Bardic Yokel collects the Yokel songs written between 2018 and the present End Times and marked orange for ambivalence about poetry. The Yokel identifies poetically with their mostly leftward-turning Sacral Chakra.
2018
Villanelle: Just Write It!
When you write, don’t worry about
saving face.
All your embarrassing experiences are
grist for your hopper.
There are worse things than being
a literary disgrace.
You can struggle every morning at a frenzied pace scribbling confessions that may be deemed improper, when you don’t worry about saving face.
You can write about the time you kept
your ace
when the queen was on the board and let
another take her.
There are worse things than being
a literary disgrace.
So, you dropped your lines in Arsenic
and Old Lace.
So, you put hemp oil in the popcorn popper?
So, don’t you worry about saving face!
And you’ll never ever disappear without
a trace
if you get to be known as the world’s
biggest moper.
That's the entitlement of being
a literary disgrace.
And maybe you will win the poet race
and be considered really super-duper
if you don’t worry about saving face.
Congratulations! You’re a literary disgrace!
Villanelle: My Poem Drive Is Still Alive
Grazie, Pearl Pirie.
I think my poem drive is still alive—
poem beagles swarming fast and thick—
but I wonder if it’s better or worse than
a prey drive.
To write a poem every day I strive,
though there are days when I don’t write a lick.
I hope my poem drive is still alive,
but it’s like standing waiting for the host
to arrive
when I know I don’t belong in this clique.
And I’m wondering just whose prey drive
this is, anyway, while I’m salivating
in the dark. It's not that bad a schtick,
dreaming that my poem drive is still alive,
when in truth I’d rather lie
on a leaf of grass like an enlightened tick,
untempted by the scent of passersby.
There’s a red fox running somewhere out
under the sky.
Will they be too wily and quick
for my dogs? I think my poem drive
is still alive,
but it’s no better and no worse than
a prey drive.
Yokel Plato Banishing the Poets
If you’re a poet, are you entitled to be read?
If your pecker’s hard, can you demand
a blowjob?
I banish all ye poets! Plato said.
Not lettin’ poets in my state! he said,
I don’t care how loud they moan and sob.
Poets ain’t entitled to jack shit!
The poets sneak in where real musicians tread.
They make a big show of doing the soul’s job,
but I’m banishing their asses, Plato said.
Though it’s not as if they’re paid real bread
for ranting and impersonating God—
poets who feel entitled to be read.
Those poets’ll shriek so as to wake the dead.
Then they’ll grab every heart that they can
steal and rob.
Narcissistic poets! Plato said.
Not on my watch! said Plato’s philosopher
king,
whose given name was Jóe Bob.
If you’re a poet, are you entitled to be read?
Get out of here, ye poets! Plato said.
Why Does a Chipmunk Chip?
A chipmunk chips to guard its musk.
It isn’t trying to pick a fight.
It owns no sharp rhinoceros tusk.
A chipmunk chips from dawn till dusk
trying to get the vibration right,
chucking away to guard its musk.
Though a chipmunk’s musk’s a dry husk
of any horde you’d covet, still day and night
it hankers for some kind of tusk
that it might wield in fields of risk,
putting horny foes to flight.
A chipmunk chips to guard its musk.
But a chipmunk’s not just waving a stick
[its dick].
No, this charming little wight
feels threatened by some gnarly tusk
that someone else is waving, its task
ever to beat the drum of fate—
rhinoceros, boar, or narwhal tusk.
A chipmunk chips to guard its musk.
Counting Feet
I’m sitting here now trying to count my poem’s feet, each stepping with a nifty sharp accent. How can I make sure my poem’s not a centipede?
Well, each foot should have a certain beat
that makes it amenable to measurement.
I’m sitting here now trying to count
my poem’s feet,
and it’s kind of like when I listen to my heart—
I can hear sharp pulses long or short of count,
but I don’t want it to spaz out like a centipede,
some of whose Tik-ety feet might Tok
right sweet
if I could slow them to the right wavelength.
