Sailing With Ulysses, or The Cat in the Hat Comes Back

What’s wrong with working on my own little mud-pie?
(Well, it must be wrong somehow or I wouldn’t ask.)
My mud-pie’s not meant for anybody's eyes.

And it takes too long for the mud to dry—
working in mud is terribly tedious:
I’m trying to sculpt a little pie,

and I just keep looking off to the side,
seldom taking the risk
of looking into another’s eyes.

Of course, when you’ve baked a pie, you want someone to try
it, but people seldom jump at the chance
to taste and enjoy a small mud pie.

If I work on it long enough, though, it’ll grow into a giant—
none other than the one at the end of Jack’s
beanstalk. The sun hurts my eyes,

but I’m higher than a kite can fly.
And I can put the giant’s eye out with a red-hot poker.
There’s nothing wrong with working on your own little mud pie.
Don’t fear the eye!

Making Kombucha

My story and I’m sticking to it—
gonna make some swell kombucha—
Mama scoby gonna brew it.

First, the scoby sucks up the sugar.
A scoby is a round white mushroom-thing in a 
jar of sweetened tea—my story, I’m sticking to it.

The culture of a scoby's symbiotic,
though trying to visualize might make you puke.
Mama scoby gonna brew it.

Truth is, there’s not a thing more to it—
living mash of bacteria and yeast
telling a loving story to ya

about just how sour you can stand it
when you hark back to the good old days.
Mama scoby gonna brew it

and cast off dark brown baby scobies.
Time to put Mama in the compost.
My story and I’m sticking to it—
Mama scoby gonna brew it.

Stars to Divine My Past

I’m losing track of chronology.
When did important events happen in my life?
I don’t believe in astrology

but tend to hold whatever view of history
helps me combat my stress and strife.
It’s hard to keep track of chronology

without a calendar to see me by
(it's almost as if I actually did believe
in Tarot or astrology),

but perhaps I owe no one an apology
if I freely choose to forget my grief
by losing all track of chronology,

precise memory a casualty of my 
anamnestic drywall knife—letting me live my life
bassackwardly by ladies' fancy.

Did something crucial happen in 2017?
Whatever it was, it’s buried too deep
now to ferret it out.
Chance knows no chronology. 

Remembering the Dhamma

I dreamed that my home was occupied by poetry-event planners.
They were camped out in a garage-like room with a cement floor.
I tried to use good manners

in dealing with the mob, helping them schedule jammers
for times that were convenient for them, before
the next cohort of poetry-event planners

arrived. I felt like some weird old stoner,
and I kept going in and out through the stage door,
always aware of using my best stage manners.

Well, sir, the room was crawling with railers and ranters,
trying to create a big uproar
with the threat of anyone’s home being occupied by poetry-event planners;

but my lamented old friend Dave once told me not to get up on ladders,
to be sure to remember what my two feet are for,
and to be discreet and always use such manners

as would have been recommended by Dear Abby or Anne Landers;
so I was gone, gone, solid gone, gone to the other shore.
My home was occupied by poetry-event planners,
but they were no match for my impeccable manners.

Is There a Solution to This Problem?

Am I posting less
because my laptop keypad doesn’t work?
I must confess,

my USB mouse
and keyboard are a pain to work
with. I guess I’m posting less

because I have to go where the computer is
(which is up in the attic)
to do it. OK, I love to express

my soul’s excess
every morning after I wake
up. (I do it on my back porch

in longhand in my orange note-
book.) But what
I must confess

is how dang hard it is to get myself
to walk upstairs and type the damn stuff up.
So I’m posting less.
(Are we the more blessed?)

If I Had My Way I Would Tear This Building Down

All the things we have to worry about!
Hard not to worry continually.
I have to give a special worry-shout

for my resting heart rate—
up to 61 on my Fitbit LED
this morning—just one more thing to worry about.

And I wish I knew the approximate amount
of direct repeat we can expect from history.
I'm supposed to give a mighty shout

(plus a devastating tootle on my nose-flute)
against this sinful town, but I’ve been turned to salt
because I’m worried about

the lost thousands who don’t matter to God—while Lot
takes his righteous ass out of city.
Why was God so worried about

Lot, of all people, while He let all those Sodomites
burn? In later days, Lot’s drunken body
was no pretty sight, but his line continued.
Let's all give a fuck-the-patriarchy shout!

The Great Speckled Bird

“Beautiful” is such a beautiful word—
a transcendence, when you say it!
The Great Speckled Bird

is a beautiful, beautiful thought.
Remember, her name is recorded
in the pages of God’s Holy Word—

Word that spreads a rainbow chord.
I think I first heard my mother speak it—
a particular bird

was flying low over the Arkansas
river in Pueblo, Colorado, one day, and
“beautiful” was the word

my mother used to describe it.
Beatitude for sure. Beyond this world,
yet of it. An ordinary bird.

