2018
Villanelle: The Vantage Point
Sitting in my limestone lookout place,
feet in the open char-pit hole again.
Too cold today, but I’ll do it one of these days.
I don’t know. A furious mallard race
down in the water. Queer sandaled man
sitting in their limestone lookout place.
OK, so what can you find to praise
in the life of this queer man, lived all
cross-grain?
Too cold today, but I’ll do it one of these days.
One thing this old queer likes to do is gaze
far down streets of sorrow, streets of pain
from the vantage of their limestone l
ookout place.
And what do they see there but their own
sad face?—
face of one whose life was lived in vain?
Too cold today, but I’ll do it one of these days.
And let’s suppose that they discover grace
tasting the bitter savor that remains,
surveying from their limestone lookout place.
Too cold today, but I’ll do it one of these days.
Villanelle: How Does It Feel?
I make movies and star in them myself,
then sit and watch my ratings fall.
How does it feel to be a fairy elf?
I’m the boy who didn’t recognize themself
when they asked themselves for a date to
the witch’s ball.
I make movies and star in them myself,
taking the part of the abused waif
who grew up to be Ferdinand the Bull—
how it feels to be a fairy elf.
Remembering when I was cast adrift
in a boat with a curly dark-haired gal
in a movie starring (whom else?) myself.
The attraction was as heart-felt
as our plans were unrealistic. I played the fool.
Harder than I expected to be a fairy elf!
If you throw water on a witch, you’ll melt!
When your horse dies, you’ll have to get off
and push!
I make movies and star in them myself
about the dodgy life of a wannabe fairy elf.
Villanelle: Anxiety Furniture
Grazie, Theodore Roethke.
You attach yourself to things like a cocklebur.
How can you lift what has no weight?
You learn by moving anxiety furniture.
Worries have no weight—pure air,
no more bonded to the ice than a skate.
But you attach yourself to things like
a cocklebur.
Cockleburs are light and without ligature.
They breed by sticking like the knife of fate,
so there’s always quite a lot of anxiety furniture
to move around. That’s what your little spiky
tines are for—
to help you land a berth, a job, a mate,
just by attaching to something like a cocklebur.
And this fine union, can it long endure?
Cocklebur on pant leg, or on china plate?
Sure, you have to push a ton of
anxiety furniture
around, but what good is it? How could you
hate it more?
No help in your quest for a serener state!
You attach yourself to things like a cocklebur.
You learn by moving anxiety furniture.
Wandering Sheep
Standing on the threshold
with your pencil in your hand,
trying to get a toehold.
You brought your full boatload
of crap from lands not mapped in Rand-
McNally. A mountain on the threshold!
These pastures are patrolled
by hireling trolls who want to grab command
of your big toe so it can’t take hold.
But might you be so bold
as to scuff your toe on your own pineal gland,
the lintel of the gate into the sheepfold,
bust down with your heels, and strongly propel
yourself out of the sand?
Wandering sheep straying too far from the fold,
God loved you so, that they left their gold-
en clime to place their mild demands
upon you—standing on the threshold,
trying to get a toehold.
When Your World Is Washed in Pain
Grazie, John Prine.
When your world is washed in pain
and there’s nothing you can do to make yourself
feel good,
can you simply block an input in your brain?
When you’re circling the drain
and you’re planning to repay your debts in fish food—
when someone else’s pain
is spreading on your own chest like a stain,
and booze don’t help ‘cause all your
wine is blood—
that’s when you block an input in your brain.
What you want is just a steady rain,
a vacant uneventful interlude.
You feel the pain
as sheep, counted, on a rolling plain,
a nice peaceful walk around
the neighborhood.—
That’s how you block an input in your brain.
But will terror leap the gap? The nagging
blame?
Your poor friend’s latitude and longitude
whose world’s so washed in pain?
Nope, you can’t just block an input in your brain!
