Feast of the Transfiguration

Cleverly invented myths would be easier
Comforting assurances of ease in life
And no mention of difficulty
Humiliation, and death without hope

Not even mountain mysteries for us
Slogging through the slough said to be Despond
Conflicting texts and testimonies
A lack of clarity in so many things -

Cleverly invented myths would be easier

But

If truth weren’t a mess, it wouldn’t be true

Tears of Saint Lawrence

The tears of Saint Lawrence fall by the hour
Fall from the cosmos as our good saint weeps
Silently for us through those smoky nights
When hope seems but a burning mockery

The tears of Saint Lawrence remind us of
Certain promises made in the long-ago
That all would be well, and rainbows and rain
And refreshing streams are all part of them

The tears of Saint Lawrence fall, gently fall
As if our dreams were being baptized too

The 1970s

A giant Hannibalian elephant
Descending from the alps slowly to die
In the valley of the Po, pricked about
Bellowing outrage in its agonies

Of leisure suits and suburban barbed wire
Recorded on minutes of missing tapes
As polyester doubleknits await
A bump-up in the daily gasoline line

Hubris rotting in the dust of the age
And did you hear they’ve raised the minimum wage?

A Bag of Cabbage Chips

Unlike me, many of you have accepted the situation of your imprisonment, and will die here like rotten cabbages.

-#6 in Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner

A voice:
                   Be still, and know that I am Chip
Be still, because this might sting a little
There, now, wasn’t that easy?  Here’s a tissue
Who’s a good boy, then! Here’s your free tee-shirt  

Now that you are one with the ‘way cool kids
You can use your implanted chip to buy
A cup of coffee – or maybe a bag of chips
Log into a computer, and open doors

The one small thing you cannot buy or see
Is the return of your own human dignity

I Don’t Want a Mind of my Own

No, no, I don’t want a mind of my own
A mind is a gift, and must be returned
To the realm beyond the stars whence it came
For now it is in service to humanity

A mind does not belong to its bearer
Nor is it the property of the state
Or the bombinate Men of Destiny
Or the vacuous Spirit of the Age

A mind belongs to – oh, but well you know
In Truth, I don’t want a mind of my own

August is not a Melodious Month

August is not a melodious month
Unlike September with its amphibrach
A rhythm of soothing rises and falls:
September morn and then September song

For August is a trochee all intemperate
A restive foot that wants to walk away
Impatient with discourse, laughter, and song
In its wearying heat and lassitude

August is a word alone, without a rhyme

And so

August is not a melodious time

The White House Office of Warfare and Shopping

Some jets fly off to the wars, carrying the young
The desperate sons and daughters of poverty
Sent there by men in immaculate suits -
Thank you for your service, now go away

Some jets fly off to the shops, carrying the young
The beautiful sons and daughters of Arlington
Sent there by men who keep them as pretty pets -
Did you have a nice time in Paris today?

Some of the young die in deserts of pain
Some of the young call for more champagne

The White House Staff & Boys’ Choir

Gas-station shades, and identification
Dangling from their necks like nooses at rest
Ganymedes hoping to be noticed today
Dancing attendance upon the Throne of Games

Castrati commanded to tune their throats
Each secretly fearing he will be next
To be stripped of all for that walk of shame
Passes and pass codes passed on to others

Little Ken dolls flung about in childish glee,
While decorative generals nod and agree

Heat Advisory – But Whom Does the Heat Advise?

“Heat advisory issued as temps expected to reach triple digits”

-Houston Chronicle, 29 July 2017

Hey, temps, you’ve been reaching for those digits
For centuries.  Always you reach, sometimes
you grasp, those urged indoor activities
while counting up to three in Fahrenheit

And not in that ungodly Celsius
Which is simply not our kind of measure
We need no Frenchified logic like that
For the Bible is free of decimals

Hey, temps, you’ve been reaching for those digits -
Now cuddle up with an air-conditioner

Sarah’s Kittens

Java and Chai are enjoying a busy day:
Learning that refuse bins tumble easily
And that falling into the water dish
Is baptismal redemption from that fall

That lusting for the flesh of hummingbirds
Safely a-buzz beyond the window panes
Is a joyful way of passing an hour
Before attending to the doggies’ bowl -

The kittens’ dish is full, but they want more -
What is a home without a carnivore?

