My Pronouns
My pronouns are he, him, and his
Because I’m in the sperm-making biz
Or at least I was
Till I met Dr. Buzz
And now all I’ve got is plain jiz.
But the I and the Thou are the ones
That make me wanna shoot off my guns
For the love of Buber
When I’m catching an Uber
And hitting the driver with puns.
Blurbs
When I asked GK for a blurb
I worried that I might disturb
The genius at work—
But he didn’t shirk
Providing a blurb so superb.
And then there’s that Jonathan J.
Whose blurb lit some fire to my hay
For a great conflagration
Of sweet adulation
And mythmaking making the day.
Now Ms. Wright can blurb with the best
And her blurb came last but impressed
With fantastic words
That gave flight to birds
From a Petrarchan palimpsest nest.
A Fellow Named Webb
A fellow named Webb there once was
Who was hounded and harassed by the fuzz
For committing a crime
Every single time
He just did what everyone else always does.
Words of the Day: Doggerel
A new book by Brian Jobe we sort of forgot to mention last year.
Winter Reverie Whilst Walking
My nose
Is froze
And so’s
My toes*
* Poetic license, my toes are fine.
Second Time Around
Ignoring an alarm
leads only to more alarm.
I cannot learn
what I am unable to learn.
Answering the question
“Do you believe?”
ends in questioning the answer,
since to simply believe
is never enough …
may it be enough.
Vigil
Mitternacht heißt diese Stunde;
Sie rufen uns mit hellem Mund
from Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme
by J.S. Bach
That familiar Friday night
dark, both inside and out,
and five of us scattered in silence
at the end of each sentence
like periods in a paragraph.
Smelling of shit and sweat, a laugh
breaks through the snoring of a sixth
not far behind me, and a body
adjusting itself to the forgiveness
of a creaking wooden bench
falls back to snoring after the creaking
ends. So it can’t be a bad dream,
and the candlelight illuminating
our presence is, in fact, just enough
to suggest forgiveness. I want to sleep
too, too tired to laugh.
The Night Before the First Day of School
‘Twas the first day of school, when all through the class
Not a brain cell was stirring and I needed a pass;
My classmates were sitting like lumps in their chairs,
Hoping the teacher would fall down the stairs.
The principal hid in her office and cried
While the flowers of summer wilted and died;
And mamma with her suntan and dad with his beer
Had just waved goodbye and got the hell outta here,
When out on the playground there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my desk to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
The teacher freaked out and said, Sit back down!
We don’t need such behavior from a would-be class clown!
When what to my wondering eyes did appear
But a gigantic monster truck that was hitting third gear,
With a little old driver so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment he was a lunatic.
More rapid than seagulls his curses they came,
And he whistled, and squawked, and called out my name.
Oh shit, I thought, this lunatic’s fixin’
To demolish the school like a linebacker blitzin’.
I said to my classmates, We can’t wait for the bell,
Now dash away! dash away! Like bats outta hell.
As leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;
So out of the schoolhouse everyone flew
With backpacks full of books (and some with weed too).
And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the street
The flipping and flapping of flip-flop-clad feet.
As I lept from the schoolyard and was turning around,
The dude in the truck made a cackling sound.
He put on the brakes and skidded to a stop;
I’m not really a lunatic, he said, I’m a cop
And I’m here to arrest you for gradeschool truancy
And make you learn math and linguistic fluency.
His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples, how scary!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up in a frown
And the beard on his chin was dirt-like and brown.
The stump of an e-cig he held tight in his teeth,
And the vapor encircled his head like a wreath;
He had a broad face and a little round belly
That shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.
He was chubby and plump like a horror movie elf,
And I screamed when I saw him and wet myself;
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head
Confirmed that I had something to dread;
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
Rounding us up and being a jerk.
And poking his finger deep into his nose,
He said, You’ve been binge watching too many shows.
But then all of a sudden I heard a loud whistle
That tore at my brain like a thorn on a thistle.
It was my mom waking me up and turning on the light—
“Happy first day of school, did you sleep well last night?”
Love or Nothing
i
The hardest part
is getting started.
Until you do.
The hardest part then
is continuing, because
once you’ve started,
you need to find a way
to continue continuing …
all the way to the end.
And then you realize
there was nothing to it.
Nothing at all.
ii
Steel tracks and barbed-wire fences,
a square and squat, brick ding—
every thing points beyond everything,
beyond even time and its tenses.
The welcoming arbeit macht frei,
albeit in iron. A hidden fire.
A gentle breeze, and smoke now
for our Intuition als Wesensschau.
For Edith Stein, Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, martyred at Auschwitz 9 August 1942
The Secret of Phantom Lake
(To the tune Identikit, by Radiohead)
Our country club was one tennis court
in the middle of a marsh,
and a large, rectangular pool
doubling a small, moon-shaped lake,
whose surface was always as black
as cannonballs stacked in the sun.
The girl was saved from drowning
in the deep end under the diving boards,
as I ran back and forth along the edge,
dripping dry, nothing to assuage
my guilt choking on action
even as it tried to swallow inaction.
Anger, that dispels all phantoms
and then creates more of its own.
To have a will as clear as water
without urine and chlorine.
Next morning, steam rose from the lake,
—pieces of a ragdoll mankind,
that we can create, that we can create—
as witnessed by reeds and cattails.
Birthday Limerick
A fellow named Potter was born
On this date in a stable, forlorn
And the angels sang Hank
Williams songs while they drank
Irish ale from the night till the morn.
Redound thee unto mine own personage…
Haiku Prediction
Pussy-grabbing Trump
Will be grabbing his own ass
When they lock him up
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