A battle always fought
To my heart's content I lost
My brain would rejoice in defeat
I would gather strength to retreat

Divided, I fight
In a pitiful plight
That no one even cares
Not a single cheer you will hear

Like a jester I joke
About my caustic yoke
I make light out of the matter
And every one replies with laughter

Proud of my achievement
I wail in disappointment
But still smiling I weep
For this to myself I keep

My last hope shattered
No where to be found
Like tattered cloth i'm worthless
Just some *** lying around

Clenching my face
I don't know what to do
I can't do anything
To stop this wound

Like migraine I kneel
Pray to stop the pain
A wall was my answer
Streaming blood my gain

Tired I lie
On the ground while I weep
But laughing comes life
With a deal that I must keep

To forever wander
In this forsaken world forever
To bear burden for no one
And cower in fear of others

Hopeless I accept
the terms and agreement
To lock myself forever
In this caustic life of terror

it,s loose cotton electric ***
copper children
          husky sighing t
                                      he
trickle of daughters into the little wet cracks
on Railroad ave. a beggars hand gesticulating empty spans
a river of grins course toward amber
oblivion and jarring rhythms. she's a white idea. a lemon dress *****.

          her hips are a delicious war of curving apparitions
a dearth of pleasure loaded folds. or else a caustic laceration;

     some hernia of capillaries blotting ivory thighs
            a
           n
                d all the children giggle, teeth cleaning pearly cheeks
splay the efforts of their throats all over the cobbles. it,s a night

   FRIDAY









          yes

you are the light at the end of a tendril. a spindle of dread, woven in caustic guile of argyle
parallelograms...phantom realms of solid waste. you are the pin in the subject. gating satan through a thimble
of crocodile tears, the new symbol.
the rude glyph in black bibles and strong drink, en-kindling the dead. rodents ponzi the scheme
of hell’s maze, with lies...your lies...
you have  eyes that  lead aside from your heart’s plot
you are saboteur. banal.
unrestrained waste. you are the fin in the barracuda puppet, grazing the wrist of Dim Henson
huffing crystal gorillas in the congo of your foyer
you are
the black chandelier.

teach me your cheap trick
striking off ‘ iron-on’  pinkie swears
your praline heresies... your  ‘ no remorse’    code
lay bare to me.

better my better angels,  to fathom the loathsome ****
of your actual mind. keep me abreast of your wretched games...
apply the rod of your wrong  love, above all.... you must betray.
you must know in your fetid rot
of a third eye... the phlegm genius of **** blindness.... teach me the rictus of
cold hearted.  a false god in my lotus !

spare me the chaste suzette
flip me the ***** that spits fables.
learn me the savage puns
to pummel you         sustaining your worst done.
grant me the lethal beans for my sacred cow
trade me the idylls of your forked heart
for your crushed null
and crossed
bones.

Scuzzy film on a scalding riptide,
Bare sinew woven like scaffolding,
Catcalling as warm-and-fuzzies
Mince by like so many exposed marble legs
Passing construction sites.
Crimped by a polaroid viewfinder,
I sit alone and click-click-click
With folded memories in my pocket.

Let me just set the record straight:
I’m still in love with our contrails,
But you can go **** yourself.
We were helter-skeltering kids
Rivulets of caustic devotion
Sweltering down our skeletons,
Fly away with me again, please
I’m seeing synonyms for you
In every ally-cat hymnal
This gutter throat can sputter out
Seeing scarecrows bound by wicker muscles
Shivering in a windfarm
Powered by all those doors you slammed
Snapping together like worn
Rubber bands warm summer hands --
Dance with me, you were
The most perfectly human
I've ever felt.

Is that Listerine rolling out of your mouth
In waves of empty bottles once meant for me?
Off of your shoulders like a cape,
A swindler, eyeing you
Like you’re trying to sell me cutlery.
Exchange glances that are
Trailmix crumbling between couch cushions,
Rubbing shoulders with waspy relief,
Tendrils of comfort had me gripped by the biceps
Spread eagle like a petrified starfish
Till I lashed out at you with bullwhip arms
Because my own back had been too hard to reach lately,  

Mirrored
Ad Infinitum.
Your tongue looks like a mirror,
Stick it out at me,
We always did look more than alright together
People stared on the subway,
Called us starry-eyed without a trace of irony.
Back in the day when you made me happier
Than something I don’t even have a metaphor for,
Just happy. Happy needs no metaphors.

I still check my reflection every once in a while
Never know if we’ll collide again anyway,
Best to be prepared but instead I
Drift aimfully towards a catacomb of eyelash wishes
And equally corny ******* I never believed in,
Still don’t,

It was getting at us, though,

Rubbing sandy fists down to the core
Instead of holding hands
Crunchy apple shell
Skin friction,
Bite the seed,
1,000 angry pomegranate teeth,
Chapped lips like crustacean shells,
Aligned like eye-freckles
Me looking like an unused punching bag,
You somewhere off in the distance,
A fading marble of plasticine light
On my wavering horizon.

Because yeah, you broke my ******* heart
You were novacane cruel and selfish
And so immature it stunned me
But you also taped it back into my chest
On the day we met so I guess we’re even.

It’s funny, already I can’t quite remember your voice,
the shape of my name in your mouth,
how you laughed,
but every word  you ever said
is still carved onto the back of my hand
like a roadmap towards all the ways
you showed me how to love myself.

Still rubbing them away with your scalding riptide,
All those words you said about forever,
Now just shackles,
So gladly did I submit to yours,
I still hate those ornery devices
Even now when,
They’re curled at my feet
Like broken wings.

