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Glossolalia

I put in my day with the commonplace,
with courtesies in checkout lanes,
small talk, the weather, last night's game.

I say hello like an altar boy's
et cum spiritu tuo
to the nun as she's crossing the street,
the same to my neighbor mowing his lawn,
and paperboy riding his bike.

But at night when I put myself in you,
I babble babble like Tennyson's brook,
and love is merely a four letter word.
It's as though we are speaking in tongues.
 
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Winter's Fast Approaching, My Dear

It seems like yesterday at Bryn Mawr
we ate Cortland apples on the green
the while two mutts played, one in heat,
and we laughed in our Calvin Klein jeans.

Soon there came baccalaureate masses,
sharkskin suits, silk ties, silk purses,
the sheen and currency of our ambition.
They matter very little now, my Dear.

You look so fine in your dungarees,
scissoring in the flower garden
to bring the last of the marigolds in
whose fragrance will fill these autumn nights
before the fire that too soon will flicker
and flowers that will wilt one by one.

Come. The quilt's as light as a feather
on your nakedness to have and to hold
as long as there's heat in my skin
while the dim sun sets and the nights grow cold.
 
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Second Chances

Neither wanted the album prints
of holidays on the beach in Marseiile.
We fought for the Bentley; I got the Vauxhall
with one hundred thousand miles between

you, the party of the first part,
and me the second, eating canned tuna
in a one room walk up where oral sex
was a pint of stout on a sofa bed.

That never was Sir Galahad, Dear,
sweeping you up on his stallion,
and my Katherine or the one whose name
I forgot was but my imagination

that now sees the ghost of Uncle Fred
reflected in our bottle of port,
pouring a glass for his Tilly again
out on the settee in their garden.

I can almost smell the blossoms,
however much it snows tonight
as I start the fire with writs from the attic
so that the Phoenix may rise again

while you there, couchant on the couch,
laugh when I French kiss your wrinkled brow
after which you tickle my paunch
with pearly white love bites soft as your touch.
 
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The Devil in Miss Jones

Miss Jones is a home economics teacher
who recalls her once hot body
that could have been pierced one night in Miami
with one more Black Russian under her skin
while she waited for Daphne's HUNGRY HEART,
but BORN TO BE WILD stayed in the needle
blue because her soul was white
as yesterday's sheets on Mother's bed.

Ring! Ring! It's Raúl. Tweety sings
like a love bird in the living room
where lights are dim, a beer's on ice,
and a glass is on top of a doily.
Her right shoulder voice is a friend tonight
with the devil perched on her left

until dawn creeps through Venetian blinds,
her Dos Equis Don Juan creeps through the door,
and she packs her briefcase with room enough
for the necktie and tie pin left behind.
 
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Renewal of Vows

We've lived too long in Leggoland
with his and her bathroom sinks
and separate cups for Listerine.

I'll bring fresh mint for your lips,
candles to light and Beaujolais.
I'll French kiss sweetness on your tongue.
I'll build a fire in the fireplace.

Tonight I pledge to shake your world
unlike the snowflakes in the globe
that rests upon the mantelpiece.

I'll be gentle, I'll be kind.
If you feel cold, I'll comfort you,
my embrace your only clothes,

as if I never did before;
no minister, no altar call.
Tonight we stay at home.
 
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Flea Market

Frank shakes his head with "Why oh, why?"
as Joe Joe starts to sell his wares
since, being frank, he knew no guy
would buy such gizmo have-been-theres

because Frank knew he'd never woo
Tom, Dick, or Harry to be frank,
to buy his gizmos even new,

but being Frank, he doesn't know
why Joe Joe's gizmos sell so well
and his doohickeys never do.
 
The Note She Left on his Dash

Dear Brad,

As I sit in the dark writing this note
in the front seat of your SUV
neon signs across the street
bleed Rooms to Rent $30 and up
or maybe down if it's just for an hour
because all the alleys are taken.

