A POET WALKS INTO A BAR
Have you seen my horse
No
Any priests, Irishmen or rabbis
No
How about a Black Russian
Category: Uncategorized
RULE BRITTANICA
RULE BRITTANICA
Mostly musty now
Google-buried deep
in library stacks and garage
sale Take if for a Dollar boxes
Generations
denied the pleasure
of sitting with a volume
rich and heavy to the hand
and knowing you could know
everything there was to know
about whatever started
somewhere with an M
to whatever started somewhere with an O
FORCEPS AGAIN
FORCEPS AGAIN
Science tries its best to help
nature from birth to death
They grasp your tiny head
to pull you in
and tether you to tubes
to stop your going
THE OTHER CHEEK
THE OTHER CHEEK
I have a long record
of giving in to bullies
A bad precedent was set
when the doctor slapped me
and I didn’t slap him back
FIFTY PHOTOSHOPPED SHADES OF DORIAN GRAY
FIFTY PHOTOSHOPPED SHADES OF DORIAN GRAY
In Oscar Wilde’s novel
the picture ages while the man remains young
On Facebook
the man ages while his picture remains young
NUDE
NUDE
Naked is not the same as nude
Naked is a baby
on a bearskin rug
Grandma in a nursing home
daily bathed by cold-eyed nurse
Nude is Venus rising from the sea
Nude is Marilyn
posing for a calendar
with nothing on but the radio
FOR VICTOR
FOR VICTOR
The only trick an old dog can learn
is how to be an old dog
The minimum of turns one has to take
before lying down for that nap
That a bark is as good as a chase
for keeping squirrels off the deck
And that after all these years
of standing up for your standing friends
you’ve likely earned their kneeling by you now
DERVIL
DERVIL
Dervil was the only cat
I ever knew with opposable thumbs
He didn’t really have them
but you could see
that he remembered them
from a recent incarnation
as a slightly lower life form
Studiously unrolling the roll
and flushing it down the toilet
Standing tall to grasp and turn
handles on the doors
A CAUTION AGAINST TOO MUCH CHURCH TOO SOON
A CAUTION AGAINST TOO MUCH CHURCH TOO SOON
Brother Wally at age three or four
sitting on the tracks as the train approaches
wanting to find out what it’s like to be an angel
The last minute rescue
granting him some fame and slack
when he went back to being
the little devil he had been the day before
THE DEATH OF A THOUSAND CUPS
THE DEATH OF A THOUSAND CUPS
Some die by inches, some by ounces
Little by little he sank below the surface
Each meeting less and less of him there
– a discussion without a quorum
It’s been a few months now
and he hasn’t appeared in dreams
or haunting our old haunts
It was so long
since he knew he was alive
he may not yet know that he is dead