No, I was in the play.  I didn’t like it.
The plot, setting, and characterization
Were all wrong, and the clumsy denouement  
Was poorly written and acted.
                                                           “Macbeth.”

War profiteers from John Wayne to Ken Burns
Have claimed my illegal war for their own
"Hell hath no fury like a non-combatant"  
Beyond that, the VA is ashamed of me

So, thanks, but no. I'm good.  Bitter, but good
For I was in the play.  I didn’t like it.

Alexander Pushkin and the Poker-Playing Dogs

We can have our Pushkin, all thinky and sad
And our poker-playing pups, cheating at cards
Ruslan and Ludmylla dancing on ice
At the Houston airport Holiday Inn

Did Pushkin paint the poker-playing pups
Or carve tetrameters while in his cups?
That green baize poker table, a samovar
And the Big Giant Head, who needs an ace

We can have our Pushkin, all thinky and sad
And too those kitschy dogs, being real bad!

Decorating a Mansion

Let be set out a wooden crucifix
Of indifferent and artless workmanship
Upon a table where the lamplight falls
In yellow circles on a book or two,
And sheets of paper and a quirky pen.

Let be set up a surplus Navy bunk
With mattress and blanket, and pillow too,
If Brother Guestmaster has them to hand,
Luxury enough for merciful sleep,
Or combat desperate against fearful dreams.

Let be set into the wall a hook or nail
To serve the office of a wardrobe there,
Burdened with little but perhaps too much:
A decent habit for the liturgies,
A worn-out coat, a hat against the sun.

Let be set into the cell an exile,
A man of no reputation at all,
Unnoticed in the streets, unseen, unknown,
But who delights in anonymity,
Here in this palace in Jerusalem.

Fragments in a Fragmented Season

Neither a cyber-warrior nor a cyber-worrier be

But is this flower a patriotic flower?

The nation that never had much use for me
Except to send me to an undeclared war
Is suddenly broken

Was I playing with the puppies when the revolution began
And so didn’t notice?

“Take It Down!” someone scrawled on a statue in New Orleans
Dear New Orleans: Saint Joan of Arc was never a Confederate

Dear Canada: Do you really want to be a republic?

The vice-president takes shelter within his armored hair, and is silent

The Real Knees of Irving, Texas

Think about a Wal-Mart employee taking a knee during the morning Wal-Mart chant

It’s the Russians, no doubt

Chess ratings are up

Everything’s an Orwellian Two-Minutes’ Hate now.  Even the hours and seconds are outraged

“Your attitude’s been noticed, comrade.”  - House Warden to Yuri in Doctor Zhivago

Maybe the Republic will be in better shape next season.

Waiting for our Masters to Grow Up

The barbarians who lord it over us
Thunder denunciations at each other
On whether they should kneel or stand to flags or *****
And with whom they should be photographed

Some swagger in government, in suits and ties
Some swagger with buckles binding their foreheads;
Like schoolboys they compare the size of their…purchases
And bubble themselves with fawning courtiers

As ever, we workers, savers, writers, readers
Must be the grownups - unlike our leaders

Our Lady of Walsingham

O how beautiful is Our Lady Queen!
Queen of our hearts and hopes, to her we pray,
Sweet Empress over forest, down, and dene ,    
And happy Sunrise over the pilgrim’s way

O let us crown Our Queen with leaf and flower
Gathered this morning in the dawnlit dew
For we in this island are Her true dower
Pledging our faith with thorn and rose and yew

She gives us Her feast day, cool and quiet and green -
O how beautiful is Our Lady Queen!

A Rocket from the Colonial Office

Colleagues,

If you are receiving this email, your
Syllabus for your course(s) is not showing
On the )/ webpage under House Bill
2504.  This is a state law with

Which we must be in compliance.  If you have
Not uploaded your syllabus for each
Course that you teach, you need to get that task
Completed now. The task was supposed to

Have been completed by September 5,
According to a previous email
Reminder – this is actually your third
Reminder. If you need help completing

This aspect of your responsibilities,
Please let me know if you have uploaded
Your syllabus already, but if it
Is not showing, we may need to contact

IT for assistance.  Thank you for your
Dedication to /)/) College.

