Villanelle: Last Post of the Poem-a-Day-in-April Challenge

I would have written this poem anyway—
scribbling plenty fun for its own sake, bro!
Goodbye, my fancy, see you another day!

The linked fence saves my ass from the freeway,
so I don’t literally hit the road.
I would have written this poem anyway.

Suffering no fall, I watch the trucks roll by.
When I see my brother carryin' somethin', I can't help him with his load.
Goodbye, my fancy, see you another day!

The traffic makes me dizzy, I shift and sway,
hanging in my overpass abode.
I would have written this poem anyway—

all this west-and-east the price I pay
for a peculiar inert immunity I've showed.
Goodbye, my fancy, see you another day!

I wrote this same poem forty years ago, I'll say.

What will it take to jolt me from this mode?
I would have written this poem anyway.
Goodbye, my fancy, see you another day!

Climate March Tanka

We’re all loveable.
Let’s go to the hospital.
That’s what one woman
said she thought she heard. Let us
all guess what the real chant was!

The Death of Narcissus

Fast-dissolving face,
self-beloved in vain,
echoed voice, farewell
speaking.


The nymph Echo loves Narcissus. Juno took away her voice because she wouldn't tattle on Jupiter's hanky-panky. She can only repeat what others say. Narcissus doesn't love others, only his own image, which is too insubstantial for him to possess. When he dies of frustration, Echo repeats his farewell utterance.

By far the best way to read the Metamorphoses, in my opinion, is to use the late 17th-century translation that John Dryden edited. I think the translations are by a lot of different people, but Dryden edited and rewrote them all. The downloadable searchable version is very easy to use, and Dryden's English is very accessible.

Dewey's Imp of the Perverse

Dewey can take pics
of their own feet in a fire pit
on the edge of a cliff.

Alright!
Do it, Dewey!
Dewey gotta

scoot butt over there.
Click click click click click—
with and without

sandals, sandals placed
an inch from sheer drop.
Yikes!

OK, got
‘em in the camera now.
Scramble barefoot back.

Dewey Undisclosed

parental days
performing conjugal obstetrics
Dewey’s own proper equipment blocked
through a bedroom accident
Dewey out of Colorado—
off their climate estimate
all of them Caesarian
except of course that Dewey

belly care wrong hoo boy
love does an hundred
whose later presence could actually be
the bean to old Dewey
Daedalus of emissions
of the love that is reasonably
that which when first married
fostered whose seldom properly-flowing births

but attending themselves at window
felt body wheeler mountain
well remembered themselves someone
and a bum show rap steer
which buggered poor Dewey somewhat
forced big public Arkansas watering
with main years so far beyond
that 1921 Dewey talking about

So Dewey young now to Nora
Barnacle city far on the quietest watch
women love not time
techniques precisely physical—POV—
and so the speckled Robin bird
spouse linked in loving lying
with a whole nother anything
changed from clothed basement thoughts

that go about naked now wet after dancing
bear man bare poem
mistress of their know un years
Dewey their one wondrous possibly
experience their deeply sweetly breathing
children awaking themselves to sleep
carpenters of their own
childhood going on to personify

and so un

Achieving Myself Out of a Job Haiku

They kept promoting
me, and the more they did the
more I hated it.

worbject

worbject

Dewey Nature Poet

Poetic habit:
writing at an hour of the morning,
while looking out the back window.

Dewey goes outside to write
and sits barefoot on the cedar porch,
so that the outer weather—

late April buds,
pair of finches chirping on a basswood branch
(male with reddish head—Dewey

observing with apt precision)
matches the weather on the surface
of Dewey’s skin—their

hanging foot and bare knee
also part of the weather, are they not?
kitschy ardency already present

in the finches’ song
(red squirrel bounding across the lawn),
making Dewey want to pin

their heart like a big Valentine 

to the top
of the power-line pole across the alley.

Dewey's April 21, 2017

I never knew
Prince wrote What if God was one of us,
just a slave like one of us?