I’m sitting here now particularizing
poem’s feet.
One thing my feet won’t beat is a retreat
when my heart goes off a-cantering to hounds
that can rip a poem up like a vulpine
centipede!
I’ll be the last one standing beside
Schroedinger’s cat
when God’s strange Word tears apart
the mountain-
tops. My poem’s counted feet
will run both ways like a cloven centipede!
We Are Siamese If You Please
Can a modern poet be shaman,
even without wearing a bardic tunic?
There are no better cats than I am!
Well, when you anoint yourself with balsam,
it can feel extremely therapeutic
to intone your vision in a loud shamanic
voice. You’ll be in the neighborhood when
the daemon
leaps and everyone receives the rubric:
There are no better cats than I am!
And you’ll get to hold a shining flamen
and be oracular like a Druid—
that’s the entitlement of a shaman.
So much is necessarily unclear to the layman,
whose job is just to stand and hold a tulip.
There are no better cats than I am!
Well, holy Rumi and Shams, Batman!
Put on your rouge, put on your lipstick!
Can a modern poet be a shaman?
There are no better cats than I am!
Tactful Boy
It’s not a compliment when people
call your poems masturbatory,
but aren't all of the bodily organs blessed
of God?
Literary strategies are at best compensatory.
All I want to do is tell the sultry
truth. Sure, I could project it into some
persona-Nimrod,
because it's not a compliment when people
call your poems masturbatory.
Nimrod built the Tower of Babel—
million-story!
It ascended all the way to heaven, like Jack’s
beanstalk. So, of course, God
had to smite it. But that was at best
a compensatory
act because the damage had already been
done—the motor lorry
already crashed through the crepe facade—
all allegations of your poems
being masturbatory
proved beyond question, to their not
small glory!
You’re proud of yourself. You put your skinny
or broad
butt in a chair and penned a
few compensatory
songs that any Dick or Tiffany
can identify with, and maybe they’ll applaud!
It’s not a compliment when people
call your poems masturbatory.
But literary strategies are at best
compensatory.
2019
The Unsaid
Poetry is what the poor have left to eat.
The poor are not full
after they've parceled out the pig’s feet.
We say we create
new food for well-fed
people to eat,
but that’s not right.
The dead
remain to nibble our feet.
Is you IS or is you AIN’T
a zombie?—What Poe said!
Poetry is what the poor have left to eat
after the ravenous ghosts
are swollen with their blood,
the pig’s feet
long devoured—and the gleaners have eaten the froggies! The unsaid. Poetry is how the weary fall asleep, wrapped in their swaddling sheets.
Pooh Bear Bard
Hard to write because the kitty’s on me.
Yesterday, I needed a photo of a poet reading,
so I made an effigy
of a poet, using a big orange Pooh Bear
with a mic slung up to his reading
mouth. I tried different dark glasses on him,
a black sock for a beret. It was an elegy
for the entire ursid race he was reading.
He was the effigy
of intentionality itself—entelechy
bruinized in the charismatic act of reading
(with just a whiff of beatnic ennui).
I marveled at how free
he was of the usual defects of reading.
Words flew from his page like a kitty
jumping off me.
He seized and owned that basement space
completely,
even though he was just reading
from a book—only an effigy
in a poem that I wrote with a kitty on me.
The Habitat of the Poem
I want to write about the habitat of the poem,
but I’m annoyed by the word poem in
the first place.
The rhymes are all already known.
I can’t evade the realization (like a blown
fuse) that I don’t like to say the poem face-
to-face
with folks in open mics because
the habitat of the poem
is far removed from a noisy room
in which people get up and perform on stage.
There are two pure rhymes for poem:
Jeroboam
(servant of Solomon), and low hum.
The poem might be just a deep bass,
a nearly inaudible drone in the habitat,
the house in which I go and come,
where my last
will and testament is filed separately from
my poems.
