Old snake
Never stays around long.
He knows someone will tell that story
How he lost his legs.
Why Snake Is Shy
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Tag Archives: poetry
The Lovers
Listen, so our lamp
goes out – it just means
there was someone needed light
more than us; it just means
we had enough.
Maybe
that light went to someone
underground, who now sees
the cave of wonders she
was stumbling through before;
or else a midnight thief
is about to be discovered;
or maybe the place where
it’s noon right now just got
a little bit brighter.
Anyway, you and I,
we both know there’s really
no such thing as the dark.
My Grandpa’s house is clothing for a ghost
I.
My Grandpa’s house is clothing for a ghost.
Do you recall the time bears got inside,
unlatched the pantry door, but couldn’t solve the cans?
No more do I.
That’s something Grandpa saw, or says he saw:
The cans were dented, scattered,
labels shredded, and intact though battered.
Later, when he opened one,
the peaches tasted sweeter than they had,
and smelled like honey, heavy on the tongue.
You could rest your head back,
shut your eyes and swear you heard bees hum, you could taste the sun,
open your throat and feel the sweetness run.
So Grandpa told me many times,
as if the tale were true,
as if there had been bears in his New Hampshire youth.
II.
One day the rain made mud and pulled it through the town.
It was his mother’s garden drew it down,
the way the pansies dried and cried for dew,
the way the robin redbreast wove its nest,
back when the world was new.
He was a boy like you then, wild and young,
the future bears of story yet to come.
III.
But anyway, he didn’t die there by the lake.
He died in town, and his old house
is just another place.
It doesn’t hold his ghost.
That, like the bears, the rain,
like all of that,
the half-remembered jokes
are just a midden of his past,
and mostly balderdash,
confused and dis-caboobalated, as he’d say.
IV.
Paddy me boy, he’d say, Don’t shill for sense
or value history over eloquence.
I didn’t go out when he died
to stand with Father at the cold hole’s side
or read the requiescat on the stone.
I bought a can of peaches, and stayed home.
Memento Mori
Old man sung up a crow, imbued
him with all kinds of mess,
a million ways of saying Yes
to anything that’s crude
He was divisive, he could slice
an ordinary stone into a knife
as if what cut might somehow be alive
and thrive on strife
Some said he’d killed the lark
Stone dead, that’s what they said
(though others would insist instead
her own song broke her heart)
And she – she was a battle, never right
so when she opened up the door, blew out the light,
who knows which one had won or lost the fight?
— Then it was night.
Ghost Train Morning
Gonna roll out in pajamas
Can’t be bothered, can’t be late
My hair ain’t combed, my teeth are stale
Don’t mind, don’t care, can’t wait
There’s a train ain’t waiting for me
Leaving while the rails are clear
Won’t be standing at the station
Might just leave me here
Got to leave your one and only
When your moment comes around
Got to leave your things behind you
When the walls come down
Used to be a little baby
Mama sang a lullaby
For to rock me into sleeping
While the trains rolled by
I’ve been waiting all my lifetime
For that dream to end
I’ve found love and I’ve found pleasure
Haven’t found a friend
There’s a train not waiting for me
Leaving while the rails are clear
Won’t be standing at the station
Might just leave me here
The True Poets
The true poets, seeing the world in a grain of sand, do not ask Why then so many grains of sand?
The true poets lie once then spend the rest of their lives shoring up the lie.
The true poets hum along with themselves, visiting in drafty castles, hunched over stone tables all night while the wind whistles through faulty windows, thinking themselves so very clever.
The true poets, despairing of meaning, wrestle with sentences; despairing of words, contend with syllables and are overcome.
The true poets do not agree with sharks and worms, they think the world is too much with us, they lie in bed at night fully clothed but never sleepwalk, they sleep deeply instead, fail to howl at the moon, and wake with rumpled shirts, fully rested.
The true poets spout the future’s clichés and die never knowing their true worth, never knowing it even after they have been dead a hundred years.
The true poets plot getting from here to anyplace but jump ship en route from Mexico without waiting for landfall, vanish into the dark swollen sea that undergirds the world and live forever.
The true poets, good for nothing, win the Nobel Prize in their dreams, wake to scrambled eggs toast and coffee, wishing for marmalade.
The true poets are patrons of failure put to the truth of others.
Alphabet, Schmalphabet – Z, z
Zachary Zye, the loud-buzzing black fly,
Zipped into the house in the blink of an eye.
Inside he discovered Old Man Ebenezer
Noisily snoozing, the crusty old geezer,
With his head on the bed and his feet in the freezer.
Now one thing is true of a fly with a buzz:
If that fly sees you sleeping, the first thing he does
Is to buzz in your ear. Why is that? Well… because.
So Zachary flew to the old geezer’s bed
Landed once on his chin—circled twice ‘round his head—
And then BUZZED IN HIS EAR! fit to wake up the dead.
But Old Man Ebenezer kept snoring instead.
An insult like that would make any fly sore.
I’ll wake him! cried Zachary Zye with a roar.
(If you heard it, you might think his roar was a buzz
And to tell you the truth, I suppose that it was.)
He buzzed on the old geezer’s feet (they were smelly)
And the back of his neck and the front of his belly.
He buzzed in his nose and he buzzed in his hair
He buzzed around here, and he even buzzed there.
He buzzed every place he could think of, and more.
He buzzed and he buzzed till his buzzer was sore.
But Old Man Ebenezer just lay there and snored.
So Zachary Zye, the loud-buzzing black fly,
Zipped out of the house… with a tear in his eye.
Alphabet, Schmalphabet – X, x
Xavier’s vexing X-ray eyes
Would certainly make him an excellent spy.
He’s a wizard at poker and hide-and-go-seek;
He can tell what a squirrel has stuffed in its cheek;
He can locate the needle in any haystack;
He knows what you’re hiding there, behind your back.
And he sees lots of things that he isn’t supposed…
But I’d better not say any more about those.
The Dwarf Bids Farewell to His Wife, the Elephant Lady, Citing Their Sexual Incompatibility
One ought not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediment. But then again,
Let us be reasonable, dear. I find,
Though minds be true, still bodies may present
Some difficulties – and, in point of fact,
Impediments there are, though you admit
Them not. Let’s not mince words: putting all tact
Aside, we both are freaks: I am a midget;
You, my love, are grossly fat. That’s just
The way of it, there is no blame. However,
After all our trials, I think you must
Admit some things just can’t be done, whatever
Minds may think of it. With this in view,
My body’s left you, though my mind’s still true.
Reassurance
Oh do not mind me if I stare
My staring eyes are blind;
And too I prey on wicked folk
So you need pay no mind.
Bag of Anything 