From the Valley of Shifting Sands

        -- to the spirit of David Bowie --

I. Quite a Task

Haha’ione is the place

where I’ll begin a poem today.

The theme?  Perhaps how not to waste

one's time on things of little taste

that can’t be tossed away.

What sort of things are these, you ask?

But come, let's not be premature.

You see, a poem is quite a task,

replete with metaphors of mask

and arch and aperture.

You can’t just press it for its gist

or gut it to procure the child.

It will not do to slap its wrist

or pound it with your knotted fist

and leave it in the wild.

But really, this is not the theme

with which I’d hoped to make my start.

In fact, I had no plot or scheme,

but only this electric ream

and little thought of Art.

Oh yes, and Wordsworth’s “Peter Bell,”

from which this stanza is derived.

I've taken up its metric gel

in hopes that it might scan and spell

the thoughts from which this poem shall be contrived. 

II. Minding the Grenade

It's somewhat cramped, I must admit.

The troops are marching in parade.

They need to open up a bit

or stretch their boots to looser fit

while minding the grenade.

(Don't ask me.  It's a metaphor.

A poem is filled with pits and traps

that undermine the metric floor

and channel down into the core

through sundry slits and flaps.

Grenades may well fill some of them.

Each poem contains a bang or two.

They help create an element

of readerly adrenaline -

which helps when thanks are few

for hours of blood and toil in verse.)

Ah, there we go!  A line has spilled

into a fresh, adjacent purse.

And thus the poem becomes less terse

as abler troops are drilled.

For now, though, I say "Keep it trim!"

'Twill take some time to get it right.

I owe this poem to Wordsworth's whim.

So out of deference to him

I'll try at first to keep divergence slight.

III. Peter Bell

The poem from which this slab’s been culled

concerns a man named Peter Bell.

Cast somewhat in a moral mold,

it pleads that souls should not be sold

to Hell.

This churlish man had swiped an ass

that would not follow him to doom.

The beast was loyal to the last

to his dead master.  On the grass

without a tomb

the corpse had lain since dawn or so…

or wait - ‘twas in a river, rather.

A hundred meters down below.

He’d fallen from the cliff, I trow,

was rolling in the lather

when Peter spied him from up top.

The beast had steadfastly refused

to follow Bell a single clop,

would not descend the rocky crop -

for which the donkey was abused,

as Peter hadn’t seen the corpse

when first he came across the ass

and, simply and with no remorse,

proclaimed the beast his own and forced

(or tried to force) it down the narrow pass.

IV. Poet's Pail

But I’ll no further with this tale.

I think by now you’ve got the gist.

It goes down well with chips and ale.

I keep beside my poet’s pail

a list

of things to read and things to drink,

including poems I’ve read before

and vintages that made me think

my way to each poetic brink,

then back for more.

Back, that is, to older poems

that made me want to play with verse

and stack up lines to form new homes

in which may live such wordy gnomes

as these.  A blesséd curse

is poetry - a fine affliction.

But don’t allow me to digress.

This little piece of Wordsworth fiction -

I like it for its clever diction.

But as a tale it’s quite a mess,

and Shelley rather hated it.

He wrote a “Peter Bell the Third”

in which he quite berated it

and him who had created it.

I’ll neither challenge nor defend a turd.

V. Calliope’s Brow

Okay, that’s quite enough preamble.

This poem’s in a different vein.

Although it flows in a similar amble,

it will from attempts at moral example

refrain.

My goal is simply to take the pulse

of the 21st-century here-and-now.

I cannot predict the end results,

for what once held no longer holds

in Calliope’s brow.

Both “holds true” and “retains,” I mean.

For she was Mnemosyne’s kid with Zeus.

But the wellspring of her current canteen

is Lethe, not the Hippocrene,

and her memory’s somewhat loose.

I’ll simply stand here at these windows

and attempt to snatch up what thoughts fly by.

I’ll need to develop a net that winnows

the gold from the dross in what this wind blows.

Not easy, but I’ll give it a try.

And thus a poem is generated.

It does again much that’s been undone,

collects it and has it refurbished, retraited.

I really, however, have nothing slated

but a hundred and some canteens of metric fun.

VI. Lingua Franca

In this canteen my only goal’s

from first to last to seek no theme.

I’ll drop into this voweled hole

and task my tiny metric mole

to scheme

and plot just how and where to go.

I’ll task, he’ll scheme; he’ll plot, I’ll write.

I’ll score the walls from high to low

with all we learn, with all we know.

O mole, go right,

then straight.  Unfurl this furled fist…

or no – unravel this raveled skein

of disorderly cognates that turn and twist

into arguments they themselves resist

as they sprawl themselves out on the plain.

They’re lesser primates, on their own.

The Anglo-Saxons snub the Greeks;

the Celts are shamed by troops from Rome

as Norman French usurp their home,

reducing the conquered to bad antiques.

O mole, I place my faith in you!

For you well know them better than I.

I ponder which are false, which true,

while you gather them up and make them do.

You gather, you make them do, you test and try.

VII. Language’s Loot

All poetry, little mole, is theft.

This too shall be true of our little horde.

Already we’ve canned a handsome heft

of trinkets and gems that won’t have left

us bored

when we arrive at the end of the poem,

fatigued but enfranchised with language’s loot.

Perhaps they’ll have razed our humble home,

but we’ll hop back in to imperial Rome

on a single boot

and exhibit our filled canteens on the square.

We’ll inaugurate an economy

on plains we ourselves have scoured bare!

Impoverished magistrates will stare

at slave and mole grown brawny

and eloquent in modern tongues,

as Antiquity crumbles overnight.

And we’ll pour new words from unlocked bungs

as we pause to rest our tired lungs.

We’ll vanquish the old without a fight!

They’ll never suspect the source of our wealth

nor guess our lowly origin.

So let’s cover the tracks we lay with stealth

and drink to each other’s luck and health.

(We need them both.  They’re equally important!)

VIII. Empirical Mole

Enough.  We’ll slacken our morning stroll

to a pace more apt for something lyric.

Let’s wade Experience’s jagged shoal

with smaller steps than these, my Mole

Empiric!

For History like the poem’s a sham,

but one that people seldom doubt.

And the verity of this tiny clam

is superior to the chronicler’s scam

of peace and rout,

of rise and fall, contentment, gore –

the sundry crap that fills that tale.

For lore is all the same.  It’s lore!

And Nestor soon becomes a bore

of Herodotean scale.

This little clam’s enough for us.

It doubtless too is filled with lies,

but of the sort that earn our trust

with hints of what is good and just

in single things of modest size.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, mole.

Let’s stop and feast upon these banks.

We’ll pause to feed this teaming skull

made festive in a metric lull.

Let’s break our fast and give each other thanks!

IX. Precious Schlock

  - in memoriam Lou Reed -

Jenny repined, at five years old,

“There’s nothing happening here at all!”

Her eyes were dry, her feet were cold.

“So happen now!”  That’s what she told

the wall.

And Lisa, a chaste and pious gal,

went mute at “in excelsis Deo”

and left behind her sacred cow

to take up with a crooning pal -

her shiny radio.

Candy next door picked up those waves

transmitting all that fine, fine music.

Like Sirens that Ulysses craves,

she would have donned its very staves

to drench herself and infuse with it.

And Stephanie, within a pall

of high school absences and tardies,

heard Nico sing – slim, blond and tall –

then left her home and school and all

in time to catch tomorrow’s parties.

They grieve now, ‘neath a ticking clock,

the passing of that New York mole,

who scavenged precious, mislaid schlock

and handed it back from block to block

to kids whose lives were saved by rock ‘n roll.

X. Stranger Strands (In memoriam Gabriel Garcia Márquez)

“. . . and palmers for to seken straunge strondes . . .”

             - Chaucer -

“Our caravan is loath to stall

within your vale of shifting sands.

We heed an unremembered call,

an anonymity of tall

commands –

directives issued years ago

we palmers melodize in bands.

Verbs conjugate the bits we know;

uncertainty, we fain bestow

in “ifs” and “ands.”

We sing of Adams at their dawn

and Custards on their final stands,

Napoleon as king and pawn

and Jesus in his spindly brawn –

all godliness and glands.

Our caravan is loath to pause;

for there are yet more distant lands

and folks within them tending laws,

performing to their gods’ applause

and bowing to their reprimands.

‘Twas good to hear your views upon

the good and bad from human hands

and with you greet this newest dawn.

But now we must continue on

to foreign shores and ever stranger strands.”

XI. The Songs That Molly Used to Sing

      - Christmas Eve, 2013 -

These carols call them now to mind –

the songs that Molly used to sing.

Let’s look at some she left behind.

She filled them up with every kind

of thing!

In this one there’s a Calling Bird,

its beaks and talons tied with string –

a symbol, say, of Life deferred,

of dreariness wherein the Word

cannot take wing.

In some there is a somber mirth

suggestive of belated Spring;

a bastard Child of doubtful birth,

or promises of challenged worth –

a newborn in a sling.

And this one is a Yuletide tune

that questions who is really King;

three wise men, ‘neath a shackled moon,

assembled on a stucco dune

where Commerce rules: Ka-CHING! Ka-CHING!

Her melodies recall each thought

to which, indelibly, they cling.

When we are joyful or distraught,

the cadence falls, then comes unsought

that muted cheer which Molly’s songs still bring.

XII. As Blake Said

A mood, please, that is less petite.

This temper fits me rather tight.

“To hell with patience!” I repeat.

As Blake said, “Some are born to sweet

delight!”

(Jim Morrison, he cribbed that line –

a bard of slim poetic might.

The theft he fancied rather fine

then choked on heroin and wine,

which served him right.)

One starts out with this simple goal:

to keep one’s meaning nil or slight.

Then soon one finds one’s on a roll –

that is, however strained or droll,

one’s verse has taken flight,

and who knows where the thing will land.

Enough, though.  Let’s get off this height.

It’s better to leave nothing planned

beyond the lines on which we stand

and what they put within our sight.

But then again, can this be all?

For is this not poetic blight,

surveyed at tetra-metric crawl

from off a leaky, drifting yawl?

Mole, fain that this were someone else’s plight!

XIII. A Tree with Roots

To foot poetic destiny

one now and then must scuff one’s boots.

These woods will get the best of me.

How hard we’re pressed to find a tree

with roots!

Perhaps no roots have taken hold,

or else their trees are drafting fruits.