Or two!

New Moon Over an Old Planet

A thin lunette, silver reflecting gold
Assumed into its dance among the stars -
It was, it is; it will forever repose
Within the shining monstrance of creation

Some will adore, some will deny, but still
The sun, the moon, and the stars obey, and move -
Truth is not dependent upon perception
Or upon lies loudspeakered into our cells

The bearer, even if unseen, is forever -
A thin lunette, silver reflecting gold

Saharan Dust

The sky is a visitor from Africa
Come all the way to the Americas
To say hello, and bless these skies awhile
With a hemispheric umbrella pearl-grey

How like an overcast of dreams it seems
Shielding the land away from the summer heat
Shading the green into an all-day dusk
Almost iridescent in glowing layers

The sun will return soon, but for now
The sky is a visitor from Africa

Ode to the Trumpet

The trumpet is a gift of Greece and Rome
Blown straight within the palaces of kings
Then curved into a circle for the wars
And finally folded in upon itself

No one knows when in ******* a hero
Took up a trumpet bold as brass, and said
“Trumpet, I bless you now with Africa”
And made it sing the winds of the Sahel

Layers of nations, cultures, dreams, and art:
The trumpet sings from the musician’s heart

Dia de Muertos in a Parking Lot
23 July 2017

The big trucks roll along the interstates
And bear in their wombs the American soul:
Made-in-China shoes, ‘phones, dolls, cartoon tees
Scented soaps, baseball bats, and hipster hats

And the dead. Disposable merchandise
In the commerce of nations, the subjects
Of learned discourse and bigoted rant
Everyone in America wants to be famous

Coyotes dispose of their human cargo

And

How easy for us to say we didn’t know

Does the Point Vanish? Or do We?

In poetry there is no vanishing point
No lines converging in flat distances
Upon a gessoed plane of pleynt and paint
Skillfully rendered for the imagination

In poetry lines flow as languid streams
Or sometimes storm the soul as wilding floods
For seldom do they pause and build a pose
Because lines are imagination


No
                           Lines converge in flat dis
                               Tances because in
                                   Poetry there
                                     Is no van
                                        Ishing
              ­                                 .

Cassandra and Simon

Rose and Neil eloped to America
Mrs. Blossom is forever silent now
Mortmain in solitude emends his drafts
And Topaz dances under the summer moon

Even The Shape seems to have withdrawn itself
From Godsend Castle, where Cassandra writes
Shaping into meaning the wreckages
For she will build a life true to herself

Whether or not Simon ever returns
But wait – the foot of the lane – those car lights…

A Rainbow Bends toward Eternity

A rainbow bends toward Jerusalem
Constantinople too, and holy Rome
(Though some have said the last cannot be so!)
And makes each dome glow in reflected Light

And whether the Cross is signed left to right
Or right to left, only let it be signed,
And with the work-worn hand of an ‘umble man
Who prays each day in offering up himself

Seasons sail by, like ships upon the sea

and still

A rainbow bends toward Eternity

Always Check for Scorpions in Your Boots

If in Viet-Nam you enjoyed the right
Of taking off your smelly boots at night
You kept them close to you, lest they march away
You didn’t want to be barefoot at break of day

Then when some idiot yelled “Boots and saddles!”
(He’d seen too many films, and was somewhat addled)
(True, “saddles” and “addled” don’t really rhyme)
You checked for scorpions every old time

Though now your uniforms are ties and suits
You always check for scorpions in your boots

A Veteran of the Wars

This old warrior has many tales to tell:
He’s sailed among the distant Philippines
Built ships all over the world, repaired tanks
In Germany, was in the desert wars

He served with the Marines, and the Navy too
And can tell you everything about the Aegis -
And does –
                          but he was never in the service;
He’s a sacker at the supermarket

This poor old man; he never got it right
But God bless him – he had his own wars to fight

The Canals on Mars

From an allusion by Robert Royal1

Martians spent centuries building canals
Across great continents to irrigate
Their fields, and on barges of marvelous design
Voyage across their picturesque red lands

They watch us through wonderful telescopes
And send out ships whose missions seem to be
To crash into Earth’s deserts with little green men –
Alas that none of this was ever true!

