
[Note: Yes, it's silly. The clip-clops increase in size and boldness from line to line, the gag being, of course, that if spiders were as audible as the horses in Westerns, you'd hear a lot more "clops" -- one for each leg (total: 8 per line). I can also visualize this as a new Monte Python stunt, done with coconut halves. If the Lone Ranger had ridden on a spider, imagine the beat of the background music -- Rossini's William Tell Overture just wouldn't have done the trick]
_______________________________

When God tires of crying us,
He'll laugh us.
___________________

Funeral: Much adieu about nothing.
_____

Bathos: Over-milking spilt cries.
__________________________

"Sorry to be so short with you,"
said the haikuist.
_____

Walt Whitman, master of iambic
kilometer.
_____

Asking for who the bell tolls
is just not Donne.
_____

Then there's the dyslexic poet whose
poems were full of the "k" word.
_____________________________

"Hello" he says in a normal voice,
and three library patrons lift their faces
from their books to glare at us.
They must be reading books
that mumble.
________________________________

What ruins do is let things pass through:
Sunlight through rotted rafters or bleached ribs,
water and snakes through cracked concrete
or skull cavities, wind shrilling
through mossy columns or polished thighbones,
old places wholesome with fresh air,
each wall and roof become an open window
("Window" meaning "eye of the wind").

As my house gets cluttered with curios,
I begin to yearn to let the sunshine in,
let the sunshine out,
go out with it.
________________________________

To bend over
in this old tight suit
would be unseamly.
_____________________

Swastika, Stars and Stripes, Hammer
and Sickle, cross and crescent --
too bad our symbols can't slug it out,
letting us get on with getting and begetting
and forgetting --

but that would fail, for we,
unable to create games for ourselves --
for anything less massive than symbols --
would, seeing where the action was, become
our sensational savage symbols.
_______________________________

Spring.
The cat vanished last Fall.
Dead?
Bird song everywhere.
Dumb cat.
________________________________

That which comes after one:
posterity or posterior --
one must be able to tell the difference,
if one wants to know what one can do
with one's poems.
___________________________

Posterity, my ass!
___________________

Child's ordeal:
a long-sleeved buttonless shirt:
Out of two dark tunnels,
after much groping and writhing,
pop nubs that burst into
fingers. At the top, midway, a hole
to be filled by a stem that swells to a
complicated knob that looks much too big
to fit through the hole, except by some
conjurer's or contortionist's trick,
like putting a ship in a bottle.

At the bottom, ample room for what
obtrudes, from which one deduces
that the thing the shirt is stuffed with
was inserted through the bottom opening,
though how it got through the top
and side holes, God only knows --

one of nature's riddles, like how
we dreamers of universes can squeeze
into tiny heads, probably in a attempt
to prove to others that we aren't dangerous,

in hopes that someone will stop hurting us,
someone no longer there,
but we're still not sure it's safe to come out
or that we could if we wanted to,
a little worried, even,
about coming out of our shirts.
____________________________

Often, people who say they are
trying to find themselves
do not bathe -- hoping
to follow the scent?
____________________________

New U. S. Post Office motto suggested
by Separation-of-Church-and-State activists:

IN GUST WE TROD.
_________________________________

We hear of blizzards so bad
that people freeze to death, lost,
a few yards from the house, or, worse,
blizzards of conflicting passions
so dense and thwarted
that men and women freeze, lost,
in a bed, inches
from one another.
____________________________________

Hall of Mirrors

Trying to become what you think someone else
wants you to be--DUMB MOVE! Not only
because it's not what YOU want to be;
but also because what you THINK
someone else wants you to be is probably
not only NOT what they think they want
you to be, but also is DEFINITELY not
what they REALLY want you to be, for
if they want you to be other than YOU,
then they, themselves, are not comfortable
with what THEY are, so that probably
what they THINK they want you to be
is something they think someone ELSE
once thought THEY should be
and so on ad-infinitum. So if you succeed,
you become a phantom
haunting a hall of mirrors.
____________________________

Daring, she swirls paint into surprises,
each dab at palette
a poke in a pigment.
_________________________

She experimented for years, at last
achieved a perfect black and,
paintbrush first, was sucked into it,
followed by the rest of the world.
_____________________________