Between the sundry lines we’ve scrolled

we’ve stepped on smashed-up melons rolled

by new recruits

who wish to introduce some sport

to civilize the native brutes

they’ve heard exist through false report

and myths through which they cannot sort.

Their history disputes

the fact that there was nothing here

before they barged in with their lutes

and filled the page with noise and cheer

and pondered their celestial year

which spins as they rope off the chutes

through which they fell into this text…

which ere they came lacked figs and newts,

though now with figs and newts we’re vexed

as we await whatever’s next.

How hard to view this tree through all its roots!

XIV. Our Daily Bread

Old Bill walked off in ’64,

his face a mask of wounded dread.

“To satisfy his need for lore,

he’s wandered down into the core,”

we said.

But no one knew just why he left

or what had gotten in his head.

He seemed of love and joy bereft

and wore his life as ‘twere a heft

of gloom and lead.

Youths sometimes ventured down to seek

the measure of his stately tread.

The evidence he left was weak.

Each time they thought they heard him speak,

‘twas someone else instead.

For years they boldly plummeted

down veins through which he might have fled.

Whatever though he later did,

the veins or he himself kept hid.

Each New Years Day we made his bed.

He sent us now and then a poem

to let us know he wasn’t dead.

We’d tell Old Bill, if he came home,

his pages filled a hefty tome.

We turned them as we broke our daily bread.

XV.  Finer Fits

Our day has left behind its dawn,

and here we linger, here we wait.

Come on now, Mole, advance a pawn!

At present I see nothing on

your slate.

Ah, that’s the problem with this hoard –

it’s both our freedom and our fate.

And nowhere is it for us scored

exactly when to clear the board,

unload the freight,

discard the drab or lifeless bits,

inter them in a storage crate.

Such questions tax our better wits

and interrupt those finer fits

we fain would recreate,

those thicker throes revivify

before our season waxes late.

It’s good that we see eye to eye!

For if the meter did defy

the motion, we’d be in a strait.

For now, it’s just this calm abyss

we’re doldrummed in twixt dearth and spate,

concern and boredom, joy and bliss.

All Art, dear Mole, is simply this:

a futile attempt to resist, then acquire, the innate!

XVI. My Five Dreams (or, All You Have to Do Is Knock)

The first dream kept a tiny mouse

that scampered ‘round a ticking clock.

The scratching much disturbed my spouse,

who cried in fear and fled our house

in shock.

The second one erected heights

and crowed a double-meaning cock.

Its syntax traced, in feints and sleights,

caprices of Libido’s flights.

It picked her lock.

A monkish bard possessed the third

atop its solitary rock.

His Sunday guests were not deterred.

With fire and smoke he forged each word.

He spoke like Vulcan Spock.

A vast compendium, Dream Four,

of ciphers decades out of stock –

a fugue of merriment and lore,

admixed with trouble, ruth and gore

to cadences unhinged from Bach.

The fifth one peered outside itself

to fathom worlds across the block.

A voice suggesting cosmic health

ignored my paltry mundane wealth

and proffered, “All you have to do is knock!”

XVII. Cosmic Clutch    

        - on Easter Day, 2014 -

An Easter egg on which to chew:

Perhaps our universe is spare.

It promises there’s something true

then makes us squint to see it through

the glare!

First Kepler plumbs the murky fen,

then Hubble scrapes the infra-rare

beyond the small concerns of men,

beyond their dreams, beyond their ken,

beyond their care.

We scratch our heads and mind it not.

The world spins and we all turn grayer,

insure our lives against the rot,

surmising whether Earth be but

a single single-payer –

an orphaned whim of deity

that God created on a dare.

It brought Him little gaiety

to sport with earthly frailty

and biological despair.

Or else we’re one of many such,

with life existing everywhere.

He scoffs but doesn’t ponder much

on pebbles in His cosmic clutch.

“Six billion more dependents to declare!”

 XVIII. Man of Straw

-- for Diane Ravitch, author of Reign of Error --

His makers held him to the light

and fondly clasped his little paw.

In soothing tones they calmed his fright.

They added eyes and set aright

his jaw.

He blinked and beamed long ere he spoke

and took in everything he saw.

“He’s rather cute, the little bloke!”

They gave his chin a little stroke.

He squealed in awe!

They filled his head with sights and sounds

and cogitos on which to draw.

They lectured him on freedom’s grounds.

They told him when to test its bounds

and when to hem and haw.

They tested this homunculus

to see if there was any flaw.

The press was rather credulous

and deemed this process sedulous

of crafting wisdom from the raw.

Indeed, his scores are benchmarked now,

upheld and codified as law.

To question them would cause a row.

His legend is a sacred cow!

Arise!  Assume the plough, o Man of Straw!

XIX. My Horoscope (or, Baser Quartz)

My horoscope informs me that

today I’d better mind my words.

Potential shall be thin, not fat –

diminished in a pile of flat-

tened thirds.

‘Twill be a day to passively

put up with flies and minor hurts.

No drunken Bacchanalian spree,

no overweening venery

No chasing skirts!

The images today include

a crossing pair of blunted swords

arranged like Christ upon the rood,

who seeks celestial quietude

from everlasting fiords.

Today’s a day for laying low –

for changing bulbs and mending cords,

for slackening the pace to slow.

In prison pines Camus’ Meursault,

while Hamlet paces creaky boards.

I’ll neither enter some new trade

nor venture into foreign ports

nor place my malice on parade.

I’ll not go seeking precious jade.

Instead, I’ll fill my bags with baser quartz.

XX. Herein Housed (or, Some Folks Within These Prints)

Some folks here need the finer things

like Mynah birds and Cambrai mints,

while others seek to topple kings.

Their broken limbs they set in slings

and splints.

Some folks here limit their desire

to what they comprehend through squints.

They steer between the dear and dire

and shun whatever’s close to fire

or makes them wince.

Some folks here favor figs and pears,

while some prefer the Turkish quince.

Though some anticipate Life’s cares,

it falls on others unawares

in five or ten-year stints.

Some folks here fail to catch the gist,

are not so good at taking hints.

Some need from habits to desist,

some simply to unclench their fist.

Some cherish quiet utterance,

while others cannot shut their mouths.

You’ll find them all within these prints.

You’ll find them chastened, clothed, espoused.

Their fits and faults are herein housed.

I moved here once.  I’ve lived here ever since.

 XXI. So They Say

 - based on Wheel of Fortune’s “Before and After” game -

You say you’re seeing double bed?

I’m on the razor’s edge of my seat.

But cover your Iron Maidenhead,

dear lady; for love is better off dead-

end street!

The world spins rounding up the cost,

o Mary-Mother-of-Christmas-go-round!

A Julius Caesar’s salad tossed,

as stars that have been albacrossed

get lost and found.

(And Chicken Little Richard shouted,

“O Mother, I think I smell a rat race!”

Mom, in return to sender, pouted,

“Yon Milky Way of God has sprouted.

So why the long face to face?”)

Tonight we’ll score some hits the spot.

“Get out!” we’ll say, “Go home sweet home!”

Then we’ll take our leave them out to rot

and thank God is good we haven’t got

a name like Sarah Palindrome!

But I’ve had it up to hear me out.

I’m blind!  I cannot si vous plait.

“Game over my dead body!”  Shout!

Untie this riddle’s not about!

A real loose wheel of fortune, so they say.

XXII. My Natal Chart

- written during Hurricane Iselle -

I paid my hundred bucks.  They promptly

forwarded my natal chart.

For months I had been down and dumpy.

Life: a wheeling rusty, bumpy

cart!

“You need to mind your rising sign;

to not do so would not be smart!”

A winsome maiden most divine

named Virgo – I could call her mine.

We’d never part!

They listed out my planets, then,

arranged upon the starry mart.

“Your sun is out in Leo’s den.

It puts existence in your ken!”

I felt like Jean Paul Sartre!

“Your Jupiter in Gemini

suggests that you’ll find wit and art

to judge with a discerning eye

and see Life through each by and by.”

That is to say, through each false start!

“Now look to the celestial Rhein.

From house to house your planets dart!

Your moon is lodged at Number 9.”

And on it shines as I refine

the words and dreams that fill this human heart!

XXIII. Amid Your Planetary Pumps

It’s clear that in the coming months,

though opportunity is there,

you will find horoscopic stumps

amid your planetary pumps.

Beware!

You’re on the cusp of something big,

but all could vanish in the air.

I’m Vergil.  Here’s your Dante’s wig.

I’ll guide you up the cosmic rig

from stair to stair.

At times we will with risks collide,

but I will help you fly each snare.

Perhaps you’ll want to run and hide.

But don’t be worried!  Trust your guide!

I’m why you’ve paid your fare!

On me your happiness depends –

or rather, on the trust you spare

me as we plumb those murky fens

to reap your cosmic dividends

with no dependents to declare!

So come now.  Do not be alarmed.

You’ve purchased my devoted care.

You’ll surely be returned unharmed.

Your inner beasts will all be charmed.

Together we will make a happy pair!

XXIV. There’s No THERE There

- Gertrude and Alice on a Trip Stateside -

A look came over Madame Stein.

“But there’s no THERE there!” she exclaimed.

Her words skimmed off the teary brine

which poured into a glass of wine

she drained.

The year was 1935.

Her place of birth was crossed and veined

with tubes that ribbed the cluttered hive

and kept its residents alive.

The skies were stained.

Miss Toklas offered her a towel,

and Gertrude’s torrent slowly waned.

A lecture trip to Oakland, Cal

with Alice B., her wife and pal –

her “Precious,” fondly named.

It sparkled then – a chromed array

of childhood memories unchained –

of chopping wood and making hay,

of youthful dreams and girlish play.

They looked at Gertrude – chastened, shamed –

who for the storied life she led

in “gay Paree” was broadly famed.

“There there, Miss Stein!” they comforted.

And Alice Toklas shook her head.

They couldn’t for their awkward gaffe be blamed!

XXV. Her Shadow and Mrs. M (or, Smarter Every Day)

They questioned her.  Her lights grew dim.

“What do they want of me, I pray?”

Her tears were welling to the brim.

She feared they’d tear her limb from limb

today.

Her shadow whispered “Sink or swim!”

and said she’d better make her play.

Her reasoning was rather slim.

The ball went ‘round and ‘round its rim

then lost its way.

Her shadow’s face grew dark and grim.

Both knew there would be hell to pay.

She pleadingly looked up at him.

His many thoughts she tried to skim.

His will she couldn’t sway.

They looked at her and swilled their phlegm.

Their growling hounds they kept at bay.