To perform, I’d need a drag costume—
slip hugging my thighs, taps on my toes
that could rhythm the habitat of the poem
into the room,
whatever cover I had rhyme-blown!
2020 The Yokel Shuts Down Their Poetry Venue
Noisy Dreams to Sell
Can I write poems that are perfectly quiet?
What people hate about poetry is the barking.
If I wrote a book of perfectly quiet poems,
everyone would buy it.
It would be like writing on the sky—not like
those white-
smoke-pooping Cessnas rolling and banking,
but like a huge celestial marker wiping
everything quiet
(but you can’t spot it from the airport).
It would be like nature herself, demure
but feisty—
put Diana herself in your book, everyone
will buy it!
You’ll be rich enough to dwell year-round
at the Hyatt
(no, that would be too sharky—
though a shark’s teeth may gleam and be
perfectly quiet).
I hope you’ll think my book is a laugh-riot,
but if you read it, you’ll hardly feel you’re
harking
back to the primal silence—so, Nah, don’t
buy it!
But thanks for allowing my wish to croon
in public!
My voice puts an unkillable drone on silence.
So, the songs in my book-of-dreams can never
be quiet.
They ding like a typewriter bell, groan like
the Cyclops.
Poem Is a Four-Letter Word
Rhyme words for poem:
jeroboam, though some, show some.
Not forgetting: modem,
olum, ovum.
Know some, do come,
scrotum.
So dumb.
hokum,
homerun.
Row-sum, grow some, forego some.
Grow numb, snow gum.
Low hum.
Minoan, Samoan.
Protozoan.
Know him, owe him, show him,
blow him.
Show up, throw up.
Not forgetting: triazolam
and mesonotum.
Virtual Open Mic
What a sweet dish I am!
I have a few minutes,
but why would I want to share myself with a
bunch of aggressive performers in a room?
Not coveting fame,
nor wishing to navigate the from-whom and
for-whom,
what a sweet dish I am!
I could begin
with my poem about not craving virtual
replacements,
now that we’re not supposed to be getting
together in a room
anymore. Some Sam-I-Am,
signing up for their five minutes,
among all the other dishes
who are here to perform.
Well if this were a righteous striptease I could
abide it,
but it’s just a bunch of aggressive performers
with their clothes on in a room—
a virtual room,
to make it even more claustrophobic!
What a sweet dish I am!
OK, I’ll sing, but my songs will be butt-naked!
Remembering the Dhamma
Gate. Gate. Paragate. Parasamgate. Bodhi. Svaha Heart Sutra.
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,
all 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: 1. Don’t get up on ladders,
2. Be sure to remember what your two
feet are for,
and 3. Always be discreet and 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
when my home was occupied by
poetry event planners.
They were no match for my
impeccable manners!
"Good Poem" – Oxymoron /
"Bad Poem" – Tautology
We play the good-poetry/bad-poetry game.
Is our poetry bad?
Everyone whose poetry is good gets
to go home
early, while the rest of us have to stay
until the late bell rings and be glad
of it, playing the good-poetry/bad-poetry game
without our supper. OK, so who’s to blame
for this smarmy poetry trad?
(Whoever it was got sent home
for good.) Old MacDonald had a farm,
and on that farm he had
a sad bull steer who played the good-poetry/
bad-poetry game,
when the truth is, nobody’s fuzzies are warm
about whether their own poetry is
good and not bad.
Let’s all take our rhymes and go home
and not worry if they’re worse than everyone
else’s. Maybe someone will enjoy reading
them, but the good-poetry/bad-poetry game
leaves my happy ears at home.
Camera Obscura
If I want to still my voice, might I try haiku?
Well, I take photos as I hike around
my hometown.
Will they do?
Why do I have to write poems too?
A photo, like a haiku, is a found
thing made. So, to still my voice, I could try
haiku.
What’s missing, then? Not point of view—
the eye (who else?) having a shoot-around
with the sky,
inscribing not a single word—
not even a blue graffiti tag on a traffic sign.