And Just How Did the Cow Eat the Cabbage?

The question was answered in a cafe at noon:
The cow ate the cabbage with an ordinary spoon


Thank you for your kind attention.

20 September 1870

Like vultures hovering over the faithful dead
The rank red rags of base repression hung
Upon the blast-breeched walls of captive Rome;
The smoke of conquest fouled the ancient streets
While mocking conquerors marched their betters
At the point of enlightened bayonets
To the scientific future, murdering those
Who bore themselves with quiet dignity.

False, sinister Savoy sneered in disdain
At ancient truths, this costumed reprobate
Who played at soldier once the firing ceased,
And claimed Saint Peter’s patrimony on
The corpses of the merely useful who
With today’s slogans fresh upon their lips
At dawn advanced upon the remnant walls
So thinly held by the last legionaries

And thus befeathered fat Vittorio
Was given his victory by better men
On both sides there, their corpses looted by
The pallid inheritors of Progress.
The son of a Sardinian spurred his horse
Along the streets to take enforced salutes,
And to the Quirinal by a passage broad,
And finally to the Ardeatine Caves.

“Maccabees, and all that Mess”

Antiochus declared himself to be
Epiphanes – a god unto himself
And persecuted suffering Israel
With pagan images and fire and death

The blood of martyrs Mattathias moved
And all his sons, hammers chosen by God
To cleanse the Temple of all perfidy
And through eight days rededicate the world

But now

Dismissed by the café theologian
As merely “Maccabees, and all that mess”

Paterfamilias

For Eldon Edge

An empty chair beside the fireplace waits,
And lamplight falls upon an open book,
Pen, pocketknife, keys for the pasture gates,
Dad’s barn coat hanging from its accustomed hook.

But he will not return; his duties now
Transcend the mists of the pale world we know,
And you in grief must carry on, somehow;
Your duty is here, for God will have it so

The good man takes that chair reluctantly;
It is a throne of sorts, and one imposed,
Not taken as a prize, triumphantly,
But in love’s service, and in love disposed.

An empty chair beside the fireplace waits
For you, whom doleful duty consecrates.

Reptilian Whisperings

Ipse *** caro sit reservat iram, et propitiationem petit a Deo: quis exorabit pro delictis illius?

He that is but flesh, nourisheth anger, and doth he ask forgiveness of God?  who shall obtain pardon for his sins?

-Ecclesiasticus 28:5

Like Cleopatra’s asp they want to cuddle
Against one’s heart: resentments slithering
About, indignities, enormities
Demanding incessant indulgences

Their reptilian whisperings hissering
Self-pity, inverted self-spiraling,
In closing, falling, dying loops until
Nothing is left even to pity itself

They are writhing about us even now -
Like Cleopatra’s asp they want to cuddle

Civilization Requires a Little Effort

Upon reading Amon Towles’
A Gentleman in Moscow

Civilization requires a little effort
Ties must be knotted correctly, shoes must be polished
Cuffs must be linked, but not at all gaudily -
Elegant understatement at all times

On every occasion say “Thank you” and “please”
When addressing a lady one’s hat is off
And if tomorrow they are going to shoot you
Or beat you to death in a re-named street  

Do comb your hair, and try to stand up straight
Civilization requires a little effort

The Richest Country in the World

A concrete sidewalk for skipping to school:
A busy flower shop, the picture show
Post office, the hole-in-the-wall café
The general mercantile, the old feed store

The school is gone; the sidewalk hasn’t changed
Except that no one walks it any more -
Just archaeology, weeds and bricks that tell
Of once-upon-a-time along Main Street

No townsfolk now, only unroofed walls and sky
Not far from where the four-lane passes by

Three Generations in the Student Commons

I. Berets, Coffee, and Cigarette Smoke

Much merriment and argument, and songs
Of love or revolution sung around
An old piano or a new guitar,
And poetic verses falling like leaves

