Tick-tock

Thinking about time,

each moment a knife-edge.
There’s an obvious rhyme.

We’re on the dime.
We’re a bird new-fledged.
We’re flying through time.

Drawing a lime-
line from porch to hedge;
and we need a rhyme,

so we think we hear the chime
of a clock practicing solfege
to kill time.

There’s a big pine
outside our window—we aledge
a satisfying completing rhyme

awaited still when our prime
green has withered with the sedge.
Adapting to time.
No perfect rhyme.

Remunerative Avocation (Not!)

Poetry is about self-enjoyment—
it’s gratifying to get an eyeful of you—
but it doesn’t lead to gainful employment.

I tried to get an enlargement
of a picture of myself dressed as you,
because I was jonesin’ for self-enjoyment.

And you’re not the private, I’m not the sergeant—
interrupting-cow yelling “moo.”
We both try to evade gainful employment

by getting a medical deferment.
And we refuse to listen to the news,
because how can one’s self be enjoyed

in an environment
where everyone’s dying of the righteousness flu?
Poetry is about self-enjoyment—

lower-brain stuff, mainly—lust and allurement—
you flapping by, dancing your lindy-lou.
Poetry is about self-enjoyment,
and it doesn’t lead to gainful employment.

Don't Disturb My Nap!

Trying to draw attention and be notorious,

gifting our feelings to everyone,
we’re just poets being poets.

Yes, we’re in a boisterous
mood, as we stand in your sun,
trying to draw attention and be notorious

by casting our smarmy shadow on your undressed,
resting body, gentle reader, all sleek and brown.
We’re just poets being poets,

bringing our uproarious
brand of fun,
taking advantage of our notorious

attention-worthiness, flashing our sartorious
splendor all over town—
just poets being poets.

We’ll finally be declared victorious
(the gentle reader will still be lying down),
trying to draw attention and be notorious,
more boring poets.

Amnesia

Casting my gaze back from my bleak September—

why did I turn out the way I did?
Things happened when I was too young to remember.

Memory’s like being lost in the timber
after the deer and rabbits have all fled.
When I cast my gaze back from my bleak September,

my earliest days are dimmed in slumber—
nothing takes shape for me to love or dread
that happened when I was too young to remember.

It’s like when you have to row a tender
out to the main ship hulking in the red
dawn of a bleak September

morning, sun rising in cold splendor;
then you stagger wet and scared onto the beachhead,
armed to fight ghosts you’re too old to remember;

you might catch a glimpse of something lithe and tender,
flashing like some hope you left for dead
a million years before this bleak September
day. You loved somebody once, but now you can’t remember.

Bell Ringing in the Ring

Bob says, you shouldn’t expect too much from any one thing.

What did I expect from poetry, anyway?—
all clinched up waiting for the bell to ring.

I thought my poetry fixation was just an adolescent fling—
when I was supposed to be studying, I was boo-hoo-ing “well-a-day,”
not expecting a hell of a lot from anything

in those days—I had no love to cling
to; I’d lie in bed for days—
days my alarm clock would refuse to ring.

But then I became the victim of a big sting
operation. They caught me red-handed, what could I say?
I’d been trying to get too much out of one thing,

and it was a clinical addiction, I decided, my maundering
after strange gods—instead of a romp in the hay—
waiting for the final bell to ring,

to chime the hope my heart was hazarding,
wake me up gladly to face the day.
Bob says, you shouldn’t expect too much from any one thing.
Isn’t it funny, that a bell rings in a ring?

Little Yoga Poem

I do tree
in the attic.
There’s a tree
outside my window
too.

Stand on one
foot, point toe.
The tree is 
bare, letting sun
through.

Prayer

With things going on now at such a pace, how can I trust, how can I have faith? Not worried about losing face in the face of lust, with things going on now at such a pace; not worried it’ll all go to waste— yet worry I must.— How can I have faith, when what I rest my faith in disappoints? I’ll be hard-pressed, with things going on now at such a pace not to die without a trace black as tar or red as rust. What faith mends my strength and sends me forth, tides me through until the night is spent when everything finally cancels its pace? How can I have faith?

It’ll Drive You Crazy If You Let It

Working nine-to-five,

it’s easy to lose touch
with what it feels like to be alive.

Last to leave the hive
‘cause you can't buzz your wings enough
‘cause you’re working nine-to-five.

You might want to drive
fifty in second and torch your clutch—
how it feels to be alive.

All the juice you thrive
on—pollens, nectars—what a rush,
working nine-to-five!

Like Dolly says, all taking and no giv-
ing, so just GIVE UP and be a lush
to try to feel a little more alive!

You can't but connive
with the big fat man who eats your lunch,
working nine-to-five—
hard pressed to find a way to feel alive.

Writing Versus Submitting

One writes to work out personal problems.
One submits because one wants to share a vision.
What you’re sharing can’t be just hobgoblins.

You wince when you go through old photo albums,
or after you're done waiting for the incision,
but you try to prevent embarrassment problems

in the writing. Not that you're expecting fulsome
praise, as you preen and resist revision—
sharing nothing but smarmy hobgoblins.