I hear the digital clock crow twice
and watch you both having steamy coffee
by the window in a greasy spoon
where you will order the usual,
an omelette with plenty of onions
to hide the odor of perfume

and the fetid panties I found
you hid in the glove compartment
before you creep home for pretend,
I asleep at 3:00 a.m.,
but you alone as you read this lament
and later with your stench in the bed.
 
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Weeping Willow

The willow tree outside our house
is Laurel once washing her hair
whose golden tresses were as fair
as faerie leaves dancing in the air.

"The dishwasher needs to be emptied,
living room floors need to be swept,
and corners to be gotten to.
Enough of your daydreaming, Will!"

"But Laurel, Dear, stay out here.
It's too rectangular in there.

And see how all the faerie leaves
are dancing in the air."
 
The Ghost of Guy Fawkes

Try though I did to blow up Parliament,
we share a bond. We both did sin.

King James, when you die you too shall lament.
Try though I did to blow up Parliament,

your god, the one that kings invent
that drew and quartered me is but your twin.

Try though I did to blow up Parliament,
we share a bond. We both did sin.
 
L'Histoire du Parc des Buttes Chaumont

Mon Ami, this park, once filled with gibbets,
had nooses dangling for the king's justice
to show Parisians, Jews, and gypsies
crime only pays the hangman's wages.

Whenever the queen complained after dusk
she barely could see all of the hangings
his majesty pointedly ordered
criminals, lords, even a bishop,
enter hell under one hundred lanterns.

Since Avignon was no longer papal,
Louie could only dream of annulment,
observing the fool fanning her face.

"I feel like mushrooms frying tonight.
Is Enguerrand dead yet, Mon Cheri?"
she said as Valois decanted her wine
with a wink and a nod and a c'est la vie.


http://www.lookandlearn.com/history...img=1&search=gibbet+of+Montfaucon&bool=phrase

It's not Halloween, but it is rather ghoulish.
 
Paradelle Nightmare

It was but a nightmare of the Jabberwock;
It was but a nightmare of the Jabberwock,
whatever the hell that is;
whatever the hell that is.
but of whatever that Jabberwock is
Hell! it was a nightmare!

Perhaps I'm a who who's mad, you know;
Perhaps I'm a who who's mad, you know,
who knows some devil Slithy;
who knows some devil Slithy,
some slithy devil perhaps who knows
I'm a mad Who's Who, you know.

In the nighttime I hear Brillig.
In the nighttime I hear Brillig
and Tove who carol with Lewis Carroll,
and Tove who carol with Lewis Carroll.
Here in the nighttime I carol with...Who?
Lewis Carroll, Brillig, and Tove.

Here in the nighttime, Brillig,
I'm mad with that nightmare the Jabberwock was
of a devil perhaps, Who knows?
but Lewis Carroll, (who's Carol?)
Slithy, Tove, and you who know
whatever the hell it is.....?
 
How Ghouls Do Apple Bobbing

Bubble, bubble,
boil some trouble,
methyl isocyanate,
a jarful of formaldehyde
with pig's feet that were left inside.

Edema, psychosis,
tubular necrosis,
not for us, nor ghosts, nor djinns,
maybe Dick and Jane.

A dead man’s cock
in a smelly sock
that's warming the oven.
Wormchew Boy! Go get a peck
of apples. ‘Tis time. ‘Tis time.
 
By the Light of the Silv'ry Moon

We saw so many holes that summer,
holes in Rome with frescos of saints,

Paris's less known catacombs,
and those in Ypres Salient

whose trenches were once filled with blood
where poppies now dance in the wind

as if red flowers ever could
cover up ghosts under white crosses

of stick figure boys who should have been roaring
twenties dancing with their honeys
by the light of the silv'ry moon.
 
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Martha's Tour of Indelible Beaches

Martha recalled when you didn't ask why
D-Day would sometimes explode in Tom's sleep
as long as paychecks came on a Friday.

She stood by the shoreline thinking of Tom.
His nightmares had paratroops stuck in clay
near Omaha Beach like toy soldiers found
under a Levittown bedroom window.

