A. E. H.

(1859-1939)

Hausman pines in pain,

Nevermore to gain
Friends that once sat near
Laughing over beer.

Friends and love forlorn:

Better not be born
Than complain in verse,
Over-taut and terse.
08-30-74
*

A Family Visit

Your prison is a tomb,

A vaulted, marble room
Where your wan spirit lives,
Denied the peace death gives.

And now your spirit goes

In shrouded coffin clothes
Across the headstones for
Your brother’s portal door.

His new wife sees you clear

And screams. “He’s here, he’s here!”
Your former wife was her
And he, your murderer.
02-20-92
*

A Flat in Paddington

The city spreads its streets like long

Tentacles that stretch and twine,
As looming Evil weaves a webbed design
Around the bustling, London throng.

But North of Marble Arch is bleak

Praed Street, where the shadows gloom,
And Solar Pons sits musing in his room
Of criminals he’ll subtly seek.
11-29-79
*

A Plea

Evanescently blurred, half beyond recall,

Her voice down a midnight hall—
Or her visage in oils once glimpsed on sale,
Remote, and feminine-pale.
 Whoever was she? Forget, forget
Her classical silhouette:
Let her image diffuse in a twilight haze
Of vapored blues and greys…
12-20-90
*

A Reflection on Pride

The value of Vanity’s this;

It offers bliss
In front of the looking-glass
Until years pass.
10-07-79
*

A Simple Song

A simple song is easy to remember,

It flickers like a flame inside your brain,
The melody is like a burning ember,
It even smolders through he rain.

A simple song is yesterday returning,

A ribbon wrapping up your dreams and fears,
A fantasy of ecstasy and yearning,
A symphony of smiles and tears.

Simple songs are always seeming

Nothing more than idle dreaming
Lost in the air.

So listen to the simple song I’m singing,

And listen to your childhood when it calls,
And hear the faint and distant ringing
Of bells along the castle walls.

A simple song is good most any season,

In summertime or winter or the spring,
You sing it sad or happy for no reason,
It doesn’t have to mean a thing.
1973
*

A Toast: On the 68th Birthday

of the late John Gawsworth (1912-1970)

Whatever else he was, recall

He was a Bookman after all,
And at his quietest, a poet too.
Redonda…wine…the sordid rest
Ignore for now—extol his best!
For there was good in Gawsworth, as in you.
06-29-80
*
 A Vain Request

Pain is much too personal for verse,

Don’t curse
The reader with your anger-anguished words.
Rhyme flowers, sun and birds.
1981
*

A Volume of Villon
(French fifteenth century poet)

Green leather binding, centuries old,

Covers are beveled. Spine’s rubbed.
The fore-edge is gilt. Fleur-de-lis cannot wilt
In this garden embossed with gold.

Books are enduring. Precious delights,

Outlasting their authors in life.
This poet was poor—a drunkard, a boor,
And his grave paid no royalty rights.
11-06-77
*

A Walk…At Sixteen Years of Age

The earth was smiling at the clear blue sky,

Morning dew was kissing grass once dry,
My soul and all the world tried hard to sing,
Then a blackbird making light of everything
Was whistling from a bush—sweet melody,
Still I didn’t care if he made fun of me.

For I was watching someone very beautiful appear,

Picking flowers by herself, so near.
I climbed the slope and sat by her feet,
Looking up where hillside and horizon meet—
She said “Behold the yellow slope, the deep ravine,
Mountainside, and there, the grassy green.”

But I saw nothing but her faery face,

Thrilling as her voice filled up the space.
We walked home through the woods and then we found
Timber fallen, slanted to the ground,
A barricade I raised out of her way;
Smiling, she passed under, face alive and gay,
But silent as we left the woods once more;
We sat down close upon the meadowed floor,
Our hearts spoke louder than our words would have,
Talking voicelessly of Something stirring…there.
1978
by Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)
First English translation
from Des Vers (1880)
*
 A Woman’s Work is Never Done

It takes a lot of trouble and toil forgetting you,

But everybody says I’ll find me someone,
But I’ve been working overtime on your memory…
A woman’s work is never done.

It takes a lot of labor and effort to greet the day,

It takes a lot of courage to face the sun,
It ain’t easy but I’ll be getting up one more time…
A woman’s work is never done.

I’ve struggled hard to make a life as if there’s really nothing wrong.

And everybody down at work respects me, and they say I do belong.

It takes a lot of practice at home to get things right,

A fishing pole—and baseball—and B-B gun.
I wrap each package, sign your name to the greeting card…
A woman’s work is never done.
05-27-84

Adios to Ernest Tubb

(02-09-14 to 09-06-84)

In Nashville, all those tourists visit Broadway every day;

They buy those Dolly Parton posters there;
But the record shop of Ernest Tubb won’t seem the same no more—
Sing “Adios” to Ernest Tubb—he used to walk that floor.

Inside there’re old brown photographs displayed upon the wall

Of Jimmie Rodgers, and Roy, and Kitty Wells;
On his radio show he helped some kid name of “Elvis” get a chance—
Sing “Adios” to Ernest Tubb, and his Western-Country dance.

