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Poetry
Here you can find selections of my verse dating as far back as junior high school, or as recently as last month. Some is bad, some is good, some is serious, some is just plain silly.
Poems written before junior high
I Poem
I'm pretty sure I wrote this around the age of 10 or 11.
As a kid, I wanted to accomplish every possible form of wordplay. This was an attempt to write a story containing no vowels except "I."
It's not exactly a poem, but it contains a lot of rhymed verses. It's unfinished (and there may also be some pages I wrote and then lost).
I'm not entirely sure what the plot is. It involves several unsupervised children traveling between countries, physically abusing each other, drinking, eating and mutilating dead birds, and... one of them has a supervillain power where she kills people by kissing them?
I was a disturbing child.
Hence why it's behind this link.
Poems written in junior high and high school
Sidewalk
(Written for senior English class in high school.)
I want to write a poem
About the sidewalk,
One space on the sidewalk
(Don't step on the cracks!)
Glistening gray, the trowel still nearby.
I want to write a poem
about the girdle of orange plastic
Printed in twisting gray letters, "Keep off," or "Caution,"
About the gray mystery: Still wet? Or dry?
I want to write a poem
About settling your hand into the cold wet sidewalk,
And leaving your fingerprints there for eternity,
Or plastering a leaf there, to fade away
bit by bit in the rain
And leave its fossil to be trodden under rubber shoes.
But how can I write a poem
About this hard square stone,
The sidewalk,
The metamorphic sidewalk,
The breaker of natural laws, that freezes, liquid to solid,
while the mercury clings, unchanging, at 70 degrees?
It's so hard to come up with metaphors
For something concrete.
Canterbury Alien
(In my senior year of high school, my class read the stories told by several characters in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," and then we were each assigned to create a new character and have that character tell a new story.)
(Being who I was, I insisted on making my character a space alien, and telling its story in a sort of fakey spoof-Middle-English.)
An Alyen there was, a curyous Thinge,
Eight Eyne, and Fingeres growne on each Winge,
Of which there were, vertu, threescore and fyve,
She muste have been the fynest Flyre alyve.
But 'twas not ryght to thinke of it as She;
Syxe Genderes on its Worlde there's said to be.
It had, howe'er, a jolly Tale to telle,
Excepte that it communycaites by Smelle.
It broughte alonge a Roubotte for Translationne,
And so was handeled our Communycationne.
THE ALYEN'S TALE
Well, Menne, thy Speech my Minde doth full astounde.
How funny to communycaite by Sounde.
And 'twas not easy, a Roubotte to get
That words in Middle Engylishe could set,
And rhyme them also, to the very Lettere,
As well as the Iambick Péntaméterre.
But soft! my Talé I must now relate,
Instead of lyke an Idyotte to prate,
My Smelle-Glandes thus to putte to betterre Use.
I was, one Summere's Nyght, on Betelgeuse,
(Or rathyre, on a Planette near that Starre)
Where Flowres tall as Trees and Mountainnes are,
And Beastes instead of Legges grow fleshy Wheeles,
And Ayre like Hydrochlorick Acidde feeles...
There mette I withe a sevyne-legged Manne
Whose compounde Eyne were whyte as is a Swanne.
He raysed a Shield and wayved his trustye Dirk,
And saide, "Whanne layest thou with Captaine Kirk?"
When I confess'd I knew notte what he meante,
My shuttyle throughe a Tymé Warp he sente,
Shoutynge, "My wingéd dame, I thoughte I knewe
That Kirk hath layne with evrye Alyen true,
Yette here's the only Alyen, lyve or dedde,
Who's yet abstained from Captaine Kirkes bedde!
Thys one Exceptionne proveth sure the Rule,
But I wysh notte to thynke myself a Foole
In havynge thought thatte Rule to be perfecte.
I seek, thys Imperfectionne to correcte."
As through the Tyme Warp finylly I felle,
I founde myselfe with Kirk in a Hotelle.
He was a wingless Manne, his Lymbs but foure,
With butte two Eyne, and not an Eyelashe more,
He hadde no Furre, except atop his Hedde,
So ugly wase he that I feared his Bedde.
He rose up, and acrosse the Room he wente,
And (so I thoughte) with lechyrous Intente,
He did approach me, ande I spouke a Greetynge:
"Hands off me, Kirk, or thou'lt receive a Beatynge!"
His Nouse he clutch'd, and to the Floore he felle,
For what I said hadde quyte an awfulle Smelle.
Whenne once the Ayre had cleared a lyttle Bytte,
He leanéd backe and tooke a Breath of itte,
and sayde, "Whatte kinde of Alyen arre you?
Youre Eyne are redde, and you have morre than two,
You have no lovely Bosomes on youre cheste,
And neither is your Bodye scantly dreste.
I thought all Alyens were human Gyrles,
Except with larger Breastes, and goulder Curles,
and cladde in sexierre Leotarde or Caype
But on the whole no different in theyre Shaype.
To fynde an Alyen comminge inne my Dorme
Who differs so muche fromme the Humyn Forme
Hase made me nowe the leaste aroused of Menne.
I'll never bedde an Alyen again."
And so returnéd I to my own Yeare
(The Tyme Warp having stille remainéd there).
The Moralle of my Talé, gentle Lords,
As translayted to you in Englyshe Words
Is thys: Whatever life we meet on our trek
to Canterbury: LIFE IS NOT LIKE STAR TREK.
THE LOVE SONNET OF ASTRONAUT ARNOLD
(This poem was published in my high school's literary magazine during my freshman or sophomore year.)
I love a girl, and know that she loves me,
I love her with a love of steel and granite,
I'm sure that she and I would be quite free
To wed, if she were native to this planet.
I'd hold her hand and feel our love connection,
I'd kiss her lips and feel their soft caress,
But all the ways her species shows affection
Are based on body parts I don't possess.
Don't tell me I don't love her; that's a lie.
(Do you not know the penalty for perjury?)
It's just that, to have children, she and I
Would each need quite a bit of plastic surgery.
So board your starship, but you should live daily in
A desperate fear that you might love an alien.
Chemistry Problems
(I'm better at puns than chemistry.)
My grades are abysmal in chemistry class.
I don't care whether sulfur's a liquid or gas.
All I know is that atoms are not very big
And Neils Bohr is the name of some Irish guy's pig.
The things that I know only worsen my plight.
I fume because no one says "nuclear" right,
But the things I don't get are more fun to relate.
For example, I can't tell a base from home plate.
A catalyst's lining up names of some cows,
That's the only conclusion my thinking allows.
And unless you think shooting at gemstones is cool,
I can think of no root for the word "kilojoule."
