He asked me to review his book (I must be nuts)
I did just as he asked:
                                       and now he hates my guts

A book of poetry is a prayer book
Your Daily Office of verses and lines
Attended prayerfully if possible
But, yes, attended in any event

Wavell’s Flowers for your next deployment
Young Yevtushenko for the bus commute
Or a little volume of Pushkin pushed
Into a pocket past your pocketknife

Beginning with Matins, and all through your day
Make the blessings of poetry part of your Way

You're lonely in an apartment at night
But lonesome way off in a pickup truck

Lonely sitting in an IKEA chair
Lonesome on the tail-gate of an old Ford

Lonely over a glass of single-malt
Lonesome over a Marlboro and a beer

Lonely surfing the channels of emptiness
Lonesome listening to the silence of stars

And either way you hurt; she isn’t there
No, she sure ain’t

A cookery show with noshes and gnaws -
People giving a ‘burger rounds of applause

Whispered voices adrift about the house
The little cousins all sent out to play
Adults ingathered at the kitchen table
Taking communion from the coffee ***

The hospice nurse is in and out and back
A subtle shake of her head – he’s still alive
In the back bedroom, gurgling to an end
Frail fingers twitching on the coverlet

An evening of grieving, darkening fast
Whispered voices adrift about the past

No father
Could have been a better father
Than you
When duty called
You were there
And will be forever

You're the best

Oh, yes, you should dabble amateurishly
With sketchbook, pen, guitar, and crescent wrench
With telescope and hiking boots and love
With verse that scans and prose that strongly speaks

For a dabbler, all the world is his adventure:
A coffee cup is as Old Santa Fe
A stroll in the garden a pilgrimage
To Canterbury or Santiago

And you should draw and write and sing these things
Oh, yes, you should dabble amateurishly

If you were still a child, I would give you
A Kleenex or two, as I used to do
(Now blow your nose…) and maybe a cookie too
But now…this much is true…time flew…you grew

And yet

There is no expiration date on tears
No sign that reads “You Are Too Old for Fears”
No simple answers after the smoke all clears
No moon, no music high among the spheres

Where lovers’ dreams ascended in the night…
But, here, have another Kleenex, all right?

To be chanted whenever the O Machine 1 fails:

Rumor has it that the Enigma
Was to Churchill a foul stigma

And that the ancient, creaking Babbage
It was to him but so much cabbage

Colossus One and Colossus Two
Those gadgets too he began to rue

They say he let them rust and rot -
The pity is that he did not


(I checked with the Lizard People on this – Churchill’s secret Second World War computers, powered by a primordial Lemurian source of energy so dangerous that even speaking its name in the ancient language of the Atlanteans is said to be fatal, are secured in a locked vault on Oak Island and guarded around the clock (set to Martian time) by the Trilateral Masonic-Vatican Continuum of deadly albino flying fish.)

1 E.M. Forster, “The Machine Stops,” 1909, Much-anthologized

Once upon a time each morning began
With a ventilation shaft and the night’s
Foul fall of dreams, drama, and downed debris
Dammed and maybe ****** against the window screen

And then an apartment window so high
I could see only the San Diego sky
Train windows, the Mojave through the glass
Then only for a little while
                                                       there was you

The scenery keeps shifting, and that’s okay
Life is a John Ford movie every day

Please consider the seeming illogic
The seeming illogic of paying a man
A good and wise and educated man
To poke his finger upwards in your ///

After a visit to a wizard’s lab
Where a pleasant, professional young woman
Attaches a vampire butterfly to your wrist
And ***** your blood into a little phial

“Now you might feel a little pressure, okay?”
And then consider the happy logic
                                                           ­        of staying alive

With its four-beat
Putt-putt, putt-putt
Continental rhythm
Putt-putt, putt-putt
It plows and putts
Putt-putt, putt-putt
It pulls and putts
Putt-putt, putt-putt
It plants and putts
Putt-putt, putt-putt
It digs and putts
Putt-putt, putt-putt
It mows and putts
Putt-putt, putt-putt
It rakes and putts
Putt-putt, putt-putt
It bales and putts
Putt-putt, putt-putt
A little oil, a little gas
Putt-putt, putt-putt
A sweet machine
Putt-putt, putt-putt
Upon the grass
Putt-putt, putt-putt
When all is done
Putt-putt, putt-putt
And all is said
Putt-putt, putt-putt
There’s nothing like
Putt-putt, putt-putt
Massey-Ferguson red
Putt-putt, putt-putt!