There are no canals, only an optic blur:
We will miss those Martians who never were


1Robert Royal: “Are Americans from Mars?” The Catholic Thing, 17 July 2017.

A Little ******* a Wagon Seat

Of her deep thriftiness, Grandmama Hall
Saved every button that passed through her hands
And banked them in a large glass jar from which
She could withdraw an investment in clothing:

New dresses cut and sewn from bolts of cloth
(The styles from 1900 served just fine)
From Mixson’s Store in town, and buttons for all
From her accumulated waste-not, want-not

Wisdom and skill, and girlhood memories
Of when she came to Texas in a covered wagon

15th Sunday in Ordinary Time

We are scattered, like the Tribes of Israel
Sown not in rejection but as word and work
Planted everywhere, and commanded to grow
In the rich earth of divine Creation

There is no veto in birds, rocks, or thorns
Let them instead serve in their own poor ways
As dutiful as humans, maybe more so
Unfallen either as seed or as beings

To tend and guard the ancient unities
That grow forever in Jerusalem

A Carpenter’s Hammer

A craftsman does not hammer with a hammer -
He wields it with surprising subtlety
As delicately as a scalpel poised
Or as an artist’s most elegant brush

A hammer is balanced to mind and hand
Its journey planned and scheduled with great care
To bring about something that was not before:
Through muscle and thought it falls, it dives, it drives

And when the hammer strikes the waiting nail
It sings to Creation a workman's hymn

The Happy Little Guillotine

Oh, happy guillotine, who blesses us
With your great gift of freedom, so that we
Will never again suffer the cruel torments
Of faith and friendship, air, love, light, and breath

Oh, do lop off our heads, and make us free
To gurgle hymns to The Revolution
By our hundreds free, nay, our thousands free,
To rot in the streets, gloriously free

Oh, holy guillotine, come to our aid
And make us one beneath your healing blade!

The Evolution of Sophomores

Poor sophomores like polliwogs within
Their small Samsaric Sea do swim about
And seemingly without purpose or point
Startled by shifting shadows or loud noises

But polliwogs in time absorb their tails
Then grow their legs, and hop ashore to eat
Mosquitoes, moths, and flies and dragonflies;
Sophomores acquire their driving licenses

And seemingly without purpose or point
Do drive about their small Samsaric Sea

After Their Divorce

In his garage he takes a break, and sits
Among all the mechanical debris
Of an inventor born a century late:
Unsorted hopes, tools, dreams, and engine parts

The project car that he and his son will never
Rebuild together on Sunday afternoons
An old guitar, an ashtray full of ends
A midden of beer cans crushed in memories

He should be loading his truck and trailer, but
In his garage, in bitterness, he waits

Sixth Mass Extinction

Earth's sixth mass extinction event under way, scientists warn

-The Guardian

The headmaster has shaved his head egg-smooth
Shifted his hair to the point of his chin
And his sunshades to the top of his scalp
His petrol-station SAS sunshades

He often boasts he doesn’t even own a tie
And hasn’t read a book since Upper-Sixth
Something transgender post-colonial
About Guevara (who is on his tee)

Not a form master, but a master of forms
A way-cool disciple of Ofsted norms


Variant for the American Market

Sixth Mass Extinction

Earth's sixth mass extinction event under way, scientists warn

-The Guardian


Like, you know, the principal shaves his head

Like, absolutely, ***

Got him a goatee, like, actually

Cheap gas-station Official USA Navy Seals™® shades, mannnnnnnnnnnnnnn

Not cool, ***, actually

I had to help him with the big words in Goodnight, Moon

Absolutely, like

Yosemite Sam™® on his faunky ol’ tee

His office has, like, stuffed fish and, like, football pictures, like, and his Dallas Cowboys™® baseball cap, like, actually

