Poem in Heptastitch

Apollonius’s Lyceum n’er was so grand as rumor has it, so
eat and be fat. Mow your newfound greener pastures
and recall a youth in Pelloponne where ticked a fuck meter
day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, etc.
Line five.
Line six.
Line seven.

Double Sextain

Damn these actuaries and their alarming
alarums, damn them all to their circle of hell!
Bowling with pillows,
damn that too!
I’m over here, you’re over there, and
that’s also a goddamn shame!

Ah, but the blinking sunup! Another!
It always sweetens the mood.
The poet, mollified, returns his damnations
to an assistant in the shadows lurking.
Fog in a basket in place remains.
Tiny red spots ping on.

Ready to Go

Submitting a poem to a gunsmith’s mailbox,
or a toboggan at a nunnery’s door,
or a bridesmaid in a bulldozer’s path,
or a spilt banana split, or a crater in Ull,
a planet nobody’s heard about,
seems imprudent.

The First Lines of a Very Long Poem

O gloop of the sodden, woven oak!
There some would murmur through soft’ning poops,
sky bleeps within the glen’s glems and goops,
wearisome ploops after, before . . .

Six Lines, Six Lines

Gentle zephyr, sky-blue sky, such a day
cannot be boring, do you also notice that?
You don’t also notice that?
Nor the drool to the ground on which you pause?
Think of it as haphazard irrigation,
and of a truly lovely day, try to think of that too.

These pleasures are external and possibly eternal,
though not entirely. Never entirely. And yes, of course,
I’ll memorialize you, from here to the end of
an unnamed trail I find so disturbing
I absolutely have to leave.
(The poem ends on a sigh of relief.)

Risk Assessment

I donate a walnut to a nut museum.
This runs no risk.
I turn dewdrops into diamonds.
I puncture the sky.
My room fills with blue.
None of this is risky.
I impose torque on the Cyrillic alphabet:
This is a smidgen riskier.
I apply for a patent.
We shall see where that goes.
“Here’s to the bullet holes almost in me!”
This touches on something well beyond risk.

Thoughts for a Chilly June Afternoon

Grind on, age. As if you had a choice.
Make of me a golem with divot for a heart.
Or disappearing words on a disappearing page.
Or a blot in the eulogy no one thought to bring along.

Another Day, Another Dollar

Surfaces awaken, elbows flex,
a glove flies into
a tree.

Aspects of Martyrdom

Martyrdom is rarely brisk.
Even so, we don’t often think
of martyrs as creatures of leisure.
Tied to a stake, soon to be in flames,
a martyr isn’t likely
to ask for an ash tray

nor is he offered the concomitant cigarette.
Hours from an electric chair, does
a martyr request an electric hassock or
a last meal of electric eel?
My guess is not.

His neck secured to a guillotine,
a martyr gazes into a beribboned basket half-filled
with Easter eggs and chocolate bunnies.
This is inappropriate! It shows
a total lack of respect

if not for the martyr at least for the moment.

As to who qualifies,
it’s five o’clock somewhere.

Why Poets Need Mothers

“You lose!” Mother’s chuckle, one of a thousand
standby capabilities, includes extra feet
to take her anywhere. To Russia? Not likely.
Stalin’s long gone. No replacement appears to exist.
Mother’s like that. Alrighty then,
let’s have a look inside mother’s head.
“Aha!”
“Aha what? What are you seeing?”
Depart, interlocutor.
Ping! Never mind. Happiness arrives.
I’m happy and you should be too,
whoever you are.

Quatrain Better Said in Scots

Is that your head on someone else’s torso?
With bifocals? Is that even you?
All this thistle reminds
me of Scotland.

Polar Ice Caps: Dire Outcomes

When poetry responds to your merest desire,
any old hour glass is a too tightly corseted woman
in Gilded-Age finery. One scours manuals
for her location, or illustrations of a lifetime’s slaloms,
or citizens’ grievances, or findings regarding polar fragility,
manuals cover this and more. Indeed,
but who is this too tightly corseted woman?
Forgive my presumptuousness
for assuming you’ve been wondering
in the here and now or crawling back from Russia
with what remains of Napoleon’s armée.

Temporarily Unique

This poem is not about rubber fever. It mentions
something about inedible filberts. It mentions a poet,
hat in hand, seeking Erato. It concludes with
the poem’s best line: I think I hear a tuning fork.

Corpuscle Tally

You look diminished. Even so,
have a go at what’s happening, say thanks
and depart. If perchance you leave a bloody trail,
keep count of the corpuscles. They add up.
I forgot to mention vampire bats.
I first forgot to mention freaks who blink
with their lips.