I suppose "chemistree" is a tree, like a maple,
And "metallic bonding" means using a staple.
A mole is a creature a gardener avoids,
And C3PO4 means a quartet of droids.
But for those who don't sell their old chemistry books
Or associate fission with rods, worms and hooks,
Or try to turn on the electrolytes, they
Have a talent I don't, and I guess that's okay.
My Fingernail
(Inspired by an injury I got. Not for the faint of stomach.)
I slammed my index finger in a door
And it's become a vile shade of violet;
It's tingling, throbbing, swelling, fat and sore;
The nail might rupture if I tried to file it.
When it has turned the color of molasses
From being full of fluids, pus and crud,
I'll poke it with a needle, wearing glasses
To shield my eyes from any squirts of blood.
Not rotting eggplants, nor a dying snail,
Nor Romeo's lips while flushed in loving ardor
Could be as reddish-purple as a nail
That's recently been mangled in a car door.
If I do this again, it will abolish
Any need I have for purple polish.
What my Mom Built for Me
(A Sonnet)
My mother, who made me, made this computer.
The former is a great accomplishment.
The latter is no reason to salute her;
I wonder where my mother's talent went.
The motherboard she put in this computer
(If that's the part responsible for speed)
Is slower than a snail, though snails are cuter.
Oh, wherefore did my mom commit this deed?
She could have bought a competent computer,
The fastest, best computer you can buy.
But no, no less than building one would suit her.
My mother is behaving like a guy.
I think that when I clicked, I was thirteen.
So shouldn't something happen on the screen?
The Ballad of Noah's Ark and the Fishes
(This was one of the first poems I wrote in high school: Mr. Froehle's class, freshman year. It won Honorable Mention during my sophomore year when I entered it in a poetry contest sponsored by the College of Saint Catherine.)
The Whales and the Dolphins, the Stingrays and Sharks
Were quite unconcerned with the building of Arks.
When the Heavens declared that the flood-rains would fall
They counter-declared, "We aren't bothered at all!"
A Camel walked into the Ark, then another,
And two Flying Squirrels who hated each other,
But later were forced into matrimony
While Sea Turtles smirked up at them from the Sea).
The Unicorns' entrance drew laughs from the Whales
(who could tell they'd mistakenly chosen two males).
The Swordfishes giggled, the Sailfish guffawed,
And the Chickens' arrival brought sneers from the Cod.
The Flying Fish leapt through the air in their mirth
When ten feet of rainwater covered the Earth,
But a young Moray Eel took a gulp and cried, "Ish!
"I can't live in this; I'm a Salt-water Fish!"
The Creatures who generally lived in the Ocean
Became overcome with remorseful emotion.
They begged for assistance at starboard and port:
"You'll all be to blame if our lives are cut short!"
Despite all the ruckus from Deer and Gazelle,
Who felt that the Fishes could all go to Hell,
And the Rhinos who cried, "It's their own bloody fault!"
Noah dumped over a truckload of salt.
The Fresh-Water Fish were offended and cried,
"Hey Whale! Keep your salt on your own bloody side!"
But somehow they managed to get through the Flood
And the ship was, at last, washed ashore in the mud.
When the Dove flew to Noah and gave him her Leaf,
No one concealed their tremendous relief,
But the Animals felt a bit Predatorish,
And that's why so many Land Creatures catch Fish.
Hippocampus
(I used to write poems about practically every pun I came up with.)
There's a part of your brain (I'm not positive where)
Called your "hippocampus." There is one. I swear.
And frankly, there's only one way I can find
Of explaining the name of this piece of your mind.
The cells in the brain's hippocampus, I think,
Are chubby and gray (with a faint tinge of pink)
With teeth that protrude from a huge lower jaw
Like any old hippo that you ever saw.
They wallow around in your cerebral goo
And store information inside them for you.
They work from their childhood until they are grandpas
Learning your life on the brain's Hippo Campus.
They study all night to remember your name
And take lots of tests on your favorite game.
When they take a big test and they really do rotten
They get a bad grade, and you say, "I've forgotten."
The hippos are friends with the rest of your brain,
And harm to it causes them anguish and pain.
So too much TV or a needless lobotomy
Is a mean thing to do to the poor hippopotami.
Macawbeth
(What if Macbeth were a parrot?)
Macawbeth, Thane of Parrot, proudly pranced
Along his country's long and dusty streets
Until he reached a grove, whereon he chanced
Upon a cauldron and three parakeets.
The three took off their feathered hats and bowed,
And hailed Macawbeth by three titles greater
Then e'er he'd dreamt of, then they cried aloud,
"We'll say no more. Perhaps we'll see you later,
As soon as we Bird Sisters, wing in wing
Are met in thunder, lightning, or in rain."
They vanished; then came missives from the King
Who said, "Macawbeth, fear not death and bane!
By order of the king at Dunsinane,
No pun intended-- Polly, you're a thane."
Stairway Love
(This poem was published in my high school's literary magazine during my freshman or sophomore year.)
Alone, my hall pass clutched within my fist,
I deviate from my appointed route
To bow my head and let my throat be kissed
By steel-warm water from a metal spout.
My tongue endures the water's iron bite,
I lift my moistened lips and take a breath,
My eyes upon two figures then alight,
A sight that all my calmness murdereth.
His lips find hers, their fingers gently touch,
And envy fills my unbeloved heart;
I yearn to feel a pair of lips in such
Enamored madness, pierced by Cupid's dart.
Alone am I, who never felt true love,
My lips unkissed, my hand unheld, my eyes
Unpraised by famous maddened blarney of
A maddened love, who for my kisses dies.
Ah, how I long to sit on stairways locked
In love's force-field that shelters lovestruck pairs
Who laugh at little girls whose way is blocked
When we attempt to pass them on the stairs.
Unlikeliness
(I think I wrote this as a high school sophomore.)
Assuming that somewhere in deep outer space
There exists or existed an alien race,
Consider this story before you suppose
That we're being invaded by green U. F. O's.
There's an alien species far off in the skies
Which possesses a head and a mouth and two eyes,
It has arms and legs and can speak, hear and see;
In short, it's like us to a startling degree.
Their existence, in fact, very easily can
Be the greatest coincidence known to man,
But now I expand the Coincidence List:
These aliens know that we humans exist!
And considering laws we have proved to be right
Which limit all speed to no faster than light,
You'll be startled for sure when I start to discuss
The fact that their ships could transport them to us!
A planet that close which has spaceships whose crewmen
Both know of and closely resemble the human?
Get real! But there's more. If conditions demand it,
Their bodies would let them survive on our planet!