No high school sophomore ever grew up without
A naked lady plastic ballpoint pen -
Those furtive giggles in geometry class
Are not about theorems all risqué

After the FFA trip to the rodeo
Or the band trip to sunny Galveston
A pretty lady with a 1940s do
Loses her swimsuit over and over again

Upend the pen, and she's nekkid in the sun -
Whoever thought writing could be such fun!

No writer ever seems to exhaust the ink
That oozes from extruded plastic tubes
Made by machines and chemicals that stink
The crowded banks of the fetid Huangpu

Cheap plastic pens are given, shared, and sold,
Tapped and gnawed, pocketed, stolen, lent, and lost
Drying and dying after they grow old
Misplaced, mislaid, decayed, but seldom tossed

A ballpoint helps us with our thoughts to think
But no one ever seems to exhaust the ink

Like the little children that once we were
The midnight thunder has us burrowing
Down further into the primordial covers
For fear of the rain and cold outside

Our wool and cotton caves cocoon us from
The timbers creaking through the pounding wind
The raindrops at the window wanting in
But after dawn the morning the news reports

A homeless man dying a dumpster-death
Lost his last hope with his last lonely breath

Hey, TeleCheck:

                                              T
     ­                                         H
                      ­                         I
                                         te  S  le

We read that all functionaries in the Moscow Kremlin use typewriters and messengers for in-house communications.

Typewriters cannot be hacked.  The cleverest listening devices aboard lurking submarines and in space spy craft can pick up the tap-tap-tap of a typewriter, but cannot interpret an e-tap from a g-tap.

Better still, typewriters break down only every twenty years or so.  No typewriter sends you a message that the Microsoft Word lifetime package you bought has no existence, and that you must buy it again, nor does it give you a blue screen because it has no screen at all. A typewriter tells you nothing; you tell the typewriter with the nimbleness of your mind and fingers, and it obeys.

Beyond that, one does not imagine Vladimir Putin passing idle evenings playing Candy Crush. Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia crush, maybe.

A computer, any computer, unlike the manly typewriter, often suffers the Aunt Pittypat vapors and falls into a faint, calling weakly for smelling salts.

Thus the brevity of this column.

Y'r 'umble scrivener has spent much of a beautiful spring day attempting to coax Aunt Pittypat into waking up and doing a little work:

But all Microsoft's horses (I was thinking of another quadruped, but the name is not appropriate for a family newspaper)

And all Microsoft's persons

Could not make Aunt Pittypat anything but worsens. (That's not a real word)

A personal computer is outdated before you get it home from the Godzilla Box Store, and this moribund machine is some four years old. In dog years that is...something; I forget what.

Tomorrow morning I am off to buy the cheapest machine I can find, for personal computers are as disposable as toilet paper.

I will pass another beautiful spring day re-installing programs and apps (because I am good about backing up all my files) and addresses and all the tiny little dragons that speed along its circuits, and by next week should have a brilliant and well-crafted story to tell you.

May your electrons never fail.

-30-

Old chairs just anyhow across the lawn
This morning mown by a grass-proud old man
Who with his book and chair and pipe and dog
Rules his demesne with glasses of iced tea

In this an afternoon of indolence
And as the shadows shift to mark the hours
Even Poirot relaxes his little grey cells
And merely strolls to apprehend the thief

Oh, happy summer, tea or lemonade,
And lazy hours just dreaming in the shade

A brave little man with a shopping bag
Defiantly stood before an army tank
A foul machine designed to grind free men
Into ****** scraps to be hosed away

Two unknown men - it was not the tank that stopped
It was the tank commander who stopped the tank
All that is left is old videotape:
Two bullets made all problems disappear

