I love few things better than a cup of tea
But with that advert – shouldn’t they pay me?

“We are pregnant!” the husband happily cried
“No, we are not,” the tired wife knowingly sighed

I.

How wonderful to sleep in a soft, warm bed
Beneath a roof against the blowing night
Of wind and rain rattling each window pane
As winter falls upon this weary world

The busy-ness of day is all complete
I wind the clock and so unwind myself
My little dog burrows toward my feet
Contented with her life, with warmth, with me

And now a few more pages to be read -
How wonderful to sleep in a soft, warm bed

V: Deo gratias


II.

But good enough to sleep in an old, worn bag
Beneath a tarp against the blowing night
Of wind and rain rattling the plastic *****
As winter falls upon the weary world

The emptiness of day is incomplete
And bigger guys stole my cheap Timex watch
Now slithering rats burrow toward my feet
And bite to see if they can feast on me

Another night to be drained and bled
I remember - long ago – sleeping in a bed

R: Your Deo gratias ain’t much help

If wars were subject to a copyright -
Then candidates would have to pay a fee
Each time they appeal to the glorious past
When standing for the election, the proceeds
To fall like ****** weregeld on the dead
Who can never cash the checks anyway

If wars were subject to a copyright -
Then Hollywood movies should pay their dues
Whenever a bold, scripted commando,
Body-waxed muscles glistening with makeup,
Advances up Hamburger-Helper Hill
With a patriotic song on his lipstick

If wars were subject to a copyright –
The generals’ memoirs, the admirals’, too,
Would pay to lighten the blighted young lives
Of soul-fragmented lads whose pain and blood
Won the air-conditioned another star
And unctuous applause at the officers’ club

If wars were subject to a copyright -
The President would have to pay his bill
Each time he bangs the lectern for a war,
That glorious dux bellorum dux-ing
From the rear, while a squadron of pigs fly
Above, powered by pixie-dust and smoke

A Conversion Experience at the Bright Light Free Will Four Square Full Gospel Missionary Temple Outreach of the Lord Jesus Christ 501C3 of the Lamb Ministries the Reverend Doctor Master Bishop Apostle Brother Billy-Bob Hairdo and His Honored First Lady Disciple Irma-Mae a-Brangin’ Messages and a-Suckin’ in Government Grant Money


Here is a list of the thangs we is aginner
If you do any of this stuff, yew air a sinner

Th’ Lord accepts all major credit cards for His work

Are you a Viet-Nam veteran, old man?
     Yes, but I don’t own a motorcycle
And do you really love America?
     Yes, but I don’t own a motorcycle
And are you saved?
     Beats the H** outta me

Annoyme.com

                     An Advertising Monologue in Upspeak

So I just went on annoyme.com
And like I found my ring you know like on
Annoyme.com where you will find
Those unique designs that you just can’t find

And those really famous great big name brands  
AND YOU KNOW WHICH ONES I’M TALKING ABOUT
Annoyme.com has the selections and styles
You want to see at annoyme.com

I’m going back on annoyme.com
Today, right now, while I should be at work



(Repeat many times each day for weeks and weeks until the listener changes radio stations.)

What Child is this WHOP!  WHEEP! WHOP! WHEEP! WHOP!  WHEEP! WHOP! WHEEP! WHOP!  WHEEP! WHOP! WHEEP! WHOP!  WHEEP! WHOP!
WHEEP!...
In Mary’s lap is sleeping…

“It’s okay, folks; it was just the muffins.”

Whom angels greet…
                                          “I don’t want a muffin, thanks.”
With anthems sweet…

Dark Advent is a silent waiting time
When autumn chills into pale, year-end days
And joy seems smothered by hard-frosting rime:
Cold is the debt that spring to winter pays

The seasons link to seasons in a chain,
The chain of being that links, also, our souls,
Seasons and souls, not always without pain:
Summer’s wild lightning falls and thunder rolls.

Linked to us too, rose by mystical rose,
This holy Advent is Our Lady’s Grace
To us who wait in exile sad; she knows
Where souls and seasons sing, the Night, the Place.

