My Muse’s Respiration

My muse draws shallow breaths
but I’m often mistaken.
These miniature assassins,
you cannot catch them.
Crack! Thoughtful civilizations sprinkle
lentils on the needy.
Crack! Enter affable firemen
lobbing suet at late arrivals
sheltering in hammocks,
one-upping everything.

Honk

In my youth my thoughts looked like dust bunnies.
Now they look like marbles. Concentration does that.
More to the point, this poem deals with time,
which, carefully handled, is loveable.
This poem also deals with love which I time
with an hour glass. How quaint!
I learn, too late, that my love lies buried
under memories. Not to worry, she’s insubstantial.
The memories must speak for themselves.
A poem should honk just loudly enough.

Aspects of Cannibalism

Should an Idi Amin reenactor say, “A slave is a singer one eats
when he runs out of breath,” a well-aimed poem is a tool
for correcting outrages such as this, if scattered
on a page according to directions.

Fever blisters are beautiful breasts? Well, yes,
but only in a poem in which illness
and pulchritude coexist.

In a poem of a macabre turn,
what one cannot name lean dead,
each against another, and pose no threat.
Aunt eaters perhaps, done in
by malnutrition.

But we’re doing quite well, you know. Argh!
A thoughtful poet spits out the buttons.

As for Me

Who composed the tone poem
“Death and Transportation”?
Sir Samuel Cunard?
Yes! Correct!
Cunard was a striking figure, an octet
in Brownian motion.
He played a harmonium that
looked like something Rube Goldberg
concocted, but as one might have predicted,
feet of clay go plop plop crumble.
Sic semper tyrannis.

Curse that has proven efficacious:
May a motorcycle with a loud exhaust
do carnival laps around your skull.
As for me, I listen.
As for me, I also look.
As for me, I rarely participate.

I Didn’t Do This

My not wanting to be here poses a conundrum.
For want of a better maneuver I already am,
here or in Macao, I install for the pleasure of how it
sounds, pronounced. Let’s further introduce
counterfeiters and dairymaids. Our
featureless Macao produces cheese nobody eats
and dodgy dollars, in a poem
I think I’ll disavow.

Il Duce’s Lungs

An official NFL football encases a volume of shaped air.
The most contentious among us finds nothing here
objectionable, surely to their disappointment.
Free-form air surrounds our heads as a given, certainly,
and as a kindness. Why then do I mention that
Mussolini got the trains to run on time?
Simply this: Without air encasing his head
Mussolini would have been too busy trying to breathe
to worry about schedules. Even Il Duce
put on his lungs one leg at a time.

An Offensive Term a Delight to Pronounce

Verminous, spoken, has a velvety finish, as lovely
as flutterby. Word underscores flutterby in red.
I don’t care. It stays. I show the officer my poetic license
and registration. They’re up to date. The tail lights
work. I’m free to proceed. I go.

Free Wallabies

Do you think it right to tell me I’m invisible?
Are you not aware of my mantra?
I can’t blame you. I sometimes forget it.

“You can’t come. You don’t look like
a company man.” I get that often.
A lid slams shut.

Entrance to Kansas is a sign on a door I’m
unlikely to open. Free Wallabies
is more enticing.

Decay, Three Applications

When icebergs drift away from Scadi’s Frozen Wonderland
they soon after diminish. Shamanka bottle the melt as
sea-salted panacea. Shaman label their vials
Neglected Poets’ Tears. Available
on Amazon.

Worn overlong as a garland, kebobs become intolerable.
Time is leaning on the bell. Somebody, please,
buzz it in.

A Tool for Every Task

Gold nuggets? We’re off to a start
I decline to call promising. Fool’s gold.
Imagine a poet turned loose in a flowerbed.

No gold at all, foolish or real. Just yellow paint.
Imagine a poet mashing the horizon with
his big fat feet. He appears to be
chasing sunbeams.
Idiot.

An ibex stands for a portrait of surefootedness. And
it looks really nice immobile on a rock
where the air thins out.

It’s a question of knowing what to use.
You don’t repair an hour glass
with a splitting maul.

Prune

Even in a dream it’s a grand thing
driving a car in a vacant field that looks
like a prune. Levitation poses no problem.
Murk intrudes when the car looks like
an eggplant and you look like something
by Giuseppe Arcimboldo.
I see you chewing a rubber lozenge.
Spit it out. Have a prune.
Pretend it’s a baby otter or
smell.