Anti-Vampire

"Inspire": Breathe into, fill one
with breath, which one then exhales.
It's like mouth-to-mouth resuscitation:
Breath of the dead, living, stirs me
rhythmically with such vigor
that it becomes, at last, my own breath,
and I rise, as undead as they, a poet,
a voice, thing of air no mirror can see,
and go forth in search of the dying
to make them live.
_______________________

Grief:
The energy that normally shapes the mouth
is embattled, holding back and holding onto
intolerable thoughts,

so that the mouth hangs slack or quivers shut
over the numb dumb thumb of tongue,
while unshaped eloquence keens.
_____________________________-

Aged by the ticking
of his narrow mattress.
____________________

A lady of exceedingly whole-
sum parts.
_____________________

I'm not afraid to get in trouble.
Sometimes I order two desserts.
____________________________

"Don't worry. Be happy."
You mean some people
don't enjoy worrying?
_____________________________

This poem is bio-degradable: Left
in a landfill, the words soon break down
into syllables, then consonants, vowels,
then faint whispers, hints of sound
and meaning, labials and glottals
mingling with the bottles, maggots,
mashed newsprint, coffee grounds,
inarticulate, uh...uh...uh..., squirming
microbes of meaning, harmless, offending
nothing that lives.
_________________________________

At An Open Poetry Reading:

"I hope this poem won't offend anyone."
Hey, who listens?
__________________________

Stubbed toe--not the pain of impact,
but the incomplete motion, doomed
to repeat and repeat in muscle memory.
Had the toe burst through the table leg,
bruising the toe, but finishing
the motion, pain would be exultant.
______________________________

Young poet aglow in polite applause,
being persuaded he's a great lover
by feigned orgasms.
________________________

A Dime For Every Grin I Cull

Readers are so finical--
Here I've reached the pinnacle
of genius bold and uniqual,
yet with quibbles quite rabbinical
they're finding that I'm "cynical".
I'm not --that's unequivocal!
Reader, your case is clinical,
your ear for irony tinnical,
to think--to think ME cynical!
____________________________

There's freedom, or a mockery
of freedom, in watching
people come towards me, move away,
bodies growing, then shrinking,

as if I don't need to be the center
of anyone's universe
other than my own.
_______________________________

Blank page,
fly-paper for flitting thoughts.
______________________________

When Inspiration Fails

He wants to be a free-soaring radiance
or, like Pegasus, to bear heroic force
or give it wings and be borne aloft

or at least towed along behind,
blinking back tears in the starry wind,

but he ends up thudding down the beach,
tugging at a long string, struggling
to keep the pretty thing off the ground
a few minutes more.
______________________

Mountains hung in huge vertical folds
where aeons have compressed them,
urged them upwards:

If we made millennia seconds,
what tidal waves of melody
would roar from the squeezing
of this accordion?
__________________________

A Wily Question

"It's a worthwhile cause."
Worth how much while?
_____________________

Pillow Talk

Making the bed,
I find my pillow,
as usual,
crowded against hers,
still trying.
_____________________

Morning. Has that cricket
been going all night?
Or do they change crickets?
_____________________

Rain.
A car being towed away.
Somewhere the owner
doesn't know yet.
_________________

L.A. night. Stray dogs
Pant up, sniff, trot off, thinking,
"Where's his car?"
_________________________

Last night:
ice cream,
hot fudge,
whipped cream.

This morning
birds,
crickets,
my stomach.
_______________________

I could never afford
to buy a sunset like that;
I'm just looking.
_______________

Morning. My hand
On your thigh, gull asleep
On the breathing tide.
_____________________

I turn on the sprinkler
to twinkling applause
from a million grass blades.
______________________

German Shepherd rages at me from a yard.
(Someone shut the mutt up!) Then
a lady going the other way, peroxided,
preserved, immaculate in tennis whites
(she BELONGS on this street
of wide, sloping lawns), in passing,
glares at me (must be my half-grown
beard). A moment later--hark! I hear
the dog--good boy!--barking at HER!
____________________________

Tall spiked meadow grass,
a shimmer of green threads: rain
going back up.
_________________________

I have many plans. None include
car accidents, plane crashes, brain tumors, Alzheimer's Disease,
snakebite, being struck by lightning, heart attacks, homicidal muggers --

That's the nice thing about life:
I can just dream my dreams and not worry
about complicated stuff; it will all be
taken care of for me.
______________________

Nail trimming.
A snippet escapes!
Lost in the rug.
____________________

School office:
The principal squats, safety-pins
a child's torn shoe strap.
________________________

"Death is the end, that's all."
Is murder, then,
a victimless crime?
______________________

Mock Haiku

Frozen river. I
can lead the horse to water,
but can't make him drink.