Suppose I was more agreeable
Instead of arguing over coffee about politics, religion
All those subjects deemed taboo that neither of us truly give a **** about
Pressing my point like daggers against your ribcage
Knowing the sweet spots that make you moan
I would give in, applaud your cleverness, then leave for work

You would be left wondering if you should feel insulted.

of course you should

As usual,my filterless memoirs have become vocalized
******* them back in tight and quick is useless
Once freed, the damage is done

But. they. are . just. words.

the previous statement is ridiculous and the author should be shot

Never could I slice you deeper, **** your private mind or lay your soul bare
Then with the bitter, caustic, truthful edge of my observations
You are just as vulnerable as the rest of them
Barbed wire telegrams
Frozen emails
Ash and arsenic letters
Cut you to the quick

Delightful.
But I like it better when I can witness the damage
Basking in the upper handed afterglow of my superior ability to mortally wound
For no bit of silver that I've ever found
Was ever sharper than the razor edge of my tongue

1.
assert yourself as someone strong, someone capable
make it seem like nothing hurts you
it doesn't matter if you slip up sometimes - you're only human
but it has to be rare.
if you feel like crying, convert it to anger
let the rage overwhelm you to the point where you're blind with it
let it become so overpowering that it blinds everybody else too
the blind won't see your sadness; the blind will
avert their eyes
in fear

2.
you don't feel things like other people do
your emotions are never strong, unless you're feeling angry
or depressed
but you keep those quiet, only ever spoken softly
to close friends,
these secrets hidden like taboos.
you don't care, you don't love
don't let them convince you otherwise
show them how much apathy you have inside you by letting go of hate and love altogether-
when they cut you open, let them find nothing but bland organs;
your only colour is red because you do bleed
you're still only human
but you don't bleed your soul like ink onto journal pages
that would mean you feel something - and you don't

3.
never smile in photos, never smile in your selfies
let them see you're "fine" even if your eyes are shaded with Midnight's charcoal pencils
and lined red with Two AM's pencil crayons;
the coffee in your hand isn't a sign of exhaustion - you're just bitter
no milk, no sugar
this helps you succeed with steps 1 and 2 as well
you're strong enough to stomach the caustic nature of black coffee,
you can't feel it burn your throat on the way down
and you don't flinch nor grimace when it lingers on your tongue.
you've already bitten back enough of the harsh thoughts that try to slip out like saliva,
impossible to miss, impossible to avoid;
your tongue is numb to the taste of salts and sours,
of words so violent
they land blows significant enough to sign death sentences

4.
let them know that you
are a bomb
ticking, teetering, trembling with the temptation to trigger terror
your hands stay curled into fists that you'll rarely throw, always ready
always willing to go
no one will ever say another bad thing about you, and if they do
it won't be to your face
no one you know is brave enough to look Death straight in the eye and taunt him
by now your defenses are so thick and sturdy that they'll call them bomb shells
covering what's burning away inside you, unforgiving, toxic
but it's your cool, collected carvings of ****** expressions
that'll leave them with the most shell-shock.
and they'll never find out that the only trigger in you
is a self-destruct button
because you've always hurt yourself more than you've ever hurt others.
you keep it that way, and they'll never know how much

you
actually
do
care.

a serpentine plume
of saharan dust

unveiled by radar
an ocean spanning

exhalation
of opaque

talcum haze
seeping into and onto

cracks metal glass
amid caustic

simmering
and listless

longing
for cicada drill

and aircondtioned din
to mute


Tom Spencer © 2018

check it out check it out
chic chicky boom chicky boom chic chic
it's da state of this here disunion
this here bangalore torpedo seeks yer minefields
this here suffering hero
n
crows about         strafes
multitudes                 peripherally
****** blind prophets
exclaim
chic chicky boom chicky boom chic chic
it's nothing but beginning
of  beginning & z end of approximation
time's sweet angry subluxation
universal caving in on U & U
chic chicky boom chicky boom chic chic
when was z last time U really loved
i mean really really really loved
ha i could only hold to z imagination
z skeleton z allegory z myth
'cause everything slides & falls
screams careens outta control
chic chicky boom chicky boom chic chic
she brought in rrrrevolution.evolution.now
is z caustic effervescence of her wit
eroding my sandy castle of deceit?
ha and repeat ha
chic chicky boom chicky boom chic chic
forgive-me-notes are written high
on z forehead of my despair
a cursive flowing interdiction
malediction cruxifiction err-u-diction
en-passant
in each pyrotechnic moment when we don't see I-to-I
on anything relevant to what we once hoped was us
but we continue dance dance dance
perseveration aberration indiscretion cha-cha-cha
chic chicky boom chicky boom chic chic
she said *** is z engine of z world
like engine like world like ***
like like like
could say no more
oh it's tiresome to go on
describing that chimeric uniting
flesh-to-flesh-in-flesh eliding
we all are guilty of
do not end a line with a preposition such as
that or a proposition such as this:
given angle a prove that old triangle theorem
two simultaneous loves don't make a right
cherchez les angles les anglais la bon mot
ya know
chic chicky boom chicky boom chic chic
when i die please  bury me upside down
prone to z ground making dead love to earth ya kno
while the centuries lie down next to me
chic chicky boom chicky boom chic chic
chic chicky boom chicky boom chic chic
chic chicky boom chicky boom chic chic
chic!
chic!

It has come to my attention
That I am not all right.
Some may call me sad.
Others pathetic.
Still others find me fascinating
A person to know
A wise woman.
I may be some or none of those things.
I am me.
I am melancholy
And I am bitter
I am sarcastic
Even caustic
My smiles may not be genuine
And I see little need for small talk.
I am myself
For who else would I be?

Air thin and caustic
each gasp leaving me a step closer to nauseous
lips taste the reality bitter and noxious
feel every breath taken, leaves me chest riven with anxiety
killing this ache that eats away at the dreams that live inside of me
if eyes are the windows to the souls, these eyelids secure my privacy
smothering the hazel pools from basking in sun ray's, yet these makeshift curtains no match for a fire sky
heart strained reminded of dire times
where I combined
every ounce of energy I could muster into one effort
made my bets and held my breath awaiting my death's ledger
the hypoxic reality that ensued
haunted me with ghostly recollections of you
my restless mind ventured through memories plagued with stinging sensations of uncompromising resent
I factored in my all the time spent
as well as my mind's rent
that you owed, being its only tenant
yet now that all emotional debts seem square, I don't have the heart to spend it
perhaps I'll store it away in notebooks and old pictures, praying the balance accrues interest over time left untouched in this my personal account
in something other than your love and its varying amount
battered hands pain-stakingly surmount
the pile of photos and letters, written with a future in mind
eyes wide, allowed you views inside
air thin and caustic, the light draining from these windows that leave my eyes dull
remain motionless, praying on a change, searching for my revival...

