Light-Headed Verse

Trigger Warning

—but where to start,
it’s of life only—

Always wear your trigger guard
close about your private parts
whenever out in public places,
and guard those secret parts
from encounters of the accidental sorts,
lest all the sorted pieces of a sordid past
and perfect order built to last
should come asunder
amidst a tale of bloody plunder.
There’s rapine here,
impolitic use of pronouns too
with no undue regard of fractured feelings
or of their healings,
inconsequential as those would seem
while larger issues of the day
are seen still to be at play.


 
License

My credential is of the fundamental sort.
I carry it wherever I may go.
Clearly labeled Poetic License
to be shown to one and all.
Means in effect that I can say
pretty much exactly
what I damn well please.
It stops short of saying
that anyone must listen, but
I’m working on my next degree,
will soon add that to my pedigree.


 
Rumor Has It 

Rumor has it once again that poetry is dead. 
But I’m here to say, that while 
it’s often heard to wheeze,
it yet lives to croak another day.

Poets die its true;
the elder ranks are thinning, 
and words recede as memory is fading
but, more to the point,
are hard to pick from cacophony;
or how find truth amongst the lies
that pass for fashion,
or beauty in the rubble
of a fallen promise.

Yet when I may sit quietly,
and have drawn the shades,
the words begin to come
from their hidden places,
rub against my leg,
curl softly on my page, 
then begin to whisper,
and finding no objection, 
soon are bold to speak aloud. 


 
The Joy of Words

In the beginning there were words,
not so many at first,
but pretty soon they were everywhere you looked—
spread over tables and cluttering counters,
spilling onto floors, piling up in corners,
some out on the porch.
Without clothing some were shocking, 
others breathtaking for sheer beauty,
still others terribly plain, but useful nonetheless,
all ceaselessly fornicating, some in pairs,
some in threes or fives or sevens,

others in a conga line,
binding clauses, phrases by conjunctions,
hyphens, colons plain and semi,
or by illicit comma splicings—

overactive verbs together with more proper nouns,
bare infinitives, participles, and gerunds streaking,
filling whole paragraphs until, at last,
the no vacancy sign put out,
but no one slept.

Of the unattached you could pick one up to feel its weight
or roll it on your tongue to hear its sound.
Some were profound to the point of solitude,
others nuanced to the point you’d say them fickle.
You might choose one like a sausage,
only to find it strung with others just the same.
You could cut the string—
they didn’t mind—
use the one, save the rest for later.

The saddest ones were pronouns
waiting silently for one to signify,
watching as wallflowers the joy
of others so riotously engaged.

All words but wanting to be used.
They couldn’t be abused,
except in lies, unless
especially cleaver fabrications.


 
To Bleed Again

I sat down to write and,
by Hemingway’s instruction,
opened a vein, bled all over
my blameless laptop.
Made quite a mess,
but cleaned it up.
Made a nearly finished thing,
wrapped it in white butcher’s paper,
so as to pass the checkpoint,
to be unwrapped in solitude,
so as to bleed again.


 
Sunday Morning

An old man wore a dark suit
with a yellow tie
on Sunday morning.
The willows wept,
as they do each Sunday.
The songbirds were exuberant
to the point of disrespect.
The old man had no use of platitudes
or oft repeated mysteries
but came to sit with ghosts,
to see the children’s faces
and to have lascivious thoughts
of widows in their summer dresses.


 
Zeus in Produce

Finding you naked in the produce section
bathed as you are in ethereal light,
I envision damp melons, ripe peaches,
fruits and vegetables of several kinds,
disregarding the sign that reads,
do not pinch or lick the produce please
or ignore the rights of other shoppers,
entitled as they are to their petty visions.
I do not think it appropriate to say please
but will take you amongst the fruits and vegetables
regardless of collateral effects—
the spilling of green beans, of shattered squashes,
or scattered oranges rolling down the aisles.
I saw consent in the way you sniffed
the melons for their ripeness, and did not object
when I said the tomatoes were too pricey.


 
Drinks at Five

Will you come at five for drinks?
I keep the gin in the freezer and have
the most exquisite olives,
and clean sheets.
I imagine your body as hills, valleys, nooks and crannies,
sleek plains and private gardens,
an intensity of flesh, commanding of response;
I would explore that world unto its nether reaches.
I would not be so indiscreet,
but the frankness of your eyes
produces an urgency not easy to deny.
I would paint a picture of our lust,
but rather than foretold let it be enacted
in the moment of its own inertia,
within the arms of one another,
each by the other ruled.
Please come at five for drinks.


 
Elusive Muse

Having decided upon a late career in public service,
by way of poetic contributions to
the edifice of Western Literature,
I am resolved to henceforth
produce serious shit. Serious shit though
an elusive muse: days and weeks and months
without the epic inspiration that might produce
a monumental piece of serious shit.
I have spent hours walking in woods,
a tour of garrets in Paris, went as well downtown,
hung out in alleys with less fortunate folk,
got drunk, lost my wallet, for days
thereafter in a fog,
while my brain was reassembled,
all in search of serious shit.
Yet be still my heart!
Might this not be perceived
that which by my labors was pursued?


 
Sonnet for Five Letters Across Beginning with ‘T’

Shall I compare thee to a sack of shit?
Or rather say thou art a tub of guts,
A brazen scoundrel of but little wit,
But one beyond a doubt stark raving nuts.
Shall I but count the ways you make me sick,
Or give you countless reasons for contempt
Of one who’s a malignant lunatic?
Where would I start; what charge could be exempt?
Words that of any other might seem malice,
Are for you on point and justly given;
To paint in true colors is but justice,
And but warns that greater crimes still threaten.
   Despite the pretension of where you sit,
   You, sir, remain none but a loathsome twit.


Pendant to above:

The melodrama nears its end,
too tawdry to be tragic.
He’s no Icarus
and much too fat to fly.      (Continued beyond paywall.)