Illusion

 

There are times I think all is lost

and it works out logically in my head

then the next day, hour, or transitory

second, the glass is full again

and I’m clever and handsome

I go look in the mirror to regard

myself reread with anticipation

my poems

and the bottom falls out again

I check my email and discover

a small poem of mine is accepted

anywhere and gigantism again

consumes me

but then I’m still not published

in Poetry magazine, I have “not

a pot to piss in” as my businessman

father might put it, I’m bald, short

with small hands, and have a

poor record cohabiting with women;

but what the hell, looking around

I see it could be a lot worse,

I could, for example, be

a simulacrum of myself

responding to life overeager

nervous and constantly

questioning myself

cloned perhaps in my early twenties

when maturity was all I

had to look forward to

and dying seemed like

the best option available.

 

 

 

Becoming Divine

 

for Walter Savage Landor

I don’t bemoan getting old

whence it is over and the

story told

it’s time to look forward

to again be bold

to look within

original sin

and enter a proximate

conception

 

I shall nary conceit

the final defeat

equate as hopeless

spurious last stand

which brings me my

glorious cup of doom

 

instead I shall assay

attempt to sashay

between halls of justice

and commonsense

in relieving the people

of their common woe

 

hoist my petard

sing free to regard

larder the most

decried by the host

most hopeful in any

final analysis

 

I shall become thee

a newborn infused

with vastly enhanced

subconscious reproach

to sweetly die rise up

fly between this

world and Elysian fields

which by remembrance

of efforts preceding

all those that might be

needing to drink

nectar of hope discover

an easy availability

of the Divine.

 

You see, witnessing

repeated reincarnation,

we all

become God,

eventually.

 

 

 

In Prison

 

The last place I wanted

to be looking good or

good looking was in prison,

but unfortunately that’s

where I found myself.