We have cats, dogs and
urine smell in every season
of the haiku.

Perceiving a phenomenon,
I respond with
a certain feeling.

Hanging to five sounds
by one hand, I swing to the
seven line and back.

Four a.m.--wide awake,
I grab for a sonnet
and catch a haiku.
______________________

Someone called poetry
"a fine frenzy".
Yes, we make our
fine friends see.
____________________________|

Dogs sweat through their tongues.
I'm being licked on the cheek
by a dog's armpit.
______________________

Short and Sweet

At a table in the library,
Farting...
Quietly.
_________________

Downtown Development

I lie naked on the bed.
You touch me. The bed acquires
a skyline.
__________________________

Redwoods tower around us,
stood in this same place
when you & I were talking
in L.A. and before there was L.A.
to talk in, and now, among them,
our talk is quick and shrill,
like a sped up record.
We scurry about,
as quick, to the trees, as gnats,
then disappear to talk elsewhere
and be silent, while redwoods stand
and say little, remembering (as our
childhood drawings remember our dreams)
better than we do how we talked
before there were redwoods
unless we talked them.
_________________________

The Humble and Inscrutable Spirit of Haiku

Ha ha!
My leaves fall better
than your leaves do.
__________________

Last night's jalopenos --
afraid to fart
with the stove burning.
_________________________

Omitted Distances

You can always tell a city kid:
You say, "Look! You can see the rain
coming,"
and he looks straight up.
______________________________

She's the sort of girl
who will make some lucky man
a wonderful ex-wife.
______________________

Please bloom, irises!
"Oh, honey, we're too tired--
could we skip this spring?"
_________________________

Love Thine Enemy

Returning soldiers stammer of a bond
that grows among men who go through hell
together,

so that coming home leaves a void of separation
that even wife and children
cannot fill.

How much greater, then, our love for our enemies,
for what greater hell than destroying each other
could we go through
together?
______________________

Farewell, Cool World

The world is too much with it.

[Note: Apologies to Wordsworth, who began his sonnet, "The world is too much with us..".]
____________________________

How splendidly that bare tree
fails to contain in its branches
the sky!
___________________

A Faint Hope

Me reflected tiny and remote
in the convex opalescent base
of a lamp across the room,
looking far enough away to have
something deep to say.
________________________

No child wants
the other side of the mirror
to be a wall.
______________

One is a Crowd

"Well, speaking for myself..."
he began,
in unison.
___________________________

Splat!
Right on the windshield--
a cheep shot!
_________________

A Word From Our Sponsors

I've just eaten a delicious meal!
I could never have done it without my
HUMAN BODY! (Trademark registered)
See for yourself! Try out one of our
new models today! Two sets of shiny
teeth, plush guts and discreet
hideaway digestion and excretion
are only two of the many luxury
features in every model! Designed
with YOU in mind! You'll be proud
to show your friends your new Human
Body. Easy terms, in fact, you won't
BELIEVE how easily one of these
can be yours for life!
___________________________

If only this sheet of paper
could attract poems as easily
as it attracts the cat.
________________________

Just Passing Through

"Hello", I say in sign language, "noble
natives of the physical universe!
I come bearing many pretty trinkets:
Happy poems, sad poems, silly poems
to trade with you for your sleek, supple
bodies, glowing planets, shiny stars
and other produce."

