English and Celtic Poets

A Sassenach assembles words and lines
In order, disciplined, like hammer-falls
Upon reluctant steel in armories
The beat and off-beat in formation set

A Celt sings challenges carelessly into the eagle-skies
To soar among the storms in sorrow and in joy
Laughing among full cups of heathery vowels
Claidheamh-mor swinging against blank verse in English helmets

An Englishman sends words to fight and work
A Celt persuades wild words to fight and dream

About Those Purple Socks
  
Graham Greene’s Monsignor Quixote
  
The world had no more use for any of them:
An old Communist, an old priest, an old car
All of them well into their horsemeat days
And so they fled, and crashed into the truth
  
On a chivalric quest for purple socks
Wandering on the road to Golgotha
Their Stations of the Cross a cinema,
A pair of Guardia, a brothel, wine
  
And so they fled, and fell into the Truth
There at the foot of the Altar of God

The Beggar at Canterbury Gate

The beggar sits at Canterbury Gate,
Thin, pale, unshaven, sad.  His little dog
Sits patiently as a Benedictine
At Vespers, pondering eternity.
Not that rat terriers are permitted
To make solemn vows.  Still, the pup appears
To take his own vocation seriously,
As so few humans do.  For, after all,
Dogs demonstrate for us the duties of
Poverty, stability, obedience,
In choir, perhaps; among the garbage, yes,
So that perhaps we too might live aright.

The good dog’s human plays his tin whistle
Beneath usurper Henry’s1 offering-arch
For Kings, as beggars do, must drag their sins
And lay them before the Altar of God:
The beggar drinks and drugs and smokes, and so
His penance is to sit and suffer shame;
The King’s foul murders stain his honorable soul;
His penance is a stone-carved famous name
Our beggar, then, is a happier man,
Begging for bread at Canterbury Gate;
Tho’ stones are scripted not with his poor fame,
His little dog will plead his cause to God.

1Henry VII, who built the Cathedral Gate in 1517, long after the time of Henry II and St. Thomas Becket

The Beatnik Café’

Cigarettes, coffee, a ****** beret
Blue smoke and Blue Mountain, blue verse, blue rhyme --
O Come to the side-street beatnik café;
Here present-tense yourself; caffeine the time

Here order your Bacon very well Donne
And jam your java with croissants and Keats
Orate from Spenser; groove with Tennyson
Tap out a line of Seafarer-four beats

Tap out a manifesto; everyone does
Pulp-print Red rags yelp “Revolution Now!”
The typewriter is holy, and Up the Fuzz!
Bongo that Kerouac, and Howl, but how?

Bongo that beat, oh, yeah, it’s crazzzzy, man
Sheaffer that rhythm, cat; Parker that line
Ferlinghetti your truth to a yellow pad
Sharpen your verbs to a rebel design

Sharpen your verbs from a bottle of ink
Light up a Camel; blow intellectual smoke
Teach the ****** bourgeois how they should think
Grey-suited capitalists – what a joke!

L’Envoi – Time Slouches On

Tee-shirted capitalists joke in Mandarin
The latest chained coffee’s inside the mall
English and Apples are original sin
On glowing screens where the pale pixels crawl

And no one crawls through rhythm, rhyme, or verse,
Or bongos out an existential cry
For poetry is dead; the twitters terse
Reduce the ancient loves to I, me, my.

Millennials at Work and War

Scorn not the snowflake who stands watch for us

Now thrown into the existential struggle
Surrendering their youth and taking up life
They muster in the fields and factories
And in their elders’ undeclared, shadowy wars
Uniformed in an unappreciated sense
Of duty and dignity while scorned by those
Who take their ease upon the couches of sloth
And fling cheap mockery at millennials
Who take up tools and work and love of life
Sometimes to die in deserts still unmapped
While generals dismiss their casualties as light
Despised as snowflakes by keyboard commandos
Who never got closer to any war
Than a John Wayne ketchup-****** movie.
Some work long double shifts through university
In a sawmill, shop, or fast foodery
Only to be dismissed as slacker layabouts,
But expected to trust those who condemn them
For not being the greatest generation
As defined by those who never served at all
And while being criticized they will grab
A quick cup of coffee for the night shift
Staffing the hospitals and police patrols
That keep their sneering critics alive and safe
They drive the trucks, they man the ships, they work
They drill for oil, these useless millennials
While idlers lounge long in the coffee shops
And YooToob computered jokes about them
Millennials have no time for coloring books
Or comfort animals or revolution
For they are weary with study and work
The best of them make no demands, but, sure
A little respect, hard-earned, would be nice
If only the scripted singer-songwriters
Would pack up the tired old stereotypes
And see millennials as they truly are
But darkness falls – they must go back to work
On the eleven-seven, the graveyard shift
They do not burn draft cards or Medicare cards
Instead through work they illuminate this world
And build it up with continued sacrifice

Scorn not the snowflake who stands watch for us

ICU Waiting Room in Advent

Artistic gilded deer repose in peace
Among the store-room-dusty plastic leaves
Of decorator-decorated wreaths;
From thence they gaze serenely down upon
Sneeze-spotted pics in People magazine
And empty coffee cups recyled from
Recycled natural fibers recycled
From green fair trade recycled soy inks.

No ikons grace this dying-place, no cross,
No crucifix to focus farewell prayers;
Christ’s people gather lovingly around,
Their baseball caps thrall-ringed about their heads
In devout remembrance of passing souls.
Their cell-phone aps pass through their vague, weak eyes
As once the ancient biddings and prayer-worn beads
Slipped gently through the lips and hands of men.

Advent at the Dollar Store

The *****, roachy desperation of
the unswept dollar store’s cellophane dreams
At Prices You’ll Love boxes of oilless
popcorn poppers deep-fat fryers massagers
to sweeten generational desperation
behind the counter cigarettes locked up
We Cash Work And Welfare Checks can’t afford
Lives collapsed so we console ourselves with
electric hair-curlers and boxes of chips
singing NFL coffee machines
shiny new bicycles to be stolen
before the end of January or
left out to rust in the February rain
dusty plastic holly shiny CD
players for the administration of
anaesthesia Jumbo Bargain Gift Wrap
for Your Happy Holiday Shopping Pleasure
No Shirt No Shoes No Service No, No, No
Hyphenated Industries of Chicago,
Tokyo, Seoul, and Taipei wishes us
a Merry Christmas