Villanelle to Prove I'm a Madman

To be writing all of these villanelles, I must be a madman.
Why do you imagine golden birds,
O thin men of Haddam?

Is being a poet like being a madam?
Well, the madam's the boss and her words
stick like a knife. To write all of these villanelles, I must be a madam.

Who’ll know me from Adam?
It’ll seem totally absurd,
O thin men of Haddam,

when I turn up with Aladdin’s
magic lamp, to get me further towards
my goal of being a madman.

Then it’s satin
sheets for me—the rose and the thorn.
O thin men of Haddam,

you know the Latin
for every word
that I might put in a villanelle to prove I’m a madman,
O thin men of Haddam.

Can't Take It Anymore!

Let’s face it, we’re lame,
my contemporary peers!
Why still play this game?

Knowing it all pays the same,
I got paid the same for years and years.
Let’s face it, we’re lame—

failing to achieve fame,
but singing through our tears.
Why still play this game?

I wish there was a dame
to blame, but I don’t think there is—
we’re just plain lame.

Chosen as the ones who came
and drank the most beer,
we try to play the game,

hoping for residual glam
from trying to herd reindeer.
The reindeer are all lame.
Why still play this game?

Gaining Serenity in Spite of the Pricks

I worry continually about
our dire political situation.
I wring my hands and vituperate.
But by my obsessing do I keep bad
things from happening?—like if I don’t stop
gazing at the coiled rattlesnake it won’t
strike? Mostly I think I just drive my friends
crazy, with my Facebook posts and all. So,

I’ve decided to meditate and do
yoga. Drawing my world close around me,
I feel invulnerable but cut off—
gratified that my feet don’t slide on the
carpeted stairs when I walk down them, but
fearing I’m way remiss in my duty—

unhappy because
Savasana ’s become a
stretching exercise...

Why I Don't Like Reading My Poems in Open Mics

My poems are meant for someone else to sing.

You’ll have to sing ‘em for yourself if you wanna
hear my banjo ring.

Too much of a (good?) thing?
I’m sure’s hell not going to sing ‘em for you.
My poems are meant for someone else to sing.

Messages of joy we mutually bring—
you roll in the snow, I lie in the sauna,
until the timer rings.

Not aching to know who’ll be the king,
but it sure’s hell won’t be me—I hate the drama.
My poems are meant for someone else to sing.

But a poem sure can shoot a nasty sting,
like the posterior of a bumble-hummer,
to make your mugged nerves ring.—

Next thing you know, you’re all red and swollen,
skin too sensitive to wear pajamas.
My poems are meant for the birds and bees to sing,
plus Cupid’s thumbed drone string.

Satyr Song

Easy to feel when we’re romping in the pasture,
in love with each other, in love with ourselves.—
No greater blessing than to be a living creature.

We’re preaching like the Gospel scripture
(baa-ing like a trip of goats—
natural when you’re romping in the pasture).

But we’re composted of goat-mictur-
ition, so we’re dying by dribs and droves,
still bleating the joy of being a living creature.

Don’t we love to feel the cakey mixture
wetting and shitty-ing our heels and toes
when we’re at rest from our romping in the pasture!—

jonesing that brews for us the true elixir
of the marriage of sight, hearing, touch, and smell—
tasted in the blessing of being a living creature.

Truly, the earth is our only teacher,
with its sexy, never-ending show-and-tell,
felt in our hoof-soles when we’re romping in the pasture.—
No greater blessing than to be a living creature.

What I Need After an Hour of Facebook

A talking-license?
Not!
A badge of silence.

Another beckoning
opportunity to rant
(some licentious

libel on the internet)?
Not! A hot
date with silence,

more like.
License
to be a free-booting

smart-ass?
Not!
Wads of silence

in my throbbing
brain pot.
License

to take aim
and be quiet. Post-
blocking license.
Mouse-clicks of silence.

Dancing My Blue Head Off

I’ll go ahead and write anyway,
even though I find it hard to write.
Be that as it may.