II. Ball Caps, Diet Sodas, and Purity of Thought

All turn and tune to a cinder-block wall
Upholding the Orwellian telescreen
Cartoons and Vanna White, and then at noon
With Gilligan, the Skipper too, still lost

III. Pink Hair, Bottled Water, and Fear

No merriment, no argument, only silence
As paling shadows, unaware of each other
Bow down, like Eve before that Eden-tree,
And worship the little boxes in their hands

A Fish on Ice at Mixson’s Grocery

As with my teacher’s disapproving eyes
A poor iced fish glared out upon the world -
Without her sanction everything had changed
And silent on the ice she watched life pass

Holding my mother’s hand, I was passing too
From baby food to breakfast cereal
Somehow the fish appeared to feel that this
Was an affront to her cold dignity

And thus her eyes – they seemed to follow me
And since the fish was dead, what could she see?

Now That We All Know What a Plinth Is…

What will we establish upon our bare, ruined plinths
Where late the stern-visaged generals stood? 1
Guitarists, perhaps, or free-verse poets
Or refugees from Harvard’s sophomore class

We could ***** erections to erections
As advertised on the family radio
With brazen legends reading “Hey-Hey! **-**”
Honoring the noble eloquence of our age

Or, with roses for remembrance, leave them bare
Amid shrill protestations of despair


1 Cf. Sonnet 73, Shakespeare

Inquisition of a Waitress by the Morals Police

V: “So where did you say you went to church yesterday?”

R: “I went to the Cowboy Church.  I try to get
To church, you know, as often as I can
But my boyfriend and me we don’t often work
The same shifts and he’s my ride so I don’t

“Get to go as often as I’d like, you know,
But I like to go and it’s good for me
But sometimes I just can’t; you know how it is
I went yesterday and I sure feel good.”

V: “Well, now, then, that’s all right, darlin’; good for you.”

For Keith Wilson

All bright, cool, and dry
Sweet September's now arrived
Healing the summer

The Man Born Blind

We are all born blind, and stumble through our lives
In darkness lost along the River Styx
While clinging to our long-accustomed fear
As if it were a rule to be obeyed

The light is offered, then usually denied
As if it were yet another cruel joke
Long promised and then suddenly yanked away
More lost hopes rotting among the mouldering leaves

For some the obscure is more comfortable
Than promised light that never seems to shine

A Saturday in September

Sweet autumn is the year healing itself
The sun sleeps later, and feels better for it
His early rays tentatively touching the trees
As if seeking his wristwatch to tell the time

A sweet day off is a healing time, too
The linens all rumpled with dreaming dreams
Forgotten at first light, but lingering
A happiness just out of reach, of thought

But happy all the same; now yawn, and stretch -
Another day of possibilities

Former People

For W. K. Kortas

We Former People have no reputation
So we are free to starve to death in peace
Or if we are unsightly in the street
Free rides to The Palace of Workers’ Justice

We might be beaten, we might be given a meal
Before we’re freed to a courtyard echoing
With the rattle of mop buckets and screams
And stood in liberating rows and shot

In glorious sacrifice to the Cause
Of progress and equality for all

Forestry for Romantics

Silence obtains in the forest clearing
The leaves all seem to be holding their breath
Little rabbit pellets on a pine tree stump
Cut only yesterday, still oozing sap

Fresh raccoon paw-prints in the muddy spots
But nothing moves – we are intruders here
Suddenly a silent shadow – a hooded hawk
Over there – a woodpecker drilling for bugs

If we hold still, stand still, not whisper a word
The forest will return to her appointed works

Five Ashtrays Along the Bar

A bartender named Blue, old hound-dog face
Cigarettes in ashtrays along the bar
One for the man who didn’t get that raise
Another for the man whose wife has gone

A third for the McKuen who scribbles free verse
A fourth for the silent philosopher
A fifth for the girl waiting for her call
To the tiny stage to show ‘em what’s she’s got

Leather jackets at the billiards table
A neon beer sign as the sanctuary lamp

How Peaceful this Morning to Drive a Desk

How peaceful this morning to drive a desk
The culturally-despised desk, that cliché
The flat surface littered with papers and screens
And a telephone with buttons that light up