Can something be a haiku
and not be articulated language? Who
says a poem must be uttered sound?
What might just do
could be nothing louder than boot marks
in the snow,
my old brown
shoes trudging in the field of my quiet haiku
view. Will they do?
Quality Over Substance
Do I want to see myself as others see me?—
an annoying old white guy.
I’d rather see than be me.
But I’m my own best bestie.
I’m cute, but I cannot tell a lie—
I’d rather not hear myself as others hear me,
just another dreary
droner. Why
on earth would anyone want to read me?
But I’ll claim the catbird seat—
my attic swivel chair, with the southern sky
beaming on my belly and my Carpe
Diem feet. Talk about a striptease!
Never thought I’d be so lucky—
I can both see AND be me!
Refusing to submit to straight sobriety,
maybe I’m obnoxious but I’m happy.
Whether or not others see me as I see me,
I’ll be what I see!
End Times
Yet Another Bone Song
My hair is grey, but not with years,
Nor grew it white
In a single night
As queers’ have grown from sudden fears.
Byron
Gazing into the well of how I’m feeling.
Well, be kind to me today!
Well, I wrote this reeling
so that I seemed to stand upon the ceiling,
having got drunk exceedingly today,
quaffing from the well of how I’m feeling.
Well, I don’t desire healing.
I just want to sing welladay
when I’m staggering and I’m reeling
beneath the stars, who are unpeeling
their eyelids to behold such a gay
figure as I’m drawing from the well of how
I'm feeling
tonight—lovely bones preening
in this watery mirror. How pretty am I?
Well, Childe Harold’s bones were crawling
across the Hellespont—talk about
scene-stealing!—
club foot and all. They made strong headway
when they kick-stroked through the well of
that Turkish morning—
gulls screaming.
Blind Willie Withdraws from the Standup-Comedy-Monologue Contest
I’m coming to the end of my cleverness.
Everything I write is too inane!
I may be on the precipice
of learning the final price
for my cunning-linguist brain.
Well, my cleverness
may be at an end, but my furnace
still reeks of brimstone—
viz, the precipice
of Cumberland’s vengeance at Inverness—
the special bane
of the wasted cleverness
of thinking of Inverness in the first place.
Is the non-sequitur interesting?
I doubt it. Maybe I’m on the precipice
of betrothing myself to the Prince of Peace,
of a grim encounter with the Mpls police,
of a sweet jam with my friend Aleece.
I’m coming to the end of my cleverness.
But, Lord, do I dig the precipice!
Said an Old Man to a Good-Looking Girl
Grazie, Lefty Frizzell.
So, I’m writing every day again.
I’m addicted to it like weed.
Where will it end?
I’m penning and grinning.
I want to feed
my monkey by writing every day again!
My monkey’s my best friend—
they're the only one who wants to read
my writing to its end.
So, I’m lying here on my money end,
getting myself ready to spread my seed.
There’s my monkey in the tree again!
Oh, sweet monkey, come on down
and romp with me in the autumn leaves—
friend to the end!
Astounded at how far my luck extends—
I’m an old old man, but I’ll paint this
town with a wet crayon!
So much the sexier to know, these happy days
will end
Apocalyptic Poetry Prompt
Sucking on the finger bone of my
coping mechanism.
Grazie, Nino Budabin McQuown and
Nat Mesnard.
Personify your pain!
Write the opposite of what you think people
want to hear!
Use the words, sprite, tango, and viperine!
Walk out and back in rain!
Genuflect at fear!
You know people might not want to read
about your pain,
but make a masochistic plan,
anyway, for helping yourself prepare
for death—not failing to use the words,
sprite, tango, and viperine.
OK, Sprite’s my fairy name,
and I’ll stoke our voluptuous desires
by inviting viperine
dragons and leviathans to join
the dance—monsters who’ll deliver
a performance that‘ll personify pain
My stage name’s Tango and I'm a dancing grizzly bear.
I’ll personify pain
all night, using (por supuesto) the words sprite, tango, and viperine!