A little speckled and homely, even.
Her beauty is in any voice
that sings that Grand Ole Opry song
concerning the Great Speckled Bird.

The World Is Our Nursery

Big babies in love with themselves
and expecting others to love them—
how reasonable is that?

Maybe, baby, we’ll have ourselves,
just like Romeo and Juliet,
two cute babies in love with themselves—

all our loving turned to elves,
as we fatten
on our baby fat.

It doesn’t get any funner than that—
we get to sing, “I am an antiChrist,”
for our biggest fan, Jesus Himself.

Plato said we’re each only half
of a complete erotic circle—
why we yearn so hard for others.

We’re big babies whom the world loves
for reasons we can’t fathom.
We’re helpless, but others might love us—
how charming is that?

Inspiriting the Wafer

Do I call myself out with a sarcastic voice?
I give myself quite the roast.
But voice is a literary device.

Who’s talking is the hearer's choice.
Am I the one tying my horse to a post
and addressing the beast with a sarcastic voice?

Then, also, who’s being addressed?
Who needs to hear it most?
But voice is a literary device—

a bunch of resentments that got repressed
and then, when I looked away, became a ghost
that started berating me with a sarcastic voice—

I saying not a word in my own defense.
Whom can you trust
when you employ a literary device?

I do it mainly to clean the mice
out of the laundry room, but now I’ve burned the toast,
so I call myself out with a sarcastic voice.
Dumb-ass ventriloquist!

Love Unstayed

Poetry is about sexual desire—
why it’s so messy.
Always trying to light the fire.

Something lovely to admire—
but please, not too confess-y!
Poetry is about sexual desire,

you bet your bootsies—whatever may transpire
on your back porch—you’d be remiss if
you ever stopped trying to light the fire.

I tried to travel o’er
the Rocky Mountains but my tires were leaky.
My sexual desire

never stopped treading the miry
road, at least, but the question’s tricky
whether I ever found a match to light the fire.

But if I say I’m not excited, call me a liar!
my resting BPM is up and I spew freaky
phantasmagoria all over the place, always feeding the fire
of unashamed desire.

I'm Wearing My Mask

I feel fat.
I looked at myself in a store window yesterday.
I had my mask

on, for the matter of that,
thinking on how much hell we’ll have to pay.
I looked fat;

my midriff bulged over my belt.
Other than that, I looked sexy
enough. I had my mask

on, and I was wearing my blue Bluff Country
shirt—doing my best to look away
from my big fat

Samsung phone, with the orange clown face
and all the other funny and/or scary
images, which are but a mimed masque

of the nightmare we’ve tasked
ourselves with witnessing
in our fat

opulence, as the financial markets
feed the white dream from day to day.
I feel fat,
but I’m wearing my mask.

A Grad-School Memory

Looking into the cauldron of the morning.
What will come forth?
Should I heed the rip-tide warning?

I’m not sure, but I think I see an arm.
Hey, that’s my mouth!
reflected in the cauldron of the morning.

As usual, I’m feeling lucky.
What’s it worth
to me? I’ll forget the rip-tide warning

and remember my colleague Mary Ellen,
whose boyfriend helped her hold up stores.
(James Joyce and Chester A. Anderson this morning.)

Mary Ellen’s grad school career died aborning.
Ice is breaking to the north.
If a cauldron were an ocean, would I heed the warning?

The cauldron always throws up something
while I try to stay in control of my own gorge,
looking into the cauldron of the morning,
ignoring the rip-tide warning.

After the Storm (My Erogenous Backyard)

Mirror-water on the cedar porch-step,
crow’s rusty caw—
my whole erogenous backyard.

Not remembering how I slept
through the thunderous storm.
Mirror-water on the cedar porch-step.

Yesterday the big black cat
caught and killed a gray vole
in my erogenous backyard.

I buried the vole in a flower bed
(under God’s paw)—
sky reflected in the cedar porch-step.

I’ll need to take a nap
this afternoon, but what’s the harm
in that? My erogenous backyard

lures my feet to get
down and step low,
break the mirror on the cedar porch-step,
walk into the yard.

Perfect Informational Self-Sufficiency

Are these good times or bad times for those who are paid to talk?
Is there any point in awarding Emmys and Pulitzer prizes?
I drive my own news truck.

I’ve got a story about a gorilla with buck
teeth riding the roller coaster at Denver's Elitch
Gardens Park. You can listen to me talk

about the effectiveness of the hydroxychloroquine drug—
there’s a new opinion piece in Newsweek Online.
I’d say these are the best times ever for those who are paid to talk,

except that they have to compete with yokels
like me, who can keep rebroadcasting Jim Jones’s
utterances through the speakers on the roof of their news trucks.