(me having to sing slob not slave).
Nor can I remember
the singer who had a hit with that song

when my daughters were kids—
Prince so slick! Now dead. Perfection
graphicized and preserved forever

in video. As it was, I
missed the living Prince, pretty much,
even though I worked practically

across the street from Paisley Park
in Chanhassen in the ‘80’s—
decade my mother died

(to broach a topic) after declaring
me to be a "good businessman,"
me having been motivated to audit mother’s

not inconsiderable estate—business
in high odor in those Reagan days—I
even owned four business suits—how

was I supposed to know
they were bad suits?—wardrobe a black box
to me then as now—

same as fiddles: the one
I'm used to always sounds the best.
But what a performer

Prince was! I can perform, I
can be fun to watch. But I
could never be perfect like Prince,

with a guitar 

that’s both a vagina
and a Cupid’s dart.

5-7-5 Haiku(s)

*
Living with covid:
being a mouse in a house
with cat in it.

*
Poets' emotions:
more worthy of attention
than other people's.

*
Problem with Graves's White
Goddess is, she's white. We need
a Nut-Brown Goddess.

*

sang for three hours
baby with us the whole time
never fussed a bit

*
I refuse to join
any group that assigns star-
status to people.

            -

Star-status might be
ironic star-status. That’s
one problem with it. 

*
white people making
fried cornmeal balls and calling
them hummus puppies

*
I love the fairway.
Ev'rything rolls off of it,
espeshly my ball.

*
Thumping banjos heard
from tent. Leopard frogs. Couldn't
decipher the tunes.

*

If the medium
is the message, the message
has to be Facebook.

*
Whose ever face gets
posted on Facebook the most
wins the election.

*

Parallel eaters
take planful measured bites of
all the foods at once.

Serial eaters
take dedicated bites of
one food till it’s gone.

*
For a suffering
poet, making everyone
sick is redemptive.

*
poesis—maid rite
take browned ground beef and sliced cheese
make a sloppy po’

*
People can misspell
Michael on a marker. I'm sure
it's often been done.

*
Taxidermy. Your
baby’s shoes ain’t no heirloom
till you shellac ‘em.

*
Adam and Eve in
the Garden before they had
to start having sex

*
I don't want mankind

to survive, because it'll
be people like you.

*
If he'd had any
self-respect, he would have died
a long time ago.

*
I am so blessed by
the new friends I've made! How can
I not die happy?

*
Please don't let me go
through life as nothing but an
underwear wardrobe.

*
Woe be to any
Hebrew woman who marries
a Philistine man!

*
Woe be to them in
whom I read my own sins. My
scourge is merciless.

*
Some existential
morsel. My musical voice.
The caution of death.

*
I'll talk, peons, you
listen. I'm the poet, you're
my fit audience.

*
Yup, I want power.
Faustian bargain, though, I'm
going to Hell now.

*
Some people think they're
heavyweights, but most of 'em
are just big fatsos.

*
The poets I know
don't get the medium-is-
the-message message.

*
They said it was one
of the handful of longest 
teeth they'd ever seen.

*
His heart is a soft
pillow. He uses it to 
suffocate his friends.

*
I have no urge to
rest, only to forge ahead.
I may soon be dead.

*
They kept promoting
me, and the more they did the
more I wanted out.

*
Competition does
not inspire me. It just makes
me want to give up.

*
A successful team
always includes at least one
squirrel and one moose.

*
We didn't know we
were having an affair, so
it ended badly.

*
My robe and crown have
gone missing. I look like shit
in 'em anyway.

Buried in My Cowboy Hat

*

bashful

rattlesnakes

*

wild goose

oh my land

*

spirit

don't know what

*

tumbling

tumbleweeks

*

sweet friend

memory

*

how I

would respond

A Lot of Men I Know

One thing that
bothers me
about a

lot of men
I know is
they appear

to think, if
they care for
a woman

they’re somehow 

entitled
to something.

Dewey's New Skirt

Appealing
garment!—lavender
shirt rolled around waist—

never the same length,
never the same flash
of bare Indian

loin there on the right
side, tied sleeves in tassels
not hiding much thigh skin.

A Jeremiad

(10, 10, 6, 12, 9)

Saul watches the suburbly tanned bodies,
brilliantly oiled and burnished by the sun,
and sees the bloody hair
and hears the intelligible prayer to God:
"Lord, do not hold this sin against them."

