Bucky Badger and Goldy Gopher

Cordovan leather,

dark midnight sun,
candy from China with donkey-flavored gelatin.

What do we want to do
with our last day together?
Fine to watch beloved relatives watching Goldy Gopher

play Bucky Badger.
Pantless Bucky.
Goldy always wears pants

(or does he?). Sitting with my loud nineteen-year-old nephew.
But they don’t sell beer at Badger stadium
(a Wisconsin rule—

part of the reason Bucky doesn’t wear pants.
And Goldy does?). They did throw one kid out
for taunting someone in Bucky’s hood.

Gophers are not made of prunes,
and neither are badgers: they’re both made of pickles—
classic French cornichons.

Cordovan leather,
dark midnight sun,
candy from China with donkey-flavored gelatin.

Goethe on Turkey Day

Dark Thanksgiving Day,

walking in a German cemetery.
More light! I pray.

Looking for a way
though the morass of history,
this dark Thanksgiving Day.

We'll have hell to pay,
we're dead already.—
More light! we pray.

I believe we’ll be OK,
but not because of anything I can see
this dark Thanksgiving Day.

When Goethe was dying, he
requested the curtains be drawn—
More light, he said—

soul shining like a ray
of hopeful sunlight on our grave
this dark Thanksgiving Day.
Light! we pray.

Elegy

Namaste.
I’m done with my Yoga-practice.

Easy for me to say!

My friend Dave

is done with his living-practice.

Pace

vobiscum, said

the priest, as Dave's corpse

was lowered away.

Dave rests with the dead—

What an athlete he was!—

Dave’s learned the hard way

whether there’s golf in heaven,

along with life’s other sweet habits.

Namaste,

Dave, with your Robin Williams face—

done with your person-practice—

In my heart comes your reply:

Namaste.

The Grasshopper and the Cricket

                      from the stove there shrills
            The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever,
            And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
            The grasshopper’s upon some grassy hills. Keats

Should I lie on my soft-swaddled couch

on the north end of the house,

or on my sunny south kitchen bench?

Not some light-denying grouch

in a gray terry cloth bathrobe,

just lying on their soft-swaddled couch.

True, it’s brighter out there, but much

comfier here—I’m cozy as a mouse;

but does the sunny south kitchen bench

beckon anyhow, though it’d take a winch

to lift me from this spot,

swaddled like a baby on my couch.

OK, I’ve got a fresh

perspective now, gazing through the south

window from my sunny kitchen bench.

It’s not quite as cheerful as I expected,

but the sky is blue, and a soft light glows

from a sun that reminds me of my swaddled couch,

as I sit on this hard kitchen-bench.

The Little Red Hen

Pain worse than a week ago,
but this has been one of my best working weeks ever—
digging with my grabin’ hoe.

A lot of time planning my show,
not counting the time endeavoring
to sing through pain a bit less than I’m experiencing now.

The sow got the measles anyhow,
and the thread of her life was severed
in spring when we’re all busy planting with our grabin’ hoe.

I’d say, that’s all there is there ain’t no mo',
but I need to prove I can easily recover
from pain that gets somewhat worse as the days go.

by. I’m getting lots done (though I’m layin' low),
because I can hammer like a woodpecker
and I bake only what I grind myself with my fiddle bow—

just a po’ boy going with the flow.
She died of a fever and no one could save her—
the sow, that is—pain worse than a week ago.
I’m starting to blame my grabin’ hoe.

The Holy Trinity

Christianity is down on the body.
The corporeal is subject to hellfire.

I dig the Trinity.

But God the Father’s a travesty,

thinking He knows better than Nature,

the Son’s mortal body;

so we’d all better shut our potty-

mouths and go about the nurture

of the third member of the Trinity—

the Soul of Jesus crucified and holy.

Am I a lion or a pismire,

with the fatal embarrassment of my body

revealed for all to see?

I’ll respire in the Lord until it's time to expire:

I know I love the number three—

the number of the Marys—

Salome, Magdalen, and the Mother of our

world. Christianity is down on the body.

I dig the Trinity.

Pie Jesu II

Renaissance altarpieces—

how sexy ARE they?
Classical friezes—

hoplites wearing dresses
(to our dismay).
Renaissance altarpieces—

knees dragging the traces—
Jesus, our loving savior.
Classical friezes,

eh? Ok, the head of Medusa—
all those swaying shiksas.
Renaissance altarpieces—

Christ’s feet in the Pieta;
Mother Mary
a beautiful teenager.

Fish decal on my fender,
You don’t say.
Renaissance altarpieces.
Classical friezes.