But won't you feel so awesome
when your necking becomes petting
and you find you've written a poem whose problems

are are even more personal than your own: your love will blossom
into a singular situation—nuclear fission
on a personal level, blasting your atoms into radioactive hobgoblins.

But the arena crowd is shouting: Foxes or vixens!
and your pen will finally have drawn a right rendition
of your butt, writing to work out personal problems,
knowing you’re sharing some pretty hot hobgoblins!

Two Rummages after Robert Bly

Daylight

Always faced by what’s between my ears.
There’s an insistent whirr—vibrations reaching me
through the air, and I’m trying to think what
it could be. A hummingbird?
Too loud for that—an intoned word?
Maybe the clang of a struck sword
whose note will ring forever, thread
even the daylight can’t sever

Proud Molly
I got a notch on my pistol,
but there was a catch—
I was too deep in dutch
to You-Know-Who. She scotched on me.
OK, I’ll say who when
I’m marching to the scaffold, my old match
Molly there to watch. And I’ll say,
“Molly, aint’ch...?”

For the Benefit of Mr. Kite

I want to change my feet from white to brown.

I’m an erotic poet, that’s all there is to it!
At ten to six I’ll perform such tricks without a sound.

I’m planning to perform them in the round—
you’ll be sitting there watching me, and there won’t be an exit—
I’ll start by changing my feet from white to brown,

and you’ll be plenty glad you’re sitting down
when you see me stabbed in the senate, leaking blood—
at ten to six I’ll perform such tricks without a sound.

And I’m pretty sure you won’t be dedicating a mound
to me, after I’m hurled off the Tarpeian Rock; it's
so sweet to feel my white feet toasted brown

as I lie on this nice Mediterranean isle I’ve found
to dwell on—where Ovid was exiled—my biscuits
baking into the tricks I’ll perform at ten to six without a sound!

I’ll be the randy Sun King removing my gown.
If you’re not with me in the flesh, you ARE in spirit
when I change my old goat feet from white to brown.
At ten to six I’ll perform such tricks without a sound.

Chant to Patanjali

Hari OM

yogena cittasya padena vacham
malam sarırasya ca vaidyakena
yo’pakarottam pravaram munınam
patanjalim pranjaliranato’smi
abahupurusakaram
sankhacakrasidharinam
sahasrasirasam svetam
pranamami patanjalim
Hari OM

Hari OM
He gave yoga for purity of speech,
medicine for bodily soundness.
May I approach this munificence.
To Patanjali let me bow with folded hands.
Head and hands human
holding conch and disc,
thousand-headed.
I bow to Patanjali.
Hari OM

http://santamonicaiyengaryoga.com/gpage2.html

http://www.unz.org/Pub/Reporter-1953mar17-00036

Rondelet

Pan is no longer here.
How cynical and mean!
Pan is no longer here?
How everlastingly dreary!
What do you mean,
Pan is no longer here?
Pan is everywhere!

After Amazing Grace

                                                                                    long
                                                   lighthouse
                               pier

          lift bridge

Army Corps of Engineers Museum
                                                          Duluth Shipping News

                             funny stone
                             loading structure
                             in the lake

sand
                                                                                      big freight ship
                                                            half a mile out
                                Frederick Barbarossa
          from the Black Sea

                                                                                 region

                   a few bathers
                                                                   

          Last winter
                                                                                                   a bear
                                          found her way down here

OK
                   a pretty long
                                                stairway up

                                                          to Fitgers
                                                on Superior

          St.

God

Every single word’s an ontology

of rhymes—some words have very few.
What’s the ontology of “biology?”

Well, ethnology, cosmology, doxology—
garbology, scatology (oh, pew!).
Every single word’s an anthology

of words within words—morphology,
tautology (to speak what’s true).
So what is the ontology of “biology,”

then?—every word its own mythology,
a regular ontology stew—
typology—

eidolons of cytology, necrology, phrenology.
You can list ‘em till the last shoe
drops, when you’re studyin’ on pedology.

But I think the key to “biology”’s “zoology”—
processional life of ram, kid, and ewe.
Every single word’s a mammalogy—
androgyny?—Well, I’m searching for a Trinity!

Love and Death

Eros owns the key to health.

Science helps only when you’ve started to die.
Death holds the richest wealth.

Love is the switch that turns on kith
and kin—gordian knots to tie.
Eros owns the key to health

and builds a godly commonwealth—
tall ships, towers piercing sky—
but death holds the richest wealth,

as you’ll find when all the bells
toll to announce your time to die,
when you're barely in good enough health

to hear those sledges of the bells,
chiming golden to the sky.
Death holds the richest wealth,

when you depart with perfect stealth—
gone to your hoped-for by-and-by.
Eros owns the key to health.
Death holds the richest wealth.

An Ontology

Hooves, tootsies, dogs?—No.
Cadence, cadency, rhyme, lilt,
measure, music, swing, beat,
pattern, structure, nuance, flow:
that’s the ontology of feet.
Pretty maids all in a row.
Hooves, tootsies, dogs?—No.
Ghungroo in the house God built.