General
Monarch Butterfly
Becune Point
Stunned heat of noon. In shade, tan, silken cows
hide in the thorned acacias. A butterfly staggers.
Festival Seating
Landscape Over Zero
it's hawk teaching song to swim
it's song tracing back to the first wind
we trade scraps of joy
enter family from different directions
it's a father confirming darkness
it's darkness leading to that lightning of the classics
a door of weeping slams shut
echoes chasing its cry
it's a pen blossoming in lost hope
it's a blossom resisting the inevitable route
it's love's gleam waking to
light up landscape over zero
Merry Whatever
Brief reflection on killing the Christmas carp
You take a kitchen-mallet
and a knife
and hit
the right spot, so it doesn’t jerk, for
jerking means only complications and reduces profit.
And the watchers already narrow their eyes, already admire the
dexterity,
already reach for their purses. And paper is ready
for wrapping it up. And smoke rises from chimneys.
And Christmas peers from windows, creeps along the ground
and splashes in barrels.
Such is the law of happiness.
I am just wondering if the carp is the right creature.
A far better creature surely would be one
which—stretched out—held flat—pinned down—
would turn its blue eye
on the mallet, the knife, the purse, the paper,
the watchers and the chimneys
and Christmas,
And quickly
say something. For instance
These are my happiest days; these are my golden days.
Or
The starry sky above me and the moral law within me,
Or
And yet it moves.
Or at least
Hallelujah!
Shooting Gallery
A Boat
O beautiful
was the werewolf
in his evil forest.
We took him
to the carnival
and he started
crying
when he saw
the Ferris wheel.
Electric
green and red tears
flowed down
his furry cheeks.
He looked
like a boat
out on the dark
water.
Hughy, Dewey and Louie
Funny Strange
We are tender and our lives are sweet
and they are already over and we are
visiting them in some kind of endless
reprieve from oblivion, we are walking
around in them and after we shatter
with love for everything we settle in.
Thou tiger on television chowing,
thou very fact of dreams, thou majestical
roof fretted with golden fire. Thou wisdom
of the inner parts. Thou tintinnabulation.
Is it not sweet to hand over the ocean's
harvest in a single wave of fish? To bounce
a vineyard of grapes from one's apron
and into the mouth of the crowd? To scoop up
bread and offer up one's armful to the throng?
Let us live as if we were still among
the living, let our days be patterned after
theirs. Is it not marvelous to be forgetful?
Remains of the Republic
After the Industrial Revolution, All Things Happen at Once
Now we enter a strange world, where the Hessian Christmas
Still goes on, and Washington has not reached the other shore;
The Whiskey Boys
Are gathering again on the meadows of Pennsylvania
And the Republic is still sailing on the open sea.
I saw a black angel in Washington dancing
On a barge, saying, Let us now divide kennel dogs
And hunting dogs; Henry Cabot Lodge, in New York,
Talking of sugar cane in Cuba; Ford,
In Detroit, drinking mother’s milk;
Henry Cabot Lodge, saying, “Remember the Maine!”
Ford, saying, “History is bunk!”
And Wilson saying, “What is good for General Motors … ”
Who is it, singing? Don’t you hear singing?
It is the dead of Cripple Creek;
Coxey’s army
Like turkeys are singing from the tops of trees!
And the Whiskey Boys are drunk outside Philadelphia.