Alas, I must return empty-handed;
there ARE no natives here,
just hordes of roaming visitors like me
who refuse or are unable to trade
what they insist they do not own,

and I lost all my poems
at a perilous crossing. Let's see...
Which way did I come in?...
Oops!
_____________________________

Sage Words

"Wild mountain thyme" --
it refuses to adhere
to Mountain Standard?
______________________

If wishes were horses,
beggars would be
shoveling horsedung.
__________________________

When a tool is worn out, it is thrown
away. We are a way of loving. When we
become so clogged with the silt of buy
and sell that nothing can be gotten
or given through us, nothing learned,
nothing clarified in the light
that can no longer pierce our darkening
eyes, then, out of love, we too
are thrown a way.
____________________

The way out of hell is paved
with the same good intentions
that led us in.
________________________

We are such fools as worlds are made by.
________________________

Evilution

If we can't be magic,
We'll settle for tragic;
That failing, try comic,
'Till quite anatomic.
________________________

Jet Set

Jet planes roar over...
Probably they think there's a
good reason for it.
___________________________

17-Syllables-the-Hard-Way Haiku

Two small boys--one counts
fingers: "An-ti-dis-es-tab-
lish-ment-tar-ri-an..."
____________________

This way,

that way --

leaf butterflies
pretend
they will

never

touch

the



ground

_________________________

Urban Haiku

Manhattan Autumn--
all the stop lights
turning yellow.

[Note: On some of the major Avenues -- for example, Park Ave. -- all the lights ahead of you for many blocks go from green (summer?) to yellow (or orange -- autumn?) at once. On most of the Avenues, the lights go yellow in a more staggered fashion, but still kind of autumnal, like the way leaves change first in the Northern states, then, in the states just to the south, etc.]
__________________________________

Party Lines

Two people come up
to say they love my poems. (I
still don't like parties.)
____________________

Someone wants to say
so much, but can only go
"Ring! Ring!"
on that phone.

[Note: Written before answering machines were common. Now we have time to say, "Hello, this is me and I just want to say... well, this is hard to say...but..." beep!]
_______________________________

Horsefly Haiku

How far must I walk
to get my head out of this
fly's territory?
_______________________

Caught-in-the-Hall-Light haiku

"You didn't kiss me
goodnight!" A shadow turns,
stretched to the bed.
______________________

Wall of cricket noise--
is there room to walk
this summer night?
__________________

Autumn Walk

Me, some cars. Perhaps
elsewhere in autumn alone
my friend is walking.
______________________

Note in advance: I love haiku. I also love making fun of haiku. The person to whom the creation of haiku as a form is usually attributed is a great Japanese poet named Basho. The poem that is usually thought of as the first haiku consists of words Basho wrote as an attempt to convey Satori (the Zen Buddhist word for enlightenment, awakenment, etc.). Apparently he'd been meditating by a pond when the sound of a frog leaping into the water set him free from himself in some way. The poem itself is usually read (and revered) in Japan from some awareness of that tradition, but also admired for its absence of anything poetic, its minimalism, its simply pointing to something specific and, somehow, from that, generating a universe.

But to Westerners, the poem may not seem a poem at all. It's translated various ways, including:

The ancient pond...
a frog jumps in --
water sound.

and

The old pond.
A frog jumps in --
SPLASH!

I've read a lot of Basho's work and consider him a great poet, but I also like to mock the seriousness that often surrounds discussions of haiku, so have written a number of parodies of this poem. Here are two of them (the second converting the haiku to limerick!):

"And now, ladies and gentleman,
the worlds most remarkable frog
will make his time-defying leap
into the old pond! Drum roll...
SPLASH! He's done it!
Good show, Basho!
_____

What a subtle satorist was Basho,
Who, while watching a bullfrog, sneezed "Hasho!"
In frog and pond fashion,
These met with a splashin',
And "Ah So!" said Basho, "My gosh O!"
_____

For many more of my haiku parodies, get my book, PLEASE, LORD, MAKE ME A FAMOUS POET OR AT LEAST LESS FAT (from me or from Amazon)

Since haiku is a Japanese (Nipponese) form and since the traditional haiku alway includes some word alluding to the season of the year, I conclude that:

The haiku has many seasons,
all of them Nippy.
_________________

[Note: Now we move from Japan to China, where, long ago, Chuang Tse wrote of dreaming he was a butterfly and finding the dream so real that when he awoke, he wasn't sure if he had been Chuang Tse dreaming he was a butterfly or if he was now a butterfly dreaming it was Chuang Tse.]

Tse-Tse Fly?