She also recalled on Long Island Sound
a summer's day of fishhooks and minnows
and blood in a bucket near Oyster Bay
she'll visit again after please, Jesus,
Đà Nẵng where Sammy once walked its beaches.
 
(AP) WWII Soldier Found

Deathless joining of the ultimate
was the warrior's prize they said
just before the landing craft
opened wide its great white teeth,
and he vanished in the jungle,
cursing Nakamura's world
that screamed his name in Japanese
on the beach at Morotai.

Conscripted aborigine,
Attun foraged thirty years,
stabbing snakes in strangler trees
that tasted better boiled than fried,
and while his snake was boiling hot,
he thought about the shrines he made
of combat bootlace camouflaged
that look like snakes on strangler trees.

Sometimes there were carcasses
whose tags were those of dogs they said
he dragged to where the GI's slept,
the owners of his island now,
and when the night was full moon bright
he prayed for ocean pea soup mist
to leave a mangled body there
and etch a cross in sand nearby.

They'll take him to Jakarta
although he wanted Kao-hsiung
to hear again its poetry,
but as the newsmen sleep tonight
he buries boots they gave to him
and sleeps the way he always did
in sand nearby the chopper blades
with two new laces pocketed
that look like snakes on strangler trees.
 
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Surreal Poems Nos. 9 &10

"Neologism" as in Merriam
and Webster noun, no. 1:
"a new word or expression,
meaningless, except to the coiner,

he said to the blinrutz in the corner
while the weepaigle read what he said
perched upon his shoulder

which made the Word
that wasn't flesh
laugh at Moses crushing stones
in the only other corner.
 
To Be Rich Is Glorious

In Qufu where the master was born
a groom can have his honeymoon sooner
with Ling who loves karaoke bars
on red lantern nights before the next wedding,

reminding all the American business
her name means swallow, the bird, of course,
and knows enough of their white devil English
to wink while mouthing a long neck beer.

In a doodad stall across the street
a plastic Lao Tzu statue is smiling
at t-shirts for sale that hang on a tree
a huckster tells tourists is, but it isn't,

a ginkgo biloba two thousand years old
on which Chairman Mao once hanged a duke,
and if I lift a dollar from my pocket,
he'll show me the photo to prove it.
 
greenmountaineer said:
In Qufu where the master was born
a groom can have his honeymoon sooner
with Ling who loves karaoke bars
on red lantern nights before the next wedding,

reminding all the American business
her name means swallow, the bird, of course,
and knows enough of their white devil English
to wink while mouthing a long neck beer.

In a doodad stall across the street
a plastic Lao Tzu statue is smiling
at t-shirts for sale that hang on a tree
a huckster tells tourists is, but it isn't,

a ginkgo biloba two thousand years old
on which Chairman Mao once hanged a duke,
and if I lift a dollar from my pocket,
he'll show me the photo to prove it.
Click to expand...
people are people the world over

yet another of your pieces that is multi-facted, engaging, and cleanly written. so clean, the words disappear behind the images.
 
butters said:
people are people the world over

yet another of your pieces that is multi-facted, engaging, and cleanly written. so clean, the words disappear behind the images.
Click to expand...

Thanks, butters. A little light verse. My daughter spent 2 weeks in China 3 1/2 years ago as a junior in high school and would agree that people are people the world over.
 
Indelible Stains

In the black and blue darkness of midnight,
she never prays but says to herself
she'd like to have a tongue-glove compartment
with cyanide where her wisdom tooth was,

except for all of the paper mâché
thingamabobs on her dresser
next to the first bottle she warmed
at midnight before a lullaby

instead of the scuff of a leather heel
when the bedroom door slammed Shut
Up! like a jackhammer up her ass
for the grease stain left on his pants.

Madeline thought she had seen it all,
until just then there by the door
stood a doll-faced Raggedy Ann,
staring at the man in the moon
with a plastic knife in her hand.
 