Sometimes I go through a whole day
without picking up my orange note-
book, but today

I’m going to go ahead and write, and pray
something OK comes of it.
Be that as it may.

Thinking about what I did yesterday—
clogged in Studio A to the tune, “Lost Child.”
Had no idea how, but I danced anyway.

That’s how I rocked my blues away.
My body was tired and I slept through the night.
Be that as it may.

Hastening in the Good Old Way,
wrapping whatever it is up tight,
I’ll go ahead and write today,
come what may.

The Glacier Knocks

Are you drinking?
If you ARE drinking, I don’t blame you.
Do I hear ice clinking?

You call me
at night and tell me how you’re doing.
You aren’t drinking,

you insist, though I’m not asking.
What will become of you,
I wonder, hearing ice clinking

in your talk—fateful linking
of causes in a frozen
chain, so if you ARE drinking

I’m not surprised. And I’m raking
sand over the coals of my regretting,
love, listening to the ice clinking

in the deepest springs of my thinking,
that nothing can ever save us
from our drinking.
That’s my own ice clinking.

Shin Guard

Scary time in a bar—

“Is your boyfriend going to get his gun and shoot us?”
“No, I’ve got the keys to the car.”

I was playing my guitar,

its tawny bowl my only clothing—I’m a nudist—
but it got scary in the bar

when your boyfriend started ranting like The Superstar
Billy Graham himself—he’s the rudest
dude ever—but we’ll be OK because you locked his gun in the car.

Please say we won’t let him mar
our sweet love, baby—shoeless without lewdness.
Until he makes it scary in the bar

again, let’s share a mallomar—
marshy mallow melting in the chocolate,
and then let’s get that gun out of the car—

your crazy boyfriend far
far away—one of us the turbanned flutist, the other the cutest
little snake, love—sidewinder in a jar,
with fangs, the (right-grooved) keys to the car.

Insipid Shibboleth

Panhandler by the overpass.

I handed him a bill.
“God bless,”

he said, and I shouted, “God bless,”
back as I wheeled
onto the overpass.

So which of us was
more hypocritical?
What did saying “God bless”

gain us? Mostly,
it just salved
an awkwardness, helped us evade

one another’s face,
while we invoked the will
of God to bless

our wide hand clasp,
reward our null
regard for one another with a border pass:
“God bless!”

Levinas Levity

Seeing myself in the face of the other—
never unappreciated—
me, my brother’s keeper?

Determined not to usurp and smother
you with love—still, here’s looking at you, kid!—
seeing myself in YOUR face, baby;

and you know I don’t want to be a bother,
and I don’t want you to feel obligated
to be my sister or my brother;

and I sure don’t want to see you suffer,
because in your eyes I read “Don’t kill me!”—
seeing myself in your

face, love, and trying to think of whom I’d rather
be: because you’re the cat’s pajamas,
honey, and, though I love myself, I love you better.

We’ve both managed to travel further
down love’s road since someone told us we were naked—
seeing us in our own faces, sister!
Can we be one another’s mother?

Paradox Moxie

We may yet receive grace.
Nietzsche said that effects precede their cause,
because they’re what made us go looking for a cause in the first place.

Well, we can practice that about-face
and say that gravity antecedes a fall
and we received grace

as Newton’s apple’s consequence,
when, drawing short straws,
we went looking for the breath of grace in a hot place.

OK, let's bow
and submit to God, Who grasps us in His paws
and mercifully administers the coup de grậce—

four fangs in the jugular for the salty taste
of our blood on His tongue—God’s claws
the Cause, we’ll say, that we went looking for in the first place.

We’ll need to keep the trace—
the wound—fresh in the memory of J'accuse:
that, time out of mind, we received grace.
We were all already here before God made us.