Some start with ****, (I am reflecting now)
or nic on the breath,
but it ends in cadaverine,
all my heroes have been lost to me.

And as decomposition begins( I am angry now)
they look happy,
cuz a skull always grins,
a slow way to die,
as if doused with caustic lye,
the spiritual man is dead,
black vacuity in their eyes.

Now their souls will sin( I am staying away now)
their tongues will boast,
they mock the heavens,
but tempt the crows,
their minds are seared,
their heart debased,
any memory of my friends is all erased. (attending a funeral now)

divorce isn't a breakup
it's a death in the family
two hearts too hurt to make up
and it never ends amicably

it makes every word said, every phrase, every promise ever spoken
sting like lies and sting your pride that you believed and they were broken

it takes from you the ability to believe in the beauty of someone special
when you feel like you gave all you had to give and it ended so regretful

it robs you of all your feelings of safety and comfort and home
it takes from you your confidence, your positivity and leaves you positively alone

it creates a deep hate that takes over and makes you fume anger
it causes the caustic sorrow that darkens every tomorrow and makes everyone a stranger

it makes you question your own value, your actual self worth
it makes you feel that you're not good enough to be loved anywhere on this earth

knowing that the person who knows the true you the very best
took a look inside you and chose to pursue one of the rest
the thought holds you down and carves your heart right out of your chest
and it takes back, steals back, rapes away all that made you feel blessed
like you invested all of your time, the very best of yourself and no less
and still failed the test

so you try to stand on two broken legs to walk again on your own
and you stumble into the arms of new friends and try to make a new home
and you search frantically for affection to replace what you've known
but at the end of each night regardless of who's next to you, you are alone

bar after bar, club after party, drink drink drink and take them to bed
trying to drown the remorse and the anger and the longing that fire shots in your head
you will literally try physically to **** your way into someone new's heart
you will become an artist making selfishness and need and self promotion an art

but they don't really know you so how could they really care
true love doesn't become tangible from moans floating through thin air
a love you reap comes from time spent in wonder and in promises you keep
true love comes from the person you're meant to be with seeing that you're deep
and wanting to dive in
to only you
to never surface again
from within you
to breath for the last time on their own
without your heart making theirs beat
to go to war for you alone
with no possibility of retreat

and that hope, that chance of what could come for my life's course
is the only thing I got to keep in my divorce

Your flag
Your pride
Your accent and voice
The way you dress
The way you greet others
Your money

Your hair
Your face
Your tongue and the language it speaks
How you trip over words
Of a language which isn’t yours

Assimilate.
But not too much
We already know your name
And your story
All by one look
All before you’re granted a chance to speak

Our children will stare at the gringa who passes
Whose tongue flicks with an anglicized mark
And crowds will glare with eyes of disgust
And shield our children from the alien before us

But we will also stop you in our streets to speak with you
But not because we care what you have to say
Rather because we want to practice your language
And make it ours
So we may criticize you in a way you’ll understand

But you’re here to study
And here to learn
And we want your money but not you in our schools
You take classes with your own kind
And speak with your own kind
And suffer with your own kind

We try to keep you all contained.

You can try to speak Castellano
Or learn how we think
But it doesn’t matter what you do
Every action is already explained
By the fact you’re a foreigner.

Where do you come from?
You couldn’t tell she’s American
By her flag, her pride, her accent and voice?
Your country seems like a different planet
Are you sure you came by plane?

Alien.
Are you an alien person?
But it isn’t a question of your place of origin
It is of your humanity.
Are you an alien person?

Foreign,
Foreign,
Foreigner.

Your name is too American
Write it like this.
Never mind that, it is too hard to say.
Here is a new one.
You only have one surname.
What did you do to disgrace your mother?

Come observe a new culture, never participating.
But we will observe you from across the Atlantic.
And your semi-barbaric ways
Because we know if the choice was ours
We’d house the lady
And you the tiger.

Come to our country where we may serve you poisoned fruit
And send you to our prison-hospitals
Where you will stay in your cell until yellow swims around your ankles
And you cry loud enough to be an annoyance
And when your bill arrives, te haremos confundido por Castellano
Never offering you el lujo a entender
Never offering ni paz ni amistad.

But you chose to come here
You cannot be surprised to you pay thousands to clean your blood off our floors
When you chose to spread your enslavement and war.
You are all so violent to spill so much blood
So barbaric.

Who will believe you if you say you don’t fight?
We see the news of you failing to protect your children
And how Oedipus permeates your state of mind
And the permanence of a confederacy keen on killing Kenyans
You walk your streets ready to spill your brother’s blood
And the blood of a million foreigners as you have done before

You circumcise your sons the moment they cry
And just stop there?
Why not cut off the rest
So your kind may never reproduce?
And your brother may live in awe of you

But we never enslaved nor conquered
Nor cut the hands or feet of any right-doer
Nor colonized, evangelized, or spoke a wrong word
We stayed neutral in war, fighting civil for the civil
Our history is filled with the taste of sweet sugar
Curated by the hands of people who adored us
Violence is all too western
And by that we mean American.

You chose to abandon your land
To study here
And to learn here
To hunt for our money and spend it on alcohol
So you may drunkenly stumble with your own kind
And speak with your own kind
And suffer with your own kind
And play the most dangerous game

A gamble with your money
A gamble with the law
A gamble with your freedom
All contained in a troublesome roulette

Because here the game is always rigged against you.