Bloomingdale’s Winter Window Display

“A life,” I once said, “should not be too sad.” So
just sad enough? PVC walnuts on a Styrofoam hillside
is irrelevant to the musher lost in a blizzard
of exquisitely crafted polyethylene snowflakes.
Each flake differs from the next. No expense was spared.

A poet travels, pinning what he learns to
a bulletin board. Townies’ feet go plop plop plop
to no particular purpose. This tableau is consigned
to the cellar as insufficiently seasonal.

We arrive, finally, at a Theresienstadt
bristling with tinsel and
Christmas lights.

Departure

How I cherish this languid rivalry! You are rarely
out of sight, even when you float. You may wonder,
to whom am I speaking. A thoughtful response
includes someone somewhere and anyone everywhere.
Poetry remains a medium in which ambiguity
looks sexy. In the next two lines
I could be running into walls
wielding a Chinese cleaver.

My muse suggests I depart.
I’ll head for the horizon
where possibility flirts with hope.

The One Day of the Year Iconoclasts Sparkle

Iconoclasts who take their work to heart spit
on whatever draws their attention.
Noting golden speckles in the azure,
iconoclasts spit skyward
at velocities besting missiles.
Slackers dream of what might have been.
Several lie buried under memories of meals
they mostly enjoyed. Downed golden speckles
fall to those who spat. Iconoclasts sparkle
on the new year’s first Tuesday.

Paths in the Air

A poet says hello just loudly enough
to distract a field marshal from scrutinizing terrain.
The field marshal’s purpose is martial and
therefore bellicose. A poet seeking paths to peace should
say hello just loudly enough, again and again,
until one achieves his purpose.

Is melancholy sexy? Perhaps to hopeless romantics.
A better look for field marshals is jolly,
especially in victory. In such a circumstance,
a poet is forlorn.
His teardrops are for sale.

Poem in Which Moonlight Plays a Part

“We got no time fer varmints.” Uttered in moonlight,
a beautiful woman under one’s spell, does that make sense?
Of course not. Creating perfect breasts of unsightly zits,
at this Poetry excels. But have a care for what
you say at a pivotal moment, also in moonlight. Your
Beamer’s four tires, all have been slashed.
You appear to have angered the gods.

When the Palace Goes, So Do I

It’s already too late. The use-by date is too faded to read.
Someone saying he’s God tells me things.
The caller’s rich baritone and top-shelf diction lead me
to believe this may indeed be God. Taking a caller’s measure
over a landline, one might as well unscramble an egg.
To make themselves known, prostitutes blink excessively.
And it’s already too late. The palace divides into slender wedges.
I divine that I am sliding. Say goodbye to the children.
Anyone’s.

Be Reverential

If it’s an enchanted grotto you seek,
seek elsewhere. Find a place in your mind
for a likelier pursuit. Acquire a telescope
and scan for distant delights. If you discover
the gods’ habitation, be reverential.
An angry god can turn you into
something your mother
wouldn’t recognize.

Lake Titicaca

Hypocrisy, notwithstanding his years,
remains a striking figure, widely traveled
and studious. Sincerity, Hypocrisy’s spinster sister,
passes the hours at her loom.
Rates of absorption, respiration,
aspiration, perspiration, transportation,
these figures remain unavailable.
Ask again later.

Are you ensorcelled? I don’t believe I’ve ever been
nor did I know what the term means till
moments ago: under a magic spell. Hypocrisy knows.
Hypocrisy knows everything but cannot weave.
Sincerity’s lap rugs have won blue ribbons at six state fairs.
Hypocrisy’s lap rugs remain empty promises.
After a few drinks the boasting becomes intolerable.

Foolish Oregon! Foolish oregano!
Neither lays claim to Lake Titicaca,
a pity, that.

Somebody Moved

Owing to saudade
I had intended this as a suicide note
but a tarot array says not today.
Grand gestures require articulation.
Grand articulation requires nimble joints.

“People of the world, say cheese!”
I took the picture.
As the old joke has it,
somebody moved

to inhospitable Mars.

Another Round of Tercets

Stack the mourners atop the deceased,
apply a fixative, create
a memorial.

I’m sending my thoughts and prayers.
You’ll need to sign when
they arrive.

If asked, I identify as a polytheist.
The stories are more
enjoyable.

A hypothesis, if valid, bears repetition.
A poem’s repetition requires
narration.

Beginning one’s story at the end
precludes the enrichments
events provide.

Two More Tercets

Often, when I sit, I suspect I’m going south,
which, taken in the vernacular,
betokens switch off.