Seasons and souls, linked to days dreary-dim:
Follow them with roses to Bethlehem

A calling-crow-cold sky ceilings the world,
Lowering the horizon to itself
All silvery and grey upon the fields
Of pale, exhausted, dry-corn-stalk summer

The earth is tired, the air is cold, the dawn
False-promises nothing but an early dusk
As calling-cold-crows crowd the world with noise,
Loud-gossiping from tree to ground to sky

Soon falling frosts and fields of ice will fold
Even those fell, foolish fowls into the depths
Of dark creek bottoms where dim ancient oaks
Hide darkling birds from wild blue northern winds

Crows squawk of Advent disapprovingly,
For Advent-autumn drifts to Christmastide
When all the good of the seasonal year
Then warms and charms the house, the hearth, the heart

In the old French barracks, shelvings of cots
No ventilation – that was for officers
The night was hot, wet; sleep was difficult
No one knew anyone or anything

A siren. Life paused. Should we do something?
We barefooted outside in our skivvies
Hot. Silent. Still. Stuffy. Respirations
Is this a false alarm? Is it over now?

BLAM!
                                
Boom. BOOM! Boom-boom-boom-boom. BOOM!

And during a pause

a small voice said, “I don’t think they want us here.”

Outside with the dogs for their night patrol
A bright flashlight for fear of wild winter wolves
Death-singing from the tree-line beyond the field -
My little dogs bark boldly, but stay close

They’re never permitted beyond the fence
That Hadrian’s Wall of doggylization
Through which they plot escape on sunny days
But not on this wolf-howling moonlit night

Better to have a chew-toy than to be one
So with them I close the door against the dark

A Manifesto Against Manifestos

          “You can silence me, but you can never convince me”
                    -graffiti on a bulkhead in Viet-Nam

I am not woke; I am awake. No one
Commands me how to see and think and write
I am not one of The Masses.  I am.
I am not one of The People.  I am.

I choose as my teachers Dostoyevsky
And Byron, too, and Shelley, Keats, and Waugh
Ahkmatova, Shakespeare, Chesterton, and Lewis -
Not some embalm’ed face upon a screen

I am not obedient, and no one
Commands me how to see and think and write

For Thomas V. Morris and William J. Bennett
In gratitude for a wonderful summer at Notre Dame



O, thou dry Jansenist! A night of fire
Left in your pocket like a shopping list
Sitting quietly in a room, will never burn
To set your sere and withered soul alight

And one might wager that your calculator
In brass, for counting brass, touches not the heart
Which has its reasons which the mind knows too
Pensees which never make a night a day

Forgive thou, then, this lettre provinciale
And count it as a friend’s memorial

When Lot’s wife shook with
Anger or fear, and looked back -
What there did she see?

Love and the Sunday Funnies

We will not turn on the radio today
We will repudiate its veto over us
We will silence its news and its noise
We will not wait upon its appointed hours

We will sit in the windowlight and read
Maybe the Great Books, or maybe the funnies
-The funnies!
Let’s read the funnies to each other, and laugh
About Charlie Brown and his kite-eating tree

And joyfully fling the funnies and ourselves
Upon the sunbeams, all over the floor

We will not turn on the radio today
We will repudiate its veto over us
We will silence its news and its noise
We will not wait upon its appointed hours

We will sit in the windowlight and read
Maybe the Great Books, or maybe the funnies
-The funnies!
Let’s read the funnies to each other, and laugh
About Charlie Brown and his kite-eating tree

And joyfully fling the funnies and ourselves
Upon the sunbeams, all over the floor