They told her, as she pondered them,

“These flaws which from your actions stem

have led our business all astray!”

The shadow winked and smiled at them

then promptly offered her a tray.

“Let’s drink our Kool-Aid, Mrs. M!

They’re watching as we haw and hem.

We’re making them look smarter every day!”

XXVI. No McNuggets! (or, Gnomic Nuggets)

“This is my letter to the World

That never wrote to Me - ”

-- Emily Dickinson, #441

I opened up each windy vent;

my crumpled sword, I did unsheathe.

The workweek boggles our intent,

and Saturdays we’d fain repent

and breathe!

I mused upon this 2-day grant.

Just what had it rolled up its sleeve?

I mustered up a little chant:

“I will not rage, I will not rant!

I’ll seek reprieve!”

My mind was dim, my thoughts were scant.

To Friday’s cares they still would cleave.

I turned to Emily – my aunt,

my nurse, my Muse of Rhymes Aslant.

I hoped she’d give me leave

to borrow an unpotted plant

and see how much I could achieve

if long I thought on what it meant –

this lined and metered message sent

to me to ponder, chew and teethe.

I plunged into a lettered rent.

With fitful sighs my chest did heave,

and soon I broke into a pant:

“O Lady of Amherst, I am spent!

Upon your gnomic nuggets I must thieve!”

XXVII. Sated Hands

O mole, I feel it’s in our fate,

although perhaps not in our plans –

an expiry of this our freight

as time removes its weight from sated

hands.

We’re loathe to empty out our crate

and leave these items to the sands.

To think how each and every trait

of things we’d make (or recreate

from former strands)

will vanish from this earthly slate,

along with us and our demands!

But these thoughts, too – they come too late.

And here we putter, here we prate -

a pair of also-rans.

Our lethargy becomes innate.

We watch the cosmos take its stands

and intermix its love and hate

apportioned out to small and great,

which gather into cosmic clans.

Forgive me, mole.  This sudden spate

of sullenness is under bans!

Just slap me in my muddled pate.

A single slap should set me straight!

We’ll put it to the fault of wearied glands!

XXVIII. The Data Child

        -- an educational allegory --

Its weary makers yawned and smiled.

“At last! Our darling’s natal morn!”

The doorbell rang, the papers dialed.

The rumor of the Data Child

was born!

They’d had to keep their project mum

amid the critics heaping scorn

and shouting children were no sum,

that raw statistics could not plumb

the human horn -

that cornucopia of love,

of hope, of symboled rose and thorn.

But edicts fell from high above,

delivered by a soulless dove.

Some called it Data Porn!

Its makers crawled before the press,

although their rags were soiled and torn

and clothed corruption’s stinking mess.

They quickly grabbed a priest to bless

the beast and have its foreskin shorn.

The cameras readied for the show

as deeds were signed and oaths were sworn.

The cords were pulled from down below,

revealing an absurd tableau:

They’d placed their cart before a unicorn!

XXIX. Sabbath (or, The Sanctity of Rest)

    -- for Beverly Vallejo-Sanderson --

“Give in, or we shall work no more!”

The builders proffered their request –

a plea the priests could not ignore.

The Babylonians were sorely

pressed.

Some chief proposed a seventh day.

They laughed, supposing it a jest.

“No, really!  Think!  A time to play,

to spend with loved ones, laugh and pray

and clean the nest!”

Some decades later, Moses sighed,

exhaustion heaving from his chest:

“Dear Sir, today we almost died.

We cannot take another stride.

Just look from east to west!”

The sojourners of Israel

were losing stamina and zest.

“A seventh day will help them heal,

return them to their hope and zeal.”

So Yahweh to himself confessed.

Fast forward to our present time.

24/7?  We’ve regressed.

Up Sinai do we climb, climb, climb.

To pause is a malicious crime!

We’ve disavowed the sanctity of rest.

XXX.  As Jagger Says (or, This Feeling That We Haven’t Done Enough)

How heavy, Molly, are these shoes

we cannot help but drag and scuff –

as heavy as their empty views,

which they call news.  It isn’t news,

it’s fluff!

It seems we’re in it.  Too late now!

The game they play is crude and rough.

They say that we have caused a row.

We’ve toppled their most sacred cow

with just a puff.

Yes, we’re to blame.  To live with this,

as Jagger says, we must be tough,

tough, tough!  They shout at us and hiss.

But let’s not take it so amiss.

The snake casts off its slough.

They had us by the neck.  No more!

They’ve merely bitten off the scruff

and now are spitting out the gore.

They’ve failed to penetrate our core,

our style, our gist, our worth, our stuff.

So come on, now!  Get up!  We’ll take

a stand and call the paper’s bluff.

You fire the coals, I’ll fetch the rake.

For it’s the only way we’ll shake

this feeling that we haven’t done enough.

XXXI. Ambition’s Sleuth (or, Jim Morrison Isn’t Dead.  He’s a Drunken Expat Alive and Not So Well in Paris.)

On Monday I resume my perch

and contract out my faded youth.

Within myself I pitch and lurch.

Come Friday I begin my search

for truth.

I chase it down in alleyways

then lose it in a girlie booth.

I stumble through the neon maze,

enveloped in the old malaise

of 80 proof.

I fondle at Minerva’s bust.

She’s cold as stone.  Severe, aloof.

I mimic her to gain her trust.

She’s mute and godly, so it’s just.

And yet it’s quite uncouth.

The gendarmes took me in last night.

They found me soiled in piss and ruth.

I kicked the bearded one for spite.

He pummeled me, I didn’t fight.

It seems I lost my seventh tooth.

I don’t know how I keep my job.

They prize me for my Yankee sooth.

I once set teenage hearts athrob

and played a shaman to the mob.

For decades I’ve escaped ambition’s sleuth.

XXXII. The Middle Way

-- for Mary Ann Kurose --

“Dear Sir, I’ve brought you figs to eat.”

She bowed and offered him a tray.

Siddhartha looked up from his feet

to spy a maiden young and sweet 

and gay.

He wondered, was this in his dreams?

then closed his eyes and fed his clay.

“I know exactly what this means.

My tightrope walk between extremes

must end today!”

The nourishment refreshed his veins

and soon dispelled his mind’s display

of anguish and its knotted skeins –

that human world of hopes and pains

and plans that go astray.

His five disciples pulled their hair

and gnashed their teeth in mad dismay.

This sudden change they couldn’t bear.

They spat at him a broken prayer

and fled.  Nor did he bid them stay.

Siddhartha, having passed his test,

looked up and hailed a chirping jay.

He’d found, to end his tortured quest,

Nirvana as enlightened rest.

The Buddha rose and claimed the Middle Way.

XXXIII. Buddha Breath

It swaddles us, it clears our way,

companions us from birth to death;

it greets us at the break of day

and brings us milk upon a tray:

Our breath!

It buoys us and scuds the foam

before us in the worldly bath.

It sanctifies our mental dome

and guides our tread upon the loam.

It minds our path!

It gathers in the purer air

and blows away the dust, the chaff.

It tends to every whim and care

and fans our bluster when we dare.

It fills each sigh and laugh.

It helps apportion cosmic wit,

ensuring us our supple heft.

It readies us and makes us fit

to love, to share each other’s spit.

For in the end there is no theft!

So when you’re feeling down and out

upon this road from birth to death,

just stop and focus on the spout.

Remind yourself without a pout:

“Take heart!  You’ll never lose your Buddha breath!”

XXXIV. North Node in Gemini

This month I’ve gained some astral sooth

at my astrologer’s behest:

In former lives I was the sleuth

who lived them as a search for Truth –

a quest!

She told me I must scan both Nodes,

as quondam selves do therein nest –

the South and North at antipodes,

the Moon’s contrarian abodes

and karmic test.

My North Node lies in Gemini,

my South in Sagittarius.

With folks, then, I am awkward, shy –

for I’ve descended from up high.

I’m humbled, more or less!

Among my many former lives

was Xuanzang,* whom I love the best.

In perpetuity he thrives

and minds the wanderlustful drives

with which my current life is pressed.

I’m less than he, though not the least.

I’ve yet to fathom all the rest –

each man, each monkey, bird and beast.

In search of Truth I’ve traveled east,

though old Tripitaka* got there heading west.

*Pr. "SHWEN-dzahng." Legendary Chinese monk who traveled to India during the Tang Dynasty in search of the original Buddhist texts.  Journey to the West, the epic novel of the Ming Dynasty, is a fictional account of his travels, and his character has been rendered in English as "Tripitaka" (pr. "tri-PIT-i-kuh").

XXXV. The Pathless Land

“Truth is a pathless land.” – Krishnamurti

The monk had tread his many ways

through virgin wood, o’er desert sand.

He’d also been where knowledge sways

and ingenuity displays

the grand.

And when the monk returned at last,

he found himself in hot demand.

The questions came on thick and fast

about the lands through which he’d passed.

He found this bland.

He couldn’t now recall that much –

or much that they would understand.

They only wanted such and such.

His subtler thoughts they couldn’t touch.

They saw that he was tanned.

He’d wandered off in search of Truth

and hoped to shake it by the hand.

He never found its shack, its booth.

It didn’t kick him in his tooth,

nor did it praise or reprimand.

It took him years before he knew

he’d met his goal, though not as planned.

His countrymen, a fickle crew –

they laughed at him but loved him, too.

They saw he walked in Truth – a pathless land.

XXXVI. Like Ferdinand (or, Taurus Moon)

“Do not ignore our mounting debt!”

My Sun in Leo knows the tune.

It thinks it spies a safety net

just up ahead and hopes we’ll get

there soon.

It keeps us ever on the run.

Its pace is always “highest noon,”

its fires fixed on former fun.

We’re past the solstice, dearest Sun.

We’re not in June!

To other planets I must turn.

I’m far too young to feel such doom,

nor do I wish to fill an urn.

But Leo wants my sun to burn

until its final fume.

My Moon in Taurus questions this.

“Passivity’s our greatest boon.”

Though Leo takes it much amiss,

it contemplates in silent bliss

the bluebells in the meadow strewn

and quits attempts to understand

the feints the matadors have planned,

their tricks that make the damsels swoon.

It whiles the time with Ferdinand,

who sits in peace beneath my Taurus Moon.

XXXVII. The Buddha’s Five Remembrances (or, The Ground on Which We Stand)

Five sober facts the Buddha told

to help us shun conceit and rage

and caution us when we grow bold:

The first is that we all get old.

We age!

