Abandoned Poems
Page 8
In the coming eons, the doughnut could be incorporated into new stars and planets, in some far, far day become the material for earthly and alien jewelry on gigantic or tiny surviving body parts, earlobes, necks, or whatever new forms of life, vanity may treasure.
Future Roulette? The winnings something like eggs, not money, something unknown inside each egg. Resurrection? All the numbers, plus 00, the house wins. I trip on a loose shoelace. I still can’t believe how lucky we all are. (Professors recite a list of fortuitous circumstances.) They had three detectors running for only a few weeks. It was the closest gamma-ray burst ever recorded, the loudest gravitational wave. It’s all just too good to be true. But as far as I can tell it’s really true. I’m living the dream.
EPITHALAMIUM
For Geoffrey G. O’Brien And Hannah Zeavin
A little off key, I want to sing about the marriage
of pied beauty and truth. I sing a love song.
I’m between a baritone and a bass,
I’m more gramophone than cell phone.
May you swim and sail in an ocean of love
that crashes against the coastline of poetry
and psychotherapy where cliffs show
the traces of glaciers and prehistoric monsters.
You lovers know the arithmetic has changed:
one plus one do not make two, make one flesh;
one plus one may make a darling three.
The arithmetic of making love
has nothing to do with long division.
Arithmetic is not mathematics.
Mathematics is taking a shower or bath together,
splashing with humanity in a tub.
You join and divide group pleasures in a tub,
at the theater, or opera—now you’re all dressed up
it’s time for moving on, being-in-a-crowd,
dances, weddings, and birthday pleasures.
Three cheers! Three cheers!
(Harpo brings three chairs.)
Still Hannah may save a life at a distance
with a telephone call, Skype, email,
her work leads to group pleasures.
All these matters, private and public,
are reason the word love was invented.
I don’t know, is learning different from wisdom
as a cat from lion, a dog from wolf?
So get a dog, plant a garden because flowers, trees,
birds are also teachers. An old boy,
I could tell you something about
the Catskills, the Pyrenees, the Apennines—
something useful about cities:
Rome, Barcelona, Athens, Venice, Paris—
I hold cities in my fist like a bunch of flowers,
lyrics in my score: Rimbaud, Baudelaire,
rosemary for forgetfulness.
* * *
May you vote together in many elections,
champion each other’s freedom.
May you share your rights and wrongs.
I have resisted the urge to rhyme.
I want to make something like a wedding cake,
but what I’ve done is bread, or a bagel.
Everything I said is white bread, not whole wheat.
(Bond Bread is out of fashion, always white.)
I hope you separate the leavened from the unleavened.
Jews can perform their own marriage,
the bridegroom simply puts a ring on a lady’s finger.
Geoffrey, I just popped the cork—
I hope you choose to break a glass,
a second glass for the destruction
of the Library of Alexandria.
I sing in a band, can’t quite put this in rap:
I clap for Goethe, after sailing from Naples to Palermo
in 4 days, the main sail and Goethe flapped the news,
“No one who has never seen himself surrounded
by nothing but the sea can have a true perception
of the world and his own relation to it. . .”
* * *
Since all writing is part make-believe,
gentles, I can write a love poem from any lover
to any lover, pretend I was Steve
or Stephanie, pretend I could cover
or uncover genitalia familiar now as eyes,
get so close to a vagina or penis
I’m blind. To keep a certain distance is wise.
I told Geoffrey years ago, “Take an El Greco
out of its frame as if you were holding a baby’s eyes.”
I wish you good turns, north, west, east, south
in a King or Queen size democratic bed, with Venus
and Mars drinking from mouth to mouth.
Signs and wonders one night or day will cease.
The Gods know nothing about ego, super ego, or id—
riding the back of a centaur, outside their window is Cupid.
May the little God always keep you under
his wing, may you live in peace
that no man or woman shall put asunder.
* * *
We must live in the past, present and future tense.
I hear the sound of a cello string
plucked at the bottom of a well.
Cupid sings,
may he always keep you company—
without an orchestra, he can be a symphony.
Laughing, he says he is his own accountant, his senses
are his assets: hearing, touch, smell,
sight, and taste are recompense
for the liabilities of heaven and hell;
each may be empty as an answer with no question.
It’s time for nonsense.
Well, well, Rebecca at the well gave water to a camel.
