Monthly Archives: November 2014

MS Found in a Typewriter

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After dreaming on and off all last night of falling rain, I woke to find this poem on a sheet of foolscap someone had left in the old typewriter I still keep on the shelf. I surmise it is a response to my poem, A Malison.
homage to archy
tell me mr why so glum question mark
yr time will go and ours will come.
why so bitter question mark why so vexed question mark
you ve had yr turn and we are next.
for that s how evolution works
progress comes in fits and jerks.
the future s not as bad as it appears
a lot can happen in a billion years.
roaches will learn to dig and build
and after the sun explodes we ll be here still.
survival of the fittest is another term for fate.
we roaches understand. we wait.

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A Malison

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9248091760_5dce1d3d0a_bCockroach, eater of refuse, crawler
in corners, inhabitant of dark spaces,
unwanted denizen of all our
proud modern cities, scourge of all races;
disgusting, vile, unkillable
by any but the heaviest tread
or most corrosive chemical;
prolific, fecund, Darwinianly bred
to survive any adversity:

though your species will continue
long after the end of humanity
it consoles me somewhat that in two,
or four, — at most five billion years —
the Sun will explode in your sky
and your Earth will boil and sear
and every last one of you will also die.

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She thinks of love

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7128732795_da10bb8c40_cShe thinks of love
The way a courser thinks of speed:
As a gift from above,
A destiny, a need.

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Sonnet: Against Sonnets

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God’s sake, don’t write a sonnet! What’s the point?
That boy you like will still be fully dressed,
And other poets still be unimpressed
(In fact, their noses may go out of joint).

Feeling is first! Form’s just an afterthought,
And rhyming’s unforgiving work at best,
When every single line feels like a test.
So, should you write a sonnet? You should not.

Oh, Petrarch, Shakespeare, had their vogue, it’s true,
But really, fourteen lines is awfully long.
Best get in — cut the middle — finish strong.
Who wants a sonnet? You should write haiku.

Trust me, I’ve thought this through and through: put down the pen.
The sonnet’s day is gone, and will not come again.

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The Serpent’s Catechism

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From spite, for what He chose to style a crime,
God stole my hands and feet, my legs and arms,
And left me as you see: all head and spine,
And gave me fangs for teeth, cold blood for warm.
Did He think to stop me thus from doing harm?

Sonnet: On the Brand-X Anthology of Poetry

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(a book review in verse)
Scan
Much had I travell’d in the realms of gold
And never found a blessed thing to eat;
For laurels, though they may smell very sweet,
As nourishment – try one? – they leave you cold.

By not one teacher was I ever told
There was a land both lowly and obscene
That Bill Zaranka ruled as his demesne!
His book was sent me by a flame of old

Bought from wherever such odd things were selling;
And now, some decades late, to write I’ve hasted:
For though I know that flowers are for smelling
I were a liar if I kept from telling
How many precious hours and days I’ve wasted
Since first I of Zaranka’s garland tasted.

 

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Para el Día de los Inocentes

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504769422_7f6b03f977_oYou did not recognize that small things grow;
Before you could, the sickness in your bones
Grew large in hunger, swallowing you whole.

Should it be said you lived, who never tasted breath?
I cannot know; perhaps you can,
Who are so intimate with Death.

In Her dry land where all must come at last,
I cannot know, but hope you are at rest.

 

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