Poem in Four Three Three

So, all I said was, It sounds like chalk speaking potato.
I mean back in town squeezing happiness with 39
or 40 fingers sending Marushka into the snow
for lentils, was it?

Crack! Sprinkles! And only then! I’ll be honest.
I am a cloud, a rent-free cloud, all are welcome. But oh!
Then you! None other!

I looked so hard into the sky I broke something else.
A ball, is it, bouncing outside? Every example that comes
to mind is persistently asymmetrical.

Crotch Goblins

Throughout the savanna sun-dappled moments
shed their camouflage. No one finds this strange or
alarming. Things are very different at night.
That’s when crotch goblins go on the prowl. Also
someone screams. If that’s not an omen,
I can’t imagine what qualifies.

A Fish’s Fate

Juice alone lacks specificity. Orange juice narrows it down.
So does battery juice. Buttery juice is a recent concoction, actually
just now. While it’s something I doubt I’d relish, I’d
survive a glass of buttery juice. Of battery juice, likely not.

In what is probably dated slang, Chilly Will has juice, i.e., clout.
A large, impassive fish asks for nothing.
It awaits its destiny.

Timing Is All

That which speaks volumes:
a monogrammed spittoon and
the odor of sanctity. Tarot says it’s likely.
Palmistry confirms.

My worms are your worms,
you have to believe it.
Horsefly gaskets in our very own sunlight,
you pull your shirt up over your face,
I need to know when.

Stationary Swine

A personage whose identity I’ve promised
to protect, let’s call him squire,
proposes that crash dummies be assigned
nationalities. Surely this offends
whatever ethnicity, religion, region,
and, as mentioned, nationality is
so tagged. Squire’s foresight is particularly
damaging to perennial blossoms
(Cranesbill Geraniums, etc.),
worse even than hogs at large in l’Orangerie.
It pays to remember that a fear of swine
gets one nowhere, much as swine also go nowhere
short of people who throw them somewhere.
(Many more possibilities. Let’s keep this short.)

Machines Don’t Care

Metaphysicians fill holes in the mind with speculation.
’Pataphysicians likewise, with imaginary solutions.
Soldiers stick flags in the holes they make.
Oblivious to this and everything else,
the tabernacle pump goes chuf chuf chuf.

Nocturne

They say you can turn one thing into another
till everything looks odd. So hit me with a shelf
from which popular items have flown.
Or grill me a fish that sheds tears.
Or am I that leaf in the lamplight that
trembles when you approach?

Outcomes

Curiosity leads to possibilities
that sometimes aren’t,
or vibrate. There we loiter,
gathering stars
with loops for hanging.

On reflection, astronomy has nothing
to do with floor-length draperies.
It’s memory that restores love’s aromas.

If I crouch do I look like rubbish?
Shall I throw myself out or simply stand up?
Mother love or mother lode,
either suffices. My entire head vibrates
when I roll my r’s.

Another Day, Another Dollar

Surfaces awaken, elbows flex,
a glove flies into
a tree.

Rent Flesh

Upon my soul! Such a deep wound! Within it
old friends from whom I’ve not heard, possibly forever,
distant mountains that ripple in the breeze,
which I find suspicious, clouds that sound hollow
when they bump, and calls for help
that seem genuine enough.

The Circles That Swirl

The circles that swirl about in my head
fill with shavings and sweepings.
There you stand in one of these engorging
on shavings and sweepings. There I elsewhere stand
stuffing moonlight into a sack

in a manner of speaking,

where a topaz-like heart on a demon’s tail swings,
where I’ll gladly confess to what graces I’ve stolen,
also gladly. Including the Grail!
As an additional attraction, it’s audible!
Even to you!
Am I deceived?

Parlor Game with Music

Five people have arranged themselves in a circle,
each with a length of string in hand. Each length attaches
to a large green balloon the five people tug at.
The activity lasts until someone says, “Enough!”

A recording of Stockhausen’s Helicopter Quartet
plays at a volume setting making it difficult
for anyone to hear anything other
than the music.

Why Are We Floating?

Plump, full fed and fair. But where is Horace?
He breaks bread over pits with torches, smiting
Old Barbera, well, here goes another:
for each of my bananas footmen diddle
a craggy ape’s crags, also with Horace into the din.
Forms perish ’twixt ticks & tocks, thrones
empty ’twixt ticks & tocks, pretender pop up
’twixt ticks & tocks, a cloud asks,
“Daddy, why are we floating?”