For these four coincidences to combine,
The chances are one in five billion and nine
But millions of people (who may include you)
Just simply and plainly assume that they're true!
This absence of logic has made itself known
To the alien presidents over the phone.
They've made up their minds, on receiving this call,
That our planet's not worth taking over at all.
Coincidence?
(More about alien improbability, written around the same time. I was quite the outspoken skeptic back then, apparently.)
We're deeply convinced that our chemistry teacher
Is some sort of extraterrestrial creature.
If old Mrs. Curtis is closely inspected,
An alien invasion just might be deflected.
For instance, her name is suspiciously weird.
Her surname reveals the dark secrets we've feared.
It contains the three characters C, U and R...
And so does Arcturus, the name of a star!
If you plot on a map both her church and her home,
And the house of her seventeenth cousin from Rome,
They form a triangle , which everyone knows
Is the shape of some recently seen UFO's.
Add that to the paint job on one of her cars,
Which is red, like the planet we Earthlings call Mars,
And you will agree that this series of incidents
Just couldn't possibly be a coincidence.
"Vidiots"
(I think I wrote this one when I was in junior high school and irritated with some cousins and classmates who were obsessed with violent video games.)
C'mon, make your choice. Will you be Mr. Dead,
With stainless steel claws growing out of your head?
Or will you be I'm-Gonna-Murder-You Bob,
Whose very appearance is grossly macabre?
Don't choose to be Ernie the Flesh-ripping Goon,
Because he reacts like a total buffoon
When Quentin the Evil Deranged Mutant Mummy
Shoots Red-Hot Attack Bullets straight at his tummy!
I'll give you a tip: When the Screamers arrive,
With their Flesh-Melting Rays which no one can survive,
Apply your Professional Gut-tearing Wrenchers,
Which crack them in half like a cheap set of dentures!
If they shoot you with globs of Corrosive Green Mud
And you're left in a pool of computerized blood,
Remember (the experts have said that you should)
That they are the bad guys, and you are the good.
Clytemnestra's Remorse
I was assigned in my junior year of high school to use the words "garrulous," "succinct", "complacent," "sullen," "contrive," "calamity," "carnage," "sanguine," "specious," "implacable," "invidious," "malignant," "conundrum," "enigma," "oblivion," "imminent," "inexorable," "insatiable," "conflagration," "fastidious," "inextricable," "hackneyed," "dirge" and "barren" in sentences.
(There was no assignment to put the sentences in a poem. But I was always a showoff.)
Since they were words from the play we were studying, Agamemnon, I wrote the poem about that.
So garrulous that speaking is my art
I shall not speak succinctly now to thee.
Complacent though I seem, my sullen heart
Regrets contriving this calamity.
War's carnage done! The sanguine joy and pride!
My specious tale of love and hope grown dim!
Implacable, the Furies by my side
Encouraged my invidious scheme for him.
A plot that stank of my malignancy,
It gave him the conundrum to resolve
Of whether to annoy the gods or me!
(That enigma a man will quickly solve.)
And once he had insulted the divine,
A man's life and his lover's life were mine.
A girl whose words were all considered lies,
Whose hope into oblivion had faded,
When urged to flee her imminent demise
Inexorably could not be persuaded.
Revenge, the insatiable conflagration
That led to my fastidious mind's plot
To clean the earth of that abomination
Ties us in an inextricable knot.
Our hunger for revenge, from overuse
Should have grown hackneyed! Suddenly I hear
The music of a funeral dirge let loose
And wish my manly eyes could shed a tear.
A loving heart grows barren, cold and cruel
Once it has lost its long-beloved jewel.
A Narrow Fellow
(In, I believe, sophomore or junior year of high school, I was assigned to parody a poem. The poem I chose was "A Narrow Fellow in the Grass" by Emily Dickinson, shown here, and my parody follows it.)
"A NARROW FELLOW IN THE GRASS"
BY EMILY DICKINSON
A narrow Fellow in the Grass
Occasionally rides—
You may have met him— did you not
His notice sudden is—
The Grass divides as with a Comb
A spotted shaft is seen—
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on—
He likes a Boggy Acre
A Floor too cool for Corn—
Yet when a Boy, and Barefoot—
I more than once at Noon
Have passed, I thought, a Whip lash
Unbraiding in the Sun
When stooping to secure it
It wrinkled, and was gone—
Several of Nature's People
I know, and they know me—
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality—
But never met this Fellow
Attended, or alone
Without a tighter breathing
And Zero at the Bone—
PARODY—
A Narrow Fellow this one is
But by no means a Snake—
He's like a Hyphen— longer, though—
A Breath— a Pause— a Break—
Divides the Words as with a Comb—
A Comb devoid of Teeth—
Allows a Speaking Man to pause
And take some Time to Breathe.
In Dickinson's Snake Poem
Two thoughts he oft Attaches—
But when a Younger Writer
I typed him as two Dashes - -
Because I didn't know then
The way that one must tell O-
bedient Computers
To type this Narrow Fellow.
For Commas, Quotes and Colons
And Exclamation Points—
I feel a sort of Trembling—
A Tightness in the Joints—
But when I meet this Fellow
While traveling through a Tome
I greet him with a Smile—
and read Another Poem.
Poems written during my college years
We Pay the Dam
(In my freshman year of college I wrote this nonsense poem, which reads the same right-side-up and upside-down... when written in this particular font, and if you ignore spaces between words and lines.)
TEXT OF POEM:
we pay the dam
pat elates snap ewe: we pay the dam
tea sued sewers, mad pea pot deal
pat! equate a sea duo atop no hippo hem
tease me diapers! lease at sunday towns a seal
a seal duo! ten bat sea pads say
sexes, a snow plow sun you'd owe
plot so we'll ease at sea quay
no hue women be we! here ate wet joe
a seal deletes a potash sea
tea we ate! i held no hit nuts! owe pat today
sheds! unshy tooth was no way to toss hot tea!
tea otto used well! omaha tousled hay
leaps, pats a tot's paws, jaded tarot told me so!
you owe a tequila a patted eel!
nba team on ohio
saw plot to jet paper's meds, to test ed's deal
hey pals note yew oil lamp as not to eat
i eat toys so to the mouth my toothy sun is pay
she potted a moist nut! you play! i ate a meat
easy set odes at a lap lease aorta mate a jay
i am aqua woman you hen beast
ease all, amos told a mop, no huns
mold mouse's ax ashes sped east
equation please lease sumo the puns
tea seal is jade! paw a seat
way odd! you dote on peas eaten baited
leap to dead pew's jam as pans eat
we pay the dam: amadeus sat elated
Human Alien
(While studying abroad in 2002, I wrote this song. Unfortunately, I don't know how to write music, and my voice is completely untrained, and I wasn't quite decided on how the tune was going to go for some of the verses. If you know a musician who can make something better out of it, please let me know.)