America, America City,
city that kills her prophets, I gather
your children together
as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. Have
mercy on me, O Lord, for I am

in trouble. Like a seagull on a stone
step, I have become a reproach to my
acquaintances. When they
see me in the street, they avoid me. Hooker on
the corner, waiting for a train, Drunk

lying on the sidewalk, sleeping in the
rain. Forgotten out of mind, like a dead
dog, I am a broken
pot. For I have heard the whispering of the crowd.
Where is my tranquil old age? I may

ask myself, but fear is not allowed. As
for me, Lord, in Thee have I trusted.
Get my sister Sandy,
and my little brother Ray. Let me never be
confounded. Thus says the Lord your God:

I will make this house like Shiloh, and this

nation a curse for all the nations. Now,
therefore, amend your ways
to avert wrath, for truly God delivers me
to pour His just vengeance in your ears.

Two Rose Poems

Sonnets to Orpheus, Number 6, Second Series

Rainer Maria Rilke

Rose, throned one, to the ancients
you were a cup with a simple rim,
but to us you are the full, unnumbered bloom
of an inexhaustible Dasein.

You shine in your richness like a costume on a costume,
on a body made of nothing but shining,
but your single garment is the avoidance
and denial of any apparel.

For centuries, your scent has wafted
its sweet names to us;
suddenly it hangs in the air like fame.

In spite of this, we don’t know its name, we guess . . .
and memory goes over
the names invoked in recallable hours.

The Rose

Jorge Luis Borges

Unfading rose that I cannot sing,

that of heft and fragrance,

that of the black garden in the tall night,

that of any garden of any afternoon,

rose that rises out of tenuous

ash by the art of alchemy,

rose of the Persians and of Ariosto,

that which is always alone,

always the rose of all roses,

young Platonic flower,

blind burning rose that I cannot sing,

unattainable rose.

Time and Poetry (Responses to Geof Huth)

*
time passes on caterpillar toes
pointe is, time has moments
poet must dance each one.

*
fluttering
moments netted
eternity missed

*
pwoermd comes 
in a timeless flash
days later still here

*
don't be shy
make spectacles
of yourself

*
pwoermd instantaneous

Photoshopping
waxsynth

*
Entirement 
repleting worbject
fully born

*
everywhere cats must be liberated
cats inherent in every wall and sidewalk
draw them

The Two Marys

      
Mother of God

Raped in the Temple
such things happen
I delivered in a cave.

Magdalene

I saw the empty sepulcher,

I, who let the Word enter me
but had no child.

John, I:14, Jorge Luis Borges

The Word became flesh and walked among us

The Asian histories refer
to a king of a certain time who, tired
of tedium and splendor, sallied forth
in secret and alone to cross the suburbs

and lose himself in the crowd
of dirty hands and obscure names;
today, as the Emir of the Believers,
Harun, God wants to walk among the people

and be born of a woman as were born
all those whose lineage dissolves in dust,
and to receive the orb entire,

air, water, tomorrows, stone and lily,

but afterwards the martyr’s blood,
the scorn, the nails and the wood.

Dewey's Saturday Jam

1

Spanish-guitar
belly
ukulele fly

2

poor fly
feet
in the jelly

3

I belong
to
somebody

4

tomb’s lap 

buzz
and thrum

Senryu Satchel

*
foot on the edge
of the porcelain bathtub—Dewey
cutting their toenails

*
at White Sands
gleeful hopped out barefooted and
scorched my feet

*
|my vest button
snagged
in her shirt loop

*

stiff peddling freeway overpass

old woman

keeping her speed up  

*

Saturday morning bus stop

old man doing

grocery bag curls

*

cone of sticks amid the trees
same temperature
inside as out

*
cave in the cliff wall
gasoline
for warmth

*

frosty houses

window glass lets light out
but not the noise

*
Valentine’s Day
card for each class mate—
one card glows

*
maple syrup
thin glass maple leaf—
grade B is better

Panhandler by Freeway Entrance

1.

My hat decal - Frog? No,
horny toad.
We’re all horny toads

(smiley goat teeth),
or else
civilization would end.

Life, I say,
our knuckles
touching.

2.

Beautiful sunny spring day.

Soon, of course,
drones will rain down -

drones dropping
from the sky,
killing people everywhere.

Whole way of life
justified
by deadly drones.

3.

Roll by low and slow,

hand in the wind.
Thank you, sir, god bless.