A brave little man with a shopping bag
Another brave man with a battle tank:

They stopped -
                              And, yes, someday China will be free

My dad was on Omaha Beach but he
didn’t talk much about it so now
I’m going to take the rest of the day
to tell you all that he didn’t much talk about
we broke the Enigma code yeah we did
you can always tell a real veteran by
his thousand-yard stare, yessir, I know stuff
we kicked the Germans’ butts but he didn’t talk
much about it if not for us the French
would be speaking German yeah man yeah
when I was in graduate school but he
didn’t talk much about it we saved the world
when I was in graduate school when I
saw Patton those liberals in academia
he had this thousand-yard stare them snowflakes
wouldn’t hit Omaha Beach now they’d be browning
their pants when I was in graduate school
but he didn’t talk much about it yeah
that M-1 was the best battle implement
ever devised I got me one and boy
it’s got some serious stopping power yessir
I just love to go out to the range and pop some caps
with that bad boy the French are cheese-eating
surrender monkeys we can’t depend on the Italians
but he didn’t talk much about it when I
was in graduate school thousand-yard stare
my dad was there he didn’t talk much about it
here is a youtube about it if only
those snowflakes would watch Patton they’d learn something
left-wing academia he didn’t talk much about it
when I was in graduate school yeah man
I seen it on Band of Brothers liberal elites
Macron Macron Macron first front second front
‘cause I know stuff I got a whole liberry
but he didn’t talk much about it if not
for us yeah you’d all be speaking German
we saved France’s **** when DeGaulle told us
he wanted all American soldiers out of France
we asked him if that included the thousands
of American soldiers in French cemeteries
and that sure shut him up ha ha ha
bet you never heard that before and then
there was these old veterans at the airport
and this Frenchy asked them for their passports
and this old man had to look for his
and this Frenchy asked this veteran if he
had been in France before and this veteran
said he had and then this Frenchy he said
then you know you need to have your passport
ready and this here old veteran said that he
was at Normandy and there wasn’t no Frenchies
to give it to and you could hear a pin drop
ha ha I bet you never heard that one before
When I was in graduate school when I
was on my gap year but he didn’t talk much about it
snowflake liberal elites in academia
I love me my AK-47 that son
spits out some serious lead but he didn’t
talk much about it…


Me? Like, I had this deferment, my feet,
but I know all about it ‘cause I watch John Wayne
and my dad was in it so I guess he ought to know
and he was in a real war; you were only in
like you know them A-rabs and stuff…

No picturesque ruins will remain for us
To wander through with our sketchbooks and pens
For drawing pictures or writing blank verse
About bare ruin’d 2 air-conditioning ducts

The baptismal font will be repurposed
As a bird-bath (with a plastic Saint Elvis)
And the stained-glass windows will be sold off
As fashionable bathroom accessories

The crucifix of deplorable design 3
Will be stored in the back of someone’s garage
Until the girls carry it off to the woods
And laughingly use it for target practice

A rubbly field will serve as a soccer pitch
Until seventy years 4 have passed away


1  Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey”
2  Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73
3  Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited
4  Daniel 9:1-2

A Poem for June


Just why a cucumber should be so cool
Eludes the logical; a cucumber’s just
A vegetable a-lying on the ground
Awaiting consumption.  But let’s accept
This vegetarian cliché’ simply
To get on with this cool descriptive task:

Whatever’s cool in the falling June sun
Descends through oak leaves, dark and summer green
And dancing down the air falls happily
Upon this cool cucumber cave where sits
Upon a wooden bench a lazy man
Who should be taking now another turn
With lawnmower, shovel, or shears against
The wild greenness of happy midsummer.

But, oh!  Persephone surely won’t mind
If her allotted garden tasks are paused
By her appointed minion rustic who
Takes now his ease in her delightful shade.
For summer after all is more than work;
She calls for dozing too, and dreamily
Watching busy bees buzz among the flowers,
Like fussy matchmakers arranging marriages,
And hummingbirds humming in and out of leaves,
Their sanctuary leaves, to argue at
The nectar-feeders, as if there weren’t
Enough for all.  The squirrels in the trees
Would never condescend to chitter there;
They glare at humans disapprovingly,
Like old teachers unhappily aware
That, oh, somewhere, somehow a child might be
Enjoying life, and that would never do!

