Villanelle: I'll be Fine

I fell down the shaft of a diamond mine.

I was pushed, and it all came out in court.
If that’s your only problem, you’ll be fine.

Go shove it where the sun don’t shine,
I said, appealing to their heart,
and they pushed me down the diamond mine.

Which way do the hairs on your wrist incline?
Don’t bet that way, you’ll lose your shirt.
If that’s your only problem, you’ll be fine.

But someone else has drunk the wine
they left for me—it was a right smart
disappointment—my dry diamond mine!

I held the tip of the rope, unspooled the twine.
The bottom of a mine smells like a fart.
If that’s your only problem, you’ll be fine.

I was the last sentient being left alive
when the rest of 'em sailed through the starry port
and I fell down the shaft of a diamond mine.
If that’s your only problem, you’ll be fine.

To Be or Not to Be Cool or Sloppy

Here’s an idea for our act: you be competent and cool, and I’ll be warm and sloppy.

We’ll compliment each other, like Dick and Tommy Smothers.

Because, sloopy as I am, I can be intense. I try to bring it, yes, but everyone can see, I’m sloppy.

You’re intense too—you shut your eyes and sway back and forth on stage. You’re very accurate, and very loud.

Our performances are a mixed bag. Here’s the deal: you either have to play loud in bars, and have the audience sort of ignore you (it seems),

or you have to connect more intimately in coffeehouse venues, where being loud and stagy doesn’t help.

Now think of a poet promoting their book. The book is the cool thing—the performance can be, and usually is, desultory.

The poet just says, here’s one of the poems in my cool book. Then people buy the book—or not, but some do, and some will even read it.

Point is, the actual poem performances are not important.

The cool bar musician must be more engaging than a poet with a book. If they’re not, the performance falls flat.

The poet’s performance can’t fall flat because it was never intended to be engaging.

OK, we’ve had the cool bar music performer and the poet with a book. Last, we have the sloppy-warm coffeehouse performer.

In a bar, or as a poet with a book, you have an audience because you’re cool—people will listen to you (or shout over you, or zone you out), whatever you play or read.

As for the coffeehouse performer, I’m already afraid they’ll be too smarmy. They’re sloppy like a big sloppy kiss.

So what do you need to be a performer? You need some interesting material, and you need to perform it in an engaging way.

“Engaging” means respectful of the audience’s need for two things, one positive, one negative: to be entertained, and not to be put upon.

Paradoxically, the audience wants both to be touched and to be left alone.

To be touched by someone you don’t know is yucky.

That’s where music helps. The audience can listen to the music and be touched unawares.

So if you’re going to perform music in a coffeehouse, be sloppy enough to be warm, but be sure to play and sing accurately, so that you’re enjoyable.

If you’re going to perform poems anywhere at all, be sure to bring a harmonium, as Ginsberg did.

Spanish Girl

A red mite ran across my paper just now,

and I smashed it with the fourth finger
of my writing hand. Robert Frost wrote a poem about

a similar bug. My mite left a red streak
on the page, just to the right of the word the.
The mite was liquified into dye.

There wasn’t much to the mite besides
fluid in the first place, kind of like
the ink in my pen, blah.

So, of course, the mite
is now my writing, with all the apropos
delicious dire concomitant trimmings—

the streak of scarlet at the end
of Carmen—white sheet raised
to receive the flung blood.

Frost had something sagacious to say
about the least display of intelligence on a page.
But I can’t stop thinking of that Spanish girl.

White Castle Villanelle

I’ll tell you what I want to eat today,

and I know where to get ‘em too.
Breakfast sliders—what I crave!

I’ll tell you what again—I bet I’d save
more than just a buck or two
if I ate breakfast sliders every day.

You tell me that I don’t behave
in public places and embarrass you
just by eating what I crave,

so you always want to go to the Good Egg.
If I’ve had one egg, I’ve had a few—
at least a couple every day—

remembering days when I would play
tennis with a hangover—I’d puree
two eggs in milk, raw. I CRAVED!

Listening to what my gut says—
Dammit, here they come again!!!
I’ll tell you what I want to eat today.
Breakfast sliders—what I crave!