Kafka’s Coffee Cup

A poor petitioner spoke unto a grille;
His need was simple, coffee ‘gainst the dawn.
A voice metallic, disembodied, chill
Chanted a liturgy through the speaker ‘phone:

“And would you like some sweetener with that?
Sugar?  Or chemicals, yellow or pink?
Creamer, perhaps, no gluten and no fat;
The selection is yours; what do you think?

“And, oh, yes, would you like to supersize
Your order with a little bit of nosh?
A doughnuts or bagel, some curly fries,
Or a croissant with cream cheese, by gosh!”

(The reader pauses, then speaks the last two lines slowly)

Years passed, as did this tale of Kafka’s woe:
He died while waiting for that cup of joe.

A Secret University

You registered for university
When in the womb you were beloved of God
Your classes then began when you were born
When you awoke, and saw your mother’s eyes

And in them all the possibilities
Of life, of golden life, given to you
Upon this planet with its flowered fields
Forests and rivers beneath its moon and sun

And all these tell you, in eternal Song1
That all the world is your university


1In The Kalevala, in Lewis’ Narnia, and in many faiths, God sings the world into being.

Reclining **** with Pet Frog

Hobby Lobby got caught smuggling artifacts
Vaticanos got caught snuggling each other
Putin and Trump are loose with their facts
The governor of New Jersey is BIG Brother

The Republicans blame the Democrats
The Democrats blame the Russians
The Russians blame the plutocrats
And the Norks won’t join the discussions

All of them make big messes every day
And they expect us to shut up and pay

Still Life with Ant Poison

A summer’s dusk, a rustic garden bench
Deep-weathered from the cycles of seasons and years
And burdened with those homely implements
Beloved of the philosopher-gardener:

Clay pots at rest after nursing young plants
An old birdhouse in need of repair, a trowel
A pair of old cloth gloves, a watering can
A cylinder of painful death for ants

And for the old philosopher’s Vespers
An inch
             (or two)
                           of therapeutic single-malt

The Bishop of DaNang

In Grateful Memory:
Pierre Marie Pham Ngoc Chi,14 May 1909 – 21 January 1988

What did he think of his Americans
Some six or so, just kids, in jungle greens
Receiving from his hands the Sacrament
Of Confirmation there, among Marines

A Quonset hut chapel in the morning sun
Blistering the steel in its passage to noon
Anointing all with gun oil and with sweat
“Do you reject Satan and all his works…?”

The Word and his blessings, a group picture -
And what did the NVA think of him?

What’s in a #?

#“What's in a #? That which we call a #
By any other # would smell as #...”

-#Shakespeare?

You are, by the Grace of God, as you speak;
You are not a #; you are not an @
You are not a consumable to be
Tagged, twitted, labeled, renamed, and recycled

Honor the languages of your ancestors
Who gave to you, through work and dignity,
The Muses Nine of civilization
And not vague scratchings in the muck of now

Write nobly, not in # @ noises weak -
You are, by the Grace of God, as you speak

A Family Luncheon in Honor of Independence Day

The flag posted without enthusiasm
The interior doors locked against children
Whose mothers aver that their pryings and thefts
Are expressions of their authentic selves

Dutiful hot dogs, Chinese paper plates
Surgeries, diets, and bowel movements
Articulated in autopsic detail
And catalogues of recent family deaths

The in-laws sit for hours; they won’t go away -
Now speak again of Independence Day!

Is That a Prophet on Your Roof?

A woman of Shunem gave to Elisha
A small room on her roof, furnishing it with
A bed, a chair, a table, and a lamp
And, truly, what more does a man of God need?

It’s possible that the neighbors gossiped
About keeping a prophet on the roof
And what did the owners’ association say
About extra rooms and extra prophets?