Even the ribbon of smoke from the morning’s
Trimmings and cuttings and sawings appears
To be taking a nap in the summer noon,
There gently snoring up wisps of ashes
Instead of roaring, hissing manfully
As it did in the early hours.
                                                     The bench
Along the fence where the tired old man sits
Creaks as he shifts his weight, and watches
His backyard world doze in the leaf-laced sun;
He lights a well-deserved cigar, and sees
Its soothing smoke join with the ******* fire
Ascending heavenward with peaceful thoughts.

There is no darkness to our restless nights
Even the trees are lit by an industrial glow
One’s room is a mystery of little lights
Hovering like fairies putting on a show

Mostly blue, a yellow one here and there
Some reds and greens, as boxes take on power
Our masters’ eyes and spies, colouring the air
While watching, listening, hour after after hour

You wake, you listen - a moving finger writes
There is no darkness to our restless nights

An ironmonger is a but a hardware store
And equally inaccurate both ways
For not nearly all that is mongered is iron
Just as not all that is hardware is hard

At the ironmonger one finds toilet seats
Hammers and saws, water valves, mosquito spray
Welders’ caps and leather gloves, wrecking bars
And hunting licenses against the fall

Coffee in paper cups, men vested in jeans
Stained with the work of tending the Garden
Chanting the liturgies of field and shop
Of pump and plow and press, piston and plane

Cups empty, then, their Ite, missa est:
“Well, boys, I got to go now; y’all be blessed”

Just like old Parson Weems’ young naughty George
I took my little chainsaw and I chopped
Or, rather, sawed, a cherry tree, down, down
Onto the ground, with leaves and limbs all ‘round

And I am sorry for the tree, each bee
That fed upon its blossoms, and each bird
That fed upon its summer fruit, but it
Was jammed into an apple tree, and so

It had to go. There is no message here
Though for this tree you might well shed a tear

From A Liturgy for the Emperor

We believe in God's holy empire too,
Byzantium, eternally golden
The Red-Apple Tree in the eastern sun
The City that echoes with laughing light
Through memory and history and beyond.
We believe in God and His Emperor,
And we believe that in the absence of
The Emperor, even then we must be
The Emperor's subjects, stubborn and true,
Wherever God has chosen to send us.
We then must rule our passions and our hearts,
Tend our gardens as if they were Eden --
Because they are -- and care for our children
As if angels were visiting tonight,
Until our God restores our Emperor,
Restores His City where the Earth-halves meet,
And finally, some day, some happy day,
Returns Himself to sit and rule enthroned
In His Three Romes, and in Jerusalem

Every farm boy knows that the first day of summer
Is that morning, that happy, glorious morning
In May when writing topic sentences
And solving for X are but fading ghosts

He’s up at dawn without being called even once
And pulling on his jeans and and boots and tee
He greets his fishing rod upon the rack
And Grandpa’s tackle box, which was left to him

Because

After breakfast and getting up the cows
For milking, he is the king of all his world

Oh, yes, there are dragons, and pixies too
Dragons at dusk at the far end of the lane
And pixies at noon, among the orchard trees
Where the early apples ripen and swell

All through the drowsy, dreamy, bees-y hours
While Fair Folk frolic unseen by the old
Whom Hypnos has given a lesser gift
Thus we are free to dance among the leaves

Oh, yes, there are dragons, and pixies too
Elusive and teasing - but look for them

The drunken Navy cook was suppurative 1 with tats
And the supply boat was always sunk or late
Our officers would not release the c-rats
So one night someone forced a lock, and we ate:

Tin-can crackers, mother////ers and ham
Mystery meat with beans in tomato sauce
Beans and baby ////s and some heavy jam
Beef slices with potatoes in sphagnum moss

But Lieutenant Macbeth, a lord over the earth
Found us, and then he much displaced the mirth 2


1 Cf. Chaucer’s cook in The Canterbury Tales
2 Macbeth III.IV.132-133

In the end, Lieutenant Macbeth (not the ////’s real name) could do nothing since the looted c-rats were so widely distributed that he’d have had to write up the entire unit.