You are giants
Coarse, crude, and caustic
Who infect every perfect thing you touch
Turning our fine shores to gravel lots
Spitting oil in our seas
And turning our precious wine to water
All for the sake of bettering your newborn nation
Which ***** on the *** of its European predecessors

Wipe your streets with the blood of your children
And the blood of your women
And the blood of every barbarian who dares to hold a gun in the name of freedom
And there will be no one left to sing your anthem

We will eat you and your country alive
And burn your body among our forgotten tyranny
With the victims of our cultural dictatorship
And your country will pay no mind
And your death will be not so much as tragedy as a mere statistic.

Because to you it is life and death.
But to us it is a bet
How long will the gringa last?
Before xenophobia eats her alive
And her last words fall victim to a false deafness
Because this language should not be hers?

Yes, this is a ballad to your loss
The coming of a new era
When the gringa hangs on her cross
With the ashes of white and blue behind her
As her blood spills red
And she looks up to the stars
As her guts spill out
Striped with the acid of her nation

And we will watch as she sells her guts to afford her surgeon
In that country which pays her no mind
In that country which sees her as meat to be hunted
In that country which plays the most dangerous game
In her country who wins the most dangerous game
In her country who saved her life
In her country who she calls home
In her country who wants her home.

And she will cry waving her bloodied flag
Screaming “I’m American!”
Because her heart lies in her imperfect land
In her imperfect home
With her imperfect people
And she has an unfathomable love for her flag
Stained with the blood of a million foreigners.

Fred occupies his chair, innocently enough.
Occupying his time by
Solving the crossword puzzle, racking his brain
for the answers.
So all of the letters fit together.
So every space is filled. The beauty of solved Enigmas.
Ten across. Opposite of faithfulness.
The fire consumes the logs. Contained Chaos.
The room is illuminated in frantic light
Emanating from the fireplace.
Flames prevented from yielding to their Natural


Yearning to Disseminate to whatever matter
Will accept them. Fred sits on his chair,
Innocently enough,
But if you look in those
Eyes of his, you will witness the Beauty of
Pain, la Douleur exquise d'amour.
Loving Someone he will, invariably, love and forgive.

A woman

Whose love has changed patterns. Changed
Directions. Altered. There is a string
That hitches his heart to that of his infidel.
His wife. He feels foreign blood impairing
Them. He knows her. Without her telling
Him anything, he knows the Lies in those
Eyes of her. Confirming his knowledge.
Ten across. Infidelity. Means unfaithful.


She walked in moments ago, sat on the
Usual chair in front of him. Fred’s
Heart aches now with the immensity of the
Heartache within his wife.
He feels her heart has been broken
By the same man who usurped her from
Him every Thursday. She would return

[not quite yet]

Home on those days, Disjointed, Distracted. He
Knew this was what Falling in
Love looked like. But today, his wife's
Heart feels different. Her Lover is
Absent from their blood. Fred no
Longer is
Obligated to pump the blood of his
Wife’s flame throughout his own body.


and yet, he feels sorry for her.
feels her suffering.
feels her pain more than his own.


He watches her face, the Sorrow in
Her eyes drinks the flames of the
Fire. Fred can tell she wishes she were


In the flames. Better yet, the
Blaze itself, free from her despondency,
The places her mind must be traveling to.
Fred is fully aware that she is contemplating
Unloading her triste to him. Not for
His own Benefit, to be Honest with him.
Only to assuage her Guilt, to
empty her conscience of
Bad Blood.


She is a sinner. She will sin
Again. No doubt about that. But.
His Infidel.
He cannot stand to see her...
His love...his life...


If someone is spread out before you
Seeking to surrender to Death,
You do not Simply let them die.
Especially if they share half your blood.
Especially if your Happiness is
Contingent upon their survival.


Fred’s wife has a ghostly look on her
Face and he cannot help but save her from
Her caustic thoughts, from the
Consuming pain in her very
Core.


and so he guides
her back to him.
just her wide eyes.
he knows all.

And He forgives her.

Awaken from the dreams
Nightmares all around
Caustic waves of infidelity
Sinking
Skulking
Sinning
What transpires at nightfall
Is epitomized into everyday life
Different being
Vampire
Carnivore
Folk-lore

The Top Ten Epigrams of All Time

In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.—Albert Camus

It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.—Eleanor Roosevelt

If you can't be a good example, you'll just have to be a horrible warning.—Catherine the Great

If life were fair, Elvis would be alive and his impersonators would be dead.—Johnny Carson

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.—Oscar Wilde

To err is human, but it feels divine.—Mae West

An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.—Mohandas Gandhi

For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.—Virginia Woolf

I'm not offended by dumb blonde jokes because I'm not dumb, and also I'm not blonde.—Dolly Parton

He does not believe, who does not live according to his belief.—Sigmund Freud



In April 2014 A Poet’s Glossary by Academy Chancellor Edward Hirsch was published. As Hirsch writes in the preface, “this book—one person’s work, a poet’s glossary—has grown, as if naturally, out of my lifelong interest in poetry, my curiosity about its vocabulary, its forms and genres, its histories and traditions, its classical, romantic, and modern movements, its various outlying groups, its small devices and large mysteries—how it works.” Each week we will feature a term and its definition from Hirsch’s new book.

epigram: From the Greek epigramma, “to write upon.” An epigram is a short, witty poem or pointed saying. Ambrose Bierce defined it in The Devil’s Diction­ary (1881–1911) as “a short, sharp saying in prose and verse.” In Hellenistic Greece (third century B.C.E.), the epigram developed from an inscription carved in a stone monument or onto an object, such as a vase, into a literary genre in its own right. It may have developed out of the proverb. The Greek Anthology (tenth century, fourteenth century) is filled with more than fifteen hundred epigrams of all sorts, including pungent lyrics on the pleasures of wine, women, boys, and song.