How lovely - fluorescents flickering over files
And not a yellow sun over shimmering muck
Lines for gas and water, rot and decay
And cast-off couches reeking in the heat

How peaceful - the ordinary all about
(Even though the men’s room is all wrecked out)

Thought it was Over

Thought it was over. It isn’t. A call,
A telephone call late at night. Prepare
Once again up and out with the curfew dawn
Yawning in the windshield, searching the night

Another paper cup of coffee for the road
The last breakfast biscuit at the gas stop
Three days out of date. It’s embalmed by now
Lines for gas, only there isn’t any gas

Lines for ice, lines for food, roads flooded out
Thought it was over. The coffee is cold

Dead Fish in the Street

Little dead fish shining in the morning sun
Everywhere filth and stench, glasses, a shoe
A sodden large-print bible in the muck
A welcome mat in the middle of the street

A woman’s purse without any I.D.
Other than a picture of a little boy
Happy and proud in his baseball uniform
An electrical line down – is it live?

Broken furniture and toys, and broken lives
A street of dreams, dreams swept away and smashed

Exit the Hurricane - not the catchiest title, eh?



What is that silence? It is the not-rain
The first not-rain since Friday this past week
Every loud frog gloats in unseemly song
The old, sour water recedes from the door

The whole house stinks; it stinks of damp and rot
Of clothes unwashed because the drains are dammed
Of smelly shoes and even smellier socks
Of refugee gear flung casually about

The whole house stinks; it stinks of damp and rot
Of too many people – and isn’t it wonderful!

Until this morning my daughter was safe
For so the city said
But the waters rose, slithering up her stairs
And still the city said she was safe

She was evacuated, first by canoe
Then by an air-boat
Then by a dump truck

She and another evacuee laughed in the rain:
“Now we are the people they take pictures of”

Then by a bus

To a center at Saint Martha’s Church and School
Where someone said she would be bussed again
This time to downtown Houston, for reasons
Best known to some stupid * of a *

Her friend’s husband with his big ol’ pickup
Worked around barriers and through high water
And they escaped up the road to Willis, Texas
Tomorrow I will be honored to shake his hand

Long ago, when she left home, I promised
That an old man and two little dachshunds
Would wait for her.  I’m even older now
With grand-dachshunds  – but we said we would wait

And we have

Best I can do at the moment
Tears of gratitude
*Deo gratias

A Hurricane at the Bus Stop

Sunday Night in East Texas

There will be no big yellow busses tomorrow
Clattering along dusty rural roads
And stopping for each bouquet of children
Lovely, and flower-fresh in their store-new clothes

Through day and night, and day and night again
The rain has fallen in tired metaphors
As fire-ants float along in stinging *****
And water-moccasins swim the lawn with death

Stories and riddles by lamp-light tonight,
And “Someday you’ll tell your children about this”

Bands of Rain

The radar shows them as spiraling lunettes;
Here on the ground only rain, and then not
And then again, pale rain. The air is green,
The leaves are still, and heavy with the damp

The hurricane is far away, and yet
Its tentacles search out with menacing winds
And hidden tornados pursuivant
Poor refugees from its transient rule

And now another band, beating the walls
With hideous fury as another night falls

Hurricane Prep

At dawn to the gas station, before the crowds
Assemble in undemocratic lines
Then hours of busting knuckles and language
On the generator long-stored and ignored

All the old lawn chairs stacked and stowed away
A “H* Storm Brewing in the Gulf” – oh, no!
Water bottles stacking in the laundry room
Hyperbole stacking on the radio

Menacing winds roaming among the trees -
But we are ready with double-A batteries!