Time Machine 1963

I'm sitting in the back seat of
our '59 Cats Eyes Chevrolet,
Mom and Dad in the front seat,
a thermos of coffee, no belts,

Mom humming On Wisconsin
where Grandma and Uncle Ken make
the best vanilla ice cream
in a cabin up in the Dells.

But there comes a day you no longer swim
in rivers so clean you can swallow
the water Dad pushes you in
while Mom in her Jantzen waves to us,
and Grandma's sipping lemonade.

There's an inch of snow on the diamond tonight
where last summer we never thought
the Yanks would have their heads up their ass
to be swept by L.A. in the Series,

and Timmy's Cooper and my dog Spot
growl, show their teeth and form a pack
to follow deer prints into the woods
among the slag heaps and holes in the ground
when the sky turns black in Allentown.


I usually don't comment on my poems but make an exception here. Today is the anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination. Anyone at least a teenager then can tell you exactly what he or she was doing on that day. It's as though time stood still. In the six years that followed in that decade, America saw the Vietnam War expand, further assassinations of RFK and Martin Luther King, race riots in many of our cities, the hippy drop out, tune in, turn on culture, and college campuses erupting.

I sometimes wonder how we didn't have a civil war as we did a century earlier.
 
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The Five Senses Challenge

What remains, all said and done?
when you see black after the sun
goes down,
but for a dead yellow man
cratered in the moon.

Is there music there?
Do planets make noise when they spin?
I don't hear my own,
except for the wind
in the turbulence of storms.
Does the soul have ears?

And does it drink the nectar
of gods, or was it some
Bacchanalian poet drunk

and what about my nose?
that knows the scent of perfume
almost as if
I can smell, see, sing, and
taste of it.

There has to be touch.
I pray there is touch
happily ever after,
for if not touch, what then of love
unless there is no sense to it?
 
Edited Version

Lady Elevator Operator

Retha read the Daily News
about the crime and mayhem.
"This is why we need Jesus Christ"
she whispered on the evening shift,
waiting for the theater crowd
going out, coming in.

“Evenin’, Retha. Twenty second,
223's clogged again.
Hey there, Girl, your Handyman
would like to hear some ‘Stormy Weather'
like the times you used to sing
to tease us bad boys after church."

She knows the names of Sammy's girls
and husbands; she knows their kids
and has to know how each one is
before she plays his game,
the one that Sammy loves so much
because there was a time,
if only in a young man's mind
when Retha was his Lena Horne
pining for her man.

So now the rocket starts to groan
as Retha slides the grill to shut
as if percussion set the tone,
and strings and winds are warming up.

First comes whisper, then a moan,
then comes all of heaven's glory
eight by six feet, My Oh My!
and even though ain’t no sun up,
Retha's risin' Lordy, Lordy,
praise You, Jesus, up, up, up in the sky!
 
greenmountaineer said:
Lady Elevator Operator

Retha read the Daily News
about the crime and mayhem.
"This is why we need Jesus Christ"
she whispered on the evening shift,
waiting for the theater crowd
going out, coming in.

“Evenin’, Retha. Twenty second,
223's clogged again.
Hey there, Girl, your Handyman
would like to hear some ‘Stormy Weather'
like the times you used to sing
to tease us bad boys after church."

She knows the names of Sammy's girls
and husbands; she knows their kids
and has to know how each one is
before she plays his game,
the one that Sammy loves so much
because there was a time,
if only in a young man's mind
when Retha was his Lena Horne
pining for her man.

So now the rocket starts to groan
as Retha slides the grill to shut
as if percussion set the tone,
and strings and winds are warming up.

First comes whisper, then a moan,
then comes all of heaven's glory
eight by six feet, My Oh My!
and even though ain’t no sun up,
Retha's risin' Lordy, Lordy,
praise You, Jesus, up, up, up in the sky!
Click to expand...

Slyly erotic, gm. I didn't see the earlier version(s), but really like this one. There's a lot of cool riffing in it, jazzy.
 
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