A Child Whispers to Himself

Someday I will wake up in the morning
And not be wrong
Someday I will look outside the window
And not be wrong
Someday I will not make up my bed just right
(or maybe not make it up at all)
And not be wrong
Someday I will open the refrigerator
And not be wrong
Someday I will choose my clothes for the day
And not be wrong
Someday I will say something I think
And not be wrong
Someday I will toast a slice of bread
And not be wrong
Someday I will read a book because I like it
And not be wrong
Someday I will visit a friend of my choosing
And not be wrong
Someday I will admire the pictures I like
And not be wrong
Someday I will play in the leaves with the dogs
And not be wrong
Someday I will order from a menu
And not be wrong
Someday I will eat my dessert first
And not be wrong
Someday I will hug only people I like
And not be wrong
Someday I will buy the coat I want to wear
And not be wrong
Someday I will smile at the girl next door
And not be wrong
Someday I will write poetry openly
And not be wrong
Someday I will say, “That’s a pretty car”
And not be wrong
Someday I will say, “I like the fog and mist”
And not be wrong
Someday at the store I will buy some little thing
And not be wrong
Someday I will use the shampoo I like
And not be wrong
Someday I will take long, hot, soapy baths
And not be wrong
Someday I will tell someone about my dreams
And not be wrong

Someday…

Someday I will leave this unhappy house
And not look back
And not be wrong

“Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.”

                                              -Thoreau

Som­e six or so cheap watches set in a row
Ten-dollar Timex models with shabby straps
Cast-offs and hand-me-downs – and so one asks:
Why are there watches on a refectory table?

The abbey’s clocks are the moon and the sun
And the cycle of seasons each in turn
The changing leaves and liturgies in time
With the Great Dance of stars in their appointed spheres

But even so:

Those six or so cheap watches set in a row

Are

For outside appointments - and now we know!

The dead-bolts on the interior doors
Against the nephews most securely locked
(One is destructive; the other explores)
Ignored by their mother (usually crocked)

The brother-in-law babbles about his bowels
And surgeries over the festive spread
Ignoring his wife’s disapproving scowls
Detailing each grim therapy and med

The puppies are safely penned inside
Because of an incident with a crowbar
And a nephew who kicked and screamed and cried -
He wasn’t allowed to **** the dogs or bash the car

His mother comforted him in his tears
And glowered at me for telling him no
And comforted herself with a few more beers
Her special child is sensitive, you know

The brother-in-law’s colonoscopy
With lurid adjectives of graphic doom
Comes with the pie and more iced tea
His miseries circulate around the room

Then from the living room an expensive crash
“Not me!” “Not me!” More screams and denials and cries
An old family vase – it’s now just trash
“You shouldn’t have glass around,” their mother sighs

The brother-in-law offers to show his scars
He finds his shirt buttons, makes his move
We other men escape outside for cigars
Cigars!? The women uniformly disapprove

One nephew leaps upon a garden seat
And jumps and yells until it falls apart
Their mother says her boy is cute and sweet
“Are you all right, my dear little heart?”

The brother-in-law holds his tummy and groans
And tells us all about his flatulence
And just which foods lead to what moans
(Perhaps he should practice some abstinence)

The women come outside to cough and choke
With practiced puritan disapproval and sneers
About the satanic scent of tobacco smoke
The world’s best mother chugs a few more beers

The brother-in-law explains why he can’t drink
It’s about his digestion (be surprised)
And we shouldn’t smoke; if only we’d think
And we (got a match?) are properly chastised

Then at the end of this mandatory day
Of mandatory Hallmark merriment
All of them finally go the (space) away
And how did the mailbox get broken and bent?

But the brother-in-law pauses at the garden gate
“Say, did I tell you about my new pills…?”
And so dear solitude again must wait
While darkness slowly falls upon the hills

A Citizen of the United States

To: Donald J. Trump

Greeting:

You are reluctant to go to the wars
And I do understand – I went to one
And you missed out. I was sorry to hear
Of your physical disabilities

You are reluctant to go to the wars
And I do understand – but why are you
Eager to send the daughters and sons
Of other fathers off to die for - what?

You are reluctant to go to the wars
And I do understand -

                        Now get off your * and go see those kids

And bring them home

Every morning good Damocles wakes up
And after breakfast from a drive-through bag
Salutes the time-clock with a merry ding
From a little card that records his time

He drives his forklift or his cubby-desk
And sorts each pallet or computer code
Into their places in the secular scheme
The minor chain of being more-or-less

Until a meeting when, and with great sorrow,
A Suit tells all, “we’re shutting down tomorrow.
Oh, the company still exists (and what could be finer?),
But we’re sending all your jobs away to China.”