The second has to do with health.

There’s no one who is never ill.

Subverting joy and fickle wealth,

disease creeps in with pointed stealth –

a bitter pill.

We’re loath to speak the third: our death –

though from its gaze we cannot shy.

Our grim organic aftermath.

We rise and fall with every breath

because we’re born to die.

The saddest fact is number four:

the transience of all worldly love.

The ones we best and least adore

we lose, and then we lose some more.

We hope to gain them back above.

And karma is our final fact

when life has spindled to a strand,

collecting every thought and act –

a record of our cosmic tact;

from life to life, the ground on which we stand.

XXXVIII. Skillful Means

    - in memoriam Leonard Nimoy -

The Vulcan, on the verge of death,

recalled his life in varied scenes

and gazed upon that milky clef –

the light through which our living breath

careens.

He thought of former suffering –

such pain as once had filled his dreams.

Maturity was buffering

one’s sadness in a supple ring

of enthymemes.

“It isn’t logical to pine

for all that flickers on life’s screens –

to exit from maternal brine

and bellow when they cut our vine,

to crave our natal seams.”

He didn’t have to work from scratch.

On Planet Earth he found some themes

and in its Buddha met his match.

In time he learned to de-attach

from cravings as from all extremes.

Spock bade goodnight to love and strife,

relinquishing his final schemes.

His mind with emptiness was rife.

He promised, as he left this life,

that in the next he’d spread these skillful means.

XXXIX. Adorning Our Days

Because our time on Earth decays,

and no one knows just why we’re born,

we place our promises in lays

with which we earnestly our days

adorn.

We pledge, for instance, not to hate.

Nor, further, shall we ever scorn

nor blame nor otherwise berate

our modest home, our simple plate,

our prickly thorn.

We promise that we won’t neglect

such goods as fall from plenty’s horn.

We pledge to them our long respect,

not suffering that they’ll be wrecked

or more than lightly worn.

We say we’ll cultivate our best

and have our worst desires shorn.

We promise that we’ll take our rest

when east has given up to west

and sinks beneath the fading corn.

We pledge that, though we slipped today,

we’ll be more mindful in the morn.

Despite our errors, come what may,

we know that we’ll reclaim our way –

that middle path from which we’re often torn.

XL. The Dharma Chests

    -- for Lara Mangieri --

Some recipes for Spanish Fly

and mantras that will frighten pests

are of the things that herein lie

to please our gods and edify

our guests.

In this one there’s a hidden stage

from which to spy illicit trysts,

bad jokes that never die but age

and tokens of that mounting rage

that soon desists.

They’re crammed with cheer to hide the must,

with valor lined with trick requests,

with caveats to quell disgust

and signatures to measure us

and help us mind the rests.

Dead spirits also lie within,

some holding hands, some clenching fists,

resembling friends who died in sin,

that man who rescued Rin Tin Tin,

and crazy Scientologists.

O mole, the varied wonders that

have tumbled out of human breasts!

The thoughts that wander like a gnat!

The words intoning senseless scat!

The funny dharmas pent inside these chests!

XLI.  Daimoku (or, Our Happy Woe)

“There’s much that lies beyond our ken

and little that we really know,

confined within our human pen.

And so we’ll chant nam’ myoho ren-

ge kyo.

“Ten Worlds determine how we grow.

We bathe within their interglow,

they conjugate our happy woe.

And this is why we’ll chant nam’ myo-

ho renge kyo.

“Our vices lavish us with scant

regard for what they ill bestow.

At times we pace, at times we pant.

And so the laity shall chant

nam’ myoho renge kyo.

“Although we love, we’re often sly.

We undermine both friend and foe

and horde the goods for which we vie.

And that’s another reason why

we’ll chant nam’ myoho renge kyo.”

The day began.  Nichiren woke.

This world was filled with blowing snow.

Nine others dwindled ere he spoke.

The monk threw off his heavy cloak

and scribbled down,  “Nam’ myoho renge kyo.”

XLII.  List of Things to Do on Pam’s Birthday

   -- for Pam --

To start my day with nembutsu

and follow that with eggs and Spam

(I’ll chant nam’ amida butsu

then swallow things that make me who

I am);

to notice, having had my fill,

I’ve waxed another kilogram

(what’s that upon my windowsill?

but roaches I no longer kill…

I bark, they scram);

then next, to grab the daily news

and read about the latest scam

(the turning of financial screws,

a dignitary flubbing cues,

the Common Core’s a sham…);

to kiss my wife; to tease my son;

to help my daughter in a jam;

to say the daimoku at one –

nam’ myoho renge kyo; that done,

to opt for salmon over ham

and not to overcook the fish

and have to swear again “Goddamn!”

and make Rebecca fix the dish;

to finish with a poem to wish

my cosmic sister “Happy birthday, Pam!”

XLIII.  To Each His Koan

I keep them up here in my hat –

some handmade koans to call my own.

A koan for this, a koan for that.

A koan to show me where I’m at.

A koan

to make me doubt when I am sure

and push me off my stolid throne.

Another, like a prickly spur

to kick me into sudden cure,

to make me groan

whenever I lack confidence

or nurture ills to which I’m prone.

I keep this one with sparkling tints,

providing not so subtle hints

that call me to my zone.

Some simple ones as well, that please

by virtue of their gentle tone.

And some to sip with morning teas

that warm affections when they freeze

and melt my ego’s heart of stone.

I cannot say they’ll work for you.

I love you, but you’re not my clone.

So here are some for you to chew.

I think you’ll like at least a few.

And if you don’t?  Oh well, “To each his koan!”

XLIV. Strategies Oblique

-- also for Pam --

Imagine all these happenings

as leading up to No Event –

as motile, disconnected strings

unraveled from what Chronos brings

unmeant.

Reverse, back up, but don’t collide.

Or do, which also might work out.

(I did one time, and then I died.

But what the hell, at least I tried!)

Climb up, surmount,

repeat.  That done: collapse, renege…

or else embrace the status quo

then call your failure something big

and summon others.  Found a league

of stooges (I’ll be Moe).

Then question what is truly real

within this piece of work you’ve made,

and disavow approval’s seal.

Allow the monster to anneal

before they judge it’s made the grade.

Then smash the tablets on the calves

and never yet your Aaron speak.

Let Israel pick up the halves

and find their own familiar paths.

Stay tuned for further Strategies Oblique.

XLV. Revolution’s Memes

A poetry in evolution

gathers force between the semes –

stitching flaws in elocution,

scripting quilts of revolution’s

memes.

In this one see a native root

of humble origin step up

and give this Slavic pest the boot

or render that French suffix mute

to pep things up.

And here misnomer elevates

and, lo, as substantive now reigns.

“Behead the predicate!” he prates

as proverbs peer from guarded gates.

A cognate mops the stains.

In this one words divest themselves

entirely of what they meant

before we smashed semantic shelves

and rearranged in 10s and 12s

our syllables of new intent.

Yes, this is how it comes to be,

prefiguring the world outside –

a microcosmic panoply

on which it claims monopoly.

The world indeed may end. Its poems abide.

XVLI. The Klingons (or, Blocking Up the Hall)

Don’t stand in the doorway!  Don’t block up the hall!

     -- Bob Dylan, “The Times They Are a-Changin’”

A union is a special place

wherein its members can stand tall

to look the bosses in the face

and counter them without a trace

of gall.

But when a faction wants to cling

to power in its makeshift stall

beyond that day of reckoning

that ends the temporary fling

of each and all,

and when this cadre breaks its faith

by keeping numbers in its thrall

and dumping minutes in the waste

so that the facts cannot be traced…

such doings should appall!

Indeed, we’ve got a case like this,

although the space they’re in is small.

The press will take it all amiss

and drown the truth in public piss:

“A veritable union brawl!”

Alas!  A cadre clinging on

to ridges in a crumbling wall!

The shady figments that they’ve drawn!

The fate that they must break upon!

Two dozen Klingons, blocking up the hall!

XLVII. Undead Jane (or, The Four Estates)

-- fragment from an abandoned allegory --

In this, our realm, the Four Estates

are linked together in a chain.

They bear their own specific traits

and suffer predetermined fates

and pain.

The First lies way above the muck.

It mans the sun and spills the rain.

Its Yahweh is the mighty buck. 

It really couldn’t give a cluck

for ought but gain.

The Second just pretends to rule

while fancying its ransacked brain

a bucket to collect the drool

of Mammon (for it’s Mammon’s fool)

and pour it down the drain.

The Third Estate facilitates

for One and Two as Abel’s Cain.

It’s drawn from Four but fills its crates

with One and Two’s best figs and dates –

our kingdom’s ladder-climbing swain.

The Fourth is all the rest of us –

the ones who till the land, in plain.

And here she comes – a wraith of dust

our graves cough up in mad disgust.

I guess she’s ours.  Let’s call her Undead Jane.

XLVIII. Token Lines

“Let my inspiration flow

In token lines suggesting rhythm…”

-- Robert Hunter, “Terrapin Station”

Regard me, Mole, as I invoke

the muses in triadic nines.

Mnemosyne shall first uncloak

our hopes and dreams to fall in token

lines.

Then Euterpe will find the rhymes

and with her pipes blow out the smoke.

Calliope will narrate times

and chime the vespers, lauds and primes

that with them stroke.

We’ll pressure Clio with a poke

to save our history from swines.

Dame Thalia will tell a joke

as Melpomene’s heroes croak

and lay to rest their spines.

Then Erato will set her mines

to capture every lass and bloke

and prism lust through Love that binds.

Terpsichore will cast the mimes

to dance our turmoil in Love’s yoke.

Let Polyhymnia provoke

the sacred prayers of rustic hinds

to gods that thundered ere they broke.

And knowledge of our cosmic spoke,

Urania let flash in blazing signs.

XLIX. That Someone Cared (Poem for Emily)

A question that is often aired

is why some certain text survived.

The simple fact that someone cared

has much to do with how it’s fared

and thrived.

Apparently this one was kept

because it sparked renewed debate

on why a son of man had wept

and rendered older views inept

or out of date.

By contrast, that one claimed a cure

for lethargy and other ills

that all of us at times endure

because we’re humans and impure

and lack essential skills.

This other one is simply here

because the poo-bah of the day

had skimmed it while he drank his beer

and found it filled his mind with cheer.

“Ten thousand copies!  No delay!”

Yet still from some we take our cues.

This one has been my sacristy.

I’ve knelt upon its numbered pews.