Just Remember He's Some Mother's
Precious Darling
If I were a homeless guy on a mat,
empty bottle in a bag,
sleeping on the street—
grizzled face under a stocking cap
battered as from a stag
fight, poor homeless guy on a mat—
imagine someone might kindly invite
me into their home, wrap me in their flag
of pity, bleeding mercy of the street—
imagine they might give me grub to eat,
tie a nice nosebag
of oats for this horseless guy on a mat
as if it totally didn’t matter that
my mittened fingers peep, my shirt’s a foul rag,
my closed eyes bear the fist marks
of the street.
Someone is truly worried that my feet
might freeze off and I’ll lie with wooden pegs—
a homeless guy on a mat,
sleeping on the street!
The Biggest Billy Goat Gruff
Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.
Thomas Wyatt.
Their teasing doesn’t bother me much.
Some people are just assholes.
Why should I let myself be touched?
I see their touching
smiles everywhere I go. They’re trolls!
But their abuse don't hurt me much.
I hit a home run in the clutch,
defended my goals.
Why should I let myself be touched,
when all they want to do is smutch
their sooty souls on mine and control
my feelings? But they don't annoy me—much!
—Trip, trap, trip, trap! said the bridge.
—Who’s that tripping on my bridge? said
the troll?
—Why should I let myself be touched?
said the biggest Billy Goat Gruff. A ledge
appeared, and the goat climbed out
of their hole
after putting the troll out of commission—much!
Why should a tranny goat let themselves be touched?
Achin’ Snow
Grazie, Conrad Potter Aiken
and Hans Christian Anderson.
Winter is a tough go.
Sleighs and bells and beckoning lights.
Silent, secret snow.
How bright will the fog lights glow
when we decide to stay out all night,
freezing, with no other place to go?
And sad because we can’t show
much for our lives?
Silent, secret snow.
We were OK for a while, then we went loco
whetting knives and picking fights
with whomever we couldn’t go
to bed with. We didn’t show
much progress in our struggle to live right,
so the silent, secret snow
fell on us as we slowly froze.
Vision of love in our last match light.
Our tiny feet the first and last to go
out into the silent, secret snow.
2019
Remembering Who I Am
I am a child of Earth and Sky.
Anxiety is just me screaming at myself.
Do I have to be punished like this?
Can’t I just take an oblivion pill?
I’m a sexy little fille.
What do I risk by saying this?
(See, there I go, screaming at myself!)
I’ll put my boxed ears on the shelf
and be deaf to the catcalls and hisses.
That’s me taking an oblivion pill.
But truly I’ll be past all help
till I receive my Savior’s kiss,
taking away my need to scream at myself.
Fair enough, then—I’ll resort to stealth,
quietly drifting into eternal bliss.
Look at me taking an oblivion pill!
But I only do it for my mental health—
forgetting contained in anamnesis—
impossible when I’m screaming at myself.
Give me a remembering pill!
Mind Control (Zombie Apocalypse)
People get inside your head.
You imagine they control you with their minds.
They make you wish you were dead.
People get inside your heart
carrying Don’t tread on me! signs.
But they mess plenty with your head—
eat your brains, that is, because zombies
must be fed.
But they only treat you so unkind
because for just one time you took a bite
of eating your own self up—you’re the smart
person who invented their cruel games,
you know. People got inside your head,
so it became convenient for you to load
them with everything your heart had to cry
about, and now you can’t wish them dead
because they’re providing the daily bread
of all your pain and suffering—
cherished and endured inside your head.
Don’t you wish you were dead?
Clarissa Harlowe
Your soul is good and true!
Everything you love is beautiful and right!
But somehow the world turns poisonous
for you.
You put your whole reliance on loveless
people who
insist on being with you day and night—
your soul so good and true
that the wingéd worm can't spoil the
rosebud you,
no matter how early it takes flight.
But it all turns poisonous for you—
and you’re in society’s dungeon too—
because at last you had to scratch and bite,
your soul so good and true
that God will justify you no matter what you do.
You’re irreproachable but dyed
in the crimson sins of others, poisoning
your life for you.
You’re always the one whom the black shoe
fits, the one whose name they wrote
under the photograph of so good and true
a soul as you are, Love, and poisoned
your life for you.
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 KNOW you’re on the hot seat
when you love a zombie.
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 assure me, though I’m not asking.