Macaroni Penguin
(The macaroni penguin, like the macaroni pasta, got its name from the Italian word "macaroni," which means something like "magnificent" or "dearest darlings" (sources differ on the exact definition). However, the penguin thinks it was named after the pasta, and has rather indignant feelings about that.)
I'm the macaroni penguin, but I find that name absurd;
My topknot is the loveliest that's found on any bird.
I really think a human sounds a little like a phony
When he compares my awesome crest to slimy macaroni.
You call my hairdo cheesy when you ought to call it chic;
I think that I would bite you with my long and mighty beak
If I should see you stare at me while elbowing a crony
And whispering, "Pre-pasta-rous! It looks like macaroni!"
Upon my noodle there is nothing vaguely like a noodle,
But when a gorgeous plume of mine was found by Yankee Doodle,
He stuck it in his ugly hat while perched atop his pony
And just like all the rest of you, he called it macaroni.
The feathers that adorn me are of gold and fiery red,
So long and slender as they come cascading from my head
That anyone is full of the most putrid of baloney
If he suggests they look the slightest bit like macaroni.
I'm glad that I'm restricted to the very deepest South,
Far off from any Homo sapiens macaroni-mouth,
Away from you crass primates with your crania thick and bony,
Where none within my earshot call my feathers macaroni.
"Don't Make my Dreams come True"
(I had a dream. I wrote a song about it. It's supposed to be sung to a sort of country-western tune. Not intended for George W. Bush fans.)
Long before the election of the year 2000
And the inauguration of 2001
I dreamt I was George W. Bush
And got assimilated by the Pokemon.
I was forced at gunpoint to declare myself
To be a Pokemon named "Georgie-Poo,"
And since then I've been careful of folks
Who promise to make all my dreams come true.
REFRAIN:
Oh please don't make my dreams come true
'Cause you sure as heck can bet your tush
That I don't wanna be named "Georgie-Poo,"
and I don't wanna be George W. Bush.
Now I don't remember much else of the dream,
But when I saw a mural the very next day
With pretty painted pictures sayin' "Reach for your dreams,"
Well I turned and looked the other way.
A while ago a guy I know
Was scared 'cause he dreamed he got his head shot through
So I told him about that dream I had
And I said "Some dreams just don't come true."
REFRAIN
Well now that it's 2001
And that nightmare election is over and done,
I think 'bout Bush sometimes and wonder
If we might be better off with a Pokemon.
But still I'd hate it if he got assimilated
to a Pokemon named "Georgie-Poo,"
'Cause I'd have to be George W. Bush
if that particular dream came true.
REFRAIN
"Sich Aendert die Englische Sprache"
(A parody of Heinrich Heine's "Die Jahre Kommen und Gehen." To get it, you have to have read that poem in the original German, and also know some things about linguistics, like the fact that the English language used to have genders for all nouns.)
Sich aendert die englische Sprache,
Geschlechter steigen ins Grab,
Saechlich allein ist das Genus
Dass ich fuer Sachen hab'.
Die Loeffel, der Gabel, das Messer
Sind alle jetzt sexlos "the,"
Doch lieb' ich nicht nur "es," ich liebe
"er,' ich liebe "sie"!
Within the Walls
(The best (?) of two worlds: more high-brow linguistic play, sung to the tune of a song I learned on the bus to day camp.)
I did a little plumbing
And there inside the wall
The centipedes and roaches
Were playing a game of ball.
They told me, "Close the wall up,
Go back the way you came,
Please leave and stop disturbing
Our intramural game."
Man and God
(What does "playing God" really mean?)
God created hair and baldness,
Man created the toupee.
God made ninety elements,
Man adds new ones constantly.
God gives Man a deadly virus,
Man takes pills and stays alive,
God gives flowers golden pigment,
Man makes Yellow #5.
God makes wolf, Man makes chihuahua,
no one thinks that this is odd,
Man tries genetic engineering...
Oops, now Man is playing God.
Pun with the Wind
(My worst pun poem ever.)
How do the germs from one man's sneeze
Get to another man's nose?
How do the seeds from a cottonwood tree
Get to a new place to grow?
How does my state get pollution that comes
All the way from Ohio?
The answer, my friend,
is "Blowing in the wind."
The answer is "Blowing in the wind."
Ups and Downs
(Random silliness.)
To avoid attack by a hippopotamus,
It's best to make sure he doesn't notice you,
So don't stand upwind from a hippopotamus
(Though standing downwind is pretty bad too).
"Haiku"
(A silly haiku in German.)
Eine Kuh hat sich
In einem Haifisch verliebt.
Ihr Kind heisst "Haiku."
Coo-Coo Haiku
(A silly haiku in English.)
"I coo and you coo,
And we all coo for haiku!"
Said the Asian dove.
The Most Important Letter In My Name
(To the Tune of "America the Beautiful.")
Oh, beautiful for E and R,
for I and K and A,
Oh, beautiful for all of these,
Especially the K!
I'm Erika, I'm Erika,
God shed his grace on me,
But not on those who write my name
And spell it with a C!
Here are some poems written for the course "Language of Desire," which I took in January as a college soph or junior. Note that some of them are slightly R-rated.
Beholder
A Poem with Geographical Metaphors
This morning I gazed at a tropical vine
That branched at the end into shoots young and fine;
and rioted gaily in freedom, and there,
While gazing upon it, I thought of thy hair.
This forenoon a wide open plain I went through,
That to every horizon within human view
Was unmarred by the subtlest hillock or crest,
And there, my beloved, I thought of thy breast.
This evening I ventured deep down in the caves
Where among the stalagmites lapped cool gentle waves,
And stalactites protruded like fangs from above,
And in that place, thy mouth I imagined, my love.
Tonight o'er a dormant volcano I walked
Where from pits in the surface so rugged and pocked
Bubbled mud of a pungent and sulfurous kind,
And beloved, this brought thy complexion to mind.
Our hearts, my beloved, forever are knit,
Thy soul unto mine doth impeccably fit,
And therefore art thou so exquisite to me
That the beauties of nature remind me of thee.
Celebrate
An Aubade
Arise, beloved, morning is not far.
Look thou, the sun glows like a crimson gem.
That's just the light that's on the VCR.
Get real, my dear! It's only four AM.
But covetous young rogues no minute spare
To bring themselves that which is coveted.