Stupid!

Robin needed a drive to work.     I drove her.
Then I thought,     I’ll drive to Eat My Words.
How stupid, though!     I’d removed my bag of books.

So, from the U     I drove back to St. Paul.
Got my bag     and put it in my pack.
Good. Alright.     So I set off again.

Traffic bad on 280.     The radio
was no help, so     I turned it off.
Broadway finally.     Stuck

behind buses.     Veering around trucks.
Past Central     I drove,
Past Stinson     (I think it was),

Washington,     University.
Where     is the Brewery?
Don’t see it,     but, anyway,

I’m turning right on 4^th.      Alrighty,
there’s a North-     East Minneapolis Arts District sign.
I might as well     just park.

But, of course,     Eat My Words was closed til ten o’clock.

Stupid! What a stupid day!     I’ll just hole up
at Maeve’s and post     my haikus.

Kigo Keg

tap
the Kigo
keg


clouds slide
under branches
wet-foot moon


prickly pear in snow

loopy tracks halt—

eensy brown lump

pile of cats—
where 
do my feet go


rabbit hutch—
den leader removes
maggoty babies


holding
a buzz
in my hand


stung
through a hollyhock
flower

pop
corn—grass
hopper

To John Keats, Jorge Luis Borges

From the beginning until your young death
the terrible beauty was lurking
as for others good luck
or bad. Waiting for you in the dawns
of London, in the casual pages
of a dictionary of mythology,
in the common gifts of the day,
in a face, in a voice, and in the mortal lips
of Fanny Brawne. O Keats! passed,
snatched away, blinded by time,
the high nightingale and the Grecian urn
will be your eternity. O vagabond!
You were the fire. In panic memory,
you are not ashes now. You are glory.

I, Jorge Luis Borges

The skull, the secret heart,
the paths of blood that I don’t see,
the tunnels of sleep (that Proteus),
the guts, the nape, the skeleton.
I am these. Incredibly,
I am also the memory of a sword       
and that of a solitary setting sun
that scattered itself in gold, in shadow, in nothing.
I am he who sees the prows from the harbor;
I am the twice-told tales, the tales I tell,
recorded for an exhausted time;
I am he who envies those who have already died.
More rare it is to be one who weaves
words in a room of a house.

Dreaming

Dreaming, dreaming,
Of you, sweetheart, I am dreaming,
Dreaming of days when you loved me best,
Dreaming of hours that have gone to rest.

Lost (won’t say “my”) car yesterday.
Went to the garage in back to get a music stand out of car trunk—garage empty.
Here’s a fine howdy-do.

Stolen? Could be, but, nah, probably left it somewhere.
Tell Robin? could keep it secret—told her, she was merciful.
Always that question, “Are we losing it?”

Car, if left somewhere, just a problem to solve, but when driven last even?
Past couple days a blank, pretty much.
Can put ‘em back together: poems made, tunes played.

Now be Saturday morning, or Sunday morning, really.
Thing is, never take car if not too far to walk.
Checked journal (pen scratching now), when was car used last?

Wednesday: Blue Moon met with Nora about Silence, getting the most out of each other;
Gnome, very sweet meeting, Beth, Alice, and Althea.
Thursday: Got Silence into Common Good Books.

Blue Moon a lot farther away than Common Good Books, but pretty definitely by foot,
but why drive the car to Common Good Books?
Got haircut Thursday too, right across the street.

Pretty good feeling about that Thursday possibility.
Take Robin’s Subaru the few blocks, immediately see red car parked up right side of Grand.
Sure enough, licence plate MZG, that’s the amazing red Corolla, formerly UVA, my little grape.

Legally parked, looks like, music stand out of trunk, Subaru home.
Biggest problems: 1) the temporal location of the narrative present;
2) pronouns—“I” is just a ghost.

Playing Cajun With Mary

Fiddling on that wicked tune from Joel.
—Don’t press down hard, he'd say, keep your fingers loose.
I had to use my little pinkie too.
I'll never get close to Joel’s sound, that I know.

Then Mary had to stop from shoulder pain.
—This arthritis may end my musical career.
—No, that can’t possibly be allowed, my dear!
She shrugged, and we soon started up again.