Across the street is Tootsie’s Lounge, where beer and memories flow;
Nearby, the Grand Ole Opry used to play—
Where “E. T.” helped Loretta face that famous microphone;
Sing “Adios” to Ernest Tubb—he’s the best friend Nashville’s known.

He was Lone Star lean and lanky, with a voice like Texas sand—
And he used electric guitars, `way back when;
Instead of wasting tears tonight, let’s everybody sing—
Sing “Adios” to Ernest Tubb…he made that dance floor swing.
09-07-84
*

Advertisement

“The purple-wanded wizard casts

Enchantment that lasts
Beyond your petty life and place:
A spell that spans space.

His work is even guaranteed;

He hasn’t got the greed
 To spin cheap magic like some do,
So let him serve you.”
1980
*

Aesthetes

Passionless poets, posturing so cold

Unmemorably pretty, never bold,
Decadent, dreamy poseurs on the stage
Unable to laugh, sob or rage.
1981
*

After Explaining the Draft to My Four-Year Old

In our nation’s final, fatal stages

Before our country falls
From cowardice within,
Our daughters die for soldier’s wages.
And when the bugle calls
Out taps…it sounds our sin.
03-15-82
*

After Sunset

The reddened riot of wine-rich sun

Spills over skies of afternoon,
And purpling-reds of the day now done
Splash!--then dissolve, so soon.

And sunset turns a violet grey

Mixing with twilight’s magic blur,
Revealing the fairy-shapes at play,
Listen!--to wings’ soft whir.
11-01-79
*

Agoraphobia

No walls! Naked space

And panic born of openness,
Where we confront love’s dread expanse.

Beware! Terror-place
Of freedom where our hearts undress,
And too much candor kills Romance.

Retreat! Go—retrace
Our trail and trek where fear is less,
And sentiment (old-fashioned) has a chance.
04-21-81
*

Aid
 You were a friend
To the weak,
Now you pretend
You can’t speak
To the meek.

Now you’re too strong,

So you say:
Life’s not too long--
Anyway:
Let them pray.
02-74
*

Algae

Green, green skies of Sardantha,

Tarnish the copper-red sun,
And the Princess Mirantha,
Knows the city is done.

Doomed, doomed—like the old fable

Warns in its rhyme,
She sits down at the table
Dining with skull-featured Time.
10-22-77
*

All Hallow’s Eve

Wind in trees,
Rain on eaves,
Fire in grate,
Hour is late,
Till…finally…Hallowe’en
Shapes are seen!
10-31-71
*

All Hallow’s Eve Epilogue

You say this little book of verse

Is sicker that the rest you’ve seen?
Remember—nothing’s ever worse
Than being born on Hallowe’en.

A poet’s birthday shouldn’t be

A holiday to raise the dead,
And yet my anniversary
Is when the greedy ghouls are fed.
01-13-67
*

Aloha Street
 The others always set her high
And latter dirtied her to die,
Until the only thing I found
Was Carol crippled on the ground.

I lifter her a little late

For any of her love or hate,
When all she wanted me to touch
Were tears that trickled down her crutch.

And when I kissed her mirror clean

Of all the images between
Tomorrow and the past she made,
I found her quivering and afraid.

And so I fled the heavy gloom

Of Carol in her furnished room,
Where musty memories still feed
Her feelings till they burst and bleed.
08-27-68
*

Already Among You

Three hundred years is not too long alive;

There’re some of us who’ve lived twice that!
Immortal race built to sustain, survive,
With plastic bone, synthetic skin and fat.
12-07-78
*

Am I My Brother’s Keeper?

Of course not. I must walk aloof, alone,

And clutch my dear possessions close to me:
Pomp and power; prizes I’ve sought, and won!
And since I have no “brother” of my own
I have no one to keep or help, you see,
“Each man for himself”—that’s how it’s done!
And help I ask from anyone is none.
…At least that’s how I’ve tried to make it be,
Until suburban chilliness stills my heart
And I grow sick of living inwardly,
Discovering my neighbors aren’t made of stone,
(Chain-link fences can’t prison us apart)
As cautiously our nervous voices start
Exchanging greetings in that iced Unknown.
02-20-80
*

An Idle Question

You don’t agree.

You never have, you know,
 Ignoring poets every time.

Humanity!
You’ve little distance left to go
Before you wreak your final crime:

“A winnable nuclear war.”

(By whom?
Our children asleep in their room?)
08-31-82
*

Anachronize

Spit contempt at Time.

Write rhyme,
Though rhyme is obsolete
And brings a doomed defeat.

Dance a jig in place

With grace,
To meter’s measured beat,
For freedom lies in shackles to poetic feet.
05-04-81
*

And Always Will

The morning lamp

Has dried the damp
Murky moon;
And day has burned
To red, and turned
Dawn to noon.