Well, they can soak their heads, for all I care.
As long as it's still dark, I stay in bed.
The lie we lived last night has borne its fruit,
And other sleepers rise to start the raid.
Go back to sleep and let them have the loot.
In either case they'll get it, I'm afraid.
And yet, beloved, custom says we ought
To watch them open gifts this time of year.
I guess so; after all, it's stuff we bought.
Go get the camera. Merry Christmas, dear.
Bras
A Poem Inspired by Carl Phillips' "Toys"
They line the racks and shelves, each one spread out across its plastic hanger, showing off,
as if I were perusing some museum built for voyeuristic men, not shopping
the lingerie section. As if the things were so much more attractive
than the underpants and hose a couple aisles down that every one of them deserved
not just three times as high a cost, but its own personal display stand.
People say that men must have invented them, but I read once that a French lady
fashioned the first one from two handkerchiefs, at a party when she couldn't stand
to wear her corset any more. "It was delicious," she said. "A nearly naked feeling."
The name was taken from the corset it replaced, the "brassiere," or "arm protector,"
or literally, "armer," like "leggings" for "leg-coverings," a body part plus some generic suffix.
Armor, I think, and laugh as I imagine iron plates rounded to cup soft flesh,
Chain mail wrapped around a stomach, stiff cold sleeves with hinges
at the elbows, creaking underneath a blouse, ending in gleaming gauntlets,
when what was meant to be protected was not the lady's bosom, or her arms,
but "virtue," and I laugh harder at the value placed on clothes.
Lovers' Block
A Poem that Fits, as I See it, the "Contemporary Aesthetic"
When I glance periodically at your face
as expressionless as Windows 98 and every phrase
that comes to mind is either the wrong thing for the context
Or so much the right thing that it would make
it even more obvious than it is already
that I'm struggling to think of things to talk about
it's like when you have to write an assignment
in the next two hours and you think
and pace and bite your pencil or stare
At the computer screen and twine your feet in the chair legs
And the twisting of your toes and tightness in your face
and nervous sweat and every fold of your clothes and where
the light is coming from and noises the neighbors make next door
and everything you think and everything
you sense ties yet another filament into the net between
the words hidden inside you somewhere and your conscious
mind with its power to reproduce your thoughts in other
forms outside your locked-in head.
I stare at you and wonder
if I should ask what you did yesterday
(but no, that would sound like an interrogation)
or if you've seen some movie (no, too much of a non sequitur) or maybe
say something about the weather (no! no! no!) and silence grows
like creeping Charlie weeds across the space
between us where for people who belong like this
it might grow nicely, daffodils and lilies lining
that distance like a well-kept path.
But creeping Charlie is a live net of tendrils
Each one tender, delicate, but let a summer week
pass without weeding and the tangle blocking
all the plants you want to grow from growing
is so thick you'll never get it all out.
Laments of the Creation
A Dramatic Monologue
I am a life, made out of deaths. Things that were once alive
Were cut apart, pieced gruesomely together, and in some mystic manner
I do not care to know, brought back to life. I am this creation,
And the one who made me is no god.
He too is made of death, as all life is, from worms
That eat dead men, to grasses that consume through hungry roots
Particles that once were worms, dead in the soil,
To beasts that feed on grass, to men like him who eat the meat of beasts
And, in them, eat the meat of other men.
But he is made of dead things in the way of nature,
The way the dead have become part of the living since the world began,
And I am made of larger pieces, things more clearly dead,
And therefore more repulsive to humanity.
The hate with which they met my love set me aflame with rage;
Now let these other flames consume me, here alone upon the northern ice,
For but a moment let me have the beauty I possessed in death before I lived,
And crumble down in ashes to the ground and billow up in gases to the air
And be in death a part of living things again, but this time in the ancient way.
Desperate
A Poem with Animal Metaphors
When I was almost a teenager and walking in the park
My mother and I found a dove.
He had once been a pet dove, she told me, because he was a foreign kind
And tried to eat the wood chips in the flower bed, and didn't fly away
But let her catch him in her hands. We took him home
and kept him by the mirror above the dresser
And he thought the dove in the mirror was female
And tried to woo it, bowing down and telling it he loved it
with his strange and gurgly coo,
Until he noticed the dove in the mirror was cooing too
And then he realized it was male and tried to kill it, and we hid it from him with a towel.
I tried to build him a bigger cage, and bought him sprays of reddish-brown
Papery-shelled fresh millet seeds, which were his favorite food,
and when I saw a cage of doves like him at a pet store
I bought one and brought her home to him.
They couldn't tell me if she was a she, but I guessed she was
because I saw the other doves seek her attentions with their courtly bows
and cooing serenades. She cost ten dollars and had lived
in such a tiny, dirty cage that her tail feathers
were tattered from colliding with the bars, and her magenta feet
were crusted over with dove droppings and I had to hold her down
and pick them off, crumb by smelly crumb,
(Scratching the scaly skin sometimes and almost crying at the blood).
I suppose if we had given him a dove
with parasites and half her feathers missing and a tumor
in her side, he would have loved her just as much,
Bowed and cooed, and been so eager to help build a nest that he would take
All the twigs and grass stems handed to him (when before he wouldn't
Touch a millet seed that human fingers offered)...everything he did for her.
When they had children, one of them I gave
To a lady who had been my fifth grade teacher. She and I
Had been through a lot together; when I was almost a teenager
And desperate for love, the other students in her class
Would tell me some boy wanted me to kiss him, and laugh at me when I tried to.
Once they wrote "I love you" on a scrap of paper, signed it with a name I hardly knew
And put it on my desk. I had it still, pinned on the bulletin board next to the mirror
and the dove cage, just in case by some unlikely chance it might be real.
Fiction
A Sonnet
Persecuted in a world where no one was like her,
Bewildered by the social customs of humanity,
Her first attraction was to some fictional character
She'd read about in books and seen in movies on TV.
The girl who could identify with no one who was real
Saw her reflection first in his imaginary plight
And feelings she had never felt and thought she could not feel
Were roused within her by a man unable to requite.
Love had been the smoke of someone's chimney in the distance,
But it became the fire of which she built herself a hell,
Longing for him desperately she cursed his nonexistence
While people who existed found her only to repel.
Saturday nights, while others make romance reality,
In some old book or movie she must find her company.
Language of Love
Another Sonnet
There is no logic in your premises,
And yet I love to seek their origins,
To chart your past, your ancient families
And find where every part of you begins.
I love to draw already known conclusions
From laws that have no meaning at first glance,
And deep within your tangled convolutions
To find the order and the elegance.