You may think we’re in dutch, you may think we’re in luck,
but you listen to me rant while fact sleeps with the fishes.
And it’s not even that I get paid to talk;

I do it out of pure altruistic
generosity, just adding my voice to the chorus.
Nobody listens to anybody talk,
anyhow, but we’ve all got our own news trucks.

Separation

Beyond our fence of wood,
an orange dog hurls itself
from the back porch into the yard.

In these hard
covid times, the breath of life thickens
beyond our wooden

deck chair. What’s the good
of fences? I ask, walking across
the back porch, one foot into the yard.

Only a matter of minutes until I start
playing my mandolin again
(ribs of maple wood).

Kind of a fixture in my neighborhood,
traipsing the sidewalks—geriatric elf—
past thousands of planted yards;

expecting a vicious year ahead,
waiting to find out what will be taken
from those outside our fence of wood,
with their own back yards and fences.

Feeding the Darkness-Bulldog

Darkness loves to be hated
(why are we surprised by this?),
because, when we hate it, we can’t stop watching it.

(Some of us need to shun the light
of whom we did or didn’t vote for in '16.)
Darkness loves to be hated—

its face is terrifying and its tweets are outrageous.
“How much we hate you, Darkness!” we scream,
as if we’re afraid that if we stopped watching you,

you’d say something even more hateful and we’d miss it,
because we were lying down on our civic duty
to give Darkness what it loves—namely, hatred.

It seems somehow that we are fated
to squeeze our eyes wide shut and kiss
a poisonous toad a million times by never ceasing to watch it.

Darkness receives our hatred
with the threatened promise to be with us always.
Darkness loves to be hated,
because, when we hate it, we can’t stop feeding it.

Searching Pintarest

Erotic Hindu icons.
You can meditate before a lovely image.
Google it if you wanna.

The Hindu god of love is Kāma,
firstborn of the primal chaos.
There are Hindu icons

of Kāmadeva riding their parrot Vahana,
with bow and arrows like Cupid.
Google it if you wanna.

Whatever prompt you want to write on,
barefoot poet striking all your matches
(there’s an erotic image

for you). But your lost true lover
returns to you in that momentary flash.
Google Lucius Apuleius if you wanna

read the story, which must repeat as karma—
lime and salt in the erotic shaker—
your own board your best erotic icon
as you surf the Google-Dharma.

Still Point of the Turning World

Putting the fire in the fat—
all my plans and worries;
but what is today without all that?

“God is just one of my little rats
that I have to chase after and put in their cages
when I’m putting the fire in the fat.”

Crazy Margaret said that
one day when I was trying
to drive her home: how could she manage all that?!

Though I’ve heard God is a pretty cool cat.
He created the world in six stages,
last putting the fire in the fat

of Adam’s rib, at which point
He got real nervous!
What would today be without all that?

I’ll just sit here and watch the birds
in this tiny gap between two ages.
Go, you chicken fat!
Today’s just another tale of that.

Jury Service in Covid Time

“What will be the topic for my yokel-soliloquy?”
I ask, as I feel my way into the day.
My back hurts and my coffee tastes funny.

Well, I’ve been summoned for jury duty—
not sure what there is to say
about that for my yokel-soliloquy.

Is it a good enough excuse that I’m on covid quarantine?
I suppose I’d need a signed excuse from the DA.
But my back hurts and my coffee tastes funny.

Waiting for days in a stuffy room
while they figure out which jury
to put me on? Heavy price for a yokel-soliloquy,

though I guess I have to do my civic duty.
So sad that it all has to end this way,
with my back hurting and my coffee tasting funny:

“Shut up and hand over the money,”
they’ll say as they explain the fine I’ll have to pay—
jail time to boot—for refusing today's topic for my yokel-soliloquy.
“It’s gonna be cash on the barrelhead, honey!”

Jabber-Walk Algebra

What’s the best smarmy-snarky
portmanteau word?
Could be sparky,

but there’s no seal emoji—
just one for a sea otter.
Or, the best smarmy-snarky

portmanteau word could be smarty,
favored of the daughter
of Zeus and Circe.

It’s not malarkey,
even though it’s totally absurd:
it’s sparky

and smarty in one—no blarney.
Each day I walk around
and sing skilanky songs that put the sharky

Cerberus doggy
to peaceful slumber.
The best smarmy-snarky
portmanteau word is smurple-dhaze.

Thank You, Mr. Railroad Man

What’s worse, being smarmy
(like a smelly blanket),
or snarky

(like the miserly
dude who wants to rake the
big gold smarmy

moon out of Lake Eerie).
I’m tired of having to fake it—
all the slick jokes give me a snarky

take on love’s grand symphony—
waiting for the bluebird
(the smarmiest

of all birds) to whistle me safe from toxic            
blue-green-algae blooms
(it gets plenty stinky,

I'll say!)—I’ll put on my rinky
and ride blind to another junket—
all my snark gone cheesy 
and all my smarm skunky.