Ernst Robert Curtius writes in European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (1953): “No poetic form is so favorable to playing with pointed and sur­prising ideas as epigram—for which reason seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Germany called it ‘Sinngedicht.’ This development of the epigram necessarily resulted after the genre ceased to be bound by its original defi­nition (an inscription for the dead, for sacrificial offerings, etc.).” Curtius relates the interest in epigrams to the development of the “conceit” as an aesthetic concept.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge defined the epigram in epigrammatic form (1802):

What is an epigram? A dwarfish whole;
Its body brevity and wit its soul.

The pithiness, wit, irony, and sometimes harsh tone of the English epigram derive from the Roman poets, especially Martial, known for his caustic short poems, as in 1.32 (85–86 B.C.E.): “Sabinus, I don’t like you. You know why? / Sabinus, I don’t like you. That is why.”

The epigram is brief and pointed. It has no particular form, though it often employs a rhymed couplet or quatrain, which can stand alone or serve as part of a longer work. Here is Alexander Pope’s “Epigram from the French” (1732):

Sir, I admit your general rule,
That every poet is a fool:
But you yourself may serve to show it,
That every fool is not a poet.

Geoffrey Hartman points out that there are two diverging traditions of the epigram. These were classified by J. C. Scaliger as mel and fel (Poetics Libri Septem, 1561), which have been interpreted as sweet and sour, sugar and salt, naïve and pointed. Thus Robert Hayman, echoing Horace’s idea that poetry should be both “dulce et utile,” sweet and useful, writes in Quodlibets (1628):

Short epigrams relish both sweet and sour,
Like fritters of sour apples and sweet flour.

The “vinegar” of the epigram was often contrasted with the “honey” of the sonnet, especially the Petrarchan sonnet, though the Shakespearean sonnet, with its pointed final couplet, also combined the sweet with the sour. “By a natural development,” Hartman writes, “since epigram and sonnet were not all that distinct, the pointed style often became the honeyed style raised to a higher power, to preciousness. A new opposition is frequently found, not between sugared and salty, but between pointed (precious, over­written) and plain.”

The sometimes sweet, sometimes sour, and sometimes sweet-and-sour epigram has been employed by contemporary American formalists, such as Howard Nemerov, X. J. Kennedy, and especially J. V. Cunningham. Here is a two-line poem that Cunningham translated in 1950 from the Welsh epi­grammatist John Owen (1.32, 1606):

Life flows to death as rivers to the sea,
And life is fresh and death is salt to me.

Excerpted from A Poet’s Glossary by Edward Hirsch. Copyright © 2014 by Edward Hirsch. Used by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.



collected in
collection
A Poet’s Glossary
Each week we feature a new term from Academy Chancellor Edward Hirsch’...

Several million years have past,
since the cosmos dumped it's trash.
But the book said
that it didn't happen that way.

And as this minstrel looks around
at this "drunk on ancient dogma" town
wanting Heaven, all they do is pray.

Celtic faces black with coal,
patiently await the dole.
Smoke and cough and cough and smoke, to Wally World they do fly.

For there's a caustic cross upon their hill,
protected by a local still.
Or is it the other way around in the wettest county, that is dry.

Who is this vagabond I see,
he walks the streets in search of thee?
With the stench of cheap addiction in the air.

While rats guard a yellow stream,
Arthur's long forgotten dream.
He mumbles verses, but no one sees him there.

And down at Ruby's so many more
just can't seem to find the door.
They use to know the game, but have forgotten how to play.

Wild Bill you old crazy sot,
"The Seven" have, but you have not.
Maybe you can show us, show us all the way.

Dr. Stangename counts his jack,
prescribing hits of "hillbilly smack".
Let's pull a tooth and buy another day of cheap grace.

Watch high above the S.S.D.I.,
a once frozen war machine will fly.
While Arthur's dream crumbles into space.

I climbed The Pinnacle to find,
the fallen star had left behind
a bowl of cryptic confusion, guilty illusions in it's wake.

I told a lady with a PHD,
"Now woman in Afghanistan are free".
But she just sneered and said, "for heaven's sake!"

Listen you can hear the swords,
of the ancient feudal lords.
Clans of clans, left over ways of thinking.

Children, bearing children, beg.
While "The Seven" sit upon the keg.
Deeming them not wise enough for drinking.

It wasn't always this way.
Arthur almost had his hay day.
That's when the devil's broken promise beget a faithless town.

And in the years when King Volstead reigned,
some rode on the gravy train.
The ***** were in their court, and they sold his Crown.

I hope someday this rhyme is moot,
and we all get to share the loot.
And they let the ghost of "Ragtime Harney" play.

For it clearly isn't working here,
just like a party with no beer.
There's no reason for anyone to stay.

Up the road it's "a hundred wet",
and I'll see you there I bet.
You'll give them the prize, that you could have won.

And while you smoke and spit and chew,
power-ball and bingo too.
The lesser of the evils, like self righteous boll weevils,
fearing truth upheavals just like this one.

This is a hell of a way to get to Heaven,
livin' your life at the mercy of "The Seven".
Dying to get out. Dying, you stay in.

While "The Seven" get rich, by keeping you poor.
The keepers of the keys to the barrel house door.
And don't tell me that's no sin.
This is a hell of a way to get to Heaven,
a hell of a way to get in.

Lined with age in faded denim
Squinted eyes and jaded smile
Sauntering through dusty courtyard
Remembering back here awhile.
Sadness tugs me back to recall
Recall of that young girl when,
Laughingly she stood in denim,
Clear blue eyes which sparkled then.
Tragic how the years have jaded,
Criminal how time applies
A caustic pall to all that’s lovely,
Attitude and tearsome lies.
Wish that I could haul me back there
Roll me back to young and pure,
Pluck the innocence from history
Transit back where truth endured.
Transit back uncomplicated
Back to where it all began
Happy kids in dusty courtyard
Faded denim, making plans.