Explosive Methane Gas

Dwelling on the negative

can provide a pad

for blastoff—

a kind of laxative

for a wad

of waste—a fricative,

but anal not dental,

a fart

aiding blastoff.

Like taking the yard waste

to the composting site in the fall—

you can dwell on the negative

without sinking into it;

it might make you sad

that summer's past, but it'll fuel new leaf:

as when your dentist

says, This won't hurt a bit,

and she’s leaning on the drill,

yelling BLASTOFF!!!

Commitment

You can’t afford to be haphazard.

The best guard against anxiety is preparation.—
Prepare to be dazzled!

If you don’t let yourself get too frazzled,
you can be a knock-out sensation—
if you don’t throw everyone off the scent with your haphazard

garb, wearing your negligee
on stage, as if you were keeping an assignation
with someone who dazzles

you to your deepest core—who fishes on the Grand Canal
while your heart is racing
without hazard-

brakes. You got married in the fall
before your good love entered remission,
blind from the sundazzle.

You tried to catch a lizard
by its not-so-tensile tail—presticoccyxation.
You made a haphazard
stab at seriousness, but now you’re dazzled.

Feline Sound Equipment

It’s dismal outside and there’s a cat on my lap.

I need to figure out what the notch setting is.
It’s still too early for a nap.

Trying not to borrow mayhem or mayhap,
just getting ready for some electric bliss—
it’s dismal outside and there’s a cat on my lap.

There’s another cat by the table lamp.
Both those sweet cats thank me for the fish,
but it’s still too early for a nap.

A cat always makes a good prop
in a photo or a poem—everyone wants to kiss
the kitty, when it’s purring on their lap—

why I need to wind my ditties up
and try to send them through the pa speakers.—
This fiddling makes me want to take a nap

right now, it’s so drony and grindy!
The kitty’s already sleeping, vibrating my chest,
right here in my lap.
Bow a nap!

Tap-Dancing Out of Here

I want to learn to tap-dance properly,

but I don’t know the way
to Galilee.

So are you afraid for me—
afraid I’ll scarcely earn a lay
by lap-dancing gauchely?

What you didn't see
was, I tap-danced myself all the way
to the minor leagues—

the Galilee
Damselfish, to name
the exact team.

You'll know what I mean
when I say bad luck's to blame
for stranding us here in Galilee.

But Jesus had girly feet,
as anyone could see—
they tap-danced on the Sea
of Galilee.

Flood

When my life’s at a rampage—

river hurtling down the chasm—
do I still try to act my age?

How old AM I, anyway—conceived not a few days
ago (mom wondering about the time while dad’s spasm
was at its rampage).

So let me count the ways
I may disobey my catechism
that I learned to recite at an early age,

before I lost my Book of Mary, all whose pages
blew into the lake. So I could never know Christ risen
but had to embark on the rampageous

stream of my own life, take up the gage
(with this ring I thee wed) while love's in season
no matter what ripe or green age

I’ve reached when I sing my joyful rage
to anyone who’ll listen.
When their life’s at a rampage,
who acts their age?

Zen POA / Zen PAUA

Sometimes on our journey,

because we’re afraid our thinking is funny,
we need Zen Power of Attorney.

When we have to pony
up even though our cards are lousy,
when our journey

jolts to a halt in a God-forsaken stretch of Wyoming
and we’re worried about the lonesome roving
wolves, we invoke our Zen Power of Attorney

to constrain the bitter, ravenous ghosts from homing
in on us so close. Disappointing
as it is, we realize our journey

must be postponed a while. We hold a cuttlefish
shell in our hands and think of the family
of life—our Attorney

appointed before life’s Odyssey
began, and now we’re free
to resume our journey—
celestial body glowing abalone.

Zen poān

For every action there’s a reaction,

and, for a living organism, every moment is a crisis
of eating or being eaten.

So is there some way to slow down
time, sit still, and try to absorb things by osmosis?
For every action there’s a reaction,

sure, so you must always know the faction
you’re fighting with. Lao Tzu’s advice is:
you can eat what you like eating,

but you’ll never get any traction
if you go wading wearing water shoes.
For every action there’s a reaction—

a splash—of some kind,
but feet made of water can’t kick.
Do you think you can escape by being eaten?

OK, chop wood, carry water.
Try to seep into the interstices
between the reactions and the actions.
Eating’s just a mode of being eaten.

With Hey, Ho, the Wind and the Rain

          Goethe hated musical settings of his lyrics,
          and Mary Oliver refused permission to my friend Sherry.