Prelude PEAVEY you give PEAVEY the splendor
Of the PEAVEY CAN I HAVE AN ‘AMEN’!?
How great is our PEAVEY WOOOOOO! The lion and
The PEAVEY name above all YEAH!!!!!

Age to PEAVEY chorus PEAVEY bridge PEAVEY
You are PEAVEY touching my PEAVEY these
Bones will PEAVEY shout your PEAVEY OH YEAH!!!!
We pour out our PEAVEY WOOOOO!!!!! YEAHHHH!!! An’ Lord

We just wanna PEAVEY you YEAH! And WOOOOO!!!
REPEAT 4X PEAVEY YEAH!  WOOOOO!!!! We are
God’s PEAVEY AMEN!!!! CAN I HEAR AN ‘AMEN!?’
Food drive PEAVEY outreach ministries PEAVEY

Love offering PEAVEY I worship PEAVEY
Outreach WOOOOO! And Lord we just offer up our
PEAVEY…!!!


(You can always walk away – and I did)

Premeditated Amnesia 1

For nothing here is old, save for deep layers
Of moss and muck and mouldering remains
Civilisations lit by visions and fire
Now lost beneath a Wal-Mart Parking lot

Incuriously the tentacles of Now
Slither more deeply into the pale past
And churn up yet another housing estate
At the corner of Kingsford Lane and Heather Way

Near the Motorcycle Church, for piston prayers:
For nothing here is old, save for deep layers





1”The U.S. is probably the contemporary world’s purest example of a society which is perpetually trying to abolish history, to avoid thinking in historical terms, to associate dynamism with premeditated amnesia.” -Alexander Woodside quoted by Susan Sontag:

https://bostonreview.net/susan-sontag-interview-geoffrey-movius?utmsource=Boston+Review+E­mail+Subscribers&utmcampaign=b581739691-EMAILCAMPAIGN201808170417COPY01&utmmedium=email&utmterm=0_2cb428c5ad-b581739691-41080789

Don’t you judge me while I am judging you
For judging me when I was judging you
For judging me since I was judging you
For judging me ‘cause I was judging you

Don’t interrupt while I am interrupting you
For interrupting when I was interrupting
For interrupting since I was interrupting
For interrupting ‘cause I was interrupting

What’s that? You say you didn’t hear or see?
How dare you not focus your life on me!?

“I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me”
Embroidered on the back of his letterman jacket
Hanging from the kitchen chair where he sits
Practicing chords while the **** cooks to crank

In the trailer back of his momma’s house
Where she lets him live while he looks for work
They didn’t treat him right at the truck stop
His uncle might get him on at the mill

A crankster wankster twanging out his art
Unless the Cossaks find out about…


                                                        ­               “Who’s there…?”

“Catherine Coulter and J.T. Ellison’s explosive Brit
in the FBI thriller The Sixth Day is now in paperback!”

One wouldn’t like to see an exploding Brit
Who would ruin one’s tweed country suit
Splattering English gore all over it –
That exploding galloping major brute!

But

Before the man went CRACK!
How did they ever fit
That pyrotechnic Brit
into a paperback?

A Trochee Christmas and its Several Interchangeable Anapests
                    Brought to You in Some Desperation
                   By Your Local Chamber of Commerce
                        (Second Trailer Past the Stoplight)

Christmas in the Park
Christmas on the Main
Christmas on the Lake
Christmas on the Strand
Christmas on the Square
Christmas on the Farm
Christmas on the Beach
Christmas on the Mall
Christmas in the Mall
Christmas on the Block
Christmas on the Coast
Christmas on the Gulf
Christmas on the Hill
Christmas in the Keys
Christmas on the Quay
Christmas on the Quad
Christmas on the Range
Christmas on the Ranch
Christmas in the Vale
And this year, Christmas at the 'Gras!

But no Christmas without anapests, ‘kay?