But colors shift

And fall and lift
Flags of light,
And men still creep
Like rats, and leap
Into ink night.
05-74
*

And Blind

Time’s never slow,

Minutes, they go
Ticking fast,
Floating, they flow
Toward the past.

Seconds, they fall

Over Time’s wall
Into Then,
Deaf to the call
 Of Now’s men.
09-28-75
*

And I’m Never Going to Leave You, Girl

When the years come down like snowflakes, and they flutter in your eyes,
I’ll rise up like the midnight sun and I’ll warm your winter skies,
And warm your winter skies.
When your dreams dissolve to ashes laying cold upon the stone,
I’ll build the biggest bonfire your heart has ever known,
Your heart has ever know.

And I’m never going to leave you girl,

I’m never going to let you go.

When the devil comes knocking and you forget to pray,

I’ll kneel right down beside you girl and help you find your way,
And help you find your way.
And when at last it’s over, our love will still survive—
Two names carved on a heart-shaped stone will keep the flame alive,
Will keep the flame alive.
1985
*

And I Never Got Over You and Me

I missed the last few class reunions,

You’ve been to one, they’re all the same;
I shut my eyes and see those yearbook faces—
That silly heart you drew around my name.

Growing up for some means growing older—

I’ve traveled light, I’ve traveled far—
But out there on that lifetime highway
Sometimes you find exactly who you are:

And I never, never, never got over you and me.

‘Hate to see how you have changed, for God knows time
Has left its lines on me.
Growing old but still I can’t outgrow remembering
What we said we’d be, you and me.

I’ve traveled continents and oceans,

I’ve slept in palaces and cheap hotels,
I’ve danced with ladies of a foreign language,
But all I’ve really learned is what time tells:

And I never, never, never got over you and me.

02-04-84
*

And Then Make Love

I’m glad of April rain,

 Keeping us indoors
Inside our rattled window pane
While the night storm pours.

The rain’s a winding sheet,

Shrouding up the night;
Inside we drink and talk and eat
By a fire built bright.
05-28-79
*

Anne (1)

Your heart is a fjord haven,

Cove on a ragged coast,
And I’m your buccaneer,
Lifting a pirate toast.

My heart is a brigantine,
Tossed by a corsair sea,
And you are its figurehead
Carved from a pliant tree.
05-15-69
*

Anne (2)

Cycles spin
Out and in
Like reels
Of our love:
Circles of
Two wheels.

Silver smiles,
Golden miles
With you,
Jeweled years,
Tinseled tears
Of blue.
12-08-76
*

Anne (3)

Love’s more than feeling, it’s will-power strained

Tense as a wire, so pleasurably-pained.
Love is decision, as firm as our God’s,
Daring, defiant of all earthly odds.

Love is a flower, but fashioned of stone,

Rugged, unwithered, petals unblown.
Love isn’t poetry, love isn’t song.
Love’s in your heat-tempered soul…steely…strong.
09-24-82
*
 Anne (4)

Your musical smile

Tinkles like silver rain,
On your face, a sky of gold.
The tune’s still in style—
Lyrical, fond refrain
Like a diamond, never old.
10-18-82
*

Anonymous Inquisitors

“Do you hear gratings creak

Upon the cellar bricks?”
…Just autumn winds that wreak
Deceptive, noisy tricks.

“And did you hear the knell

Of bells from long ago?”
…The belfry long since fell
In ruins, this I know.

“Who calls your name aloud

Outside your bolted door?”
…I sleep. No one’s allowed
To rouse me while I snore.

“Excuse us, please forgive

Our frivolous remarks—
You’ve moments left to live—
Our claws will leave red marks!”
06-14-93
*

Answered Prayer

The villages are burning

The North men are returning
Their work done:
Hear their jeering, joking,
Smell the pyre-fuel smoking
From their fatal fun.

One old priest surviving,

Vengeance soon arriving,
Who knows when?
Payment for the village,
For the rape and pillage:
Doom on those North men.
07-28-75
*

Anti-Communist Manifesto
World Communism’s sure to spread
Where U. S. money’s spent,
And mild reformers turn bright red
As Yankee guns are sent
To kill those who dissent.

The Marxist’s actually approve

Our foreign policy.
By arming tyrannies, we move
Poor nations left as left can be.
The real dupes are you and me.
05-26-83
*

Antique

The curio shop

Where no one will stop,
Lives in its yesterday-dust;
A grandfather’s clock,
An earthenware crock,
And Time’s faintest aroma of must.

The brass button trays,

The bright feather sprays,
Languish like lovers ignored.
The years are for sale,
The bargains all fail,
And Time shuffles by, looking bored.
09-27-77
*

Aphrodite

A kiss corrodes on the statue’s lips,

Frozen for centuries,
A tear made of marble softly slips
Downward. But no one sees.

The tourists walk past, indifferent.

Bric-a-brac, they ignore.
Erotic emotion in stone’s all spent,
Cold as the art gallery’s floor.
07-04-81
*

Approaching Hour

When the fickle tick of Time

Intensifies, then I’m
Aware of countless minutes past.
And wonder: when the clock
Explodes its final tock,
Will I look foolish at the last,
Unready—Godless—and aghast?
04-05-81
 *

April Flight

Tear-times,
Cloud chimes,
Wind-tunes,
Ice-moons:
Nancy.