Hurricane Preparedness Checklist

Double-A batteries, a map out of town
A tank full of gas, a mind full of plans
A flashlight, toilet paper, a radio
A can opener and cans to go, go, go

Leather gloves and duct tape, whistles
Waterproof matches, and match-proof water
Blankies and ponchos and changes of clothes
A medical kit and a pocket knife

But

No one ever lists a box of cigars,
And a Wodehouse for reading by lamplight

A Russian Soldier, 1918

A Russian soldier, Moskina1 in hand,
Though filthy, tired, unknown, unpaid, unfed,
Fights for his God, his Czar, and his Fatherland:
No medals, no *****, no sleep, no bread

His clumsy lowest-bidder boots,2 they rot
Into the foulness where the world’s sins pitch
Into the slime of old Iscariot3
Good men to die in some Gehenna-ditch

Saint George, Saint Michael, and Saint Seraphim
Preserve him in the end from Judas’ crime4
Life’s-end tears, life’s-end prayers, a blood-choked scream
And so he climbs the trench wall one last time,

Three cartridges5 clenched in his frozen fist,
He disappears at last into the mist6

1. Mosin-Nagant rifle
2. Betrayal by contractors
3. Betrayal by politicians and Bolsheviks
4. This Russian soldier does not fail his duty
5. Ammunition shortage / the Trinity / God, Czar, and Fatherland
6. This Russian soldier is known only to God

4,000 More Light Casualties

A group of journalists arrived from Moscow and were told that the Afghan National Army…had taken the ridge. (They) were posing for victory photographs while our soldiers lay in the morgue.

-Svetlana Alexeivich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

A touchy old man who never went to war
Now poses with his decorative generals  
In their tailored Ken-and-Barbie battle dress
All prepped for combat in the officers’ clubs

New president, same as old presidents
And generals, awarding each other medals
And promotions for their golden resumes’
For sending not-their-children off to die

While they prosper on defense industry bids,
Afghanistan is the graveyard of our kids

(Shhhhhhhhhh…Don’t disturb Congress; they’re all asleep.)

The Existential Despair of Diet and Exercise

A banana instead of a bite of cheese
Skipping the butter on ground-acorn toast
The mocking of perfidious calories
One more notch in the belt – feel free to boast!

To the treadmill, now, with your lazy (self)
Off the cliff with those Sisyphean pounds
And a steak for dinner? – just give it a pass
Think yourself skinny, and make hopeful sounds

(Time passes)

A week of denial, now the scales – oh, da(rn):
You lost no pounds; you gained a kilogram!

A Morning Meeting with God’s Anointed One
and His Team Fist-Pumping Woo-Hoo

He pads his expenses and prays over us
About a great evil spreading its claws
We too must pray to drive out the darkness
Because dissent is sent by Satan, amen

But be ye positive, not negative
Hold hands and be one united company
Be anointed in Jesus, just like the boss
Who feels his critics should be jailed, amen

Think less, work more, do not presume to judge;
Now go ye forth and peddle that discount sludge!

Amen

Graveyard Shift at (Famous) Clinic

1974

The proto-beepers that sometimes worked
Tidy white uniforms on minimum wage
Silver plate for the * * Pavilion
Stainless steel flatware for the merely rich

Fluorescents flickering from high ceilings
Where actors and directors went to dry
Sober up, every year or so until
They went once more, discreetly, there to die

“Surrounded by loving friends and family”
Arguing in the hallways over the will

Michaelmas Term

We might as well call it Augustinemas term
Beginning as it does on Augustine’s feast;
And though there are Vandals outside the gates
And Pelagians within, we must read

Tolle lege: take up and read. We read
We read because the scholar at his book,
Its whispered pages strewn with Paters and Aves,
Rebukes the insolence of each transient age -

The drums, the guns, the men of destiny
Are but processionals of shadows and mist

Three Pews of Mourners

The widower and kin in the front pew
And in the next cousins and beloved friends
And in the third, poor disconcerted souls
Grandchildren grown, and come from far away

From far away through metaphysical gaps
And not entirely sure where they might be
Here where their parents brought them for baptism    
Long since adrift upon some obscure sea    

Clutches of keys and mobile ‘phones held dear
Eyes darting about in suspicion and fear

On Reading Yet Another Essay on the Death of Reading

Yet another essay beginning with “I”
Sophomore thesis: no one reads anymore
The power of books, the great ideas
The shared experience, the care of souls

The temptations of social media
(Really? No one ever said that before)
Escape, new points of view, humanity
Foundations of faith (but never the roofs)

If reading is dead -

If reading is dead, then who reads those essays,
Those many essays on the death of reading?