The universe is strange, but I can see
The beauty in a paradox of space,
Or in an atom's deep complexity,
Although I might design them different ways.
There's chaos in the order that's within
chaos, and in it, order once again.
Non-Love Poem
A Ghazal : a series of couplets that seem unrelated, but nevertheless have a common theme
If one has never felt attraction, there is no sexual orientation, but there still is sexuality.
There is desire that's desire for desire. One can be hungry without hungering for a certain food.
Alien brain parasite, born together with your host, you live in beautiful and awful symbiosis.
You share your superintelligence, but devour understanding of humanity and force the foreign customs of your planet.
A new-hatched chick (experimentally pigmented purple) lies alone and bleeding
From sores in the impressions of its siblings' beaks. Its only feeling is bewilderment.
Twisted meanings of words; when men chase women, those often chased are seldom chaste.
If you're attracted to the other sex, but not attractive to them, are you "Straight, no chaser?"
Otherworldly creature trapped in human body, hated flesh that bears no alien mark except for one:
The constellation of scabs that spans its breasts where a compulsive tic has picked the skin away.
Twisted meanings of words; a "love magnet" doesn't always attract.
Sometimes its north pole meets love's north pole, and they repel.
In every throng of laughing children, one has "germs," and they infect you if you touch her,
And you must go infect another, spread the plague forever till she is forgotten and confused.
I wrote a story in English, and wrote it again in German, and showed it to my preschool teacher.
I didn't know I was supposed to wear a bra in junior high.
No Martian makes the anthropologist on Mars its mate, and if it wanted to, she couldn't tell.
The repellent magnet for lovers finds its love for love still unrequited.
Lecture, LOV 101
A Retelling of Shakespeare's "Let Me Not To The Marriage of True Minds"
As mentioned in last Friday's Shakespeare pieces,
True love is of the minds . Your love's not real
If it decreases when your lover creases,
Or you dump anybody over the hill.
Steel-reinforced concrete that doesn't age
Till hell is frozen- that's a lovers' bond.
Your heart is your best love-locating gauge;
An idiot could make other parts respond.
If asked who the next Miss America champ is,
You won't name any grandma that you know,
Yet lots of them are still the wives of grandpas;
True love will last however old you grow.
For homework, I suggest that you review
The Art of Courtly Love , Book One, Part Two.
Streetlight Serenade
An Evening Poem
There is no moon tonight, at least
whatever crescent glimmer might be seen
on clearer nights is blanketed from view
by summer fog that thickens to opaqueness higher up
and beads her with glass spheres in random patterns,
a bridal gown turned up, skirt open to the sky.
He is nearby,
Mature and needing, reaching love-stems out full-grown and strong
And heavy at the tips with fertile dust
but they are motionless, a branch's length apart
and yet they yearn as though from miles away
to be a vine and twine and press themselves together,
mingle their life-potions, strike a spark in moonless night.
No moon, and all that shines on them this evening
and makes two flares of luminescent white
glow in the earth between the sidewalk and the asphalt
is one flickering street lamp,
its head and ball of brightest light encased within a thicker smaller fog,
a fog of wings, intoxicated on electric brightness,
as they beat and flutter, make a twinkling light-starved cloud.
A single pair of wings
moves on a lower plane, a shadowy matchmaker
who tonight is hungry not for light but for the scent of him;
its perfume-drunk antennae seek him out, it clasps his outspread body,
Burrows in, drinks deep,
Emerging with his life-dust mingled in the chalk-dust of its wings.
And when she feels its touch, it is like his,
A motion, powder-soft, on inner centers swollen with fertility,
a push of legs, a flash of wings,
a shudder as they part,
And she is empty, and yet full with a still-quiet promise,
still quaking gently as her silent white-winged messenger flies off into the mist.
On a Maroon-and-White Sweatshirt
A Poem Inspired by Anne Sexton's "Song for a Red Nightgown"
I have a maroon sweatshirt with white writing,
or maybe dark red with creamy writing, but maroon and white
I think are my school colors, and what I have to call this shirt, since the writing
Says "Augsburg College."
It's a nice sweatshirt. It's oversized and keeps me warm
all the way to my wrists, and over my hands if I want,
and inside it's got a rabbity soft feel to it
that makes me want to be naked underneath.
That's why I bought it, and not
because the white writing says "Augsburg College."
I love Augsburg. I love it because the work isn't too hard
and the people are friendly and it's a small convenient campus
Tunneled under and crossed over with skyways like the web of a big mother spider,
saying "Don't go outside, spiderlings, you'll freeze in this Minnesota windchill!"
I love my sweatshirt, even though I'd love it just as much
if it were all maroon, with no writing at all.
I love my school, with the love one has for useful things,
the way I love my Swiss Army knife with four blades, scissors and a magnifying glass,
the way I love my recumbent bike, so smooth-steering and so easy on my back,
the way I love my sweatshirt for being warm and soft inside.
"Show school spirit," the posters say, advertising
a rally or parade or football game. "Cheer for your sweatshirt,"
the posters don't say. "Proclaim your love for this so-helpful tool you use!
It keeps you warm, doesn't it? Don't you love the soft and cozy
Feeling of the lining? Buy a banner, buy a bumper sticker,
Buy a sweatshirt to celebrate your sweatshirt! Show some pride!"
Unrequited
A Tanka : a form of Asian short poetry
The incandescent light bulb
Seems a bright haven, glowing with promise.
Deception! Poor moth, you taste no nectar.
But why beat indelible glass
With your body, till you are tattered and burned?
My Word
A Love Poem from One Inanimate Object to Another
Each year we become even lovelier still,
As we grow in the nurture of Almighty Bill,
But from '95 all the way to NT,
You're always compatible only with me.
You couldn't survive installation in Mac,
And if you were to try, I would wish you were back,
For without you no words would in me be processed
(Well, yeah, there's Corel, but I like you the best.)
I can run any program you ever could want;
(It just wouldn't sell if they made one I can't.)
But of all of the windows I look through each day
You're the one facing the most scenic way.
We've had some hard times, but we somehow survive,
As long as you're safely installed in my drive,
Consoling each other with comforting hugs
When every new version turns up full of bugs.
When I freeze and inspire a cold angry frown
With the permanent screen "Windows is shutting down,"
You crash along with me, enduring my terrors
Until I'm done "checking the hard drive for errors."
As for you, the word "goosebumps" leaves people surprised;
It's only correct if it's capitalized.
Your spellchecker's influenced by R.L. Stine,
But do I delete you? No, love, you are mine.
We care for each other despite all our flaws,
Together we bear them, whatever the cause,
Comprehended by only the most avid nerd,
You're Word for Windows, I'm Windows for Word.