Sun-lines,
Spring wines,
Once more
She’ll soar:
Nancy.
07-16-77
*

Archeological Reverence

The golden chair of opulence

Seats a stately emperor,
Enrobed in royal purple hue
Of lichen moss that shrouds his bones from view.

And yet he holds you in his thrall,

Millennia since he has lived,
You bow before his exhumed throne,
And kiss, in fealty, his toe of bone.
11-16-91
*

Arrested Development

I’m scarcely ready yet

To write wise rhymes of middle age.
What can be wrong? I still love song.
And adolescent passions in me rage.

My muse cannot grow up.

Cold cautiousness I’ll never learn.
Until I’m dust, sweet lyric lust
With molten purple heat, will burn.
1981
*

Arthur Rackham
(1867-1939)

Arthur Rackham lived to draw:

Observe the dreamy things he saw
In his fey, fantastic brain—
Elves and fairies, sprites and trolls,
Giant birds, huge rabbit holes,
Yet the man himself seemed sane…
Modest, mousey, very plain.
 Grey and green and burnished brown,
Embroidering an elf-queen’s gown,
Or the foggy English skies
Looming somber up above—
Moody colors children love
And their parents prize as well:
Rackham’s visionary spell..
08-08-78
*

Arthur Symons
(1865-1945)

Ethereal as Soho candlelight

Behind a fog-enfeathered window-pane
Lurk Arthur Symons’ decadent designs:
Poems, paling like a yellow haze to white,
As all their pastel tones dissolve in rain,
The storms of Time that curtain and confine
The poet’s soul, and blot each precious line.
And yet you glimpse his ghost in Drury Lane,
Languid like a vagrant vagabond,
A misty phantom fated to remain
Forever flickering, in and out of sight.
For Arthur Symons lived behind (beyond)
This muted, modern age, amid the fond
Yellow Nineties’ aesthetic yesternight.
03-30-80
*

Artisans

The carpenter cuts and sands

And hammers. Notice how his hands
Explore the mortised wood
And sense when the fit is good.

The poet’s a craftsman, too:

He whittles fondly all day through
With words he shapes and files
And polishes--like wooden tiles.
09-20-79
*

As Always

Cards are dealt,

Losses felt
In your guts:
Sword-like cuts.

Dice are thrown

And you groan
At the toss:
One more loss.
 Beg one more
Chance to score;
Dealer grins;
Satan wins.
07-06-74
*

Ash

I wrote my best, too long, long past,

Words from my heart, not head,
I grab my pen, I clutch it fast,
But all my art is dead,
All my art is dead.

As dead as dreams that died of age,

Tired from a weary wait,
As rhymes unprinted on the page
Burned in the fireplace grate,
Burned in the fireplace grate.
02-16-76
*

Aspirations

“Greatness”…the goal of ermined kings,

“Sainthood”…nun and priest,
“Fame”…the troubadour who sings,
“Mankind”…the charnel worms who feast.
09-09-86
*

Astral Projection

Imagine the ultimate empires of star,

Those silver galaxies so far
You cannot see them, but in dream.
Reenter their shimmering seas of light,
Bejeweled glimmerings of bright
Resplendent saffron suns, that beam
Inside your head. Their visions stream,
And craze you with their glamoured, gloried gleam.
10-04-1980 (Rev. 08-28-1991)
*

At the Window

I saw him again today

Peering out through the glass
At me as I dared to pass
The house so grave and cold and grey.

I let well enough alone,

Keeping my eyes ahead,
Ignoring that pale white head
 As I raced past the house of stone.
09-20-79
*

Atmosphere of Houses

Houses softly speak:

Whispering, they creak
When the winds drive in…
Murmured tales begin
Of tragedies—old joys—and secret sin.

Marriages and death,

Birth and infants’ breath,
Funereal tears…
Mirth from sunny years
Ghost-echoings of triumphs, lusts, and tears.
11-18-78
*

Atonement

Salem Village still

Shudders at the hill
Where the curse was cast,
The year the “witches” swung,
Dying, drying, hung
Three centuries long past.

Curses crossing time,

Vindicate the crime
To be avenged today.
You know your forbears lied
When they testified
So tremble now, and pray.
01-14-75
*

Aubrey Beardsley
(1872-1898)

Boney, hawk-beaked boy,

Beardsley was a toy
Of fickle Time’s disdain:
Consumptive, blood-flecked pain.

Furiously he drew,
Knowing all was through
Too soon. His paling face
Foreshadowed Time’s brief race.

Harlequins and whores,

Dwarves and marble floors
Are Beardsley’s legacy.
Sublime perversity.
1984
 *

August Storm

Summer thunder shatters sky,

Wet replaces dry,
Unexpected torrents blot
Out the humid hot.