A Letter from Ekaterinburg

Dormition of the Theotokos
1917

Dear Alexei,

We are enjoying a beautiful summer –
The days have been perfect ever since spring
Cooler mornings now, and that’s about it -
Nothing exciting ever happens here

How is the new government working out?
Some of the banknotes are overprinted
With vague slogans covering the Czar, but
Nothing exciting ever happens here

Petrograd must be exciting for you, but
Nothing exciting ever happens here.

Write soon,

-Mitya

So You’re Still Wearing Your Old Boonie Hat?

The old man asked.  Old man.  Maybe my age
“The original is carefully put away;
This one I ordered off the amazon”
His wooden stick was leaned against the pew

His grown children glanced disapprovingly
At two old dudes whispering during Mass
After the Eucharist, before the hymn
And the “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord”

He said he burned his Marine Corps sea bag
when he got home, but somehow you could tell
          it hadn’t helped

19th Sunday in Ordinary Time

He is not contained in the mighty winds
Nor in fell earthquakes from the earth’s dark core
Nor in red fires which devour what is left
But there is a whisper –

He is not contained in the missiles’ roar
Nor in the fall of civilizations
Nor in the flames of man’s self-destruction
But there is a whisper –

And where the Truth is lifted by priestly hands
There – there is the soft whispering of hope

Fat Confederates in Camouflage Knee-Pants

General Robert E. Lee in in a slogan tee -
One cannot imagine such, nor yet
**** Dowling defending old Galveston
Armed with made-in-China tiki torches

Doctor Martin Luther King adorned in bling -
One cannot imagine such, nor yet
The Little Rock Nine disfigured with tats
Or freedom marchers sporting designer sneaks

So, all you goofs and oafs and slobs and yobs,
Get out of the way; go find yourselves jobs

Uncle Vanya and Lady Godiva

Uncle Vanya came strolling down the road
Wishing he had made something of his life
His young friend Anne loquaciously agreed
And with remarkable vehemence urged him

     to endeavour to remediate his perceived inadequacies in the    
     many precedent matters that burdened him…

Don Quixote suggested that worries were giants
Cassandra said, “There is only one page left”
Nick Adams whispered, “Shh! You’ll scare the fish!”
Ambrose Silk asked the way to the world’s end

And young Lady Godiva, sans chemise
Outsourced her image on souvenir tees

Encountering a Fawn on a Rainy Morning in August

                                 leaped
The mother deer                  the farmer’s new fence
With her accustomed elegance and grace
Her fawn, confused, abandoned in the field
Held still, and pondered a new mystery

For a motorist, the asphalt is The Way
Menaced by mysterious fields and woods
For a deer, its fields and woods are The Way
Menaced by mysterious dark asphalt

The baby deer then found an open gate
The motorist found his way to Wal-Mart

“And When Night Comes…”

They twist her witness with bent arguments
Scholarly papers, harsh editorials
Like smoke and ashes obscuring the heavens
Telling her in retrospect who she is


But in her end, and in her beginning
She left all quarrels on the altar of man
And gave herself on the Altar of God
Because her only crime was loving Him

      and us

Those who emend her – again they martyr her:
They do not know what else to do with her

Ouroboros

Writhing about in man’s mythologies
Is a completeness, itself to affirm
Scriven in the ancient cosmologies:
The self-ordained perfection of The Worm

The Samsara of the self-seeking soul
And a self-admiring self-causation
Itself entire, a universal whole
Devouring its tail in auto-phagation

But metamorphoses have come to pass:
The endless worm’s head is now up its own (self)

Rule 2: Don’t Write Poetry about Poetry

A poem is a magic looking-glass
In which you see others, and not yourself
And search it for veiled possibilities
This mirror for the needs of –
                                                        not yourself

When you tap-tap to push pixels about
Or set in place a line of ink and hope
Into a meaning that you have perceived
It is a bedesman’s prayer for –
                                                     not yourself

A poem is a magic-measured song
That helps make sense of life for –
                                                     not yourself