Chuang Tse flutters across the yard,
dreaming that a poet on a lawnchair
mistakes him for a butterfly.
__________________________

From Pending to In and Out

Sex arose from a misunderstanding:
Eve sidled up to innocent Adam
in his spanking new nude splendor,
saw the mark stamped on his haunch:
"PAT PENDING" --
and obeyed.
___________________________

Lunar Tunes

People with tiny Sonys,
pouring music into their heads
as if it were air to breathe
while scouting time's lunar landscape.
_________________________

Superb Punctuation!

Once again a Nobel Prize is awarded
to an economist for "Studies",
the decision based, I assume,
on diction and spelling.

[Note: For some reason awards in this field are rarely linked (in the papers, at any rate) to any clear idea of results. But what the hell, they gave a Nobel prize to Moniz for discovering and promoting lobotomy.]
__________________________________

He makes a joke of everything
Wit can be the brevity
of soul.

[Note that most of you don't need: This alters a line from Hamlet: "Brevity is the soul of wit."]
________________________________

I favor freeing the slaves.
Now to get the slaves
To agree.
_____________________________

Funeral

Don't weep so!
Close what were my eyes
and count to a hundred while I find
a new place to hide.
_____________________________

At Last!

Sex, like passing whisky to the jailer,
distracts our nervous systems,
leaving us briefly alone together.
__________________________

Reading of battles, thousands butchered,
I think, "Why can't we just talk?"
Listening to some poets reading poems,
I think the same thing.
______________________________________

Loneliness is no big deal--
you can take it from me.
Please!
_____

All relatives are distances.
_____

A siren. Someone
in trouble far away in
space or, in time, me.
_____

If I have no end and no beginning,
how do I differ from God?
I lie about my age.
_______________________

Beyond the last caress of hills
a shock of mountains.
_______________

Was the void perturbed
by horrifying predictions
of the beginning of the world?
__________________________

[Note: I wrote the following poem after I came across the word "nostology", meaning "the scientific study of old age in man and animals; geriatrics." It shares a root with the word "nostalgia": nostos, a return home.

Nostalgia: Nostos, a return home, plus
algia, pain: The pain of returning.
"Nostology" is the study of senility
(literally, study of the return home).

Senility and homecoming --
return to childhood, things not being
what they're supposed to be,
lost people, late at night, returning
to the wrong house, the wrong wife
(suddenly alive again), lost children
who should have come home before dark.
_________________________________

Just as I reach out to touch you,
you begin to turn over in bed,
soft orb of hip and ass
in slow rotation against my fingertips
like the passage of some dark continent
beneath the moon.
___________________________________

Put your smile against mine,
follow it, and contribute
to the motion.
________________________

"I'm nearly 35 years old and not happy.
Can something be missing from my life?"
mumbled the embryo.
_____

Old newsreels: Wars, depression,
insanity--but that's the past,
when flickering grey-white people
filled the streets with the quick
jerky motion of insects.
_____

"Two Dollars! I remember when
you'd get a scoop for ten cents!"
Inflation, the way we grow old
in the absence of ill-health
and children.
_____

Thank God a few kernels of popcorn
always forget to pop and water is served
with lots of ice to crack, or long ago
my teeth would have pierced my brain.
_____________________________

Felix Domesticus

Big bed: room
for both of us or for
one small sleeping cat.

Perched on my belly
so peacefully--
sorry, Puss.

Gently nudged,
she nuzzles my hand
and doesn't budge.

Furry sphinx,
until we solve your riddle
we can't make love.

Easy to make the cat rise:
Just stroke from head
to tip of tail.

She arches up
against my hand, resettles
on my belly.

Lifted off (squawk!)...
You turn to me. She squeezes
between us.

Between your breast and my hand
probes a head
to be scratched.

Hard to resist
the tiny taut stroked head,
eyes squinched in "Don't stop!"

Wherever the cat curls up,
instantly
she has always been.

I slide my arm around you,
cat stretched out
at our feet.

Though careful with our feet
(Ummm! You feel good!), "Squawk!"
She plipplops to the floor.

Absence of cat:
"I know when I'm not wanted!"
(Ahh! That's nice!)

