Tag Archives: poem

STALWART

STALWART

one day
not upon a time
the plants
elected
to row straight

electrifying with joy
stalwarts everywhere
every
  treacle-thick politico
in
wotlds known
and worlds
unkown

fairy tale
and the political
racing
to conclusion
running in parallel

Oh happy day
exclusion of the middle
extermination
of the extremities:
it’s so
   axiomatic, lowest-
common-denominator
raised to the heavens
square
    root of zero
dutifully delivered

and in the woods so
much smoke
the trees so
covered in soot you
cannot see the leaves

but
Pan’s man, fabulous
Guillermo has
set a fantastic trap
they are
bound
to fall into

surrounded by thorn bushes
in the light of their shadow

you could not
do anything to look
more enchanted
       surpass the mystery

conjuring up
a string of images

                    burrowimg in
wormknv deeo

teaching us how
                  to align, accept
the imperfect, rough
and smmoth

how to accept what is
for what it is
       become part of
the picture

native to this place


MAGICIAN

MAGICIAN

I met a magician once,
the whole world knows
his power
  but I saw him first

was possessed by him
and wanted to possess him

wanted to
    learn everything I could

sittimg at hos feet
for a tbousand years

but
despite his best efforts
huge patiemce
most sadly
he failed in his
sublime efforts,
did not succeed

for I was not
cut from the right cloth,
of the right mettle

open to all the possibilies
it is my belief
he saw in me

Ts

LINEAR B

LINEAR B

the treasure is hidden
maybe they buried it yesterday
perhaps it was not
and will not ever
be discovered

buried as it was
at the beginning of time

but here is Homer
who threw his two
books at my head
as the goddess Athena
instructed

giving me
the choice between the epic,
the poetic, on the one hand,
and on the other, narrative story
via a story that is simply
the mythos
of story itself

having, for my sins and
pretensions, run with
the promise of this goddess,
eschewing the chance
to be loved or
figure of power, status
and wealth

for which
error in judgement
no Trojan war
in my lifetime, but
the enmity of Aphrodite
and
lack of
intimate touch

but back to the drawing board
and the key
theme of this piece

though Homer’s works oral
and recited

I am sure I read of scholarship
of text
voice reduced to word
in script
Linear A or B, perhaps
(given the nature of
this industry) all the way
through (American
pronunciation here
if you please) a
Linear Z

and me, unlike
my Father, so cyclic, so
non-linear

cannot
connect dots together, am
totally
unable to
draw a straight line

my Father sketching plans
to meet highest expectations,
serious
engineering requirements

and here I am, for
my part
a Nobody poet, almost
drowned
still journeying home

my words
running across
strict
line division, gallivanting
this way
and that way
flaunting, luxuriating in
the joy of
enjambment

buzzing like bees
(no
epic simile) all over the page

and so much I have
here
thrown out on technicality

that great 9000 Cyclops red
eye giving me
the wherefores
and whys

and me pulling the plug on
your blackboard your
whiteboard
T square and micrometer

searching
before we leap into
the arms of the Sirens, are
devoured by
Scylla, sucked into Charybdis

for what
the game is here, the genre,
the argument, the premise
the narrative

scribbled
somewhere on that board, in
its circuits and relays

somewhere buried there inside
in the floor beneath in
the wall behind

a treasure, a dark truth,
a secret

desperate to be lost
desperate to arrive

OVID IN EXILE

OVID IN EXILE

in the Senate
on the Forum

they are not talking about it
no one is talking about it
Ovid
  is in exile

the young Emperor
Augustus, formerly Octavian,
friend to the poets, patron of the arts

has blotted his copybook,
sent Ovid
     into exile

no headlines, not a
scrap of graffiti
to record this event

too much truly momentous
on the horizon
to let this
      sublime moral moment
undercut, let alone
overshadow
the great transformation

civil war over
the Caesar legacy entrenched
for who knows how long,
even the most conservative guess
will kick off with
a century or two, a good
few centuries

an Empire has been born
and Ovid missed its birth
for Ovid
       is out of town

and, to be honest, who
really cares,
   gives a damn about the impact
of this on his poetry

lately become
what was promised, always
                                 promised

as the statues go up
to enshrine the new image

Ovid is in exile
and Rome and its fictions
transformed as expected
                continue to be