I don’t want my singing to distract from my song,
but go ahead and add your voice if your intent
‘s to love that well which thou must leave ere long.

Do we know if Shakespeare could play along
with his own voice on the lute?
Did he fear that his singing might distract from his song?

Shakespeare never wanted to be the Dong
with the Luminous Nose, and now in death he’s quiet.
He loved that well that he'd to leave ere long.

What was right and what was wrong
for Shakespeare? Even if it was wrong, he tried it
if he was sure it wouldn’t distract from his song:

When that I was and a little tag-along
boy—so shy, it wasn’t funny, 
I loved that well I had to leave ere long.

Now I have my hanky-pack slung
over my shoulder, and I’m hopping a ride
on the train going west (as the song
says), loving my wife and friends, whom I must leave ere long.

What Gets Across the Footlights

The poems read this evening
are probably more gettable in the book.

But the writers themselves are fetching.

Did I get a sense of hearing

a given fuck

read aloud? Or rather, did the poems this evening

only make me feel I was leaving

the feast unfed—getting in my truck

and absconding—(maybe with that fetching

trans writer)—not optimistic about squeezing

blood from a turnip, much less

from the poems read this evening?

But they just need a little leavening:

these printed St.-Paul-Almanac

poems will prove to be plenty fetching

when the writers themselves as normal kvetching

people fetch us, with their verve and pluck—

the poems just a pretext

for such earnest fetching.

Last Defrag Operation

Scanning and repairing Drive C:—

when all those electrons are scattered into space,
that’ll be the end of me.

You know I always say that I agree
when you assure me that I’ll see God’s face
when my computer is done scanning and repairing Drive C:

But I can count to way past 3
while I’m sitting here on my dead ass,
wondering if the end of me

has come so quickly, like a thief
in the night—departing in no haste
because it has to finish scanning and repairing Drive C:

And the question is, can it ever succeed,
now that I’ve disappeared without a trace:
the virtual end of me

has come, to what purpose I can’t see,
because I don’t know God’s bit address,
or if They're the one scanning and repairing Drive C:—
what may remain of me. . .

A Snoot for the Fiddler

I pray this glamour never lifts

or fades—that’s an unrealistic wish,
but glamour is my grift.

I know the junko men, always got the best
of them—with their tricky grammar, passing me the fifth—
I pray this glamour never lifts.

Because petty is as petty does—I sniffed
the spirit-y scent of gold in the panning dish—
my foolishness the gift

that gives forever—spendthrift
wit that puts a toothless
grin on everything—hilarity that ever lifts.

So when you’re sad, and you feel you’re being stiffed
by life, and nigh to sleeping with the fish,
take up glamour as your grift—

you won’t regret you did,
as you listen to the fizzy yeasts bubbling in the mash.
I pray their proof will lift
my bowed-out glamour-riffs!

Padmasana Lotus

Who says God is dead?

The ineffable can never vanish.

That’s why I need to tie up all the threads,

make wax impressions of all the heads-

of-Caesars on polished

or tarnished coins, bald-eyed like the dead—

God, only a blur except when blood is shed—

as when the Philistines were vanquishéd:

our God killed their God,

the fish-God Dagon—Jonah’s

whale, or the dolphin who rescued Dionysus—

Orpheus, torn

to shreds—flesh become Word

of the blind, bread of the famishéd.

Who says God is dead?—

One particular unresolved feud

gives me lots of daily anguish.

I won’t say God is dead

while there’s still one hanging thread.

You Can't Kill God

Who says God is dead?

The ineffable can never vanish.
That’s why I need to tie up all the threads,

make wax impressions of all the heads-
of-Caesars on polished
or tarnished coins, bald-eyed like the dead—

God, only a blur except when blood is shed—
as when the Philistines were vanquishéd:
our God killed their God,

the fish-God Dagon—Jonah’s
whale, or the dolphin who rescued Dionysus—
Orpheus, torn

to shreds—flesh become Word
of the blind, bread of the famishéd.
Who says God is dead?—

One particular unresolved feud
gives me lots of daily anguish.
I won’t say God is dead
while there’s still one hanging thread.

Not to Mention the Check Engine Light

On hold with Cretin Amoco,

standing on the cold cold floor.
Thanks for giving us this opportunity to serve you!

There’s some kind of zydeco

muzak in my ear—
on hold with Cretin Amoco.