Is the rain but Nature’s brief

Gift for our relief?
Or a random, out-of-place
Waterfall from space?
07-10-78
*

Autumn Bloom
(for Anne)

Happiness reblooms anew,

And age is less with me.
The flowering is late, the petals few
But planted youthfully by you.
I pluck ecstatically.
01-10-82
*

Baby’s Manifesto

Now I’m two

And I talk to you;
When I’m four
I’ll talk much more.
03-18-79
*

Back Then They Called Us Rustlers

The gunfighters came up from Texas; they arrived on the railroad train;
The Cattlemen’s Association was bound to control the range.

They had a sheet of paper, a list of names, of men they had to kill;
And they left some cowboy’s bodies in the Wyoming April chill.

Back then they called us rustlers, ‘cause we fought for our own piece of land,
Back then they called us rustlers, ‘cause now and then we changed a brand.

They had the money, and they owned the Governor,

Back in the year of “Ninety-Two, in the Johnson County War.

In a cold Wyoming November, we lost our three-year old boy,

And my woman she didn’t say nothing, as she packed up for Illinois.

And you wouldn’t believe it to see me now: I work for the biggest ranch in the state,
And the owner, he’s my very best friend—we overcame our range-war hate.
 Back then he’d have called me a rustler, ‘cause I fought for my own piece of land,
Back then he’d have called me a rustler—now and then I changed one or his brands:
With a .44-40 in my hand…
1987
*

Bad Goodbye

We tried to tie the time,

But now I find that I’m
A drifter down a road of make-believe.
We tried so hard to care,
But still we didn’t share
Our secrets for the other to receive.

And now our future’s past,

For flowers never last,
They bloom, and then they wither in a year.
For flowers are not real
They bloom and then they peel
Their petals to the ground and disappear.

I think we played too free,

I think we tried to be
The hero and the queen upon the stage,
But now the curtain’s down,
And you can pawn your crown,
Too late for love, we learned to act our age.
1967
*

Badland Ballad

The sun is scarleting the land,

Bloodying a dead
And skull-encrusted sea of land,
Once an ocean bed.

Another visitor to see

Fossils all around—
Another order soon to be
Bleaching on the ground.

Instead of everlasting bliss,

Only yawning doubt,
Till even God’s afraid that His
Time has trickled out.
12-23-68
*

Baggage

Rejoice! The cavalcade of dreams arrives,

Fancies, dreads, mirages too,
Chimeras thrive, old myth survives
Caravan unpacks for you.
 11-79
*

Balanced Books

He shouldered all the shame,

Bore the blame
Of his name.
The debt his father made
He has paid
With his blade…
By cutting his own skin
All too thin, purging sin.

Then his ghost took flight

In the night.
Now no more…
Dead upon the floor
Wet with gore.
The ledger showed
“See no debt is owed,
Kinfolk blood, freely flowed.”
1967
*

Balbathon
(for Lord Dunsany. 1878-1958)

Ancient towers streaming

Shadows on the sand:
The City’s doomed to dreaming,
Unlikely long to stand.

See the City crumbling,

Fissures breeching walls,
As towers, spires, come tumbling,
And rubble fills the halls.

Thus a sad, sad City

Offers up its prayer.
And so the gods take pity,
And topple it with care.
05-30-70 (rev. 1990)
*

Ballad of Hank Williams

The saddest man you ever saw

Sang through his nose, his notes were raw.
The people said his voice was flat;
Hank Williams wore a cowboy hat.

A hundred songs upon the shelf,

He loved us more than loved himself:
He sang of you, he sang of me
To set our shackled spirits free.
 When life and love had done him wrong,
He put it in a country song.
His words came down like falling rain—
The dreams he lost became our gain.

He loved to drink, but he loved more

Composing melodies meant for
The words he couldn’t always spell,
But sang so well, that they still sell.

A limousine, gold in the bank

Were not enough to ease old Hank:
He cursed his loves, and feared his Lord
Would pay him back the debts he stored.

The debts were cleared on New Year’s day.

The coroner could only say
That too much living took its toll
From Hank’s poor self-tormented soul.

You hear that lonesome yodel whine?

It’s just a ghost, aged twenty-nine,
He died in Nineteen Fifty-Three,
But still he haunts Montgomery.
02-15-74
*

Balladeer

The troubadour has come too far,

Music carries him,
On supple strings of his guitar
Down the road so deathly dim,

Is music better than a bed?

Can it warm your bones
And fill your belly till you’re fed”
Songs are cold as crypted stones
When the wet wind moans.
08-22-78
*

Bandit’s Bull’s Eye

I curse the brigands as they ride

Off with the peasant’s hog,
And a sack of corn from the peasant’s crib,
With a sword through the peasant’s dog.

The thieves curse me as I track them down,

Archers at my command,
Encircling them with their bow-strings taut,
Aimed at the outlaw band—
Suddenly, I bring down my hand!
05-21-90
 *

Barbed Wire Ballad

Rusted wire against a tree

Year by year recedes
Inside of the circling bark, invisibly
Consumed. Relentlessly, the oak tree feeds.