Breastplate Villanelle

Watching myself wait,
in love with myself, as always,
waiting for the blood to abate.

Thinking of St. Patrick’s Breastplate,
sitting with my head in a daze,
watching myself wait.

What is blood’s level in its normal state?
Why should I settle for anything less?—
waiting for my blood to abate.

Christ with me as my blood passes through the gates
of the heart, to cop a phrase—
watching myself wait,

listening for such pounding on the walls of fate—
senses full of the Oneness, blood in our eyes.
How may the blood abate

when we can finally hold each other’s weight
(just a bit abashed by the surprise!)?—
Watching myself wait,
waiting for the blood to abate.

Villanelle: Microwaved Plantain

How do you get heat out of a banana?—

sitting waiting for your plantain to cool.
Banana-bana fo-fana.

How can you taste it when you don't wanna,
not sure you have the correct tool
for extracting heat from a banana?

The ocean sands are sweating manna,
and all you do is stand and drool,
Tony-bony-mo-man-a.

The joint is swinging like a hammer.
You pitch forward like an inspired mule,
roaring, I’ve burned my tongue on my banana!

And I’m your sweet cabana-
boy, baby. Please don’t be cruel,
Anna Anna bo-banna!

And what a fine display of glam-a!
You're the exception that proves every rule
for how to get heat out of a banana!
Banana-bana fo-fana!

Letting the Rhymes Write 'Em

*

So which ideas will it be
for rhymes? It’s always a surprise.
The ineffable pops up like serpent eyes.
The train arrives, whichever way

it’s headed. The door bangs shut.
It’s hard enough to put up with all the crap—
now you’re not even allowed to take a nap,
so you stand and scratch your butt

and wonder when this dreadful party ends.
The only interesting people are threatening
to leave, so you rush off to get more wine,

but when you come back again, your friends are all gone,
not lingering behind for the resentment testing.
Or you never can find your way home, ol’ pal o’ mine.

*

The animals are escaping from the zoo,
disguised as humans. The lion wore a false nose,
but it tried to take a drink out of a garden hose,
and that’s when somebody saw through

to the real lion underneath. The streets
were almost deserted, and an onion cried.
And you woulda’ thought somebody’d died
And there was blood on the nuptial sheets

hung out the hotel window. What a harsh, shaming
culture we are! How inhumane! Always trying
to find reasons to blame the innocent! It’s flaming

hot for us down here in Pandemonium,
no modicum
of decency at all. I’m going back to lion taming!

*

You know, a sonnet’s like a villanelle;
only, you can’t just predict several of the lines.
So, all the more, you can’t ever tell
which way the cosmic thumb inclines,

and you’re pretty much adrift and on the street.
It’s as if you’d had a row
with your roommate, and you had to break your lease,
without a home to go to now.

Well, the birds wung in just fine. We saw a finch
before we all went into cardiac arrest,
or sprained our ankle, or got the flu.

We were flexible and refused to give an inch,
and we put our dead ideas to the test,
until our time expired—and about time, too!

*

Do we like night or day better, do we think?
Day is a million eyes
blooming together on the brink

of time, till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

You know, you violated your poet contract
when you didn’t want to pick a fight with God.

Nobody denies that God’s a pretty odd
dude, mainly good at putting on an act,

the old agony, you know,
putting on the style—
that’s what all the prayin’ folks are doin’ all the while.

Thanks, Pete. You had your say, you ran your mile.
We hated to see you go.
Now you’re just a shape in the bathroom tile.

*

Will you ever get back to the original topic? that’s the question.
Remembering the time you won honorable mention
in a track race—you didn’t drop the baton,
and the judges voted for you in abstention.

You hobbled to the finish line with kleenex in your pants.
Then you had to get a broom and sweep up the ants.
And when I sing my song, I hope you’ll sing along,
on the chorus anyhow. Forget the shoulds and can’ts!

We’re all poets here, and we excel at wild rants.
So unhitch your tongue from whatever cloud you’re on,
and practice your conjugation and declension.

If anyone looks at you at all, they’ll look askance.
You’ll be the boy with the inexhaustible crayon,
but no use trying to telephone—you won’t have the extension.