Life’s downward spiral, especially through
sea-green vistas, warns against
eating jellyfish.

What Should Have Been Five Quintains

A poet looks like a brioche,
in the nude, with a quilted pot-holder
where a fig leaf once hung,
like in Hamlet.

Bad poets snarl too much.
Tantrums get bad poets nowhere,
nor does flattery, nor do podiatrists named Flaherty
whose travelogues scan poorly. Poopoo on a pizza peel
in other than a poem? Phooey!

Chivalry on life-support: Do but recall
what befell sister Schvister thumping about the kitchen
on a peg leg. Wisteria under the rug?
Not bloody likely! Not on my unwound watch!
Count everyone’s fingers.

A cow’s pelvis defines indifference.
A quilted pet holder
is a petit-bourgeois affectation.
People deflate too soon.

Spit out the gristle.
Say phooey too soon.
Don’t if you don’t want to.
What you want is on
page 38.

Did You Know?

In this locale (the Continental Sheaf),
the poet is seated in a cozy room. He isn’t
floating. Misstatements pass as poetic license,
for which there is no fee. Descents into an abyss
“won’t take but a minute.” Ha!
“Something’s in the piano. I can smell it.”
When you say Katmandu I envision some guy named
Cat Man doing something of a feline nature.
The misunderstanding takes less than a minute and
smells like a perishable in need of attention. The piano
is a percussion instrument. Not everyone knows that.

Daydreams

Do go on.
I’m afraid I can’t.
I am too busy daydreaming
about rocking oases
till everything tumbles into the sand
and disappears,
about rocking rock gardens,
this too, far and wide.

Adelante, when you give it your all,
when the suspense has you sitting
on the edge of your teeth,
among the tossed rocks,
the saturated sand, of either Earth.

I vibrate! I am beset by mothballs!
I cancel refrigeration!
Lovely mountains
slowly spoil.

Aspects of Mourning

Squirrels differ from rocks
as rocks differ from spun sugar.
Draping mirrors in black organza
accomplishes nothing.

I don’t pray, but only today,
which I set aside for blowing up
infidels. This accomplishes
a little something.

Greetings at an Excavation

It’s me shuffling about
in bedroom slippers,
no, make that crampons
ruining a hardwood floor
in poems such as this.
I’ll pay for the damage
in another poem.

Not

Cocktails with the Kronstadt Marines,
inedible scenery,
wonders that shouldn’t,
at least not for me.

May Time lie as lightly on our shoulders
as grandmother’s mink stole,
or not.

The Poet’s Teeth Remain Unremarked

The poet’s heart,
nibbled by Life to a coffee bean
yet beats like…
Wait! I have it!
Like an HO-gauge bilge pump!
The poet’s earlobes look like
little airplane wings.

Ramekins of Flan

My fixation on an agrarian setting
relates to haylofts for which
I have an erotic longing.
I also long to name something Solange
for the simple joy of shouting
“Solange! Solange! Tell me why!”

Splat.

How Quickly Does One Eat?

Give a lonesome man an onion.
Give generously. A large onion. But
not at so hasty a pace that the gesture
goes unobserved.

But not at so leisurely a pace that the seasons
pass into years, into decades, into centuries
and so forth. Lonesome men eat
large onions slowly.

I Won’t Dance, You Can’t Make Me

Even an underinflated poet’s conceits arrive
as poetic licensees, nor do perceptive onlookers
confuse him with ineptly fashioned manikins.
The poet is opaque, unless thin-sliced.
His words may glide smoothly from left to right,
but he’s hopeless on the dance floor.

Beetles

As collegial terms, calm and splatter
are an uncomfortable fit, especially among
invertebrates with (often colorful) carapaces. It
requires stamina to move along hippity-hop,
if one’s a beetle, as an aspect of self,
with (an often colorful) carapace.
Beetles with (often colorful) carapaces,
caring little for what we think,
persist.

Celebrating [Brackets]

The average human has a few hundred eyelashes.
If I wish to memorialize someone I admire by way of brackets,
a punctuation mark I likewise admire for its martial posture
and minimalist service as tidy typographic caskets,
I shall bracket my subject’s lashes thusly: [l], [l], [l], [l], [l],
and so on. I will spare us the totality if only to confirm
the lower-case l as a lash avatar, which, no doubt,
you’ve already figured out. But did you know,
in Times New Roman, that Western Arabic’s number one
and L’s lower-case are identical twins? As jaded as
I’ve grown with the years, I still enjoy
surprises.