Rhetorick

Marmaduke’s Retrograde Turmoil and other locally famous battles
are too far gone in history for present-day adjustments.
Statesmanlike wit succumbs to palsy. Palsy succumbs at a different rate.
So we pause here to ask, Who is Sylvia? Is she culpable?
Some questions are incisive, others, window dressing. And yet,
if I terminate rhetoric with a k it gives the poem an old-timey look.

There’s Always a Way

It’s not yet light, I think there’s something wrong
with the sun. I dream of the dawn.
(There’s always a way except when there isn’t.)
One’s mind in sleep sees little folk stirring
little black kettles, notices pinned
to their little white tunics:
I Am a Bog Imp. So Are They.
One’s mind in sleep portrays one’s head
with a centerfold crease, through the door on the right.
How’s business? I cannot say.
I cannot speak.

Even So

It matters little that raindrops fall on everything.
It matters little that certain sweets float.
One of these, a macaroon, is bobbing about in a puddle.
Here I must confess that implausibility is my poetry’s meat
and potatoes. If all goes as planned, your interest now awakens.
I couldn’t be happier. Even so, brace yourself.
Velcro secures these lines to the page!

When One Is Very Old These Thoughts Occur

I’m thinking of what might happen to my reputation
if all my teeth fell out at once. I’m thinking
of how I might respond to someone who slams
my doors so hard the neighbors call the police. Should I
regret having so many doors? Should I have opted
for better locks?

Should I stand in front of the bull’s-eye
for my tête-à-tête with the Void?

Forgive me. We oldsters wander.
An interest in death requires an interpreter.
Disasters occupy units of measure. This is a given.
Till mine comes round, may I climb
aboard your baseball?

The Part I Played in the Great War

Someone knocks, I open the door, a woman hands me
a white feather, her expression one of sour disapproval. She turns
on her keel and leaves. (I forgot to mention the oceanic
setting.) Her purpose is clear: to tell me I’m a coward and also
a century-plus too late.

Like a Capsule in a Little Silver Pill Box

Remove and carefully fold the hand-colored gift-wrap
for other applications and there you’ll find me
doing Poetry, an order up from poetry.
(See the emboldened P.)
(Before you demur, I’m aware that I’m using
emboldened contrarianly,
which makes me a poetic licensee,
which Word’s hall monitor
finds problematical,
to which I say begone!)

What I thought was Bismarck’s humidor is
my clenched left hand. I also thought
I seized a vampire by a fang. When I refer to
pyromaniacs I call them fire bugs.
They do say I am whimsical.
It’s true.

Greetings, amici, out there in the Turbulence.
I am so happy to be me rolling around like a capsule
in a little silver pill box lined in blue velvet.

Three Somewhat Related Tercets

While metamorphosis has its attractions, less perhaps
to the already flawless, among whom
I long to belong.

To be avoided: Perishing. Anguish on a reliable schedule.
Giving oneself the vapors when one intends
to give oneself airs.

While expectations have their attractions, wear and tear
are also in play. That Thoroughfare to Perfection?
I pressed the wrong button.

Like a Rebus

Today’s poem celebrates the Siege of Port Arthur
as one of several coastal events requiring notice. Like a rebus,
it doesn’t quite qualify as a Manchurian Mystery, though
close enough, or closer, had our besieged Port Arthur
been situated elsewhere, Texas perhaps.

We find you, cherished reader, under the confetti
this poem produces. You deserve an award, a trophy
even better, for your patience
and understanding.

Sylvia, Adrift

Weeknights wee knights creep out and about making the rounds.
Syvia’s nowhere, Ataturk also. Perhaps it’s they
who squeak?

“Be such a phantom as eludes one’s grasp,
where such a one is only imagined,
bilious and sallow, adrift
in the shallows.”
Sylvia, adrift in swift-flowing miscellanies. Rescue’s

a possibility. Better for continuity, not.

The Perfect Mist

When my Nepalese nephew hawks mucus in the mists
it sounds Nepalese. I cannot say why. It just does.
My Nepalese nephew disappears in the mists,
as if on a schedule. The murmur you hear is me getting ready
to call off the search.

I’ve arranged these enigmas as blocks to climb
for a different outlook. A Platonic outlook.
An outlook that provides a view
of the Perfect Mist

in which, perhaps, my Nepalese nephew wanders.

Eternity’s Porpoise

And there you stand taking a position,
for which you’ve earned everyone’s admiration.
This interest sustains like laundry out to dry
on a sunny afternoon in an ideal situation.
What we make of Eternity’s purpose,
which a type setter misreads as Eternity’s porpoise,
leads to some confusion. When a nose drops off a face
it does so mostly noiselessly. Heads off shoulders,
rather more audibly.