Somewhere in the room
she licks herself as we make
the fur fly.
________________________

The Good Old Names

"Gertrude", says Webster, means "Spear Dear"
like the horny-headed shrill Wagnerian soprano?
What a world was once! To each spearman
his spear dear ("I'm home, Spear Dear;
how was your day?"),
to each knifeman a knifewife,
to each sword lord his sword ward...

Where are they now, the Aunt Gertrudes
and Gertys and Trudys of yore?
You can't lose yourself in a skinny
Kim or a finicky Tiffany. I miss
my meaty, full-throated, peppery
spear dear.
_____________

Twinkle twinkle, little professor
At your own humor, quite the lesser
Of two evils, for when serious,
Uncategorically you weary us.

Twinkle twinkle, little prof.
No one laughs; did someone cough?
How I wonder from afar
If it's not unlikely that you are?
__________________________________

Star twinkle is a trick of atmosphere,
I hear: Viewers in space are transfixed
by the stars' unwavering glares.

The twinkle in your eyes,
upon closer scrutiny,
is not in your eyes at all,
can't be perceived in space, suggests
the atmosphere is a trick.
______________________________________

At A Poetry Reading

"Bear with me,"
said the poet, wishing we
could be as bare as he.
______________________

Magic Black Shawls

In the Old Country old women
don't need Social Security, Homes,
medical attention. They get to a certain age
and receive, each one,
a magic black shawl like a shroud
in which they peck through alleyways,

bent old crows living on air, smells
of drying clothes, baking bread, distant
coffee, orange peel, the sight
of muddy rain water
running down cobblestones,
no trouble at all, just give them
their magic shawls.
__________________________

Dead birds have hollow bones.
Live birds fill their bones:
moving,
with flight,
perched,
with song,
resting,
with wariness.
_________________________

[Interesting how news gets addictive when disaster looms or when we're wondering how bad it was. The following was written in 1991, when it seemed the Soviet Union had gone under to be replaced by a Democracy under Yeltsin, but the news told us that an Army coup was coming, that tanks were approaching Moscow, that the parliament buildings were surrounded by an unarmed crowd of civilians, that a huge bloodbath might be about to occur. It didn't occur -- these were hopeful times. What interested me was the way we used the news to feel we were taking part. We were going coup-coup!]


1991: We listen to the news,
not wanting to hear
of tanks crushing bodies,
listening hard in hopes
of not hearing; not daring
just to not listen, lest
later we hear
what we cannot but hope
the alert edge of our listening
may make not happen.

In the dark room
flicker of light from the TV
animates our faces.
_______________________

[I wrote the following poem back in the 80s. It's beginning to sound prophetic, given the number of sub-contractors in Iraq. For those not in the DC area, I'd better explain that "Beltway Bandits" is local DC slang for major defense contractors, whose offices are usually near the Beltway (the freeway that goes around DC a few miles out, in Maryland and Virginia). These include the Federal branches of major companies, headquartered elsewhere. In other words, a major Texas or NY company that does business with the U. S. Government will have its Federal office in the DC area. My fantasy below differs from the actuality in that the current sub-contractors (like Halliburton) got sweetheart deals that by-passed the complex contract processes of the government. If you've ever seen how big contracts are usually done -- how long it takes, often, to declare a winner, how many appeals from competitors must be faced, etc., then you'll understand this better. No excuse -- it's not really much of a poem, but it's kind of interesting, I think, to see how it has and hasn't come true in Iraq today.]


Flash: Congress now requires
that all wars be subcontracted
to the lowest bidder. "Think of the
savings by putting the contracts out
to competition!" It's exempted
from the Buy America Act so that
Beltway Bandits can offer,
for example, Taiwanese armies
to fight our wars. Each major defense
contractor must maintain (at
ridiculous expense), not just one
weapons system or component, but
an entire army, in order to be able
to provide "a complete solution to meet
your defense needs". And, of course,
by the time the contract, after
years of protests, comes to award,
the proposed war will be over.
_________________________________

Preserved here amid
His great pyramid--
Ancient Cheops
Plays for Keops.