What will become of you,
I wonder, hearing ice clinking
in your talk—fatal linking
of causes in a frozen
chain, so if you weren’t drinking
I’d be amazed. And I’m pouring
sand over the coals of my regretting,
Love, listening to the ice clinking
in the wellsprings of my thinking
that nothing can ever save us
from our drinking.
That’s my own ice clinking.
Child Homicide Victim
What is ailing you, child? Where are the demons you are fighting with? What are the losses and pains you mourn for? Come away with me, darling. Come and let me tell you about this darkness where time and space cease to exist. Come and let me tell you about my travel to the infinite world of silence.
Marisse Lee, the Pesky Pixie
Quiet
no-place
where time nor space
exist.
Quiet comfort.
Grace.
Life’s other face.
Quiet time, empty space—
but nothing lost
or gone to waste.
Quiet
girl killed
by father—
time and space
opening for
her a way
to empty
quietness.
No Time. No space.
2020
Mr. Hyde Heaves the Rock
My shadow-self is my enabler,
and I am theirs. It’s convenient to be impotent.
Remember Oakland QB, Kenny Stabler?
Kenny Stabler can’t peddle Viagra
anymore, because he died of colon cancer
at sixty-eight—
younger than my present age, shadow-self
enabler
that I am. But you had to clean the aperture
on your camera lens
if you wanted to capture all of Kenny Stabler,
stumbling back and slinging one of his
signature
ugly passes to Biletnikoff
(affectionately dubbed the Snake-Handler).
But this is all dissembling
nonsense—just a bunch of distracting
verfluffda—
more of my shadow-self’s enablement
of my wish to be always the matador, never the
bull (or vice versa)—never (or always) reluctant
to confront the enabler of my coward-
self. How evasive was Kenny Stabler?
Flush the Damn Toilet!
Always things I fail to do.
I collect them like Roman coins—
little bearer-bonds of poo
that I retain through
the successive epochs of
my life. All I failed to do.
For example, I failed to make the crew
because I refused to wear deck shoes.
Please accept this little bag of poo in lieu
of proper payment! I do
my work and have my fun,
but there’s always some aught else I fail to do—
some ass-kissing salute I fail or refuse
to perform. But collecting little bags of
poop is stupid—no one wants to be paid in poo
because of some dumb superego-
imperative about shit I should have done.
The things I failed to do!
Whole bank vaults of poo!
COVID Coffee
It’s been too freaking
cold to walk outside much lately.
I just drink coffee,
seldom seeing
anyone because it’s plaguey.
I’m not too freaking
shy to broadcast my feelings,
though—my lovings and my hatings.
I just drink my coffee,
and they spill out of me—
SOS lines
tapped by my bleating
heart, while the tears come streaming
from my bean-brown
eyes—like perked coffee,
but colorless. You see
how it is with me—
too much freaking
time to lie here drinking coffee.
Action at a Distance in Henry James
How my desires inhabit others!
Creepy entanglement!
But I don’t want to be a bother!
Thinking about old Lambert Strether,
who says good riddance
to his youth after inhabiting
the sex life of his boss’s
son. Though sensible Maria Gostrey
doesn’t think Strether a bother,
he doesn’t cop to her
charms but retreats to the USA,
leaving the sensuous ghosts his desires
had blooded
to savor forever
their dispatriated dalliance—
bother to no one but Chadwick Newsome’s
mother.
And poor Daisy dies of the Roman fever
after we’d all despaired of her innocence.
How my desires inhabit others—
especially when I’m not the slightest bother!
End Times
To Be or Not to Be Ghosted
Why would anyone ghost me?
I’m not the center of the universe.
Sorry, you lost me.
Well, I was hoping you’d whisper me
like a prayer in church.
Or, why would anyone ghost me
when they may unpeel and taste me,
raw and uncooked
as I am. Sorry, you lost me
when you said a mayfly’d outlast me.
I’ll be deep in God’s redirect
bag (talk about ghost mail!),
jolting around on my rubber-tired-hearse }
seat—
findable only though ectoplasmic search.
But I’m sure I have a
link address on high,
so I’m never out of craic.
Too inconsequential for anyone not
to ghost me.
Thank you, you’ve found me!