Memorial Day observed on a Saturday
Y’all bring y’all’s folding chairs to the memorial
A wall of names next to the pumping station
Donations accepted (but not audited)

An’ Lord we just wanna thank you for these men
Who were willing to sacrifice their all
On the beaches of Normandy and stuff
And bless our brave, God-fearing president

I’ll wear my made-in-China U.S. tie
There’ll be fire-trucks. That’ll be something, I guess


And hey man thank you for your service I guess you seen some action huh my grandpa was in World War II so I like know all about it and you weren’t in a real war that’s what my uncle said and he oughta know ‘cause he don’t like to talk about it you know like them real veterans got this thousand yard state like I’ve got this *** Nambu I found at a garage sale like you’d really like it you need to come out some time and we’ll like bust a few caps and like stuff Trump’s sure gonna show them A-rabs, like, you know MAGA like in this movie I seen one time…

“Please remove everything from your pockets
And place them in this little tray (NOW, please)

Which we will then pass around to strange people
Without you being able to see who they are.”

“Will all merlot-class diners please line up
At the door while we verify your existence?”

“I’m sorry, sir, but your meal will be delayed
For about two hours. Would you like some water?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but your meal will be delayed
While our maintenance team works on the grill.”

“I’m sorry, miss, but your meal will be delayed
While our maintenance team repairs the oven vents.”

“Yes, the breakfast special is $7.95
But there is a $10 surcharge for the plate.”

“We are sorry, miss, but it appears that
Your silverware has been re-routed to Denny’s.”

“We find that seating twenty customers
At a four-foot table is more efficient.”

“We are having a little turbulence
In the kitchen; please fasten your seat belts.”

“For safety purposes, secure all ‘phones
And stow them until after the salad.”

“We ran out of entrees fourteen tables back.
There is no more coffee. Want a doughnut?”

“However, we have lots of *****
For the belligerent drunk behind you.”

“Thank you for dining with us this evening
(Yeah, yeah, like we even care about you).”

Keep the torch alive to pass to a new generation with the key that unlocks the road to the future follow your passion the unemployment will follow we’ve been through some amazing times together make a difference to thine own self be true commencement means a beginning not an ending as we go forth life is a journey not a destination we made it all the hard work we’ve put forth to this point in time these are the best time in our lives as one door closes another door opens because a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step to make the world a better place trust your instincts you don’t find education in books we are the future bright with promise some see the future and ask why but we see the future and ask why not Habakkuk 2:7 we did it I can’t believe we’re here believe in yourself live your dreams to be all that you can be God has a plan for you we have the responsibility to build a new world if opportunity doesn’t knock build a door don’t follow the path blaze a trail because there is no one like you because you are an individual just like those other hundred or so people your age and dressed just alike because life is what happens while you’re making plans live, laugh, love you have to look through the rain to see the rainbow dance like nobody’s looking (even though they are, and they’re laughing at you, not with you) aim for the moon and if you miss you’ll hit the moon (or something) life is not waiting for the storm to pass it’s about dancing in the rain because you are a new generation called to miss 100% of the shots you don’t take because we were all one big family who have lived, laughed, and loved together hey and remember the time (name) barfed on the stairs we’ll all have that shared moment to remember together we can’t save all the starfish but I can make a difference for this one because as a great man Robert Frost said in “The Road Not Taken” we can make a difference for all the starfish in the sea of life today is the first day of your rest of your life oh, the places you’ll go like maybe eternal stasis in front of a smartphone I don’t know why they asked me to be the speaker shout-out to Mom wear sunscreen because your future’s so bright close your eyes and remember when hey, an air horn, that’s so cool, no one’s ever done that before woo-hoo I want to congratulate each of your on your incredible talents and abilities as you begin your journey to a bright and shining future because we are the best class (name of school and a shout-out to the mascot)) has ever graduated (since last year) a dream is a wish your heart makes and you can become anything you dream to be or wish to be or something #lifehack #hashtag now go forth and make your lives exceptional although on Monday morning we’ll wake up and realize we’re just some more unemployed Americans.

