Another One Bites the Dust

I threw out a poem today.
I just didn’t want to waste any more time on it
while I’m marching in the good old way.

Ok.
I wore your Easter bonnet,
and I got down on my knees to pray,

but I’m just a clay
pigeon, pox upon it!
I threw out my poem today,

not because you’re tired of listening to me go on this way
(I’ll keep talking if I want to, God dong it!),
but to keep marching in the good old way.

And I feel sort of ready to begin today,
but I’m pretty disaffected, to be honest.
I threw out my poem today

because I was sure the cat was going to pee
on it.
So, to keep marching in the good old way,
will I have to throw out this poem too?

Trying to Let Myself Off the Cross

What if I had gone to the New Year’s dance

instead of staying home practicing and writing?
Would I be giving myself a better chance

of salvation? I might get a glance
from an old friend with whom I’m always jousting:
we have a dance

—call it a “dynamic”—
in which my stress-absorption rating
may be sorely tested, giving me little chance,

when the eyes-around commences,
of keeping my composure OR my stuffing.
If I had gone to the New Year’s dance,

it would be like taking Asian self-defense
to fend off the harsh scratching and fierce biting.
Of serenity there’d be little chance—

that’s my apprehension
anyhow, so I’ll just skip the fretting—
I won’t visit ire upon myself for not going to the New Year’s dance.
But have I refused to give Jesus a chance?

Ascension (December 31, Thinking About the Dead)

Some lights aren’t shining now—

people who were beacons to me.
It’ll soon be New Year’s Eve, but I’m lying low

today. I shoveled the snow
and moved the car to a cross-street.
The LEDs were shining,

along with a dim glow
in my own soul, as I used my feet
for snow-plows. Now inside again, sitting low

to the floor in my old
Ikea chair, with the new
foot-stool I got for Christmas, light shining how-

ever it does as I pass around
the horn where the dog star
glowers and it’s too hot to go

outside. Thinking about how
things are with me—
praying that the people who are stars to me
may rise up from below.

Wanting to Make a Difference

Something we can do that makes a solid
difference to others:
not a hollow

aspiration to follow—
hope that all us boys are brothers
(pragmatically at least, a solid

possibility) and all sisters sisters (including some of the brothers).
Not forgetting the fathers and the mothers,
who died, maybe leaving a hollow

sepulchre behind but not before they had their salad
days: I’d rather be dead right now than think mine're over,
even though my mojo might not be as solid

as it was back when I attended college,
and I couldn’t be bothered
to come out of my hollow

hole and talk to other people.
I’m amazed in my old age to be lying in such clover!
the universe doing me a solid—
only my head is hollow.

Naked

Walking in a garden green—
earth soft beneath my feet.
Is this garden wild or tame?

Everyone knows who bore the blame—
'twas our beloved Mother Eve,
wandering in the Garden green.

How could Master Adam
refuse?—that dweeb—
not wild at all but tame

as a mule—same
as that later Abraham creep,
who stabbed a wild lamb in a green

thicket. The blood ran clean,
but our human destiny skipped a beat
at the fatal choice of wild or tame.

Why should we bridle at a name?
The One at fault was clearly God.
Let us walk these meadows green.
The Wilderness shall not be tame!

Burgeoning Language

Some language always suggests itself.
Whether or not it reflects my inner state,
all my poetry is theft.

I steal it from myself—
if I have the patience to wait,
some language always suggests itself—

as patterned as Blue Delft,
as elegant as a beaver hat
(Stagolee shot Billy de Lions for theft

of his John B. Stetson, with a cleft
in the brim), as ambiguous as the Cheshire Cat
(you may have noticed, I’m not all there myself).

Strange cat, sinisterly bereft
of its own visage, bats
in its rabbit-hole, face gone by theft—

just the spooky smile remaining through a deft
legerdemain. Jesus said, “straining at a gnat.”
We can watch language forever suggesting itself.
All poetry is theft.

Johnny, Get Your Gun!

When another person is preying on your mind,

because you’re mad at each other,
you can be sure you’re preying on their mind

too. Rotten eggs and watermelon rinds
filling interpsychic aether:
that's what having someone preying on your mind

is like. Sooner or later, you find
you have to turn off the channel,
because a fuzzy white-gauze bandage is smothering your mind—

cawing, preaching monologues playing inside
the bandage—panel
of pontificating heads yelling in your mind.

Hey you, on the other side of this Maginot Line—
my likeness, my only friend—
let me be assured that I’m preying on your mind

same as you’re preying on mine—
knowing we’re just going to have to yodel it over again:
Or will this be our last time
on each other's mind?