Once I was a lion, I swam in the Grand Canal.
On the Bridge of Sighs, I give advice: talk things over.
There’s old news on the Rialto,
the past on clean white sheets is a bloody stain.
No secret, every god one time or other
wet the bed: Poseidon,
wanting to piss a river down a mountain,
pissed an ocean.
Who am I to give advice?
In a deal, I exchanged bed bugs for lice.
Don’t do that.
Leave a Welcome mat
in front of your door, answer the doorbell,
love the stranger as yourself.
I wish self rhymed with Jew.
Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.
Take care of yourselves. Be singular and plural.
There’s proof on my bookshelf
I write with a pen, mostly rural.
* * *
There is grandeur in the everyday,
the sun and moon are ordinary.
We are all actors:
day plays night, night plays day.
Great inventions: the plow and metaphor.
I can’t help but write this verse.
I sing joy to the world and you,
but we are alone in the universe.
I remember one and one make one, not two.
I sing Hallelujah! in the chorus.
I lift a glass and say, “To life!”
although the firmament was not made for us.
The Great Actor
in the sky pronounces you man and wife.
LETTER TO PRESIDENT TRUMP
Mr. President, this letter is chicken feed,
worthless words in a book you won’t read.
The people will wash your mouth with soap.
Thanks to the rule of law there is still hope.
Liar, liar, fair is foul and foul is fair.
My-Country-Tis-of-Thee needs fresh air.
40% of the nation thinks creation
came 5,000 years before aviation.
Given Putin’s hand and foot in our election,
in the ballroom of the world, I see
you dancing, cheek to cheek with Pu
tin, the Kazatsky.
With Russian spies you have a tie,
not for Father’s Day but for policy.
Did Putin give you millions on or under the table?
It seems you give him aid and comfort when you’re able.
Is ruble laundering a capital gain,
a loan, bloody dirty water, or something in between?
The KKK honored you for turning a trick
in Charlottesville and Capital District.
I think you tell God fake news, if you pray—
God’s an inside trader, come what may.
Far from Alabama, on France’s middle-left,
Proudhon, boating on the Seine
near Notre Dame, wrote “property is theft.”
Thanks to the rainbow of free enterprise,
with the help of poets who are God’s spies
you may be fired for the crime of collusion.
“Impeachment” is a kind word in our Constitution.
I thank you for your pubic, I mean public service.
In your bankrupt casino, God played dice.
Wind and sunshine are bad for business when there’s coal,
fracking, Mobil, and Russian hacking.
For a sweet some love strawberry, some pistachio,
your buddy accused your buddy of auto-fellatio.
You are the frankfurter in your own roll.
I won’t pass the buck,
I don’t know if you are a putz or schmuck.
My obscenities are serious disrespect
for one who, a genius, self-genuflects.
I give you the finger: my thumbs down, not up.
It seems our democracy is still a pup,
it has rabies, not fleas, but there is a cure.
Simple honesty is the manure
of freedom. We must re-culturalize.
When infants open their eyes,
they must be born to truth that is self-evident.
The 3/5 Clause was a deadly sin,
caused your Electoral College win.
Cradle rights are fought for, not heaven sent,
weeping is protected by the First Amendment.
The union is us, Lincoln is not Lazarus.
Love has a trade deficit.
Obamacare is sic transit.
You are a knife at America’s throat—
sharpened to cut out the Black and Latin vote.
We must practice freedom and equality,
practice, practice, practice like piano and guitar,
because that’s what makes us who we are.
(Alas, the joys of fascism are not far,
you can start a half-hour World War.
Facing impeachment, c’est la guerre,
drop an atom bomb here and there).
Princely Muslims in your Mar-a-Lago pool,
you say we must be kind only to be cruel.
You are the king of Queens, and Palm Beach.
Your courtiers think in doggerel
that sonnets and terza rima are hate speech.
Molière is a pimple in your hair,
the poor, old, and disabled are absurd,
the least among us—absurd.
You hold a “football,” Putin runs interference.
Your eyes on the score bawd, on your face
the exaggerated vanity of ignorance.
I read the words of the Preacher:
vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher,
all is vanity. A golf course is a wise teacher.
Judgment Day, the Lord won’t let you take a mulligan
(an extra stroke allowed after a poor shot in golf
not counted on your score card).