We must forever grateful be that Dog
Ages ago domesticated man

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed…”

                                       -Allen Ginsberg


No. He didn’t.

He helped mediocrities self-destruct
Through formless howlings in their lonely minds
He pushed them to their deaths with obscene smirks
No more connected than foul faeces flung

Against the good, the beautiful, the true
He pitied himself, and called it rebellion
He squealed out his pimply scatologies
He destroyed the weaklings he could have helped

The best minds of his generation pitied him
But kept their children far away from it

Enough of gossamer!  Enough of it!
It’s just another word for spider ////!

A Maledictory

V:
I am #allin for My Jesus and for me
In my position here I accomplished
Many wonderful things (see attachment)
To the glory of My Jesus and of me

R:
But what about the dead body in the parking lot?

V:
I have always been #allin for the children
Now look forward to more time with my family
And with My Jesus (#allin for Jesus)
And sharing my life’s passions with the world

R:
But what about the dead body in the parking lot?

V:
Because if you believe it you can dream it
I’m #allin for My Jesus. And the children

R:
But what about the dead body in the parking lot?

Knee surgery Buc-ee’s Alabama
Diarrhea Buc-ee’s Bastrop back surgery
Buc-ee’s Fort Worth foot surgery Buc-ee’s
New Braunfels abdominal surgery

Buc-ee’s Texas City divorce Buc-ee’s
Port Lavaca gastro-intestinal
Series Buc-ee’s Pearland fever and chills
Cardiac workup Buc-ee’s Lake Jackson

Blood pressure pills Buc-ee’s Madisonville
Bypass surgery Buc-ee’s Brazoria

With thanks to everyone who gives us
Young Sheldon and The Big Bang Theory

Soft doxie
Warm doxie
Little ball  of fur
Happy doxie
Sleepy doxie
yap, yap, yap!  YAP! YAP! YAP! Yap! Yap! Yap! YAP! YAP! YAP! Yap! Yap! Yap! YAP! YAP! YAP! Yap! Yap! Yap! YAP! YAP! YAP! Yap! Yap! Yap! Bark! YAP! YAP! YAP! Yap! Yap! Yap! Woof! YAP! YAP! YAP! Yap! Yap! Yap! Grrrrrrr!  YAP! YAP! YAP! Yap! Yap! Yap !YAP! YAP! YAP! Yap! Yap! Yap!

Saint John 8: 1-11

It is the topic of many homilies:
What was Jesus writing in the dust there
At the feet of the woman those men didn’t like?
Possibly he was writing to you and me:

“I know what you do when no one’s watching.”

Or

“I know what you say in self-deception.”

Or

“I know what you think when you are silent.”

Or

“I’m going to fry your *ss if you hurt my child.”

And then there is this other mystery:
Why was there dust in the Temple, anyway?

To Our Commander-in-Chief
                       and Manque Leader of the Free World
                       And All His Old Men Golfing Buddies
                Scheduling Their Tee-Times Around Missile Launches

A dying nineteen-year-old can’t even scream
When half his face has been blown away
He can only gurgle, his remaining eye
Staring wildly in agony and fear

Your man-child plays soldier on guided hunts
Kitted out like Rambo, and KA-BLAMMING
A bighorn sheep the guide spotted for him
Taking he-man selfies while yelping “OOOOH-RAH!”