The wind that blows is all that anyone knows

                                                          ­  -Thoreau

“She hit me!” “She did not!” “He hit her first!”
“You can ask anyone – I hit the mike!”
“No, no, she hit me!” “No, he is the worst!”
“No, not at all, that’s not what it was like!”

“The president’s a meany!” “The press is rude!”
“This is unprecedented!” “You’re a fake!”
“Take away his pass; I’m not in the mood!”
“It’s unacceptable!” “Well, you’re a snake!”

As the nation crumbles in violence and smoke
The press and president are one bad joke

For David Jones, 1895-1974
Poet, Artist
Pte., Royal Welch Fusiliers

One can go back to one's own home…
and everything is so changed that one is a stranger.

― Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear

I went away, a young and foolish lad
Imagining I would go home someday
Made manly in the war, someone to respect
Admired by all in the old, familiar scenes

There was only exile. Echoes and screams
Fumbling through the flashbacks for charger clips
And stepping carefully lest the lawn explode
In dreams lit only by parachute flares

While waiting for the order for volley fire
And is the safety on? Or am I off?

A space casino painted on its sides
Its airbrakes hissing and spitting against the wheels
The charter bus clanks to a ***** stop
Its hatches open to discharge aliens

Optimistically rattling their walkers
And dragging their oxygen machines along
Spongy shoes challenged by the parking lot
Knobby white knees all rattling through the dawn

The moustache in his cool gas-station shades
Admires himself in the big West Coast mirror

Why did he shoot people he did not know?
Maybe he did not know what else to do

He was told all his life he could do anything
But he couldn’t
He was told all his life how special he was
But he wasn’t

He was told all his life to follow his dreams
But what are dreams?
And the success and the money would follow
But they didn’t

He was told all his life to be himself
But what was he?
He was given noises all his life, but when
The silence fell…

He had no poetry, no prayer, no art
He looked inside himself, and nothing was there

Why did he shoot people he did not know?
*Maybe he did not know what else to do

“…you’ll love this riveting memoir.”

One longs to see a memoir riveting,
Setting in place with tongs the hot red steel,
Bucking the tail, and quickly pivoting
For another – a worker’s life is real

The old order changeth, yielding place to new

-Tennyson, Idylls of the King

Like dinosaurs our institutions gasp
In spasms of existential death; they pass
At first unnoticed by the casual unobserver
Who trips over a covenant that isn’t there

If you vote they give you a sticker

The ephemeral Constitution changed
Like sweaty skivvies by each president
Law libraries catalogued for pulp
By obedient functionaries in tees

If you vote they give you a sticker

The faithful escorted out of the cathedral
By a bored security guard on overtime
The altar linens for sale at Goodwill
And the sanctuary repurposed on T.V.

If you vote they give you a sticker

Some of The Just Plain Folks cheer for the Reds
And the others cheer only for the Blues
As the reincarnation of Jack Chick
Blesses their four-wheelers and plastic caps

If you vote they give you a sticker

Election placards on abandoned buildings
Promise again prosperity for all
The **** lab cooks behind The Kute Kidz
Private Academy of the Dance and Math

If you vote they give you a sticker

An outreach of the Bright Light Free Will
Missionary Temple of the Lord Jesus Christ
Of the Lamb Sanctified 501C The Reverend Doctor Master Bishop Billy-Bob Hairdo PhD, DD a-brangin’ Messages and His Esteemed Lady Apostle Heather

If you vote they give you a sticker

And blessed be the Holy AR-15
God gave to His People to defend themselves
Here in the freest country in the world
Which you can find behind the barbed-wire fence

If you vote they give you a sticker

While fleets of luxury presidential jets
Arc high over our public housing projects
Reminding us of our prosperity
Here in the richest country in the world

If you vote they give you a sticker

And them Jews for Jesus I guess they’re all right
But them other Jews they just ain’t no good
Nor them Cath’lics nor them Mormons neither
And don’t you get me started on them Baptists

(We seem to have been otherwise engaged)

“The old order changeth, yielding place to new” –
(But neither cares at all for me or you)

But if you vote they give you a sticker

Remember, remember the Fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason, and plot!
I see no reason
Why gunpowder treason…
Wait – dude, is there an app for that?