The countless rings of outer bark

Enwrap the wire within.
Thus Time is absorbing me. I mark
The circles choking me. I’m taut, stretched thin.
10-07-74
*

Bardicide
(in memory: Stanton A. Coblentz)

I.

There was Beauty on the highway,

There was Beauty in the sky,
And the poets, gold and silver, sang its praise.
There were birds along the sky-way,
All unfettered, soaring high,
For the poets sang of birds in elder days.

There was glamour on the heather,

There was purple on the hill,
And the poets sang the magic of the moor,
Of the searing summer weather,
Of romantic autumn chill,
Of December fringing frost around the door,

II.

Then a gallows was erected

With a gibbet made for bones,
Where the poets swung, a-stinking, for the crows,
And their books decay, neglected,
And their graves unmarked by stones,
And their evanescent music, no one knows.
06-03-81
*

Bareback Rider

Out on the heath hies a lady in white,

Riding a giant toad;
Who is that woman, luminescently bright,
Spurring her steed on the road?

West Country witch whom, legends recount,

Transformed her man with a spell:
Cuckolding lover, she made him her mount—
 Unclad, she straddles him well.

Reptile croaking along on the path;

Lady, equestrienne witch,
Whacking his scaly skin with a lath,
Hopping each brook and broad ditch.
07-01-91
*

Bargain

I suck life dry.

The juice spurts out
To slake my drought
And some squirts in my eye.

It stings. I blink
But once or twice:
A modest price
To purchase life, I think.
12-80-82
*

Bay of Pigs Encore

The Cuban migration commences—

Refugees floating ashore;
Floridians mount their defenses,
With weapons unweilded before.

Radiation transmitters are mustered

Incinerate Castro the goal!
Too many times has he blustered…
His ashes now swirl, as waves roll.

SunMart parking lot, Silver Spring Blvd.

Ocala, Florida, 3:00 a.m., 09-03-94
*

Be Good To You

Be good to you,
Love yourself true,
I’ll take care of me,
Whatever else you do, be good to you.

Be good to you,
Look your mirror in the eye,
Give yourself another try,
Clear that cloudy sky,
I’ll take care of me, whatever else you do,
Be good to you.

Be good to you,
Make your color gold, not blue,
It’s just another name for falling rain,
 No more pain,
Not as long as you make sure you’re good to you.

Be good to you,
Love yourself true, I’ll take care of me,
Whatever else you do, be good to you.

Be good to you,
Someone else will be
Good to you, you’ll see,
Love loves company
If you want the love you think that you’re entitled to,
Be good to you.

Be good to you,
Find a mountain with a view,
Leave all the tears of yesterday below,
Melting snow,
And you’ll be so good to me, and me to you.
07-06-76
*

Before the Colors Fade

George Patton
(1885-1945)

Pistol-proud, Virginia-vain,
Deaf to danger, numb to pain,
Born a century too late,
George Patton spat at Fate.

Underneath the bombshell’s burst,

He knew this was not the first
Blood of enemies he’d spilled,
Nor the first age when he’d killed.

Once a prehistoric Celt,

Then a legionnaire who felt
Glee at gashing Jesus’ side;
Later, serving Him with pride.

Visionary general,
Prayerful, and profane, and all
This, and something more as well;
Poet, rhyming while bombs fell.
12-02-73
*

Believe!

Purple cats are back in style,

See them on the street,
Purple whiskers, purple smile,
Purple pussy feet.

Little children know they’re there,

 Only grown-ups don’t.
Pet the fluffy purple hair,
Never mind who won’t.
12-02-78
*

Below the Horizon

Beginning poets write of sunsets, yes,

And so do ending poets, too,
Wan singers whose exhausted little tunes are through:
Who sing one final time of purple-splendored rosiness,
Of twilight turned to violet
And then to grey. Poetic suns then set,
As black-winged angels press their skeleton-caress.
08-80 (rev. 1990)
*

Better Than Nothing

Leaves are withering,

Fall is here to bring,
Early, early chill,
Yet you never care
If the autumn air
Comes to kiss or kill.

Springtime, winter, fall:

Weather each and all,
Treasure Life’s green leaf,
Never measure how
Long God will allow,
Even if so brief.
1980
*

Beverage

I’d rather rhyme and meter my dreams,

But you like your verse jagged,
And ugly-built.
I’ll try it loose and anti-styled,
Formless as pooled tears
In maudlin drops.
Drink them!
1972
*

Beverage (2)

Magical dragon’s tooth

Brings back youth,
Stir in a diamond-clear
Mermaid’s tear,
Drain the cup just as you’re told,
Don’t grow old.
 11-04-77
*

Beyond

No cause for petty fearing

When all your years run out:
Eternity is nearing,
Soon killing death and doubt.

Eternal Life--His giving--

Infused from Enfleshed God--
Transforming now our living,
So travel where He trod.
02-26-1974 (Rev. 11-11-1990)
*

Biblio-Blaze

The Book-Ship, it wrecks on the reef,

Cargo floats onto the sand,
The Captain is giddy with grief,
Watching the doom close at hand.