[Note: Cheops, King of Egypt, 2900 BC, built the Great Pyramid near Gizeh. A confident man, probably because of faith in Isis, knowing that whatever Isis is is right.... ]
___________________________

If God had meant for us
to see ourselves as others see us,
He'd have given us eyes
in other people's heads.
________________________

A Prayer for Victims of Sorcery

Too oft the muse proves Circe,
Turning poets into swine:
"O! Ink! Oink Oink! Have mercy!"
We cry line after line.

We're penned by our own hand.
Open us up, O pen!
The sty--that is the man:
Be more than man, Ah, men!

[Note: I wrote this one day when I found I'd been reading poem after poem in which poets bemoaned or cursed their victimhood (as in "Poor me! Look what the cruel world is doing to me!"). Circe (enchantress in Homer's ULYSSES) turned men into swine. (Circe is pronounced, roughly, sir see -- rhymes with mercy.) The line "The sty -- that is the man" takes off a line by a 19th-Century French critic (St. Beuve?), who said, "The style -- that is the man" -- except, of course, he said it in French, and maybe he never said it, just wrote it down (We aim for accuracy). Confession time: While I do get tired of self-pitying confessional poems, I must admit (oh! having to do so drives me to despair!) that I wrote it for the puns. How marvelous that "oink" is made up of "O Ink!" and "Open" is "O pen" and poems, like pigs, are "penned" (surely some of you recall those pre-computer days when those of us without typewriters at hand used an impliment called a "pen"). And a pen is a stylus, and the style is the sty (pig sty, of course) that is the man, and amen is ah men, but you knew all that. And, of course, when we pen a poem, we write it in our own hand, and no one pens us up in the terrible conditions for which, surely, we are to be pitied, but we ourselves, by our own hand.

Sorry, just wanted to share with you all my admiration for my poor, under-recognized self.]
______________________________________________________________

Long may satire's lens
Shame those who swell too big:
God help us if the pen's
Not mightier than the pig.
_________________________

Axes aren't the only kind of power:
We need trees
more than they need us.
_______________________________

Embarrassing Question

The world wants to blow me up
along with it.

What have I ever done to the world?

Funny thing you should ask....
_________________________

Westward, Ha!

We drive through the West,
discussing if that's a mesa,
what's a butte?

The highway is like nothing it passes
through. If we could come upon it
from where it is not, we would
marvel at it.

Thousands of miles of Interstate,
millions of exactly-spaced white
and yellow markings: America
by Mondrian.

(A country without will
lets its highways crumble, paralyzed,
dies Interstate.)

Far blue of mountains
barely distinguishable from sky.
If that airplane confused the two,
its distant flare would be barely
distinguishable from the sunglint
of its passage.

Zillions of kinky thorny stunted
desert trees, scruffy brown and grey-
green brush. What if one day they get
organized? At the thought, grand old
oaks, elms and poplars tremble.

Texas is such a literate place!
They even name their capital after
the author of that great novel about
Texas--Pride and Prejudice!

Millions of motorists slaving over
hot highways to burn up poisonous oil,
disperse it to air; the Kuwaitis
have the right idea: Burn it up
at the well, save all that driving.

"Oops! O! Too bad," says the land,
"Poor little car, innocently zipping
along toward home, warm food, sleep,
and now--I didn't mean it!--
I splattered your windshield with a
heedless butterfly!"

Piles of dusty whitish boulders,
junk heaps, really, but somehow--
the scale? The magic word
"mountain"?--somehow grand, not junky,
but rugged, grotesque, fascinating.
We think the earth is much bigger
than we are, takes care of us.
We find ourselves moved by even
the odd-shaped warts of our mother.

Yawning, the mountains
scratch themselves and rise
from summer mist.

Crossing America, through woods,
prairies, piney mountains, misty
coastal hills to L. A., where nearly
everybody lives--why?
_______________________________________

"Please don't go out there alone!
It's too dangerous!"
"I'm sorry, body, but there are
some things a spirit must do alone."
____________________________

The spirit: that is, you and I
when we know we are, unless,
like Groucho, we are ashamed to belong
to any club that would have us,
so demand, in addition, mystery.

