NaPoWriMo 2013, # 30: Nostalgia

In madness and in hell the circles, though they’re round,

have infinite sharp corners. I like ceilings I can touch –

above rooms in which the windows are cranked open,

paned with an ancient, wavy glass that puts sad feelings

on the garden paths, the trees, the grass, the sundial –

I look out my eyes, in other words, as if from a cottage

where Coleridge soothed his baby Hartley, or Hardy,

decades later, mourned his dear departed wife. Make me

of amber, whalebone, scrolled cherry, or maybe

scrimshawed ivory. Ban me; make me rare and grained

with life and death. The instant I make sense,

skin and bind me as a book. Plant my words

in terraced rows. Sentence me to florid prose.

NaPoWriMo 2013, # 29: In My Head

The cosmographer in my head sings numbers to the stars.

In his singing, stars are multiplied like gifted offspring

who sing of father and of farther as the same sad thing.

The many rooms I think are vast. They hold more corners

than geometry allows. They are inhabited by shadows

of balletic grace and cast. Those shadows eat both dark

and light, and all the meatless weight of what I mean.

The year is young. It slides its way through you and me

as if it had somewhere to go. It hatches eggs like moons.

Kill the tyrant in his shell, says Shakespeare. I flail my arms

and oceans come. Avoid the land: its only fish are dead.

Let April be the coffin nail, let May the sail. My eye fell out;

now all seems glowing. What I broadcast is a seed and grows. 

NaPoWriMo 2013, # 28: Fries

- for Mike

When I was young and hungry I married my waitress.

She brought me French fries. I hadn’t ordered French fries.

She ate two or three on the way, sat down, propped her chin

with one hand and stole more fries I hadn’t ordered with the other.

I hate French fries. We got married. It was a beautiful,
it was an amazing life for a few years, a lot of years. Then,
she got the you-know-what. Cancer; she got cancer.
She died? Yeah, she died. We were married. French fries.
She ate my fries and I was in love like you wouldn’t gather.

NaPoWriMo 2013, # 27: Epigram, In Which I Mangle a Sonnet by Patrick Kavanagh

The world is not a virgin, never was:
to be a world is always to be wise.

NaPoWriMo 2013, # 26: In a Simple World

In a simple world, Mr. would marry Ms. Universe

and she’d give birth to a little earth. Handsome

as a square, beautiful as a circle, the two would be

God in duplicate, Omnipotence, Inc., no absconditum deos

but true-blue parents tending our every days, our heres

and nows, our overs and agains: jewelers honing

our genetic facets, engineers tuning our mechanical facts.

Hell’s harms would only seem eternal, a time-out

timed to make us think; heaven would be when it ended

and our loving parents folded us in their infinite arms.  

NaPoWriMo 2013, # 25: Meditation

The leaves of the cottonwood applaud.

The theatre of the world takes its encore.

Day after day keeps coming back.

Everything’s accident. In the leaves’ sound,

answers to questions. Then the rain:

questions drown out the answers.

The rain ends, the air is calm. Stillness,

neither question nor answer. Such silence

our method; such absence, our god.

NaPoWrimMo 2013, # 24: Thistle

The last arrogant thistle stands in my path,

its cyclopean blossom hung low and glaring;

its stem so prickly the air above tingles

and my eyes itch staring. Bullheaded

or to put it more frankly dumb as a weed,

I have been pulling its brethren all morning

bare-handed. My palms hang raw and electric

with pain, stained, splotched, proud

and done: they refuse to take this one.

I leap it nimbly on my way inside. 

NaPoWriMo 2013, # 23: Mosh Pit

We go down to the Chamber Music Festival,

we get a mosh pit going, me and my friend

and some ace who claims his name is Mauler:

a three-way smash, set to a Schubert quartet.

NaPoWriMo 2103, # 22: Turtles

- for Robert McBrearty

Has anyone told the turtles it’s turtles all the way down?

It must take every turtle ever born, and most of the tortoises

and terrapins as well, to make it all the way down;

it must be cramped and dark the further down one goes,

down and down, to that First Turtle, the Unmoved Turtle,

who must be huge and old and strong. Has he ever seen

the bewildering, tragic, wondrous world he helps hold up?

And yes, of course: what the hell, if there is or even

if there isn’t a Hell, is that Chelonian geezer standing on

himself? He must be where the Champion Counter,

the most stubborn skeptic in all of human history

up to now, simply gave up counting. It’s just

that no one has yet checked under Turtle Number One

to see that in fact he (more likely she, I feel)

is standing on another turtle. I have worked in offices

and warehouses and restaurants and other places –

I’ve had lots of jobs, probably like you – where

there was practically always some mean old geezer

who seemed to have been there forever; he

(it was usually a he) seemed to know everything,

was cranky as hell, not smart and not exactly dumb,

and was, you might say, something like the Hedgehog

and the Fox, together: he knew about a gazillion

little things, like the Fox, but also the One Big Thing,

at least as far as restaurants/warehouses/offices

were concerned. Usually, though, it was just the biggest

of the many little things: “NEVER push that button there,

for ANY reason!!” for example – and  he would usually

pull out the Big Thing, or one of the more arcane

Little Things, when he felt like humiliating

whoever was new. The old geezer, in other words,

was a Huge Asshole – sort of like Yahweh; but

he generally knew more than the Manager,

even more than the Owner (who was rarely around),

so he was never let go. It is, I think, good exercise

to imagine, or at least try to imagine, the geezer

when he was young; to picture him arriving there

in the office/restaurant/warehouse, shy, tentative,

even afraid, certainly humble; and while we’re at it

let’s say his life was full of promise as well;

picture him there, a skinny kid, bad skin, greasy hair;

he knows little about the world, and nothing

about the New World he’s stumbled into.

But some old guy, The First Turtle minus one,

is there to teach the youngster; and let’s say at that point

in the history of the world, or at least the history

of suck-ass jobs, everyone was doing his part equally,

and no one was standing on anyone else’s back.