Poems written after college
"Higgledy Piggledy"
The nursery rhyme "Higgledy Piggledy, My Black Hen" isn't really a Higgledy Piggledy -- but shouldn't it be? Here's my attempt to make it one.
Higgledy piggledy,
Gallus domesticus,
Feathered in ebony
blackness intense,
Hastens to ovulate
(Oft decatuply) for
Aristocratically
Pedigreed gents.
Waiting For More Words To Change (The Descriptivist Dilemma)
The popular song "Waiting On The World To Change" inspired a parody, sometime in the mid-00's.
Language isn't static
It changes day by day
And those changes, they're decided
By what most people say.
So when an error's really common
You can pretty much expect
That within a few years it'll be
The way that's deemed correct.
So we keep waiting
Waiting
waiting for more words to change
We keep waiting
Waiting
waiting for more words to change
We know we can't prevent it
And that it's silly to resent it
So we keep waiting
Waiting
waiting for more words to change
"Waiting on" means serving
That's how waiters got their name
It's not the same as "waiting for"
But it's often used the same.
If some day the dictionaries
list the two as synonyms
It just means language has evolved
To suit the public's whims.
So we keep waiting
Waiting
waiting for more words to change
We keep waiting
Waiting
waiting for more words to change
It's not that we don't care
But it's the only option that's there
So we keep waiting
Waiting
waiting for more words to change
"Hopefully" doesn't mean "I hope"
It means "in a hopeful way"
But some dictionaries list them both
'Cause of what most people say.
"Nauseous" means "nauseating"
It does not mean "nauseated"
But so many people said it wrong
The original meaning's faded.
So we keep waiting
Waiting
waiting for more words to change
We keep waiting
Waiting
waiting for more words to change
There aren't logical excuses
For objecting to new uses
So we keep waiting
Waiting
waiting for more words to change.
Beautiful Trek
The song "Beautiful Wreck" inspired another parody, around the same time. This was before I actually watched any TNG or DS9, so I really had no right to say the things I said here. But I had to, because I couldn't resist the fact that the original song contained a rhyme for "Trek," a rhyme for countless words used in Star Trek, a mention of the phrase "Milky Way," and even a mention of the phrase "seven years."
All you newer Treks, I've given up on you,
'Cause I like the original Trek, I do.
Of all of those shows set in the Milky Way
TOS, you're the one I wish could have stayed.
You're the one that's least sub-par
What a beautiful Trek you are
Flying star to star,
Beautiful Trek you are.
They go crazy every seven years, you know
And so every seven years they make a new Trek show.
Except for TOS, 'cause you just got three,
Which is sad, 'cause you're still the best Trek to me.
I'm still sitting here waiting by my TV set
But there's been nothing good yet
But there's been nothing good yet
You've got Spock's pon farr
What a beautiful Trek you are
You've got Kolinahr
Beautiful Trek you are.
What a beautiful, such a beautiful
A beautiful Trek you are.
All you newer Treks, I've given up on you,
'Cause I like the original Trek, I do.
Yeah, I like the original Trek, I do.
I like the original Trek, I do.
Yeah, you've got T'Lar
What a beautiful Trek you are
But not Tasha Yar
And not Selar
But what a beautiful Trek you are.
What a beautiful, such a beautiful,
Beautiful Trek you are.
What a beautiful, such a beautiful,
Beautiful Trek you are.
Sci-fi Palindrome Poem
First posted here on Twitter, on Aug 11, 2015. Also shared at Diversicon the same year.
(The entire poem is a palindrome, reading the same backward and forward if lines, spaces, punctuation and capitalization are disregarded.)
Niagara fog on Avalon:
a clover, if no garden.
O, not pure elf fins, Rome!
Bad wolf's eyes; I'd rate mitosis.
Sharp, o lirpa-- a slash.
Sam, o Drano elf,
I rot cod diagnoses
or Dalek at yam party.
Trap a mayo? Minion mail? No.
Seen sun ever, ewoks?
Is fire Vogon to God?
O Miles, Elim Garak,
cops, and sun: a rust is risen.
I, Planet Tiki X, am Neil,
a step for prison-kind,
unto bored ore.
Nerd, holler "Frell! Oh, Dren!"
Erode robot nudnik? No sir.
Prof pets alien maxi-kitten;
Alpine sirs, it's Uranus DNA.
Spock, a rag. Miles! Elim!
Odo got Nog over,
if Sisko were Venus.
Neeson? Liam? No!
I, Nimoy, am a party.
Trap may take lad!
Rose, Song, aid Doctor,
if Leonardo mash salsa, April.
Oprah's sis! O, Time TARDIS!
Eyes flow; dab 'em or sniffle.
Erupt on! One-dragon fire! Volcano lava!
No, go far again.
I Won A Pig
Video of a speech where I read the poem aloud
One time in grade school,
I was minding my own business
telling stories to myself,
or searching on the ground
for tiny bits of precious garbage,
or whatever lonely thing I did that day
when some other kid came up to me.
I don't remember anything about them--
name, or race, or gender,
even age,
it was some time in elementary school
but I cannot
remember
when.
I just remember
what happened next.
The kid told me, "I won a pig."
I had no context for this revelation.
I didn't know this child,
and our school was in the city.
I didn't know of any local contests
where the prize could be a pig.
And if there were one, why would it
be any of my business?
My mind had no idea
what it should do with this.
nAnd so my mind
did what my mind
would always do
when it had nothing else to do.
It made a pitifully awful pun.
I took the words "I won a pig"
and punned the second word, the "won"
from a past-tense verb into a number
and proceeded to the second number
in the sequence
and I said "I TWO a pig."
And the other child--nameless, genderless--
just looked at me and paused a moment
and decided just to go along with it,
and said, "I three a pig."
And we kept going,
four a pig, and five a pig, and so on...
...all the way until the other child said
"I seven a pig,"
and I replied,
"I eight a pig."
And then I realized this was all a setup...
and I wasn't even mad, 'cause it was funny:
it was another pun, and one of those
elaborate grade school jokes
where you try to get somebody to say something
that's embarrassing or silly,
like "I-C-U-P."
I-ate-a-pig.
And it wasn't til years later that I realized
what a leap of faith this kid had taken,
walking up to me without a context,
calling out "I won a pig," just trusting
that I would carry on the chain
that took that joke to its conclusion.
Were they somehow so familiar
with my word-playful mind
that they predicted
that I would make that one
specific pun on "won" and "one",
although I didn't even know their name?