E. Dickinson - her “simple News

that Nature told with tender Majesty.”

L. Form and Fire (or, Haas at Fifty)

When I was young my teachers were the old.

I gave up fire for form till I was cold.

I suffered like a metal being cast.

I went to school to age to learn the past.

Now when I am old my teachers are the young.

What can't be molded must be cracked and sprung.

I strain at lessons fit to start a suture.

I go to school to youth to learn the future.

-- Robert Frost, “What Fifty Said”

R. Frost, at turning fifty, said

that he’d be going back to school

to crack the nuts inside his head

and prove that they were not yet dead.

No fool!

He knew that there was more to age

than petrifying in a mold

or yellowing upon some page.

Past fifty could be fiery rage –

all heat, no cold!

How quickly had the decades passed

since he was young and they were old.

He’d held the modernists aghast

with lines of a Horatian cast

and English iambs bold.

He told himself, “What’s gone is gone.

Don’t pine for youth.  No more of it!

I’ll stir my formed and frozen brawn

by studying my younger spawn.

No resting on my laureate!”

Like Robert, now I’m ten times five.

I seize on every new desire

to burn the dead bees in my hive

and bring their ancient queen alive –

at half a century, half-form, half-fire!*

[*Alternate ending: a half a century of form and fire!]

LI. The Wild Toccata

The wild toccata that I heard

was like no other ever writ.

It set off in augmented thirds

that sparkled from their staves like birds

of wit.

Unnerving was this rush of sound –

this cacophonic flight of tones.

A stable key could not be found,

and little meter save a mound

of sticks and bones.

But then some minims set a pace,

while semiquavers swept the clock.

A clique of rests announced a race,

which led to quite a heated chase

like those in J. S. Bach.

At length a fugue took full command.

Its subject was a tune from Beck.

The countersubject made its stand -

a B-side from some one-hit band.

It didn’t fit, but what the heck.

Then suddenly those birds came back.

Our earnest fugue did not conclude.

The thirds returned into a stack.

A long fermata took the flak,

and slowly silence once again ensued.

LII. Accountability

-- for Mireille --

Accountability is here!

Accountability is there!

It manifests itself as fear

that heads will soon be rolling near

your chair.

Perhaps your own?  Well, certainly!

For someone surely is at fault!

The data presses down so sternly.

Write your will, prepare your gurney,

sweep your vault!

It’s part and parcel of each score

our students spill upon the page.

It’s in the bytes through which they pore.

It’s in the goddamn Common Core!

It’s in our righteous rage!

It weaves throughout our day its tune

of boredom, drudgery and woes.

It darkens Shelley’s midnight moon.

And from it no one is immune

save, in the sky, the CEOs.

No, they are not accountable.

They’re high above the din, the blare.

Our doubts are all surmountable;

their profits, hardly countable.

But down below we dupes must grin and bear.

LIII. Graphic Facets

-- for Shirley and her wily and many-faceted emojis --

This first one takes you for a ride

and empties out your piggy bank.

He leaves you with nor hair nor hide –

yet he’s the one you’ve always tried

to thank!

And this one here, without a doubt,

is full of Shirley’s secret wile.

You cannot tell what it’s about;

all inquiries it puts to rout

in single-file.

You’d best take care when eyeing them,

for some of them are dangerous.

It’s hard at times descrying them

through trickery belying them.

Their secrecy is heinous!

I almost choked when first I saw

this flashing one with neon wings.

She clasped my tongue within her claw.

She tickled it then pinched it raw,

and now it heals in vocal slings.

Just how were these emojis, though,

procured?  By whose substantial wealth?

Did Shirley wrest them from a foe

to march before him to and fro?

Or are they graphic facets of herself?

LIV. Along the Cosmic Path (Beethoven’s Final String Quartet)

  -- for Keith Ward --

That learned ability to gauge

just what, just how much is at stake.

That sense of how to bring to page

one’s love and readiness, one’s rage

and ache.

That feeling when we’ve done our work

that living well’s a piece of cake.

That love of Dasein’s ownmost quirk.

That shrugging off each lover’s smirk

at our mistake.

That will to flout catastrophe

and reassume, within its wake,

one’s vocalized apostrophe

and never let it atrophy

or turn to mold or break.

That fateful query, “Must it be?” –

the “s” in “must” a hissing snake

insinuating we’ll be free

when masons caulk Eternity

and Gravitas lays down its rake.

That time when we at last renounce

that point we felt obliged to make.

We drop the ball and let it bounce,

then mind our feet that gaily flounce

along the cosmic path of give and take.

LV. Calliope

Good morning!  There’s our windowsill.

The day begins an empty cup.

We listen to the songbird trill.

“My darling, how you gonna fill

it up?”

Some early morning mindlessness

which leads us to our drowsy mop.

“What say you, Mr. Joe Abyss?”

We seize it, soften, smile, then kiss

our bony sop.

It suffers our ingratitude,

but such it is with every prop.

We prize them when we’re in the mood.

Neglect, we know, can lead to feud

within our cluttered shop.

We nonetheless compose our day,

which beckons, “Take it from the top!”

Our feet stand firmly on the clay

until we glimpse that final ray

and mind the curtains as they drop.

At night we rest, replete or spare,

and dream on each success, each flop.

Through exhalations foul and fair

we organize that human air

that billows in and out at every stop.

LVI. What It Meant

It meant we’d get there when we could,

although we’d suffer angst and grit.

It meant we’d do just as we should,

despite the fact that something wouldn't

fit.

It meant, at times, that we’d give in;

at others, that we’d never quit.

It meant that we’d screw up again

then mouth our ritual amends

with mustered wit.

It meant we’d often sorely fail,

though now and then we’d score a hit.

We’d hound to death our fictive grail

then shrink our narrative to scale –

an epic to a skit.

It meant our truth was like a knot,

our hope – a narrow, hidden slit.

We pondered as we stirred our pot

that years ago we cared a lot

but now we couldn’t give a shit.

And while its vapors filled our tent,

the universe turned on its spit.

We conned it as around it went.

And though we guessed at what it meant,

we couldn’t fathom what we meant to it.

LVII. To My Friend

Because we’ve got this nice word “both”

that marks as ours the time we spend,

and hand in hand we keep our oath

to follow through the undergrowth

each bend,

each wrinkle in the other’s path,

no matter where the bypaths wend.

Because I mollify the wrath

of those who cannot solve your math

or comprehend

the riddles in your argument.

Because you’re ready to defend

my every careless, wayward hint,

my random sparks from fading flint,

my fragile dividend.

Because we know just when to rest

and give each other time to mend.

Because we know when not to jest,

when not to hound a solo quest

or spoil a solitary trend.

Because the list goes on and on

and will until it has no end.

Because it will well past the dawn –

indeed, until we both are gone.

Yes, this is why we call each other “friend”!

LVIII. Splendiferous Machines

The poem stands up and takes a breath.

It combs its hair, it wears its jeans.

It conjures up its magic math

and pacifies or puts to death

its fiends.

Its streets are paved, its gods are hymned,

its saints extolled in magazines.

Its prisons guard the lines that sinned.

Its nurseries are placed upwind  

of its latrines.

A school of wild ontologies

erects itself upon its greens,

replete with seven colleges

promoting latest knowledges

and manned by tenured deans.

It summons on its stage – to play

its history in varied scenes –

the conscripts of semantic clay

who work the land and win the day.

It bows before assenting queens.

And thus the poem commands itself,

apportioning its ways and means

and summoning its metric elf

to syllabize a sonic shelf

stacked tall with these splendiferous machines.

LIX.  Epistrophe (or, Feeding the Troll)

It seems we’re part of what we’ve mined.

We are our history, dear Mole!

Alas, my friend, you’re not so blind.

For look at all we’ve seen!  Unwind

the scroll!

Our legacy includes much more

than firing clay and mining coal.

Each chapter forms a precious drawer

of what we’ve salvaged from the gore

of woe and dole,

of all that’s bad in history

as we progress from goal to goal

within this aimless mystery

and ever-same epistrophe

which marks our onward stroll.

That’s why we keep on cherishing

these parts that make or break the whole.

Vignettes must keep from perishing,

despite the sharp disparaging

from carpish critics with no soul

who tell us that we’ve lost our way

in fables that are trite or droll.

But let them cackle, let them bray.

This history shall have its day!

Once more we get in line to feed the troll.

LX. Letter to Amy Perruso

Dear Amy,

Just this one request

(I’ll make it brief and say it straight):

Sit down and give yourself a rest.

These heavy tasks with which you’re pressed

can wait.

In fact they’re ours as much as yours.

You’ve shared them, and we’ve made them speak.

Sit down and let us settle scores.

Just watch your eagle as it soars

from peak to peak

past vultures feeding off decay

and scavenging uncommon cores.

Wrap up your trouble and dismay

and let us put them both away.

We’ll be your bureau drawers!

Enacting godly godless plots

with graceful wit and actions tactful,

we’ll magnify the brightest spots

and volley barbs and fire shots

with honed precision most impactful.

So lay thee down and have a nap

and give your brain deservéd pause.

We’ll shame the fools and spring each trap

and tell them they must cut their crap.

                Your dear friends,

Andy Jones and Gilchrist Haas

LXI. Oblique Strategies

1. An Inaudible Gong

Until volition comes to a halt

we’ve got this bunch of strategies

for mending every flaw and fault

that undergird our gay Gestalt

of pleas

and lies and prolonged queries, of laughter

that often leads to ridicule

and causes one man to hang from a rafter,

another to flea, leaving nothing after

but traces of fuel

and memories in the heads of others –

which intrigue but fade before very long

then reemerge in other men’s druthers,

or else from the lips of their lisping lovers

to brush an inaudible gong.

Yes, strategies strange and strategies strong!

As volition keeps going, on and on,

we pick them from out of a gleaming throng.

We examine them first so as not to choose wrong.

Sometimes we trade a king for a pawn.

Some are tightlipped, while others leak.

Some are new and some are antique.

Some boast quite a bit, though this one’s meek.

See that one dive off a dizzying peak!

Behold them all - these strategies oblique.

2. The Finest Lists

There ain’t no need to make a list,

for strategies don’t work that way.

Indeed, they oftener resist

us as we clasp them in our fists

of clay

(although it cannot be denied

that lists indeed are of a type

of strategy that’s often plied

when all the others have been tried

or aren’t yet ripe.

Ben Franklin and Jay Gatsby, too,

were fond of lists and penned a few.