Why I Hate Poetry

You force me to say if I accept your dare.
I mumble something in my beard.
Is it fair

of you to set snares
for my feelings like this? Sure, I’m weird,
but does that entitle you to dare

me to share
my soul with you?—as I’ve always feared
closeness. It isn’t fair

to lay wait for me in the thoroughfare
and make me encounter you in the nude—
my own normal state of attire, I dare

say. I don’t care
who’s in the wrong who's in the clear,
but it doesn’t feel fair

to be reduced to prayer
by your imperative life circumstances so dire.
So, mostly, I refuse the dare.
It isn’t fair.

Resistance

If I bought a tin of impeachmints,
with Trump’s face on it, would it make me feel better?
(Not sure if they also had resistmints.)

I could print RESISTANCE,
with Trump’s face on it, on a sweater
that I could wear while I suck my impeachmints.

But I worry that someone might resent
my saddening them with my blue distemper—
my attempts at resistance

misfiring badly because addressed to the wrong folks.
Only my friends get in a nauseated lather
day after day about the need for impeachment,

until finally we just make each other sick
and fearful, looking for some way to feel safer,
mistaking—fatally—ridicule for resistance.

Scoffing and wringing our hands, we do his bidding.
We pretend we’re fighting, but we’re eating the wafer.
Our breaths will stink to high heaven, no matter how many mints
we suck down, until we bleed resistance.

White Horse, Rainer Maria Von Rilke

But what shall I dedicate to you, Lord, say it,

who taught the creatures their ear? –

My memory of one spring day, its
evening, in Russia –, a horse …

Across from the village a white horse came,

a rope tied to one fore-hoof, 

to be alone in the meadows for the night.

How it shook the locks of its mane

in time with its high spirits! –

with that rough, hobbled gallop.

How the springs of its noble blood leapt!

that felt the distances, and on,

that sang and heard –, your epic song

was sealed in it.

                                    That image: I dedicate it.

Silly Rabbit-Cat

When you’re a black cat in the grass,

big furry body humped to the sky,
licking your white paws,

you won't be able to evade the laws
of physics—especially gravity—
heavy cat in the grass,

bound in a stiff harness
and leashed by a rope to a tree.
You’re chewing your own paws

because you can’t leap as you please
to where the birds fly.
Poor cat in the grass,

growling plaintively when a blue jay
dive-bombs you, where you lie
biting nothing but your paws.

For this performance, my applause,
Oh, my darling puddy-pie!—
black cat in the grass,
licking your white paws.

Thought of a Cat in the Grass

What a twittery world

Atalanta and the Calydon Boar

               When such as I cast out remorse,
               We must dance and we must sing,
               We are blessed by everything.
               Everything we look upon is blessed. Yeats

Remove all sources of stress from your life!
You don’t need this terrible shit!
Get a divorce from your struggle and strife!

Your resolution'll cut like a surgical knife,
so excising your worries won’t hurt a bit—
Remove all sources of stress from your life!

. . .

But I love my worries like a wife.
Too late to run. The hell with it!
I’d get a divorce from my struggle and strife

if I thought it would bring the least relief,
but it really just brings on harder fits—
can’t remove the sources of stress from my life,

‘cause I won’t give up the heady grief
I suck down daily like spirit grits,
tasting and savoring my struggle and strife.

What I mostly need is more sleep,
but I’ll sail through the rest of my life all right—
friends with all sources of stress in my life—
on my magic carpet of struggle and strife!

Zombie Love

You’re on the hot seat.

For your next hot date you just can’t wait,

when you love a zombie.

He’ll use deceit.

His kind regard is sucker bait.

You’re on the hot seat

whether you know it or not. You meet.

You gossip about your friends. It’s always his treat

when you love a zombie.

The zombie is so sweet!

His teeth twinkle and his throat gapes.

Your hot seat

grows hotter, hotter, hotter by the minute,

and you know you’ll never make a break

when you love a zombie.

Zombie philosophy:

if it’s a hole, shove something in it—

so you’re REALLY on the hot seat

when you love a zombie.