The savages storm toward the loot,

Battering boxes with stones,
But water-logged pistols won’t shoot:
Captain stands by and he groans.

They ravage the books from the ship,

Vellum and parchment are torn
And hand-crafted bindings go rip!
Captain stands sick and forlorn.

And volumes of romance and myth

Blaze in a pyramid spire
For roasting the Book-Captain with:
Cannibals dance at his pyre.
1969
*

Biblio-tourist

Each time I inhale

The aroma of oranges and tea,
I wish I could sail
The Orient, fickle and free.

The China I seek

Is fashioned of legend and dream.
Reality’s weak.
But myths ever glimmer and gleam.

I circle the globe,

I think of a pagoda built high,
Where gowned in his robe
 Of saffron a monk shuffles by.

For books are bought cheap,

They serve me instead of a ship:
I read—fall asleep—
And embark, on a fanciful trip.
11-05-78 (rev. 08-14-90)
*

Bibliography

Some futile first editions are

Last editions, too,
Collectors combing close and far
For those very few.
06-15-78
*

Big Foot

From Canada to California back up in the trees,

There’s a legendary creature no one ever really sees,
He’s a snow-man and an ape-man, and a monster and a myth,
But he’s no one that a man would ever dare to battle with.

On the southern side of Washington, the spring of ‘Sixty-Nine,

Now the weather it was colder, up and down the timberline,
And the monster he was hungry and he left his tracks around,
But nobody ever saw him, for he never made a sound.

And we’re never going to catch him, for he always disappears,

And the Big Foot, he’ll keep living for another million years.

He’s the answer and the question, he’s the riddle of our time,
But nobody ever shoots him, since it turned into a crime.
And they didn’t have to pass a law to save his savage hide
For a man who’d hunt the Big Foot would be bound for suicide.

But I still would like to see him, from a mile or so away,

With a camera so that I could prove the things I have to say,
But nobody’s going to see him in the woods of Washington,
And make the folks believe it, for it never has been done.

And we’re never going to catch him, for he always disappears,

And the Big Foot, he’ll keep living for another million years.
08-12-73
*

Bird Dung of Doom

The prophets forewarned us in ancient words

Of monstrous, metallic, reptilian birds
Igniting skies with a flight of fire:
Below them the smoke of charred Earth will spire.

These death-pterodactyls are coming true:

 Their pilots turn bleak the horizons of blue,
Sleek avian avatars, spilling down
Their droppings that cinder the field and town.

The creatures themselves are consumed in flame,

And man is a dinosaur, obsolete-name,
Forgotten as prophesied, slain by sleek
Low-swooping pteranodons, bones-in-beak.
12-03-84
*

Birthday Eve

The words of the witch from the smoky pyre

Fell on my ancestor’s head.
He spat disdain at the hissing fire
And cursed at the curse she said.

He died that month, his thirtieth year,

Birthday and death-day the same,
And so did is son, and his son, till here
I’m the last to possess their name.

I carry a cross, but so did they.

Doctor has checked me—I’m fine.
But still I am panicked, today’s the last day
Of the year that I’m twenty-nine.
06-30-82
*

Birthright

Liberty isn’t security, no,

People seem quick to forget,
Danger and risk and the chances to grow
Are treasures we fight for yet.

Freedom to win and the freedom to fail,

Liberties purchased with pain
Often are bartered or offered for sale
For some politician’s gain.
03-30-80
*

Black

Black the raven’s wing appears

Poised for somber flight,
Black the craven soul who hears
Demons in the night.

Black the rose a witch has kissed,

Black its withered frame,
Yet the man-made devil-mist
Puts the rose to shame.
 Be the magic what it will
Black as chimney stack
None so black but blacker still:
Armaggedon-black.
1974
*

Black Betrothal

Your pleas amuse me, utterly,

Seeking answers from the King of Cynics, me.
Your tears each freeze upon my palm.
My lacerating laughter is your poisoned balm
And still you murmur: “Where is love?”

My words are underwater snakes

Rippling in the ebony of knighted lakes
That was inside my caverned soul.
My serpentine remarks like vipers now unroll.
Encoiling you, with adder-love.

Surrender innocence to me, my dear…

Girlish, fresh naiveté will disappear
Between my worldly hands, I’ll crimp
Your delicate ideals—you’ll limp
A martyr, maimed by cynic-love.

I’ll consecrate you with a crown.

Reign with me…our vassals bowing down
Before our skull-rimmed throne. A Cynic Queen
To sit beside me, as the mossy green
Beslimes our bones…with charnel love.
1972
*

Black Bridegroom

“Milady, I come for a kiss,

You push me, rejected away,
I offer you harlequin-bliss,
The rapture of black and grey.”