The virtues, in the former’s view,

could help us better grasp the true

when numbered in their queue.

And Order was his very bane,

with Resolution on its heels.

For wouldn’t an untidy brain

on firm decisions place some strain

and turn resolve to broken wheels?

The latter listed aim by aim

some goals for mind and for physique,

foreshadowing, as readers claim,

his future in its daisy-chain.

The finest lists are always most oblique.)

3. Horace in a Hearse

Precisely for this reason, then,

there isn’t just one place to start

in bringing them into our ken.

For as I’ve said, there’s no Top Ten

in Art

or Action. (Hmm…a comely quote

to put into The Quotable Haas

for would-be bards to learn by rote

or strike an epigraphic note

to win applause

from some creative writing prof

who’s found me on the Internet

and noted that I’m standing off

from verse in print, at which I scoff.

The Net’s a better bet.

For print is on the wane, it seems,

and books of poetry don’t sell.

Just look at all those yellow reams

collecting dust on musty themes.

The Hippocrene’s an empty well.

Some sorcerer has placed a curse

on poems that aren’t melodied.

The sun has set on printed verse.

They’ve hauled off Horace in a hearse.

In this life all my poems shall go unfee’d.)

4. Muzzled Pup

Yes, mostly they elude our clutch.

Extracting them in retrospect

from spite and mundane such and such,

we baste and blame ourselves for much

neglect.

“How couldn’t we have spied this thing?

So unassuming. Does it speak?”

We seize it, bind its broken wing

and wrap solicitation’s sling

around its beak.

That’s what we do…we shut it up

and make of it a silly game

like Bingo or Gnip Gnop.

We pacify the muzzled pup.

“Don’t worry, kids…it’s tame!”

Voila! The strategy is gone,

and once again we grasp at straws.

The king has gobbled up each pawn.

It’s time to mow the checkered lawn.

We turn to Bach or Plato’s Laws

for inspiration, cheer and grist –

to what the muzzled pup agrees

will reinforce our shaky gist

or veil its flaws with antique mist.

But these of course are also strategies!

5. Ophelia Disguised as Sam-I-Am (or, Skirting the Periphery)

But look, I haven’t yet begun.

I’m skirting the periphery

and catching at each ready pun.

“Ophelia – get thee to a nun-

nery!”

Which makes no sense, but there it is.

I’m just expanding out a bit

by muddying false clarities

and springing proud temerities

that prison wit.

The routine seems to go like this:

I introduce some latest thought.

It wanders off in search of bliss.

Then soon the canto’s gone amiss.

The form for which I’ve fought

is tighter than the sense conveyed.

A balance has been unachieved.

The poem, alas, is poorly made

because some thought has boldly strayed

beyond the lines through which it breathed.

(Ophelia told her boyfriend, “Scram!”

and tossed her bodice in the creek.

She said, “You’re not for me, dear Ham!”

then left disguised as Sam-I-Am.

The players found Bill’s ending somewhat weak.)

6. Obliquity

And then there are the minor ways –

the obvious, the understood.

One maximizes holidays.

One looks up to the skies and prays

for good.

One leaves work early for a change

and sets his mind to other things.

One heads off to the putting range.

One contemplates how much is strange

that fortune brings.

You might call these “the things we do” –

the strategies that get us by,

the strategies that see us through,

that help us breathe and crawl and chew

and laugh and love and cry.

You’ll say that these are not oblique

because they’re things we do each day.

They do not move us to a peak

or offer secrets through some leak

within Creation’s passageway.

But here’s a fact for scribes and bards:

Obliquity is everywhere.

It’s all in how you read the cards.

Our strategies are in the shards

of turtle shells that fall from human care.

7. Cloned Affairs

At times it’s good to work alone,

and then to gather into pairs.

At first it held a single drone,

but now my life’s a chord of cloned

affairs.

I met my current semblable

one time while strolling back from Rome.

To love we were amenable.

The air is quite commendable

within our dome!

Our strategies will intersect,

knot up, then split and recombine

to unpredictable effect.

It’s rather pointless to inspect

which ones are hers and which are mine.

And then there are the ones that come

about by virtue of the pair.

Our kids, for instance. They are some.

They scratch and wail! They bang a drum!

Cacophony is in the air.

At times I try to bring it back

into myself where it began

before I felt an inner lack

and spied across this empty crack

another one to bridge the gaping span.

8. Our Fumbled Plays

It’s often good to shift our gaze

to trivia of lesser weight –

that passing thought, that minor phase,

those musings that our fumbled plays

create;

to choices that were less than great,

conceits that never garnered praise,

lost doodlings of uncertain date

that faded ere that basement crate

was set ablaze;

to tidbits that were left on trays

and harbingers that barged in late;

to primaries that fled the grays;

to gaffes that earned the boos and yays

that rang inside our pate;

to likenesses that don’t equate

but open yet another maze

where aspiration doesn’t wait

and inquiry does not abate

as folks flesh out their fertile clays

and clarify their means and ways

for strengthening their infant state

and rendering their past innate.

And meanwhile, as our thoughts rephrase,

we fumble and we stumble through to Fate!

9. The Act

-- for Pam, again --

The most subversive one of all’s

the strategy we call the Act.

It doesn’t matter where luck falls

or who has got the biggest balls.

In fact

one can’t predict when it will flash,

take hold, and rearrange one’s life,

reducing best laid plans to ash

and throwing keepsakes in the trash

and making strife

of all that comforted before

and seemed to be a part of us.

No one predicted sudden war

of elements within our store

that once did clothe and guard us.

But suddenly we must destroy,

must smash, must tear the idols down.

Our former love is sham decoy,

and all, besides destruction, ploy

for incubating false renown.

And so we on the sudden smash!

But then we reincorporate

the bits into a tender stash

we’ll not sell out for fame or cash.

The Act is lord of how we will create!

10. The Worlds to Which This Might Belong

We don’t know how it came to us.

Did some lone star or ancient tribe

intend for it to one day claim us

while half suspecting it would maim us?

Describe

the world to which this might belong!

A souvenir? Yes! And a herald!

Ten thousand generations strong,

embodying all right and wrong.

‘Tis quite a world

to which this might belong! It’s got

no flaws besides this single stitch

which must be pulled to keep it taut.

Its purpose much beleaguers thought.

What sort of world to which

this might belong? A mystery.

It causes joy, it causes fright.

Can we reject its ministry?

It isn’t of our history!

Is there a world in which this might

belong? And is it false or true?

We’ll use it now to bang our gong

and leave to artists to construe

such landscapes which it puts in view.

Alas! The worlds to which this might belong!

11. Giant Steps (or, Always Underway)

We’re always taking giant steps;

indeed, right now we’re underway.

They guide us through those heights and depths

and distances we on our maps

display.

At times they lead us far astray

on ever stranger flights and trips.

They help us stumble and sashay

from Eden out to old Cathay

on boundless ships.

Returning, we begin new laps

and train to strike another way.

This time we’ll earn applause and claps

by springing cold oppression’s traps

to dawn a brighter day.

When Lilliputians as he lay

bound Gulliver with cords and straps,

he didn’t sink into dismay,

nor did he think to curse or pray.

Instead he mused, amid the slaps

from countless sceptered six-inch chaps,

“What steps have led me here, I pray?”

Regret set in at times, perhaps.

But still, he never let them lapse –

those steps that threw the shadows of his clay.

12. Remember Quiet Nights

Remember all those quiet nights

that added up to nothing much.

No thunder echoed from the heights

to muffle lovers’ febrile flights

of touch.

Recall such evenings strolling by

as caused our metaphors to mix –

those blended hues that mollify

severities that multiply

in logic’s bricks.

And think on sunsets, fading fast,

we hardly noticed ere they left.

Already of the future past,

we didn’t mourn what wouldn’t last.

We didn’t feel bereft.

And recollect the silhouettes

that drowsed upon emerging dusk.

Day’s fingers plucked, in pirouettes,

arpeggios upon its frets.

The grain threw off its bodiced husk.

Yes, call to mind the crepuscules

waylaying memory in sleights,

igniting slow, through finer fuels,

the fire of dead conceits and rules.

Remember them.  Remember quiet nights.

13. Poet’s Pelf (or, Better in a Day)

-- for Kris Coffield --

It seems that you’ve been weathering

some tempest that has caused dismay.

But take it from a veteran:

Alas! ‘Twill all be better in

a day!

In this life nothing’s ever set;

God made us not of stone but clay.

And though I see you frown and fret,

I’m telling you, ‘twill all be bet-

ter in a day!

And Lucifer, before his fall,

beheld the welkin lined with gray.

“I’ll take advantage of this squall

to carve Inferno, then ‘twill all

be better in a day!”

And Emily, inside her room,

looked out to clouds that weren’t gay.

Although they glower Death – and Doom –

The Coffins crack – with April’s Bloom –

‘Twould all be better in a day!

Indeed, you’ve told me this yourself!

Here’s back at you in roundelay.

It’s simply honest poet’s pelf,

delivered by my metric elf:

“Good friend, ‘twill all be better in a day!”

14. Synaesthesia

Mix up the senses. Start with sight

and, like Picasso, place a nose

where odors can be gleaned in flight

and pupils stoop and duck like fright-

ened crows.

Then take the cone that funnels sound,

unwind and flatten taut like skin.

Caress it ‘til it’s full and round,

erect like Venus on her mound.

Then beat a din.

Which brings us to the flap of taste.

We’ll stretch it up to lick the eye.

An optic-salivary paste

will sweeten sight and slacken haste.

Let’s suck the sockets dry!

And now, the dual valves of smell

will vacuum clean the lapping tongue.

The mouth has reeked for quite a spell.

Olfactory is quick to tell

and fumigates from nose to lung.

At long last we arrive at touch

and with our thumb massage the ear.

We’ll cool off in its tactile hutch

and cease to ponder overmuch

the pulse, the throb of everything we hear.

15. An End in Art (or, The Unenclosed World)

Some strategies exist for when

we cannot seem to make a start.

I’ve borrowed this one from a friend.

It works for folks who seek an end

in art.

It has to do with modeling.

You take the nearest thing around –

a broken bottle or a string,

a brat that’s suffered coddling,

an unknown sound.

In fact just now I’ve done the same.

I’ve taken scraps of the mundane

and placed them here inside this frame

to end a line, provide a name,

or build to a refrain.

And then, to make them all cohere

within a pleasing bricolage

that functions as a broken mirror

or prism into which we peer

to recognize an alter-image,

we have the child avoid the glass

while picking up a blunted shard.