Mary lives alone with her old black cat.
The cat was on the bed while we two played.
We scraped up quite a feast—I was amazed
at how well our two fiddles chewed the fat.

So generous of her to want to play with me at all!

Then I left and drove south, to Minnehaha Falls.

Haiku

prickly pear in snow

loopy tracks halt—

eensy brown lump

     _________

prickly pear in snow

loopy tracks halt—

stiff gray lump

Trying to Be the Knight of Faith

To believe
six impossible things
before breakfast.

Something can’t really
be true unless
it’s impossible, right?

I believed I would
come home to a fabulous dinner—
I wasn’t disappointed.

I had to leave my cat
in my house when they took me away—
will he be OK?

The end has come.

I’m dying in prison and my cat isn’t with me—
big white paws, wheezy purr.

Blue Moon

Moon floating in front of the blue.
Some wispy clouds melting behind the moon too.
Moon half a mil away.

How far away is the blue?

Haiku (maybe)

           *
old Jewish graveyard

red-brick gate
red boots dance the slabs

            *
sun-warmed creatures
impossible to catch
western fence haiku           

            *
song sparrow
foundering
in goldenrod
            
           *
bones and fur
white
butt tufts

           *
nesting squirrels 
do it
under my garage roof

           *
in my tent
the ground itself
brings the party to me

           *
puddles 
on the climbing path
caked shoes

            *
birch diamonds
breathe
I stumble on the path

            *
red wing 
blackbirds ring 
their telephones

Flower-muscle, Anemone, Rainer Maria Rilke

Flower-muscle, anemone,

gradually opening in the meadow morning,

as into you the many-toned
light of the bright heavens is poured,

into that tense but quiet muscle
of infinite reception—

sometimes so completely overpowered

that the resting posture of the downfall

hardly allows the hinged

petals to spring back and cover you:

you, decision and power of how many worlds!

We, violent ones, we weather longer.

But when—in which of all our lives—

can we finally be so open and receptive?

Sonnet 5 of the Sonnets to Orpheus, second series

This Is the Animal That Doesn't Exist, Rainer Maria Rilke

O this is the animal that doesn’t exist.
They didn’t know that, and, in any case—
its neck, its carriage, and its gait, even
to the quiet light of its soft gaze—they loved it.

Truly it was not. But, because they loved it, it became
a righteous beast. They always allowed it space.
And in that space, released and stark,
it held its head up easily and didn’t need

to be. They nourished it without corn, with nothing
but the pure possibility that it could be.
And they gave the animal such strength

that it pushed a horn out of its brow. A horn.

To a virgin it came then, white, nearby—
and was in the mirror-silver and in her.

Sonnet 4, Sonnets to Orpheus, second series

Mirrors, Rainer Maria Rilke

Mirrors: no one has yet described
what you truly are.
You fill the virtualities of time
as with holes of a sieve.

You, prodigals of the empty hall
when the day dawns like a gaping forest,
and the luster shines like a sixteen-pointer
through your untreadableness!

Mostly you’re full of images.
Some seem to have sunk into you,
others you’ve shyly sent away.

But the most beautiful will stay, until

into those cheeks so chastely withheld
springs the dissolved daffodil.

Sonnet 3, Sonnets to Orpheus, second series

Just as a Painter, Rainer Maria Rilke

Just as a painter may sometimes grab
the nearest scrap for their urgent stroke,
so a mirror may sometimes catch
the sweet authentic smiles of girls

as they step out into the morning, alone,
or into the glow of evening lights.
And of the breathing life of their faces,
later, only a shadow remains.

What have eyes in the afterglow
of dying embers ever discerned
but ashes of life forever lost?

Of the Earth, who can count the losses?

Only they who, with tunes of praise,
sing the heart, born into the whole.

Sonnet 2 in Sonnets to Orpheus, second series 

Breath, You Invisible Poem, Rainer Maria Rilke

Breath, you invisible poem!

Always for yourself

exchanged. Counter-play

in which I rhythmically occur.

Single wave, whose

gradual sea I am;

thriftiest of all possible seas,

room to gain.

Of how many of these places was the space already there

in me? Some breezes

are like my children.

Do you recognize me, air, you, full of my location?

you, once smooth as paper,

bark and leaf of my words.

Sonnet 1 in Sonnets to Orpheus, second series.