A dying nineteen-year-old can’t even scream
When half his face has been blown away

During a thunderstorm a little frog
For reasons best known to its grey-green self
Climbed stickey-toed into the chambers of
The gauge, then begged for life as the water rose

Made in China of toxic plastic for
The Weather Consortium Collective ®™
All-natural collection of earth-safe
Weather instruments to save the animals

I took it to the lawn, and gentled it out
During a thunderstorm, a little frog

A Boy’s happy Christmas in the long ago
Miss Dee found it in an old house she bought
*** metal with the paint peeling away
Wire axles and rubber tires that still roll

No carpet in those years, a wood-plank floor
Was the dreamland for winter adventures
Between the gas fire and the Christmas tree
Between the morning and evening milkings

Somewhere an old man misses his fire truck -
His happy Christmas in the long ago

I have never been one of the slacker drones
I have never been one of the sheep-y clones
I have never eavesdropped on lovers’ moans
I have never seen Jesus in traffic cones

and

I have never watched The Game of Thrones

Our steppes and birch woods are metaphorical
And so are we - who has not seen himself
In youth as the innocent Alyosha
Or in bad days as Dimitri or Ivan

Grushenka at times, and pale Katya too
The Grand Inquisitor at our dark worst
Old Karamazov lusting after Death
Foul Smerdyakov descending cellar stairs

Or gypsy dancers in a rented room
Rolling Polish officers for their pay

But who could ever be Father Zosima?

Although some of my universities
Were universities, I take your point
For you too are a university
I want to know your course of study, your life

Tell me about your university:
Your favorite poet, how you see the skies
Do you like trains? Which hand do you write with?
Which crayon-color did you use up first?

Tell me a story that you tell yourself
While I polish your eyeglasses just right

Rosaries might be like ball-point pens
A souvenir for you from Brighton Beach
Fabrique en Chine, blessed by the Bishop of Rome
A kind thought from gap years and honeymoons

But now those rosaries and ball-point pens
Repose in stasis beneath your Sunday socks
And the handkerchiefs Mee-Maw monogrammed
In silk for your high school graduation

Go find them
(No, no, not the socks or handkerchiefs...)

Words flung onto paper are gifts of light
And so are Aves whispered in the night

A wanderer came upon the mysterious sphynx
“Stranger, stand still, if you would choose to live;
I ask each passerby what he knows and thinks,
Thus now I ask a riddle, so stand and give.”

The wanderer answered her rightly that day

And then

The treacherous sphynx devoured him anyway

There is no monolith I push against
If it is there I simply walk around it
Insolently, usually, hands in pockets
Pretending that the monolith is not

I have been cautioned about my attitude
And then I taped those cautions to the stone
Or made them into verse to be resented:
And just who do you think you are, smart boy?

And to tell you the truth I’m not quite sure
If I ever find out, I’ll let me know

Once upon a time -

A young philosopher sat among men
In the shaded olive groves of Athens
Incense to the Muses, wisdom to all
His ideas soared like Athena’s owls

One day a wise ómorfo korítsi
Delighted him with her strong arguments
Delighted him with her dark Hellenic eyes
Delighted him with a dinner invitation

And as they reclined in symposium met
With verse and wine and wisdom in delight
He excused himself to the toualéta
Where on its walls he read in Attic verse:

If you sprinkle
When you ******
Be a sweetie
Lift the seatie

After that his fellow philosophers
Saw him gently into a nursing home

This is a re-post of "All Change at Zima Junction."  This morning I turned in my keys after some forty years of herding cattle (metaphorically), seventeen of them with this institution.  I am unemployed for the first time since I was five or so and was set to toddling out to the chicken yard every evening to gather the eggs in an old Easter basket.  My mother said that the rooster often chased me and made me cry, but I don’t remember that.

And now - what adventure does Aslan have next for me?

The first book I bought upon returning home from Viet-Nam was the Penguin Modern European Poets paperback edition of Yevtushenko: Selected Poems.  That 75-cent paperback from an airport bookstall in San Francisco is beside me on the desk as I write.

                                     All Change at Zima Junction

                            For Yevgeny Yevtushenko, 1932-2017

Everyone changes trains at Zima Junction
Changes lives; nineteen becomes twenty-one
With hardly a pause for twenty and then
Everyone asks you questions you can’t answer

And then they say you’ve changed, and ignore you
The small-town brief-case politician still
Enthroned as if he were a committee -
He asks you what you are doing back here

And then you go away, on a different train:
Everyone changes trains at Zima Junction

                           “I went, and I am still going.”1

1Yevtushenko: Selected Poems. Penguin,1962