A little room in which to pray and sleep,
And friends – what more does a man of God need?

Court Day

So sullenly he sneers and slouches there
Behind a menu that he will not read
His mother smiles apologetically
And orders milk and cereal for him

He sulks beneath his franchise baseball cap
And grunts into a little plastic box
Then shoves it back into his pressed knee-pants
His mother smiles apologetically
                                                  ­           tips apologetically
                                                  ­           pays apologetically

The waitress with her chalice takes communion ‘round
Refills the cups at each creaky table
Newspaper stories, what is this world coming to,
Bacon and eggs, toast, orange juice, refills, life

Beyond the misted glass the old court house
Begins to take the early morning light
Like an old man taking his first cup of the day
Having another go at civilization

A rural Thomas More parks his old truck
This Chaucerian sergeant of the law
Will plead the usual catalogue of not-his-faults
The lad will smirk and feign apologies

The creaky tables of the ancient laws
To be served with irrelevant custom
The lad demands change for the Coke machine
His mother yields
                                 Apologetically.

(Happy 150th, Canada!)


Canada Day -  Just One?

With love from an ‘umble Yank

But every day is Canada Day!

The afternoon plane lands in Halifax
When the hatch is popped, cool air rushes in
Even the fog is happy in Canada

The Muskogee never made landfall here
And so we pilgrimage for her, complete
Her voyage from ’42 to Canada

Wolfville, Grand Pre’, Le Grande Derangement
The Deportation Cross and beer cans
Well, God forgive the Redcoats anyway

Newfoundland
Is a bold
Anapest

The church spires in a line, the light is green
The bold young captain shoots the narrows wild
Can you find your way to your painted house?

To walk again the cobbles of Ferryland
And smell the very blue of the Atlantic
The sea-blown wind is cold in Canada

Blue Puttees and a mourning Caribou
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord
Good children sing “We love thee, Newfoundland”

Quebec – royal city of New France
May Le Bon Dieu bless the Plains of Abraham,
And may God bless
The signs an English driver cannot read

The Coca-Cola streets of Niagara Falls
Yanks laugh at made-in-China Mountie mugs
And buy them, happy to be in Canada

A cup of Toujours Frais from – well, that place
But to us in your southern provinces
Below Niagara, Tim too is Canada

Though Canada goes on, these scribbles must not -
Your grateful guest wishes only to say
That every happy day is Canada Day!

Picket Fences at Camp Tien Sha

There were picket fences at Camp Tien Sha
And a sign that read “Welcome to Viet-Nam”
And nobody ever asked why that should be
Both the fences and – just why were we there?

Picket fences – so could it be that bad?
Concrete transient barracks built by the French
Hot, foul, dark, and dank – it could be that bad
Mortars in the night – Welcome to Viet-Nam

Waiting for orders – did they forget us?
There were picket fences at Camp Tien Sha

Strelnikov is still Wrong

"I used to admire your poetry…I shouldn't admire it now. I should find it absurdly personal. Don't you agree? Feelings, insights, affections...it's suddenly trivial now. You don't agree; you're wrong. The personal life is dead in Russia. History has killed it."

– Strelnikov in Doctor Zhivago (film)

Don’t write to be approved by masters who
Wear Rolexes in the Name of the People
Don’t write to be approved by masters at all
But be your own authority and see

Your life – yours - is nobler than manifestos
The latest noisy Ghibellines and Guelphs
All Power to the Constituent Assembly
One folk, one nation, one waffle with syrup

Write freedom through verses, and disobey
Anyone who pushes you what to say

Swamp the Drain

Now once upon a time there was a drain
A happy little drain that all day drained
Which is the nature of what good drains do
Letting things flow away, off to the sea

One day a blustering bullfrog strutted about
And croaked that the drain was not any good
He said he’d swamp that drain with a huuuuge dam
A beautiful dam – his audience was riveted

And he croaked and he croaked and still he croaked
                                                 ­                all day
But the happy little drain drained his croaks
                                                                ­ away

