The Little Man

 

Deep in the wood I met a
man, smaller than a boot.
He said, if you will sing
for me, you’ll again see
your father. I was poor of
voice but I cracked a lament
to make angels wince and
weep. The little man cocked
his heavy head, looked at me
and said, in a wee voice:
Chum, I am proud of you. And
he handed me a silver mirror.

 


An Alphabet for John Lennon
 

            “Phase one in which Doris gets her oats.”

                        --John Lennon
 
A is for Apple, going round and round.
B is for Beatles, going round and round.
C is for Corey.
D is for Death, our last best friend.
E is for Memphis, up to the end.
F is for Phony, Homey, Honey.
G is for Goodness, which we need.
H is for Heaven, which we need.
I is for I, as Dylan would know.
J is for Joyce, jolly Irish blow.
K is for Kittens and Kangaroos and Kites.
L is for Larry.
M is for Memphis. Something went wrong.
N is for Everything, put in a song.
O is for Ono.
P is for People, who know better.
Q is for People, who know better.
R is for Righteousness, thick as snow.
S is for Surrealism, Symbolism and Frank.
T is for Superman, a rank.
U is for You, please be kind.
W is for Wasabi, look it up.
X is for Leonard Cohen, he is not gone.
Y is for Why, which is not in this song.
Z is for Lennon, which we can plainly see. 

A Fantastic Idea

I just had a
fantastic idea
for a poem.

By the time I'd
pressed the
thing on my
phone to take
me to my note
book.

I'd completely
forgotten what
it was.

What it was meant
to be about

That's the
problem
when you smoke
a lot of weed

You get a lot of
inspirational ideas,
but they're really
hard to remember.

Oh well, I'm pretty sure
another idea will hit me.soon.

Final Significance                                            


Apropos for the Bantam edition
of some Canterbury Tales to be sitting

on top of the toilet’s tank,
in Modern English translation, next to the shitting,

certainly a concern of Chaucer
for its naturalism or metaphorical potential

the paradox that noisome dross
can be gold nugget and so value exponential

to the trained eye and subtle mind
far above the level of the squatting behind

Writer’s Workshop

The best writing advice I ever received wasn’t intended as writing advice. It was in sleepaway camp when I was just 12 years old. My bunkmates and I had congregated on a two-lane bridge over the Delaware River. I was standing beyond the safety railing, staring down at the wind-ruffled water. Three or four others had gone off the bridge without incident ahead of me. Nonetheless, gripped by fear and doubt, I hesitated. “Come on already!” my bunkmates finally all started yelling. “Jump!”

"We Ascribe To Nature How We Treat Each Other”

The difference between death and extinction
Is in the molecule of suffering that gives us light,
That makes us want to preserve the joys in despite of the indifferent universe.
That icy darkness that alienates us from ourselves,
As much as we might think struggling for good is pointless.
And which sorts us as naturally separate as on a capitalist’s conveyor belt,
Or other images of what profitably decimates life
Which have been with us since the romantics.
Since that industrialism that will consume us all in black;
But for our striving still to defeat what postures
It can’t be defeated.
I wonder if we thought up an indifferent world
Out of the calculated indifference of the order which birthed us.
These grim Appalachian hills and deadness to the oppression
Of history in the silhouettes
Of property. At least you, the poem
Is such a good way to man our spirits up
And say fuck you to resignation.
Especially to that constant patriarch who is chief executive
Of the world.

nightstick 

watch me on the ground:
silent as concrete
and all the little holes of blood
that are thought to be intellect
undiscovered,
tumbling
like beads from a cheap necklace,
ripped by a rabid hand.

my skull in so many places.

would you rather
i bawl like a baby
than lay here, breathing when i need to,
waiting for blind hands
to lock mine together?
i can’t tell you how much it hurts.
i can’t tell you the truth.

MRS B’S CROOKED TEETH

You, the wife of a handsome English prof
who made literature sing.
We, the hippies who lionized him.

We came to your porch evenings,
drank and smoked dope,
marveled at his insights,
e.e. Cummings to Shakespeare.

But I felt a weird vibe.
As the prof drank more and more,
he began  to ogle the hippie chicks,
flirt with them, stare at their braless breasts,
letch at them and ignore you.

Mrs. B., an Iowa farm daughter,
your teeth turned your face ugly
compared to the nymphs
who oohed and aahed at your husband
who unabashedly played to them,
left you, mouth closed, lips protruding
rooted in your church shoes,
sipping a Coke through a straw
to prevent hand wringing,
a simple dress, revealing
an awkward body, hiding
a burgeoning figure, babies
asleep inside, unawares.

I’m just a repentant, old hippie guy
who did his own damage to women
back in the Day. Mrs. B., I’ve mused
about you in my retirement years.
Hope you fled to better off.

Input

 
You know, I listen to
Whatever you say.
Input is always good.
Hashing things over
Deep In the mind is
A part of anyone’s
Thinking  process.
Just remember that
When I do ask you
For your opinion,
I’m really only being
Polite.  It’s not as if
I actually give a shit.

Loneliness


It follows me
wherever I go—
the factory,
the supermarket,
the bank,
even my apartment.

I can't ever
get away from it,
like some kind of ghost
that's haunting me.

It's there
when I'm at work
and feeling
barely human.

It's there
when I'm taking a piss
in the silence
of a bathroom.

It's there
in the cab
when I'm too exhausted
to make small talk
with my driver.

And it's there
when I'm the only one
at home still awake,
just trying to find the will
to make it through
another night
with this damn thing
hovering over me.

  WHAT WE DO WHEN THE WORLD
  DOESN’T DEMAND WE DO ANYTHING

 
I scribble a line on a piece of paper,
maybe a stanza too—for future reference.
I may use none of them any time soon,
as the lines and stanzas that have gotten backed up

can attest to—orphans with a home
and a hope that one day I will employ them.
I notice a woman in a motorized wheelchair,
her dog keeping pace, stepping quite elegantly.



   THE WORLD WILL SURELY END


while I’m finishing a poem,
the last line smoothed in like butter
on toast.
The day won’t be glorious,
but it will be sweet,
the sun out
and just a nip of chill in the air.
I’ll be pulled
out the window, sucked
up into the clouds and going from there,
joining so many others,
what traffic!
I often wondered where we would ultimately
wind up, such dreams I had.
And now
I’ll know, I’ll know if any of them were true.