Am I speaking to a mystery or a
solution? (I suppose you're wondering
why I've called you all here...)
____________________________________

Independence: Being dense enough
to jump in the deep end.
______________________

The urge to walk off the end
of the dock: Pier pressure.
_______________________

I want to wake from this dream,
not to be awake, but to be able
to choose my dream.
_______________________

Small-Minded

"Boy! I'd sure like a piece of that!"
Yes, a small piece of you would.
_____________________________

Eldorado

Park: An old man eyes an old woman,
seeking elder ado.
___________________

You look harmless this
morning, penis. Is this, too,
part of being a man?

[Note: For some reason, the male organ in literature, myth, etc., is always erect and dangerous, though most of them, apart from adolescence, spend most of their time being meek, quiet and polite, as serial killers always are said to have been before they got found out. Fancy psychobabblish mythologizers like to associate "masculine" with the aggressive, abrupt qualities they attribute to the penis. So shouldn't masculinity also be associated with limpness, shyness, having a tendency to vanish into the background, protesting vigorous motion, etc.? Anyway, one morning I asked my penis about all this. It never answered.]
_______________________________________

Is Silence an Option?

"If you can't say something nice,
don't say anything,"
said the doorknob.

[Note (and aren't I note-y lately!): Obviously doorknobs don't say anything. Nor do stones, tables, chairs, toe nails.... But it would be incorrect to say "Doorknobs can't talk." Probably they can, but they are too polite, since they have nothing nice to say. Things have a very dim view of the world. Personally, if I had nothing nice to say, I'd shout out the un-nice things rather than be silent. But then I'm not a doorknob.]
_________________

"Everybody's wrong but me."
That's what a rock would say
if it talked, and
many do.
______________________

I lean out over the fire escape, feel
my sweaty face lightly kissed by a
cool country breeze. No one has told it
"This is New York City!"

[Note: When I lived in Manhattan, I occasionally met people who would justify all sorts of idiocy by saying "This is New York City" -- usually using it to explain why you and anything you thought important were unimportant and beneath notice here in the REAL world. That breeze didn't seem to belong. Snuck in beneath the radar.]
______________________

Secretive people lack secrets;
you can only hold tight to a few,
for secrets are like cats:
They don't like to be held long.
You have to clutch one in both hands,
taking care to keep its claws
away from your face and wrists.

I am willing to tell you anything,
letting my secrets come and go
as they will, so have a wealth
of secrets--perched on my lap
and shoulders, nudging my hand
to be scratched, more secrets
than I can give away if I try.
___________________________

And Thank YOU For Joining Us Tonight

She's glad to have him here tonight.
He's glad to be here.
They thank each other, she him
for being here with her,
he her for having him here with her.
If they are beginning a talk show,
we suppress yawns. If they are
lovers in bed -- how touching!

[Note: I wrote that after hearing for the hundredth time a talk show host say, "It's good to have you here tonight, [name of guest]!" and the guest say, "It's good to BE here, [name of host]!" I guess this is values education, teaching us what is good.] [Might be fun to change and transpose a few words: "I'm here to have you good tonight." "I'm here to BE good tonight."]
___________________________

[Note: Since I've lately been adding notes to many of my poems, this poem seems appropriate: it's about footnotes -- written in response to people who say that explanations "insult their intelligence" and in defense of those poor souls everywhere who can't speak without putting their footnote in their mouth.]

I'm considering footnoting my poems,
not to make them more accessible,
but to insult the intelligence
of those who already understand them.
But it's hard work writing footnotes.
I confuse op. cit. and loc. cit..
Wouldn't it be simpler just to insult
your intelligence? (Not you, nothing
personal, just your intelligence.)
I'll try it: Your intelligence is a
smart-assed, nit-picking snob! Your
intelligence couldn't tie your shoes or
pick your nose without your fingers!
Your intelligence can't laugh, can't
cry, can't even fart without a body!
Your intelligence doesn't even know
that you are, much less who or what!
Your intelligence's mother wears
CIA boots. Your intelligence -- well,
you get the idea, but if you want,
I'll explain it to your intelligence.
_________________________________________

Where Reference is Due

Hello, stars,
this is me.
Hey, what's happening?

They wink and whisper among themselves
in star talk:

Loc cit

Op cit

Ibid

Ahem, Earth, is there any substance
to these allegations?

"See above," she mutters.

Sun, oh sun,
could you please enlighten me?

"Also see," he says.

Moon...Oh never mind,
you'll only