Setting the Night Watch

Nature exists without anyone’s permission:
At dusk the loud cicadas in the oaks
And the soft crickets dwelling in the grass
Sing an evening hymn to the setting sun

Sparrows and mockingbirds leave off their wars
And all make wing to Shakespeare’s rooky wood
While little dogs patter the day’s last patrol
Snuffling the bounds as true as timber wolves

And as a tourist comes a straying man
Oblivious to the changing of the watch

A Soldier Smoking a Cigarette

A soldier lay beside a railway line
Smoking a cigarette, not thinking of much
Among some hundreds of other conscript lads
Upon a grassy glacis above the fields

The boxcars waited in the stilly heat
The soldiers waited like young summer wheat
Occasionally stirred about by winds unseen
And finally stirred about by orders unheard

They rippled into the cars, and were taken away -
A shadow lay beside a railway line

For a Methodist Minister Newly Posted

We feel sometimes, we know sometimes, that we
Are aliens here, exiles and witnesses
As Abraham was sent from his father’s house
And Moses as a child was set adrift

The Apostles upon their voyages
By blood declare there is no lasting home,
Not here, so trusting in God to guide His ark
We thus are cast upon the waters of baptism

For on this planet each of us arrives
Afloat and in a Hebrew blanket wrapped

Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome

See now Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome
Three celebrants mitred with golden light  
And vested in pillar, temple, and dome
They lift life’s elements in sacred rite:      
  
Jerusalem the Wild, where prophets sing
Athens the Reasoner, amid her vines                    
Rome, the Giver of Laws, whose trumpets ring:
All send us civilization through wonders and signs                        

In faith and form and word and polychrome -
See now Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome

The University of Old Lawn Chairs

The new lawn chairs are now the old lawn chairs
How many summers - has it been that long?
Their runners are rusty, their paint is pale -
The flip-this parvenus would disapprove

Not rusty but rustic, these fine old seats
Of learning have weathered many terms
Supporting the front-yard sciences and arts
Of lightning bugs, conversations, and scotch

The cicadas’ songs, the rising of stars
With us enthroned as luxuriously as czars

Arc of the Solstice

High summer’s solstice is the year’s proud crown:
The sun has reached his apogee, and now
Will linger through July’s life-ripening days
Then drift into a worn Augustan gold

September is a sort of seasonal coup
Who in the equinoctial treaty signs
For a slow dissolution of the sun
And all his ancient power to rule and reign

In his old age the sun is seldom seen –
Diana, then, is crowned as winter’s queen

It’s Bad Only if Jenny’s Fried Chicken is Closed

Warnings and categories – a tropical storm
It’s really bad if Jenny’s has to close
No fried chicken, no electricity
No lights, no burgers, no coffee, no fries, no hope

A flashlight in the night is weak and pale
Our manna in exile - crackers and Spam
And coffee from a Thermos, not enough
To lift the spirits of the chicken-deprived

But now the sun is up, the storm has passed
O tell us that Jenny’s is open at last!

Old Communist Movie Director

From the Criterion Collection

The object now of film-school interviews
His gravelling, decades-gone voice echoing
Into a recorder his decades-gone news
How wonderful he was, and all-knowing
About Thuh Fascists, Thuh Workers, and Thuh Jews
Hugging his resentments, and loudly crowing
About the Blacklist through his smokes and *****
How bravely he defied the Rightists, going
In exile to England on a luxury cruise.

Shakespeare in the Pork

Is this a protest which I see before me,
Clichés to abuse the script? Come, let me meme thee.
I have a master’s degree, so hold still.
Art thou not, sign waver, a Democrat?

Or art thou but a pale Republican
Proceeding from the heat-oppres’sed drain?
     (that swamp metaphor, remember?)
I see thee yet, in form as palpable
As a 1950s fraternity boy

Civility thickens, and threatens life’s play
So all ideologues, just
                                           go
                                                      away

The Dog Not Taken

Two roads diverged on a paper ballot
Rejecting both, I voted for my dog