…These men are worth your tears:
You are not worth their merriment.

-Wilfred Owen, “Apologia Pro Poemate Meo”

When that loudmouth on the wireless machine
Alludes to Western Civilization
What does he mean? Paradise Lost? Probably not
Nor Saint Paul speaking on the Field of Mars

The Kalevala, Hagia Sophia
With its pendentives lifting up our prayers
Horatius fighting to defend his bridge
And Wilfred Owen dying bravely on his

Lord Tennyson and Idylls of the King
Chapultepec, Henry V, Becket
The paratroops at Arnhem, Saint Thomas More,
His King’s loyal servant, but God’s first

The Stray Dog poets of Saint Petersburg
The brave last stand of Roland at Roncesvalles
Lewis and Tolkien and glasses of beer
Montcalm and Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham

Hildegard von Bingen, Siegfried and the Rhine
Magna Carta, HMS Hood, the Thames
The Grove of Daphne, “The Old Rugged Cross”
Beatrix Potter and her little pet rabbit

El Cid, Anne Frank, John Keats, Saint Benedict
“I Have a Dream,” Dostoyevsky, and Greene
Viktor Frankl, Dag Hammarkskjold, and Proust
Good Chaucer’s naughty pilgrims telling tales

The Gettysburg Address, Willie and Joe
Stern Saint Augustine of North Africa
Wodehouse writing a jolly bit of fun
Saint Corbinian and Bavaria

The ancient glories of Byzantium
Pius XII contra the bombs and lies
The 602nd TD Battalion
Saint Joan, the Prado, and Robert Frost

And far, far more.

When that loudmouth on the wireless machine
Alludes to Western Civilization
What does he mean?

“I can buy a clock, sir!”

-Will Roper, obtuse as usual, to Sir Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons

Some vague authority for this and that
Advises us that now is the time for all
Good men to come to the aid of their clockery
And set each loyal clock an hour back

For after all, the old times were much better
When an American-made watch or clock
Required a good, strong man to wind it up –
None o’ yer godless Chinese ‘tronics, eh

And as the seasonal will must have it so
Upon our rounds to each house clock we go!

The first shots slammed across the woods at dawn
Into my sleep, there taking down my dreams
Which can’t be slung into a pickup truck
And carried to the processors by noon

Venison is a bit gamey, of course:
That’s why they call it game, wild game, then food
Blended with pork and spices for Thanksgiving
And that’s a nice little dream in itself

Let’s not indulge sentimentality here
In forest glades or on china plates – it’s just a deer

If that poor worm remained in his earthy lair
He then would drown in mud and muck and mould
And if that worm crawled up to breathe the air
A robin would eat him as a luncheon cold

He had to make a choice…

And as he died the poor worm cried:
“Mid-term elections!  Everybody lied!”

(A MePhone rattles and twanks and pings like Robby-the-Robot gone bad.)

Woman: “Yeah?”

(silence)

Woman: “YEAH?”

(silence)

Woman: “I’m in the hospital.”

Noise from MePhone: (think Charlie Brown’s parents)

Woman: “I’m in the hospital!”

MePhone: (Charlie Brown’s parents)

Woman: “I’M IN THE HOSPITAL!”

MePhone: (a small child babbling)

Woman: “I’M IN THE HOSPITAL!”

MePhone: (a small child babbling)

Woman: “YEAH!”

MePhone: (a small child babbling)

Woman: “YEAH!”

MePhone: (incoherent noises – could be a ******)

Woman: “FOR MY COLONOSCOPY!”

MePhone: (the ****** continues)

Woman: “FOR MY COLONOSCOPY!”

Offstage, a young woman in scrubbies: “Mr. Lawrence…?”

(Deo gratias)

Exit, pursued by Too Much Information.

The president wants us to come together –
One imagines a sea-to-shining sea
Patriotic ****** (with a touch of leather?)
And everyone moaning “MAGA!!!!” simultaneously