Enough, Donald, from Florida to Maine,
thou hast cleft our hearts in twain.
Let them eat cake, and drink champagne.
Our election and noodles are free of gluten,
you don’t want them free of Vladimir Putin.
After a change of address, please wear a leaf
over the fake news of your naked life.
May you play golf for the rest of your life.
Put money in thy purse.
Things are getting worse, worse, worse.
Music changes history a little, is not simply entertainment.
The present is terse, the meek shall inherit the earth,
they rent, own nothing. God doesn’t vote. Death
is a condominium with many apartments.
Here’s mud in your eye Mr. President.
You are a sleeping beauty, you make me puke.
you are awakened by a kiss of David Duke.
These words mean no more to you than “and” or “but,”
but in my barbershop, I’ve given you a haircut.
To pardon a criminal sheriff to please the base
ensures you an honored place in Hell.
Satan vacations in Hell at a Trump hotel
where everyone who looks in the mirror sees Donald’s face.
With Putin and Stalin’s ghost at your table, you say grace.
THE EAGLE AND THE FROG
When I was 10, my uncle, driving me to Schroon Lake
in his Buick, asked me if I knew the true story
of the eagle and the frog. I said, “No, Uncle Phil.”
There was an eagle who swallowed a frog.
The frog in the eagle’s dark belly
saw a little hole of light at the eagle’s bottom.
The frog stuck his head out into the sky.
The eagle took off to fly to a mountaintop.
The frog in his little voice said,
“Mr. Eagle, how high are we flying?”
The Eagle answered in a low bass voice,
“500 feet.” The frog said, “Ooh!
Mr. Eagle, how high are we now?”
The eagle, looking for another frog, said, “1000 feet.”
The frog said, “Ooh!” A minute passed,
the frog asked the eagle, “How high are we now?”
The eagle boomed, “Half a mile.”
The frog said, “You wouldn’t shit me, would you?”
MY WORM
I stole every word I ever wrote
from a worm inside my head.
After all these years she still lives in my brain
in a bed and breakfast, others put up
their worms in the five star hotel,
The Imagination. My worm is often silly,
she loves pronouns, adverbs,
she plays with hes, shes, its.
She says, “Friend, you and I
became, were born together. At first
your head was a cradle, rocked me.”
Truth is my worm never lets me sleep,
she forces me to dream, nightmare,
she and I rise in an instant.
When I spoke of revolution, she said,
“I’ll dictate your complaints!”
Her cousins, Suenos, Rêves, Fantasies,
don’t visit, still I know they celebrate overnight
feste in Venice, a flower show in Hampshire.
In the morning, she makes demands,
“Get Mozart, Coltrane, Verdi, Ella, flamenco,
amorous glow-worms
out of your head: I am not the worm
that dropped out of Enkidu’s nose.
I’m your music.”
I say, “Worm, keep rhymes out of my head.”
She stands erect, whispers in my ear,
“There’s a shipwreck in your skull. Mate,
I want to come out of your left or right ear
to see the world. I’ll stop rhyming when you’re dead."
My retort, “Worm! I can hardly hear you—
don’t waste my time. Wordsworth called you
the mind's abyss, unfathered vapour.” Worm demands
in wormy English, “Scrawl nonsense!
Write what I tell you, and rewrite:
I press my middle finger against my thum
b,
make an eye, and say, behold the invention
of the eye that is nothing but a shape.
I can make a drum with my hand and bottom,
without permission, I touch my privates, cry Rape!
I must make my death handsome.
I was a poet before I knew where babies came from.
Father told me when I was 10. . . I said, “Let me see you do it.”
Till then, when I wrote “love,” it was counterfeit.
In their bedroom I heard father eating fruit.
I would eat grape jelly, but never eat a grape.
I loved flowers in pots on a fire escape.
Every year on the day my grandfather died
a candle was lit. In my heart, a place inside
it mattered the Soviets made flats of Jewish gravestones,
one day a year, for all the sins, murder, theft, a boy atones.”
Idle reader, I confess: many have their worms.
My worm tells me,
“Your mind was invented so you could forget.
Dying, keep your mouth shut, not agape. Write:
I can rhyme Montaigne with champagne,
soon I’ll change, but never become again.”
HASTY PUDDING
On a road leading to where I used to live,