He tapes the string, then whisks the mass

at squirrels bouncing in the grass.

The unenclosed world hums beyond his yard.

16. Taming the Rhizome

For some it’s good to mechanize

whatever’s idiosyncratic.

Herein a big decision lies:

to tame or not to tame the rhi-

zomatic?

That’s sort of what I’ve done in here.

Poetic thought can grow and grow.

It needs some form to make it clear

and curb excess. Some blade or shear

to clip and mow

the parts that look or smell like waste,

have none but passing interest

or fail at once to please the taste

or seem contrived, made up, debased

or cannot be assessed.

Deleuze glanced over at Foucault

and said, “Michel, where is the root?

My book is quite a mess, you know.

I’ve lost my way in mire and woe

and fathom neither trunk nor shoot.”

“Mon cher, your plight is rather plain.

I can’t discern your episteme.

You need to discipline and train

the genii within your brain –

these products of your scattered R.E.M.!”

17. In the Eyes and Angled Ells (or, Like Riffs from Adrian Belew)

-- for Chris Sheldon --

We’re always pondering what’s best

in sky above, on earth below.

Each guess we make is second-guessed,

and truly we are never blessed

to know.

At times our loss is most complete –

the loss at which we find ourselves

in pondering our own defeat

and finding memory replete

with broken shelves.

And that is why the random serves

to guide us when we’ve lost our way.

Enlivened by its jolts and swerves

that spark reactivated nerves,

we then resume our play

with confidence and certainty –

those phantoms of our make believe

that grant us opportunity

and guide us through eternity…

or otherwise ‘til death’s reprieve.

So when you don’t know what to do,

seek guidance from the turtle shells,

from planet paths that run askew

like riffs from Adrian Belew,

from corners in the eyes and angled ells.

18. Immaculate Consistency

Immaculate consistency –

achievable, but rare indeed

in both collective history

and solitary minstrelsy.

No creed

or conjured episteme can grant

that perfect, unexpected hum

we’ve entered from directions slant,

forsaking some recanted cant

gone deaf and dumb

to truth and cosmic savoir faire.

Unmanufactured faith and trust

in self and selves will get us there –

concentric rings of binding care

that will not turn to rust.

Our comfort is a plenitude

that has no need of boost or change.

Its walls are with conviction strewed;

we’ve no desire to fret or feud

or deem each other rapt or strange.

Like everything, it has to end –

our cadence of enraptured wit.

At first a solipsistic trend,

we seized it, passed it friend to friend!

We found consistency immaculate!

19. Retrograde I

Go down below. Begin again.

Don’t start up here, but at the bottom.

No need for Well Temperament or Base Ten.

Multiple stabs at how, where, when?

I got ‘em.

Strategies on many fronts

with no divine apology.

Atemporal cosmology.

Suppose things happen all at once.

Chronology.

So many ways to begin with fun.

We wipe ourselves off and turn about;

we emerge from some decentered spout

(another way to get things done).

Let’s work from the inside out.

And acquisition begins with theft.

Creation tidies up all waste;

at birth we are of death bereft.

Chinese can be written from right to left.

Order, I guess, is a matter of taste.

Does the assonance jar? We’ll make it pure.

If the line’s too long, get the shearers. Chop, chop!

For poetry ain’t no sinecure.

A novel strategy, to be sure:

we read from the bottom and write our way to the top.

20. Retrograde II

We read from the bottom and write our way to the top.

A novel strategy, to be sure;

for poetry ain’t no sinecure.

If the line’s too long, get the shearers. Chop, chop!

Does the assonance jar? We’ll make it pure.

Order, I guess, is a matter of taste.

Chinese can be written from right to left.

At birth we are of death bereft.

Creation tidies up all waste,

and acquisition begins with theft.

Let’s work from the inside out

(another way to get things done).

We emerge from some decentered spout;

we wipe ourselves off and turn about.

So many ways to begin with fun.

Chronology.

Suppose things happen all at once.

Atemporal cosmology

with no divine apology.

Strategies on many fronts?

I got ‘em.

Multiple stabs at how, where, when.

No need for Well Temperament or Base Ten.

Don’t start up here, but at the bottom.

Go down below. Begin again.

21. Why We’re Here

Don’t break the silence. Let it be.

All strivings dwindle and recede.

Let effort seem unmannerly.

Non-strategy’s a strategy

indeed!

Don’t chase away the waning noise,

but let it simply come to rest.

They’ll soon be fast asleep, the boys,

and tucked away, their worldly toys

inside some chest.

And never mind the whistling flap

we seldom make a mention of

when day beats hard upon our cap

and edicts gather on our lap.

We’ll turn attention off.

We will not even punctuate

enough to riot into sound.

A period will demonstrate

the hush of all that’s meek and great

behind the sun’s diurnal round.

So don’t be bothered by the lull.

Don’t be afraid or think it queer.

We’re simply turning on a pole

that can’t be moved, that no one stole.

Don’t break the silence. That is why we’re here.

22. Cascades

that pour through thought and language like

a simile that’s come undone

when ego grabs an open mic

but evil id steps up to strike

or stun

the ear and its credulity

for prim and proper word and phrase

that mask both fun and cruelty,

maintaining staged duality

of clouds and rays

in which the weather’s all that counts

because the other didn’t sell…

though as for that it was announced.

We offered it, but no one pounced.

So it returned to Hell.

We’ll haul it up sometime again.

Perhaps it waits its latter day.

It couldn’t come to speech just then.

We placed it back into its pen.

We’ll air it out this Saturday.

But never mind. Cascades go on

and happen even as we speak.

We’re so much blinded by our dawn,

we seldom notice as they spawn

on tongues that roll our phrases cheek to cheek.

23. Your You of Now

You’ve only got one single you,

and I can’t say just why that’s so.

Humanity twists forward through

a forward-threading, threaded screw.

I know

because I’ve been here for awhile.

So get to know your You of Now.

The other yous you have on file

are figments of your fancy’s guile

that fill your brow.

Your you of old, your yesteryou,

implores you with his feigned regrets.

Ignore him. He’ll just make you blue.

I think he wants a buck or two

to help him pay his debts.

Your future (future perfect?) you

will certainly have been a hit

from some odd sempiternal view

that would look great if it were true

or if some godhead sanctioned it.

But never mind these phantom you’s!

Your You of Now is all that’s sure.

The others are not there to choose.

The past and future are a ruse.

You will not be because you never were!

24. As Robert Hunter Said (Shakedown Poem)

It happens here, it happens there –

a neverending slew of its.

It hardly seems to compass care –

a bricolage you’ll have to share

in bits.

You thought it added to a whole,

but here it is, a mess of parts.

We can’t distinguish branch from bole

or dead ends veering from the goal

or fits from starts.

Event with no priority

is disconnected from event

with no posteriority.

The random has seniority

despite our best intent.

But that is how it is in Art,

despite old sooth of sages dead.

It cobbles up as part on part

like trinkets at a Southwark mart

where Donne and Marlowe bought their bread.

They’re here assembled on my cart –

a restless, hopeful, motley spread.

Though some are dull, a few are smart.

“Don’t tell me this poem ain’t got no heart.

You just gotta poke around!” as Hunter said!

25. In Open Rhyme

Let’s say the intonation’s off.

There’s much that we can do to cope!

For pit is not the same as trough

and hack’s a relative of cough.

A mope

will better serve for melancholic,

jerk for bastard’s often mete,

inebriate for alcoholic.

Children do not play, they frolic…

or they bleat –

a metaphoric friend of whine.

We’re talking, here, specific words.

More often, though, they intertwine

and only in conjunction shine

like stacks of minor thirds.

An argument can come to naught,

although all else is kept alive

through tone that’s either slack or taut

depending how it’s rigged or wrought

or fashioned through its gist and jive.

Some say that all there is is tone –

that in abstracto thought’s a crime.

Without it meaning turns to stone

or calcifies as gnomic bone –

though bone itself returns in open rhyme.

26. Vestibule

Intention is inscrutable

more often than we’d care to know.

Reality is mutable;

to this fact is imputable

the woe

attending each and every art

that sets in when we stall or thud.

A wheel is broken on our cart.

We need a strategy to chart

us out of mud,

to reinterpret our mistake

as satisfying best intent

and clinching what was long at stake,

accepting glitches for the sake

of what we made and meant;

to reconfigure error’s trap

as leading to a vestibule

that wasn’t present on our map

in which we transmute gold from crap,

or Snowmane from a lowly mule.

And that is how we work things out.

It often goes like this in life.

Misgiving, or a nagging doubt,

confounds us, then we turn about

to wrestle satisfaction from our strife.

27. Context and Fine Fortuity (or, The Whole of Which We’re Part)

This thing you love’s too tight or long

and leads to someone’s awkward cough.

Could be the situation’s wrong;

the context, the Zusammenhang,

is off.

Perhaps it needs a cooler air,

a richer soil, a better friend.

Perhaps it’s deafened from the blare

of noisy neighbors on its square

at either end.

Could be we’re all a bit like this

and suffer incongruity.

Our lives are constantly amiss;

we think that elsewhere all is bliss

and fine fortuity.

So transplantation is a choice

for us and for our cherished toys.

We hope they’ll find their inner voice

and, when they do, that they’ll rejoice

in claiming sudden grace and poise.

Surroundings matter much, it seems,

in life and letters as in art –

determining the stuff of dreams

and buttressing our enthymemes,

encompassing the whole of which we’re part.

28. Of Ease Artisanal and Grace

Another useful strategy’s

to know just when to shut your trap.

Your works will beg you, “If you please,

desist from oral sophistries!

A nap

will surely do your mouth some good!

Please be our silent engineer.

You’ve made us well. That’s understood!

And all is fine beneath the hood.

Give ‘em a peer

if you’re so sure they need some proof

that what you’re at is not a waste!

It’s in good form to look aloof

and not to play the gabbing goof.

Give ‘em a little taste!

of ease artizanal and grace –

that graceful confidence and poise

that comes from having built this place;

that look of ease upon your face,

suggesting all that love employs

in fashioning this other world

that runs without much further talk.

The dome is set, the gate is pearled,

the flag’s been raised aloft unfurled.

So zip it shut, go out and take a walk!”

29. Those Moods on Sunday Afternoons

Those moods on Sunday afternoons

emerging from a well within,

inspired by half-remembered tunes,

or memory of youth that swoons

in sin,

or thoughts of some old self-neglect

in which we compromised ourselves

through rash impulses left unchecked

that caused possessions to be wrecked

or placed on shelves

because we couldn’t throw them out.

