It was the day of the wedding of Mr and Mrs Epithalamium they looked quite the Heroic Couplet and full of Romanticism until the Englyn Prose-d the Questionku ‘ Do you take this woman’ … then in a wavering Iambic Pentameter voice the groom whispered ‘I do not know’ ….Mrs Epithalamium felt quite Dizain and tried to scratch out his Ruba’I, the Clerihew stepped forward to comfort her but tripped over some Concrete and felt like a right Cowboy. The brides father, the Russian Chastushka, grabbed the groom and with a Carpe Diem attitude threatened to Choka him.
The guests all gathered in an Enclosed Rhyme with the best man making quite a Dramatic Monologue, the brides mother had her Hybronnet knocked off her head and the chief bridesmaid had her Kimo torn in the affray. The young flower girls Haibun and Hamd both burst into tears as their Crown of Sonnets were totally destroyed.
The Rev. Pantoum pleaded for calm, then repeating his plea for the melee to stop started making a List of the damage, quick as a Ghazal and with great Imagism he protected the Crystalline glass from smashing into Ninette pieces. Meanwhile the poor bride was in a state of Nonet anxiously trying to get past the twins Munaajaat and Musaddas, her Idyll life had been turned upside down, today was the day she had hoped to change her Name to Triolet.
Alliteration watched while women wept, then stepped forward and with a Lyric in his voice asked people to calm down, he told everyone he had Naat come here to watch a display such as this and suggested they went for a hot Canzone to discuss the next move, Tanka and Tyburn readily agreed as they were very hungry and particularly as it was Free Verse it meant they could eat as much as they wanted. The nearly bride couldn’t give a Sijo if she never saw her ex again she was sick of being Kyrielle to and did not want anyone else’s Epyllion and with a final Than-Bauk stormed out of the club…
© 6/4/2013
Lingering above this desert the first rains of winter,
streets greasy with oil/water/rubber cocktail.
Vegas spruces for the tourist onslaught,
bettors eager to lay their Superbowl favorite.
For a weekend the nation marches to a singular drum,
hotels swelling with the faithful to this Neon City.
The Champion stealthily concealed behind the mirror
through which no tout, nor soothsayer may perceive.
The press have lain out every faceted interview,
now only the true believers need worry beads.
This poet shrugs: for him the game has little meaning,
he looks instead to the clouds overhanging the valley.
Bring on the sacks of Sunday, the pass of phallic objects,
there will be snow upon the Redrocks to chill that morn.
The slipped knot of now into will be
is such a gentle strand,
the braid undoes itself from yesterday
as easily as a garment's clasp,
as easily as abseiling liana.
Can I hold soft
the line?
To not look back
but keep the mountain's imprint
emboldened in the eye
To unknow
the difference from ascent and descent.
O day, o cloud: what do you know
that hasn't been pressed through my palms?
This is the third evening I have lived in a hush.
A thousand others like me know the feel of warm hush.
The student in the library, snug in her work;
She’s caught up in her work and the scribbling hush.
A sporting man, dressed in white, at the courts of Central Park—
Tennis courts, one next to the other, he knocks echoes into the hush.
The woman singing jazz at some bar, swaying, drunk.
Her audience of three blinks like a dumb hush.
A man at a deli sits, hunched behind the counter;
Morning light slips through his cigarette smoke: white hush.
At 4 am, two train lights appear down the track—
Tungsten lights add a brightening hush.
And I sit by the wall in the hospital’s small waiting room.
There is no one in the hall, no one in the chairs, only me and the hush.
A softening of the skin, like putting up the wall.
In the late afternoon, he had her against the wall.
This is not the first time someone has lost their mind here—
Ten men or more have faded into thought, found staring at the wall.
We have loved each other longer than this forest used to grow—
What will happen? You will change when we are forced to cross the wall.
I cannot see, but I can smell the hyacinths on the other side.
Cord-like vines snake through the cracks in the wall.
You wear all the semblances of love in your black bathrobe;
Go ahead, put on your best perfume, like some flowery wall.
At the edge of the woods, chimneys lurk behind tall leaves.
Somewhere ahead, wrapped around the bases of trees, waits a wall.
Heat slips up our shirts, sweaty beads of sex.
We twist our clothes, grabbing at flesh, groping for sex.
The hard squeeze and pressure is scooping out the soul—
Please, push it out, we want to be left bare and have sex.
Our skin is strung together, our bodies hollowed, dry;
Blind to the heat and the mess, we’re swept up by a blissful, empty sex.
The sheets, salted with sweat, are heaved off the bed,
Pillows gone, clothing gone, here there is nothing but sex.
Gasping and shouting, we purge ourselves, we are nothing—
I am pure and vacant, I’ve rushed my blood to my groin for sex.
And moments like these are strained and stretched.
Then, release, the moment falls from us as wet as sex.
Like sheets, pillows, clothes, the rest of me returns:
Too tired to move, I listen to our breathing, short huffs in the air after sex.
On the first day, we are all just hydrogen and time. Filling these hands—
this one mirror angle, one small wrist. One afternoon’s picked-over bones.
The second day, I spun ten times. On the grass, sky turning
its cosmic ballet. The axis of the world, there in the front yard.
On the third day, a hangman’s rope of pantyhose. Easy choices
like stop, and get a condom or don’t stop, and get a family.
On the fourth day, tick-a-tick-a-ticking. Since I learned
to tell time, cradling has been inescapable and immanent.
The fifth day, I wanted an ovipositor that would glide
and bed, know it’s way around a dark brood pouch.
Day six, caught stealing ancient definitions, stuffing my pockets
and shoes. I’m told zülf is the wisp of hair falling over my eyebrow.
On the seventh day, I shelved myself and gave back one rib, honey
spines of snakes. What tiny handprints they’d leave if they had hands.
Meteor streaks an onyx sky,
thoughts vaporize without a tail
Words have seized the winds,
usurped control from ideas
Page absorbs a mutant slang,
lines malinger with an attitude
Inspiration silhouettes reason,
unblemished by banality
Grant language mellifluence or
condemn the poet to monologue
Lost are themes, jewels of a lifetime
separated by melancholy vicissitudes
I would like this life of endless
Greyhound time schedules to cease.
What self-inflicted alien abduction
tore me from the valley of my birth,
leaving me to wander empty streets,
each the branch of a coppiced maze?
I grow weary of quotidian fastfood buffets
downed with the aid of espresso baristas.
My legs have lost the muscle-memory
that strode the river cliffs with no regard.
Time to end the sleepwalk of forty years;
rejoin the forward guard of Iroquois.
I would sit smoking on the porch last autumn
in the maple leaves that kiss me with tepid lips
Breeze, with cinnamon as lipstick wafting in
and every page of Ulysses, coffee stained in it
I will die in the dead petals that did in the dirt
and in the parks where we sat, in coughing fits
Reciting poetry to neither one of us
as if the air was the audience to our worst habits
Last October I got on an airplane to Chicago
It is still the best thing I ever did.