M.
April 1963
Cairns, Nth. Queensland

The car window rolls down
Scraping off the condensation that hugs softly
Onto the gossamer surface as it exudes from existence
Welcoming a life on exhibit
Letting in the worlds expectations
A caustic compound of sleet and breeze
This incomplete paper city glows green with envy
Rotting from the inside with cirrhosis and disease
Binary choices yet palindromic
Twisting towards a misnomer of free will.

A cigarette **** let loose
As it arcs towards infinity
Exhaling a sigh from inside my vice
Laced with addiction
Leaving me like flies from ****
Rain beating off our rusted exterior
Oil stripped paint oozing into the street
The suspension rocks to one side
As I unfurl my jacket
and strike a match off my forearm
I look up at the unknowing residents of this metropolis
Each light representing my social dissonance.

My hands stir nervously underneath my coat
As I begin the entrance to exit
Slowly draping my legs from comfort to the sketches of snow
Pushing myself between steel like I wasn't in agony
An abstract conceptulisation of progress
A smooth turbulence smashes against my scalp
Like a metal rod boring into my uncertainty
I was swimming in the same pool as the ****
That populated these furrowed streets in excess
The dead had all the answers
And the living had too many questions.

Something went off in my head
My brain exploded with colours ranging from grey to ****-stained
Dripping onto my shoes with disgust
There was a hole in every pub from here to god knows
Drinking myself into oblivion and waking into this night terror
Rapid eye movements and the slurred decadence of my life on replay
Minds on fire and burrowed into ****** exaltations
But now it's gone
An image in the trees, now splattered across pavements
I make my home where I dream
Starving my journey of canonical basics.

It was all plastic
As I make my way up the emergency exit
Abounding up the stairs with wandering steps
Falling deeper into the past
Granite mirrors, mincing with guilt
Exposures, taped together backwards and inside out
My life is an alibi for reality
Dipped in *******, surfing on opiates
I was sick
Too ill to cope with enlightenment
Too stupid to hate myself.

I'll make my home where I dream
In hotel beds and in cars
On the roadside and in pity
Food crumbled on blankets
Lifestyle in overkill
In hope that travelers see
I make my home where I please.

She came upon a white horse,
through those dark melancholic shadows,
her long black hair glistening under a blood red moon,
the paleness of her skin reflecting its caustic beams,
dazzling, beguiling,  she comes for my soul,
the fire from her eyes burning my core,
searching through the dark folds of night,
she finds me and takes my hand,
it sears, it burns but I must embrace this pain,
pulling me from the darkness of this rancid void,
her great black wings shielding me from the light,
I surrender it all to my angel of the night.

Savouring its exquisite tasting
                           you regurgitate it.

Some times,
              affection
can leave a bitter aftertaste.

What hollow, caustic foulness lies behind the neatly edged hedges,
fences, plastic window frames and glass?
Resting, waiting to be woken, scream what now must not be spoken
Blood-lust of a gutless middle class
What simple lies must needs be told in bold authoritative tones
To activate the drones and make them fight -
To know, that if the call should come they'd march to that benighted drum
And sacrifice intelligence for right?
How big a monster must be built to shoulder guilt for every creeping fear
and insecurity and loss,
Till every hip and critical disclaimant finds a reason for believing
and then carries it, across.
How many layers must be stripped to tip the wretched shreds of indecision
into morals blown apart
And harmless bigot who, at work, was tolerated with a smirk
Now drives a dirk into a stranger's heart?
Now doctor, teacher, business leader, well-respected educated man
proclaims his harmlessness anew,
Make no mistake: the quills are fine and ready as the porcupine
prepares to show what harmless beasts can do.

Let us diverge
You & I
For what was once there
has long died
Maybe the right term
is half-dead
because it lives on in me
keeping me awake at night in bed

So,
let us diverge
Me & You
Our love is too explosive
and burns out too soon
Maybe the right term
is caustic
I don't know about you
but it drives me psychotic

Frosted lips met rusted leaves,
Surprising both parties at its rightness,
Between the freezing and the warm,
Between the snap and the crunch,
Between Autumn and Holly.

Hearts met in the mix of November,
A tossed salad of a month where both coexist,
They met with eyes of brown and blue,
And to their shock and everything else managed to meet too,
Between Autumn and Holly.

As the eons went by,
They muddled through ice ages, warm fronts,
Surviving only in the holy sanctuary of each others' arms,
And even when their battling storms came,
They came out with hands locked,
Gladiatorial victors of all things wicked their way come,
Possible love strung between them in the month of November,
Between Autumn and Holly.

The world grew below them,
and they did their work exactly as the atmosphere demands them,
They can nearly feel it in their bones when each meteorological tide must come,
It is the way their work happens,
And the way their world, our world turns,
Between Autumn and Holly.

Yet as humankind appeared and grew there was something stirring,
There were mechanisms and smoke clouds and an unbelievable flurry,
A heavy weight of some subversive demon latching itself lightly onto the lovers,
Then deeper,
But they refused to open their eyes; their earth and humanity won't either,
So the demon festered and grew to breathe noxious fire,
Eventually making the air too caustic in their ignorance,
Between Autumn and Holly.

Words could not be spoken after the inevitable occurred,
Autumn's world is near dead from a new, ferocious Holly storm,
A touch of the hand is all each heartbroken season wanted,
But they and the world stayed silent when everything's wrong,
And those fingertips and their vast love and brilliance created this hell,
A silence and death fell onto the possible love that possibly could have been forever,
Between Autumn and Holly.

Silence is their new normal,
Quid pro quo, in a way,
Holly's eyes scream her sorrow and guilt,
Her lips, on the other hand, say nothing,
Instead of their beloved, romantic November,
They now only meet for work,
The world becomes more chaotic and its weather distressed,
And the chasm between them grows larger with each atmospheric catastrophe,
The squalls screaming like their broken hearts,
All created by their ****** brilliant fingertips,
Between Autumn and Holly.

