Elephant-Colorings of Tires

If a poem’s not a striptease,
It’s just a dry hump.
Please please

me, my sweet sweet!
Shake your rump!
If a poem is a striptease,

we’ll feel the breeze
as we hunt the Heffalump,
Piglet and I—aiming to please

ourselves alone. Hear the trees
in this hundred-acre dump
shaking so’s to tease

our tender soles,
footin’ by the old mill pump.
It’s only about pleasing

each other’s hearts—
and especially ears—with songs
strutting tuneful
Pretty please!

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, and I’m eight miles high.
I’d rather not hear myself as others hear me—

just another dreary
droner. Why
on earth would you want to read me?

But I’ll lay claim to 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.

Must I submit to orthodoxy?
Maybe I’m obnoxious, but I’m happy,
choosing not to see myself as others see me.
I’ll be what I see!

Camp Chase

Do I wish I were less ambivalent about poetry?
Can I be a god-mouth after all?
Seems like emotional sophistry

when I or anybody
responds to the call:
“Please seduce me,

“feed me heart pie,
“speak in my ear and help me have a ball!” —
diamond-studded piano-ring

presented to Liberace
by Baron Hilton with a three-mil contract. What a tall
man Liberace weren’t! But they played Vegas

(sometimes making their entrance on a trapeze),
AND they always kept all
their clothes on—a modest guy,

but who can tell their playing from striptease? —
taking a brave self-loving stroll.
Don't want to be lackadaisical about my dreams.
Soles, you’re free!

Tourist Destination Near Eads, Colorado

Do I need better resolution on my phone camera
if my quarry is a moment not an object?
The Cheyenne and Arapaho

had no cameras
when they were slaughtered at Sand Creek,
but I was able to document

a couple of the moments I was there
using my crappy old Samsung.
Some of the massacred Cheyenne and Arapaho

(or pieces of them) are still lying in that shaded earth.
Not clear if it was hundreds or more than a thousand,
because we have poor resolution on our historical

perspective. Remember the Alamo!
we holler, as we trample
all memory of the Cheyenne and Arapaho

beneath our sandal soles,
camera resolution good enough to hide any moment.
We don’t need no stinking cameras
to forget those Cheyenne and Arapaho.

I'm Pretty Sure Something Joyous Happened This Month

     to see eternity in an hour

My irrepressible joy seemed to be funneling away,
making me wonder
how much joy I have in an average day.

But you can’t count joy,
because joy isn’t money.
I know I’ve watched my cash funnel away,

not to mention my bag of marijuan-y,
and every single other
solitary good that might sustain me

for a year or for a day. What can I pray
for or to besides my legal tender,
which nothing will prevent from dwindling away—

especially if I plan to never die?
But in Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania,
the ballots spoke with counted joy

the hour that our ship came in this November—
an entire eternity for our trouble!
My irrepressible joy is rising today
to a total that’s a plain absurdity.

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
He 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 sensual 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!

 

Begging Aphrodite's Pardon

What, other than myself, do I enjoy?
Love is such a pumped-up word!
Using myself as a boy.

Fun to have myself for a toy!
To ignore or belittle me would be absurd.
I’d have to find something else to enjoy,

or somebody else. Why am I so shy?
Because I don’t want to be a turd,
I guess, courting you as a boy—

am I cute or am I icky?
I suppose I’ll have to leave the herd
and wander off and enjoy

myself in my own private way,
tending to my sweet bird
of paradise—myself as a boy,

but knowing in my heart a girl would be prettier.
I’d rather use myself as a girl.
What, in my own stead, do I enjoy?
Only you, my precious Joy!