Or did they actually forget
that when you tell that kind of joke
you have to start by laying out the rules:
"okay, repeat the words I say,
but when I say a number
you just say the number that comes after"
they left that part out,
and if it had been anybody else but me,
the joke would be a failure,
but they were just unfathomably lucky?
Or maybe
maybe they had actually just...
won a pig,
and wanted me to know about it,
and when I made the pun
they just decided
they would run with it for fun,
and it was sheer coincidence
the conversation accidentally became a joke.
The world's absurd.
If this story has a meaning
it's that stories do not always need a meaning.
Nothing really needs a meaning,
even life
It's an insult to your life
to say it has to have a purpose,
'cause an object has a purpose,
and a tool can have a purpose,
and its purpose, almost always,
by some method or another,
is for keeping us alive...
Life doesn't have a purpose
'cause life IS a purpose.
and so is happiness,
and so are all the things that really matter.
And sometimes happiness is nonsense,
smiles sprouting from absurdity,
And stories can be worth it
for their meaningless absurdness
and their mystery alone,
so, my forgettable and memorable classmate,
if you're out there,
I wish you all the pigs
that you
could ever
win.
Silver and Bright
Written in 2019. (View on blog)
Silver and Bright
One thing it took me far too long to learn:
that sometimes an experience
that you already had
was not worth having.
it's okay.
Or maybe not okay at all
maybe that experience
has been the worst disaster
of your life
but that's my point
you have permission
to accept that's true
and all you need to know
is what you faced
and what you have to face
today, tomorrow
and no authority demands
you dig through yesterday
and find a silver lining
or a bright side
an excuse
to call it
good.
(although you likely can,
if you try hard enough
because of butterflies and hurricanes
and how each incident
has consequences
in the millions
of millions,
and sifting through them long enough,
statistically,
you're apt to see
a few that shine)
my point is that you have no duty
to decide
that any scrap of good that you unearth
is worth the bad that happened.
if you can't find sufficient fragments
of the silver or the bright
to pay the price of what was wrong
that won't increase the wrong that was,
nor will the cosmos confiscate
the scraps of good
for being not enough.
and you can hate
the war that drafted you
and love the friend you met
who shared your trench
and you can cherish certain memories
while still remembering
that you formed them
with a former friend you never ever
want to see again
and that's not contradiction.
You can be glad to have things
and not glad of how they came to you
and you don't have to dwell upon
what didn't happen
and the choices
that you would or should have made
in other universes
I mean,
of course,
the question will occur to us
we often can't resist
"if I had known all the bad
and all the good
that was to come of this,
would I have wanted it to happen?"
and over years I've learned to answer
"I don't have
to have an answer,
I never had that knowledge
or the chance to make that choice,
not in this world
I don't have
to have an answer,
I am not
some cosmic
information desk
for questions about alternate realities"
and maybe it is not my job to measure,
in the first place,
how much I hate a thing
or love another thing,
because, what kind of mathematics
can compare
the good of one thing
to the bad
of something else tied up
in that same causal web
when maybe you can't
even measure good and bad
in the same units,
maybe
it's like saying "what is more,
the weight of silver,
or the brightness
of the sun?"
If I Wrote This Poem I'd Retire
Anagram poem from 2022. (Blog post about how it happened)
I'm hired to reset wifi. O, tripe!
Serf hire... I tried it. Ow. I'm poet!
I tie to words! If there, I'm ripe...
This? Me? Terror! I weep if I do it.
If I write this premier ode to...
I'm top idiot! Free? Shit, I rewire
For dime tips, ere I write it. Oh!
I, Writer! (I totes hope I'm fired.)
Shit wifi empire. Re-edit root?
Redo it? Meteor, hit wifi spire!
I ... I... tire of other temps' weird ire.
If I wrote this poem, I'd retire.
Worrying
a poem about crying wolf
First posted here and here on Twitter, in spring of 2022.
This could be interpreted as being about abuse
but I wrote it about my own body
If I ever die from health problems that others have dismissed, they probably will not say "she was right all along"
but "how were we to know she was right this time? she's been wrong so much!"
The most successful wolf
will first appear as just a shade
an optical illusion of the gaps
between the saplings
Or a whispered crush of brush
that just as easily could be
a rabbit or a fawn
And like a rabbit or a fawn
the shepherd's heart
might startle for a beat or two
but not enough
to startle from his throat a cry
or start to shape within his thoughts
the name
of Wolf.
And for a night
the rabbit or the fawn
might halt the hunger
of the most successful wolf
who, biding time
throughout the night
for now, elects
to dream
of sheep.
The second time
(and third and fourth)
the most successful wolf
will show himself
in shadows with a shade more shape
A green-reflective eye
An ear, a jaw
outlined and recognized
for fractions of a heartbeat
Just enough to speed the beat
And sound a partly-stifled cry
And bring the thought of Wolf
to conscious mind
And then be gone
And leave the fawn and rabbit,
shepherd and apprentice,
Startled, watchful, seeing stillness
long enough, at last, to still the heart,
to slow from rapid
back to quiet
One more chip in faith in senses
One more tiny lesson,
Taught to doubt
the eyes
and ears
that saw and heard
And doubt the mouth that cried
And doubt the mind that thought
Of Wolf.
(Repeat as needed,
oftener if possible,
for maximum success.)
The time that follows,
in a day, or two, or three perhaps
The most successful wolf
will silhouette himself
against the setting moon
in sharp and slavering relief
And howl a noise
that no one could mistake
for anything but Wolf
And focus green-reflective eyes
Like challenge, on the shepherd
(or apprentice boy he left
to tend the flock)
And turn the eyes
like rabid rage
like hunger, at the sheep
in hope of sharp and slavering relief
of hunger never slaked for long
by fawn or rabbit
And will growl a noise
impossible to hear
as anything but Wolf.
And then be gone
Before the cry and panic
of the shepherd's boy
brings up the other flock,
the sheep in village clothing
who like lamb or fawn or rabbit
run in panic at a cry of fear
and mount the hill
But seeing stillness,
long enough
to still their hearts,
slow down to calm
slow down to safety
singed by heat
that simmers
into reprimand
A chip in faith
A lesson
Taught to doubt
the eyes and ears
that saw and heard
And doubt the mouth that cried
And leave them there in silence
with their flock
without a choice
but to admit
the lack of evidence
and doubt their eyes and ears
and memories
of Wolf.
(The most successful wolf
repeats this step,
as many times
as hunger will allow.)
The final time,
the most successful wolf
has no instructions.
He may feast exactly as he likes
Because the eyes and ears
the voice and mind
are out of hope
and know there is no hope
in crying Wolf
And can no longer do a thing
but watch the feast
and simply
cry.