All they have left is staring down at their world and their humanity,
Hoping one day their November, their seasons, their world can be its own again,
It is too late for them to change the tides of the atmosphere,
But across the chasm they both somber and hope one day, some day, something can bridge the divide and:
Calm the atmospheric disaster,
Calm the storms,
Calm the world,
A maybe even fix the possible love that is left,
Between Autumn and Holly.

I'm never violent
unless it's self-inflicted

**** me for feeling
something
worthy of a heartbeat
right?

Pulsating my wrists
to my fists
and unleash vibrations
in a caustic manner

I will destroy the dreams
of Darling Wreckless,
wracking my brain
like Mara's
malicious temptations

A self-destructive
sequence
in a God-mode
fashion

I get off the Belt Parkway at Rockaway Boulevard and
Jet aloft from Idyllwild.
(I know, now called J.F. ******* K!)
Aboard a TWA 747 to what was then British East Africa,
Then overland by train to Baroness Blixen’s Nairobi farm . . .
You know the one at the foot of the Ngong Hills.
I lease space in Karen’s African dreams,
Caressing her long white giraffe nape,
That exquisite Streep jugular.
I am a ghost in Meryl’s evil petting zoo:
I haunt the hand that feeds me.

Safely back in Denmark, I receive treatment
For my third bout with syphilis at Copenhagen General.
Cured at last, I return to Kenya and Karen.
In my solitude or sleep, I go with her,
One hundred miles north of the Equator,
Arriving at Julia Child’s marijuana herb garden–
Originally Kikuyu Land, of course—
But mine now by imperial design &
California voter referendum.
(Voiceover) "I had a farm in Africa
At the foot of the Ngong Hills."
My farm lies high above the sea at 6,000 feet.
By daybreak I feel oh, oh so high up,
Near to the sun on early mornings.
Evenings so limpid and restful;
Nights oh, so cold.
Mille Grazie a lei, Signore *******!
Andiamo, Sydney, amico mio.
Let it flow like the water that lives in Mombasa.
Let it flow like Kurt Luedtke’s liquid crystal script.
We zoom in. We go close in. Going close up,
On the face of Isak Dinesen’s household
Servant and general factotum. (Full camera ******)
Karen Blixen’s devoted Muslim manservant,
Farah: “God is happy, msabu. He plays with us…”
He plays with me.  And who shall I be today?
How about Tony Manero for starters?
Good choice. Nicely done!
Geezer Manero:  old and bitter now,
Still working at the hardware store,
Twice-divorced, a chain-smoker,
Severely diabetic, a drunk on dialysis 3 times a week.
Bite me, Pop:  I never thought I was John Travolta.
But, hey, I had my shot:  “I coulda been a contenda.”
Once more, by association only,
I am a great artist again, quickly made
Near great by a simple second look.
Why, oh God? I am kvetching again.
I celebrate myself and sing the
L-on-forehead loser’s lament:
Why implant the desire and then
Withhold from me the talent?
“I wrote 30 ******* operas,”
I hear Salieri’s demented cackle.
“I will speak for you, Wolfie Babaloo;
I speak for all mediocrities.
I am their champion, their patron saint.”

Must I wind up in the same
Viennese loony bin with Antonio?
Note to self:  GTF out of Austria post-haste!
I’ve been called on the Emperor’s carpet again,
My head, my decapitated Prufrock noodle,
Grown slightly bald, brought in upon a platter.
Are peaches in season?
Do I dare eat one?
I am Amadeus, ******, infantile,
An irresistible iconoclast and clown.
Wolfie:   “I am called on the imperial carpet again.
The Emperor may have no clothes but he’s got a
Shitload of ******* carpets."
Hello Girls: ‘Disco Tampons!
Staying inside, staying inside!
Wolfie: "Why have I chosen a ****** farce for my libretto?
Surely there are more elevated themes . . . NO!
I am fed to the teeth with elevated themes,
People so lofty they **** marble!"
Confutatis maledictis,
Flammis acribus addictis.

So, I mix paint in the hardware store by day.
I dance all night, near-great again by locomotion.
Join me in at least one of my verifiable nine lives.
Go with me across the Narrows,
Back to Lenape with the wild red men of Canarsee,
To Vlacke Bos, Boswijk & Nieuw Utrecht,
To Dutch treat Breuckelen, Red Hook & Bensonhurst,
To Bay Ridge and the Sheepshead.
Come with me to Coney Island’s Steeplechase & Luna Park, &
Dreamland (aka Brownsville) East New York, County of Kings.
If I’m lying, I’m dying.
And while we’re on the subject now,
Bwana Finch Hatton (pronounced FINCH HATTON),
Why not turn your focus to the rival for Karen’s heart,
To the guy who nursed her through the syphilis,
That old taciturn ******, Guru Farah?
Righto and Cheerio, Mr. Finch Hatton,
Denys George of that surname—
Why not visualize Imam Farah?
Farah: a Twisted Sister Mary Ignatius,
Explaining it all to your likes-the-dark-meat
Friend and ivory-trading business partner,
Berkeley (pronounced BARK-LEE) Cole.
Can you dig it, Travolta?
I knew that you could!