You know the moods I mean, I’m sure.

There’s much that they can be about;

they flow through more than just one spout,

and rarely are they pure.

Nor can they in a single breath

and all at once be analyzed.

They well from much too deep a depth

to pin the thief within the theft.

They’re left unthought and unsurmised

for us to feel them all the more.

Perhaps such moods are strategies

to keep alive our chastened core –

alive for poetry and lore,

alive for acts of love and love that frees.

30. Practice and Amenity

We nurture many practices. 

At times we need to sort them out

before we can get back to biz

amid repotted cactuses

of doubt

and redirected ivy’s hope.

Said otherwise, we make distinct

those things with which we have to cope

from others of a broader scope

with which we’re linked

because they don’t amount to chores

that keep us from our highest wish –

like paying bills and cleaning floors

or seeing in and out of doors

the most expensive fish

to lay on plates before the rich…

the things, that is, we do to earn

our right to sleep above the ditch,

(not in it) and the right to pitch

our dreams into a higher urn

like faith or art or something fine

betokening humanity –

some practice through which I divine

what’s crucial to me, what is mine –

my style and manner of amenity.

31. A Smile That’s Only Partly Frown

We learn to make use of the lull –

such times as I’ve described above

when moods suggest our lives as dull

or abject, lost, or overfull

with love

that hasn’t ever met its match.

It happens late in afternoon

when suddenly we deattach

from claims that hold us to our patch –

that promised boon

we’ll clinch if we remain in place

and cultivate our trusted lot.

But how we’d love some other space

or air in which to breathe or trace

some other breath or plot!

We chew on this, we think it through.

We change our seat, we shift our view.

We take a walk and find some pew,

tell Deity that life’s askew.

“I’d elsewhere rather be. Would you?”

Returning as the sun goes down,

the lull has ended in a draw,

a smile that’s only partly frown.

We’ve pinned it with a verb or noun

we utter or we keep within our jaw.

32. Infinitesimal Gradations (or, Our Gumption)

Infinitesimal gradations

bear us through the core of art,

whose ideational gestations

foment there, inside creation’s

heart.

We enter through the lull, the void –

that emptiness that I’ve described –

with discomposure unalloyed,

nor with religious feelings cloyed,

nor grouped nor tribed

with anyone we’d like to claim

as brethren in a common goal.

We’ve simply fallen from our frame

towards an unknown wall or flame.

At least we’ve got our mole!

Our inner instinct, that’s to say,

that drives us to our finer points –

the hand that we prefer to play,

our own peculiar dismay,

the energy that moves our joints,

the image that we make, our Bild,

the verve we fancy we convey,

the tune that haunts us and its lilt,

our efforts on a single stilt,

our gumption as we brave our latest day.

33. The Junk with Which We’re Rife

Complexity intensifies

approaching the noetic core.

Aesthetic judgment trains its eyes

and ears on every new surprise

in store

as syntagms smash then recombine

with affects wrested from our dreams;

with aptitudes in slow decline,

imagos that are not quite mine;

with enthymemes

constructed from recovered parts

of logic, memory, and sense;

with scraps from long forgotten arts –

their triumphs and their fits and starts,

their hindrance, their expense.

We face it with a certain ease,

and this is all that we can do.

There’s so much in there that will please –

the funny words, the spooky trees,

the patterns that we must construe

to bring this otherworld to life,

to make it speak or give it wings,

to rummage buried love and strife,

to tag the junk with which we’re rife.

Behold! An alter-world of other things!

34. Marx’s Lost Twelfth Thesis on Feuerbach

“In contracting reality,

philosophers have always erred

by forging drab normality

from gross materiality.”

Marx stared

down blankly at his German scrawl

and killed the sentence with an X.

Eleven theses said it all…

“Except,” he quipped, “perhaps a call

for better sex!”

But still he felt a certain lack

which might be better left unwrit.

He feared the thought would throw a crack

of doubt into his stolid stack

of theoretic wit.

He sighed. “Just this and nothing more?

I’ll draft a final point in verse:

Another option lies in store

for bringing praxis to the fore.

Our songs rehearse and re-rehearse

what yesterday we were about,

what Monday morning can’t repeat,

and what we’ve learned to do without.

Art rips its object inside-out.

At times it turns the world up on its feet!”

35. Owl of Minerva

“The owl of Minerva takes flight only as the dusk begins to fall.”

                    -- Hegel

“Once the search has begun, something will be found.”

         -- Eno & Schmidt

It’s in the nature of a search

that something always will get found.

Minerva’s up there on her perch

to see we’re not left in the lurch

or drowned.

She helps us find our history,

whose subject – chained, released and crowned –

is sanctified with mystery

and lyrical epistrophe

to mark its bound

and greet itself at periods,

shake hands, embrace, ascend a mound

from which to view the pyramids

beneath those starry myriads

with which our skies are gowned.

And as our priests maintain the churches,

crafting theorems to expound,

Minerva glides to other perches,

stimulating microsearches

held on high or lower ground.

Some search for fair, though some for foul,

concealing greed that would astound

and shaming honor with a scowl.

They don’t escape Minerva’s owl,

who sits and ponders as the world turns round.

36. Cascades II (or, The Colon and the Ampersand)

that plunge through us from distances

and planets we will never know.

We wonder what the instance is

that caused these keen resistances

to flow,

to wake us from our lethargy

and spur us to the here and now

with all the natal energy

that scripts a starry liturgy

upon our brow –

astrologers’ phrenology

encoding what we’ll think and say

and do without apology

because it’s all astrology

transfigured through our clay.

And that’s the strategy, dear Jane,

dear Thomas, that will get us by –

the knowledge that our windowpane

conceals from us our cosmic stain

that comes to vision as we ply

the symbols waiting in our hand

to scan the pane of how and why –

this colon and this ampersand.

For when the eye is filled with sand

it cannot very well see past the sty.

37. Riding It Out

We count our days as past they glide

and temper mindlessness with doubt.

We toss and turn from side to side.

That’s Life at times, and we must ride

it out.

It stops and starts and carries on

through floods and periods of drought.

We clear a path and thereupon

embark on some new marathon.

We ride it out.

At times we gaze in ecstasy

as Life emerges from its spout.

Then as we grasp its tendency

it falls short of expectancy.

We merely ride it out.

Our satisfaction comes to us,

though we’re not sure what it’s about.

We smile and smirk and clap and cuss

and board a brightly colored bus

as arm in arm we ride it out.

We’re at our best when hearts are rife

with plans to put all shame to rout

by questioning our hate, our strife.

Yes, we’ll agree that “Life is Life,”

but we’ll do more than simply ride it out!

38. Approaching the Penultimate

Approaching a penultimate

that’s always more than next to last.

This truth is our emolument:

We never can have all of it

so fast.

We never can have all we want,

or all we sometimes think we need.

Desire is better somewhat gaunt.

We drink not from some final font

through which we’re freed.

I never can have all of you;

you will not render me your whole.

You lend me parts on which to chew.

I give them back; their loss, I rue.

Your soul is not my soul.

You never can have all of God.

You’re only part of Him, it seems.

You’re just a lump of clayey clod.

The other parts spare not the rod

and strike with moral enthymemes.

In fact, we never have it all,

for all is infinitely vast.

It’s why desire seems so small

although a never-ending hall.

The last is never more than next to last.

39. Time for Verse

You’ll know it when your final dime

has fallen from your empty purse

into a gutter filled with grime.

You’ll know it then. You’ll know it’s time

for verse.

And when the barbs slip through your pen

and ink into an ugly curse

or random shots of sloppy Zen,

you’ll know it then and only then.

It’s time for verse!

You’ll know it when your love is weak

and magnanimity is terse,

and plenitude has passed its peak

and nothing in it wants to speak.

You’ll know it’s time for verse.

And when the author hands you lines

you’ve no desire to rehearse;

when in contempt you glare at swines

avoiding detonated mines…

that’s when you’ll know it’s time for verse.

You’ll know it as you know yourself

when things cannot get any worse

and hell is bursting on your shelf

to suffocate your inner elf.

You’ll know precisely then it’s time for verse.

40. Finale: The Sutra of Innumerable Meanings

A plain near Holy Eagle Peak,

with eighty thousand bodhisattvas

gathered there to hear him speak,

with monks and griffins great and meek,

and not a

one who lacked awakening

or hadn’t garnered much esteem

by casting off illusion’s sling

that keeps us wrapped in everything

that seems supreme

but hides its own impermanence

behind the wily aggregates

of transitory sound and sense

and sundry states of ignorance

that turn us on the spits

of samsara, of birth and death

and universal happenstance

in which we bounce from breath to breath

or fall to evil like Macbeth

while bringing others to mischance.

But now the Holy Eagle soared

and lent its shadow to the sheens

that decked the vast, enlightened horde,

as through the Buddha slowly poured

a cosmos filled with love and skillful means.

*    *    *

LXI. Penultimate

A slew of strategies exist

for bringing discourse to a close –

for roping off each turn and twist

and dressing them in clouds and misty

prose.

We make an art of how we end,

devoting energy and sweat

to siphoning each wayward trend

and leaving little to defend

or cause much fret.

All endings make us somewhat sad.

We know someday we’ll start again.

Although a respite won’t be bad,

we’ll forfeit much of what we had

when Now retreats to Then.

This poem, indeed, has seen its day.

It’s raised its case, it’s made its stands.

Behold it in its stacked display

of cinquains lean and cantos gay.

The author now dusts off his hands,

removes the scaffolding, the ropes,

the signs of discontinued strands.

He boxes up his unused tropes

and looks up to the upper slopes

that circumscribe this vale of shifting sands.

LXII. In Verse and Dreams

Dear Mole, we part the best of friends.

This canto marks abandonment!

Escape will much relieve the bends

developing as habit rends

intent.

Dismantling a recipe

is not so easy as it seems.

For form so often did agree

with content as they mingled free

in verse and dreams,

in stanzas and in daily thought…

so much so as to make us doubt

the origins in which we’re caught,

forgetting that we bravely fought

our way up through this spout.

Some day, dear Mole, we’ll stroll on back

to have a look at what we made.

We’ll study fissures in the crack

through which we paved our metric track

and call to mind each escapade

that succored us along our way.

We’ll know this journey had to end

as all does that begins with clay

and ends in myth and roundelay.

Until we meet again, dear Mole, dear friend!

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