Sometimes morose but never sad
I’m vicious to what comes along.
They’ll dance and dance when I am dead
To that old grave-dancer’s song.
That Old Grave-Dancer’s Song
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Category Archives: poetry
Don’t pretend you don’t know me
This morning when you passed
Me and I followed
You on the sidewalk
Your shadow after you’d passed
Was right there in my way,
So I stepped on your shadow’s
Head. All the way down the sidewalk
I secretly followed,
Skipping discreetly, your shadow’s
Trail, stepping and stepping the whole way.
The Prince Who Succeeded in Slaying the Giant (A Cautionary Tale)
The Prince was bold, the Prince was brave,
The Prince was young and strong,
All of these things he was, and yet
He did not live so long.
The Prince sought the Princess’s hand;
The King, to try his skill,
Commanded, “Slay the giant!”
And the Prince, he said, “I will!”
The giant’s name was Fumblegrunt
The largest of that race –
Full thirty yards he measured,
From his feet up to his face!
All night they fought, and then all day;
All afternoon as well;
Until at last the brute was slain
– And then, of course, he fell.
For Fumblegrunt was huge and strong,
And ugly and appalling;
And heavy, too, as the Prince found, who
Reckoned without his falling.
So once you’ve slain the giant –
Though your heart be filled with pride –
O once you’ve slain the giant,
Don’t forget to step aside.
This Is the Way the World Ends
In Memoriam (two translations from the English)
Dear reader, I’m curious: of the versions below, which do you prefer (if either), and why?
I.
They built a grand monument to the dead
And the place where the stone was quarried
Soon filled up with rainwater
And the young couples would meet there.
II.
Built to commemorate the dead
This palace stands, untenanted.
By the still pool in the quarry pit
The lovers sometimes come to sit.
Two Lives: Caesar / Napoleon
Caesar loved the Egyptian Queen
And conquered Europe to impress;
Napoleon, for Josephine,
Decided he could do no less.
The Roman styled himself divine —
His friends took pains to prove he erred;
For Russia’s lands the Frenchman pined
But he, too, found himself deterred.
Poor Julius! The Senate floor
Was where he met his Waterloo;
And Bonaparte proved just as poor,
For soon enough he met one, too.
“When I Wear These Shoes”
“When I wear this hat”
I said
“I can read your mind”
“That’s nothing”
she said
“When I wear these shoes
I can read
your feet”
The Natural History of the Kraken, part 2
I dreamt I had a hundred arms
And drifted with the algal swarms
On a concordant sea;
Oh, but the Maelstrom reeled me in
To wake here in the deep again
Restless, unfree.
Air
The air was cold that I breathed in
That swirled across her scented skin;
And as the air swirled into storm
She stole my breath to keep her warm.
On Writing Well
Improve your Writing? Nothing to it!
Find an Adverb and eschew it!
And Adjectival abolition
Aids most any Composition!
Widely concurs the Writing Tribe:
It’s better far not to describe;
And rare’s the Pundit who disputes
That Things should not have Attributes.
Bag of Anything 