Oh yeah, Tony Manero, the Bee Gees & me,
A marriage made in Brooklyn.
The Gibbs providing the sound track while
I took care of the local action.
I got more *** than a toilet seat, a Don Juan rep &
THE CLAP on more than one occasion.
Probably from a toilet seat.
Even my big brother–the failed priest,
Celibate too long and desperate now–
Even my defrocked, blue-balled brother,
Frankie, cashing in his chips at the Archdiocese,
Taking soave lessons from yours truly,
Taking notes, copying my slick moves with chicks.
It was the usual story with the usual suspects &
The usual character tests. All of which I flunk.
I choose Fitzgerald's “vast, ****** meretricious beauty,”
My jumpstart to the middle class.
I spurn the neighborhood puttana,
Mary Catherine Delvecchio: the community ****
With the proverbial heart of gold &
A backpack full of self-esteem deficits.
I opt out.  I’m hungry and leaping.
I morph again, grab *** the golden girl.
Now I’m Gatsby in a white suit,
Stalking Daisy Buchanan in East Egg,
Daisy: her voice full of money;
My green light flashing on the disco dance floor.
I, a fool for love; she, my faithless uptown girl,
Golden and delicious like the apple,
Capricious like a blue Persian cat.
My “orgiastic future” eluded me then.
It eludes me still. Time to go home again to the place
****-ant Prufrocks ponder their pathetic dying embers.
Time to assume the position:
Gazing out from some trapezoidal patch of green
At the foot of Roebling’s bridge,
Contemplating an alternative reality for myself,
A new life across the East River,
In the city that never sleeps.
I crave. I lust. I am a guinzo Eva Duarte.
I too must be a part of B.A., Buenos Aires:
THE BIG APPLE.
But I am ashamed of my luggage,
Not to mention my baggage.
It’s like that last thing Holden Caulfield said to me,
Just before he crossed over the Brooklyn Bridge,
Crossed over to Manhattan without me,
Leaving me alone again, searching for our kid sister,
Phoebe, the only one on earth we can relate to:
“It’s really hard to be roommates with people
If your suitcases are much better than theirs.”
Ow! That stung; that was a stinger.
I am smithereened by a self-guided drone,
A smart bomb full of snide antigravity,
Transformational and caustic.
My meager allotment of self-esteem
Metastasizes into something base,
Something heavy and vile.
I drop to earth like lead mozzarella.

I am unworthy, unworthy in the maximum mendicant,
Roman Catholic mea culpa sense of the word.
I am now Umberto Eco’s penitenziagite.
I am Salvatore, a demented hunchback
(Played flawlessly as a demented hunchback by Ron Perlman),
Spewing linguistic gibberish in a variety of vernaculars:
“Lord, I am not worthy to live anywhere west of the Gowanus Canal.”
By East River waters I weep bitter tears,
The promise of a promised land denied.
I am a garlic-eating Chuck Yeager,
Auguring in, burnt beyond recognition,
An ethnic trope, a defiant Private Maggio
From here and for eternity,
Forever a swarthy ethnic stereotype
Trying to escape thru a small but significant
Hole in the ozone layer above South Ozone Park,
New York, zip code 11420.
That’s right, Ozone Park.
If you don’t believe me, look it up.
GO ******* GOOGLE IT!

And I just don’t know when to quit.
So why quit there?
Work with me, fratello mio, mon lecteur.
Like you, I took the LSAT so long ago.
Why am I not a distinguished American jurist
Asking the one question that seems to be on
Everyone’s eugenic lips today:
“Aren’t three generations of imbeciles enough?”
I am Charly from Flowers for Algernon,
A slow learner with a push broom, swept up in
Some dust from Leonard Cohen’s cuff.
Lenny: a grey-beard loon himself now, singing
“Hallelujah” for fish & chips in London’s O2 Arena.
“Suzanne takes you down, Babaloo!”
At last, I am Jesus Quintana—
John Turturro stealing the movie as usual--
This time in a hair net and a jumpsuit,
"Made of a comfortable 65% polyester/35%
Cotton poplin, you can even add your own
Ribbon leg trim and monogramming
For just the right look to be one of
The Big Lebowski’s favorite characters.
Mouse-over the thumbnail below to see our actual style
(Color must be purple). Style #: 98P, Price: $55.95. On sale: $50.36.www.myjumpsuit.com."
Fortunately, I am a savvy marketeer:
I understand the artistic potential, the venal
Possibilities of product placement. Go with me
To that undiscovered country.
The humanities uncorrupted till now by
Crass gimcrack television ads. That’s right:
******* commercials smack dab in the
Middle of a ******* poem. Why not?
Great literature has always been about
Selling something, even if only an idea.
Hey, **** me, Herman Melville!
We both know the publication costs of
Moby **** were underwritten by the tattoo artists &
Harpoon manufacturers of New Bedford,
Matched by a small research grant from some
Proto-Greenpeace, Poseidon adventure in some
Great white whale-watching swinging soiree.
Murray the ******* K, pendejo!
At last, I am The Jesus, a pervert & pederast,
According to Walter Sobjak—another post-traumatic
Post Toasty, like me, still out there in the jungle,
Still in love with the smell of ****** in the morning.
My bowling buddy, Walter, comfortably far to the right of
The Dude, and Attila the *** for that matter,
But who gives a **** if Lenin was The Walrus?
(“Shut the **** up, Buscemi!”)
“Once you hang a right at Hubert Humphrey,”
Said the streets of 1968 Chicago,
"It’s all ******* fascism anyway.”
That creep could roll, though, and as we know so well:
“Nobody ***** with The Jesus.”
Can you dig it, Travolta?
I knew that you could!

INCOMING!
I just heard from an old girlfriend who is miles away,
Teaching school in Navajo Land.
The Big Rez:  a long day’s interstate katzenjammer,
A Route 66 nightmare by car, but by email,
Just down the block and round the corner.
I had previously closed an email to her with a frivolous
“Say hello to my stinky friend.”
It was a total non-sequitur, an iconic-moronic,
Ace Ventura-mutant line from Scarface,
Which may have meant–in my herbal lunch delirium—
That she should say hi to some mutual acquaintance
We mutually loathe, Or, perhaps an acknowledgement that she–
My surrogate Cameron Diaz–has a new **** buddy,
Of whom I am insanely jealous.
Or maybe it was a simple Seinfeld “about nothing.”
Who knows what goes on in that twisted *****’s head?
She spends the next two hours in a flood of funk,
A deluge of insecurity.
A veritable Katrina ****** of self-consciousness,
Interpreting my inane nonsense in terms of vaginal health.

Hey, you want to ruin a woman’s day?
Tell her, her **** smells.

Strung up on adderall
****** out to normality
led on by conformity
Their path filled in with chaff
Rigged to persuade
Monotony fills their days
Pushed down in worthless ways
fed on a lethal dose of caustic fluorescent