How often does my life slow
down to a crawl like this, so that the call of desire
is drowned in another’s opportunity to serve you?—

like standing bleeding from a hard blow
to the face, no clue what kind of insurance is required,
or where in the world I’ll be able to go

from here. No one cares that I’m a sensitive soul,
and I’m grieving, and my heart is sore.
They only want to seize this opportunity to serve you—

leastways by looking at my old
Subaru, with it’s trunk door
rusted shut and all—on hold with Cretin Amoco.
Thanks for giving us this opportunity to serve you!

Don't Watch TV!

Why waste my morning joy on political talk?

Although I didn’t sleep well, I slept fine.
Just took the compost out, 30⁰, in my flip-flops,

and the cat just tried to get into my backpack
(I’ve got my gym shorts and socks in there).
Why waste my morning joy on political talk,

when, like most affluent folks, I've relied on stock
prices to keep me free from care.
I can take the compost out in my flip-flops,

because I can afford to keep the boiler stoked
so I can lie around all morning in here
and refuse to listen to political talk—

especially on TV. But so astounded by my luck!
I’ve done nothing special to deserve
my fortune, but I’ll put on my flip-flops,

open my back door, and walk
out into the storm
of newsy electrons bearing the political talk
light-miles away—as I kick off my flip-flops.

Watching the Regard

The regard of others—
that’s the superego, right?
But who bothers

to watch me?—If they had their druthers,
they'd watch dogs fight
for the regard of all the other

dogs—regard growing colder
by the minute, likely, keeping us awake at night.
Always a wretched bother:

to emit and to mention an odor
equally impolite;
yet the regard of others

is so important to me that I put on face powder
and fake a slight
limp.—What a bother!

I have to try to fool my own mother
by pretending to be someone that I ain’t.
Regard of others
worth no bother.

Devil in My Britches

What would be the symbol

for the God I worship?
Maybe a timbrel?—

surely not a thimble,
but it will need stitches.
What would be the symbol

for a desecrated temple?
Worn-out lips?
A ringing bell

summoning to the roll-call?
My britches
the right symbol

because of their rambling
ways, walking through hell-
fire; carrying

certain simples—
marigold, mountain-bluebell—
to brew a potion
to deploy the devil.

Blessed Titillation

Freud talks about libido cathexis

in his theory of the drives—
investment of love into objects.

Sure, I want a Lexus,
but I lack the gravy
 to gratify that wish—where anticathexis

comes in (to completely perplex us).
But I'm done working nine-to-five,
because I've achieved the object

of my dreams—an autoconnexus,
making me feel so glad to be alive
that I achieve cathexis

by virtually switching sexes—
what I'm in love with is my own hide—
I'm the object

of my own sincere regard
and affection. And who’d deprive
me of this sweet wellness—
myself my own love object?

Left-Handed

Gotta fix the dang bannister,

because the screws are sliding out of the wall.
(Been reading Bend Sinister

by Vladimir
Nabokov, his second novel
in English.) How can I fix the dang bannister

and remain a
sane person, is all I care
about. But a sort of bend sinister

has grabbed hold and made randomness the master,
and now we’re all waiting for the trolls
to arrive, tear the bannister

out of the plaster,
and flail
us all to death with the sinister

thing (stupid banister). Or we swim our way
through suburban backyards to refuse the hell
we’ve made of things. Never fixing the dang bannister.
Can’t fix a bend sinister.

The Land of Online

A crowd of beseechings

howling like the plebes
in the James Mason Julius Caesar.

I’m tired of their bitchings;
I’ll attend to the grebes,
whose chirruped beseechings

won’t suck the money
out of my purse by their wheedling,
like the conspirators in the James Mason Julius Caesar—

that lean and hungry
Cassius, for one, voice a cracked needle
drilling at Brutus’s ear with his beseechings.

Roland Barthes remarked that every
character in the James Mason Julius Caesar
is constantly sweating

from their deep and weighty
moral dilemmas—Cicero himself vaseline-smeared.
But no matter how decisive the beseechings,
that et tu, Brute murder accomplished nothing.

Death on the Rubber

A gravestone can look a lot like a pitching rubber

(only, the roses might impede the stride),
especially when the hole’s just covered over.

Dying’s like going to sea as a landlubber
(on a ship at sea you have no place to hide),
but a gravestone can look a lot like a portal cover

through which Death bounces you like the Son of Flubber,
and where you lie is not where you abide,
even when the hole’s just covered over.

Yes, you’ll crawl in and join your lost true lover,
the one to whom you gave your youthful pride;
but your gravestone feels so much like a pitching rubber

that you find you quite well remember
the fundamentals of keeping it wide or just off the inside
corner (motion well covered).

But I want to see if Death can get it over
the plate from there (I’ll give it a deep ride),
dealing from that marble rubber.
Show me your knock-over!