“Milady, you’re yielding at last;

My love is perpetually true,
So press me against you, hold fast,
My bed is cypress and yew,
I’m Thanatos. Eros is you.”
10-29-81
*

Black Guide

A shrouded and somber shape

Carries each one of us home;
Not a man nor a woman escape
Repose, six feet in the loam.
 The guide is the gentlest of
Servants: his soft, sweet hands
Will caress us with holy love
In black-curtained slumberlands.
09-29-82
*

Blanket

Rifles rattle,
Armies battle
On the plain,
Getting glory,
Grief, or gory
Colored pain.

Conscripts giving
Up their living
For a patriotic bed
That is bag-shaped,
Shrouded, flag-draped:
Blue, white, red.
01-26-75
*

Blaze!

Round the Rim of Reason

Ring the worshippers of thought,
Faith to them is treason,
Souls are something sold and bought.

One day they’re believing,

One day faith returns,
Doubters each receiving
Light that fires and burns.
06-14-76
*

Bliss

The seas of sleep

Onrush and sweep
Me to the shores of farthest dream,
Where grounded, I
In slumber lie
Pillowed on diamond sands that gleam.

Then dawning wakes

My sleep and breaks
Reddening-orange above my bed,
And burns away
With light of day
Visions from night-land, fled and dead.
09-16-81
 *

Bliss (2)

The kiss of Time corrodes

Bronze Venuses to flaking rust,
Time’s transitoriness erodes
Marble aphrodites down to dust.

But Love’s caress slays Time.

Eternities succumb to Love’s soft sigh.
And nuptial church bells ever chime:
God’s clarion echo heard on high.
09-29-88
*

Blood Harvest

Hay is threshed by the rotor blades,

Hay along with the arms,
Legs, and heads of the milking maids,
Down on the carrion farms.

Farmer Misogynist reaps his yield—

Satan nurtured the crop—
Psychopathology wet the field—
Whing! Now the rotor blade lops!
07-10-91
*

Blue Doom

Blue tinted mist arrives

Coloring townspeople’s lives
Crystalline, diamond blue.

The blue covers everyone—

Blue’s even shrouding the sun,
Veiling it out of view.

A gaseous, blue-spun gown

Wraps up the corpse of the town;
Chemicals cover all.

And blue-tinted rain descends—

Ice-colored showers blend
Death, in the drops that fall.
04-09-79
*

Blue Ridge

As August melted from its sticky heat,

September watched us traveling to where
Virginia, South Carolina, both do meet:
The apple-mountains rich with grape and pear.
 Her family and sister welcomed me,
Far too polite to ever seem quite real,
I drowned in country hospitality
And careful conversation at each meal.
But underneath I felt a tense unease:
Her elder sister seemed to look through all
The harmony like some lone bird that sees
An animal below about to fail and fall,
Our mutual hatred and respect were like
The hunted for the hunter as it stalks to strike.
10-04-75
*

Blue Rose
(1943- )

Lady like a rose

Petals all enclose
Her instead of clothes.

Joni’s coming
Strumming, thrumming,
Hear the humming.

Feel the ecstasy,

Tortured melody,
Sweet, sweet agony.
01-75
*

Blue Western Dream

She’s a Blue Western Dream, like no cowpoke’s ever seen,

She’s got Gold Rush nuggets in her eyes,
She’s a gunfighter’s gal…she’s like the O.K. Corral,
She’ll leave you in Boot Hill, bye and bye.

On the Oregon Trail, her heart was for sale,

So she took the Wagonmaster to bed;
But his wife found out, so the pioneers kicked her out
On the desert in her dress made of red.

She’s part Cherokee…and she’s all Tennessee,

But Texas weren’t big enough for her.
A cattleman from Cheyenne, she told him “You’re my man.”
Then she raked him with the rowels of her spur.

And she finally settles down in a Nevada ghost town,

Population, seventeen.
Through her memories and her tears she relives all those years
Through the pages of a Western magazine…
1988
*

Boarding Party
 Ships of morning sail
Out across the pale
Ocean overhead,
Splashing trees and lawn,
Now that night is dead.

Ocean-blue will burn

Yellow-red and turn
Water into sand,
Making you aware
Everything is air,
Melting in your hand.

Ships of evening drift

See the mainsail shift
As the dusk begins;
Ghosts make up the crew
Setting course for you,
As the skull-flag grins.
01-21-75
*

Bob Dylan
(1941- )

They said he was “this voice of youth.”

That was the biggest lie.
It wasn’t told, but he was old,
And old men tell the truth.

A Jewish gypsy with guitar

Heard the children cry
In napalm hells. His music tells
Us who we were, and worse, still are.
02-21-82
*

Bok’s Ghost
(1914-1964)

Leap over galaxies,

Swim over starry seas
Washed by the moon.
Drink from the morning dew,
Bathe in the misty blue,
Immortal—soon.

Ride every unicorn,

Blow on a happy horn
Left you by Pan.
Paint with an angel’s brush,
Hear Heaven’s voices hush,
Awed—by a man.
08-22-74
*
 Bone Yowl

Skull-face above a camp fire,

White bone nailed to a stick,
Flames flaring like a lamp spire,
Skull-face burns down like a wick.

Skull-face falls down and crashes

Savage eyes see it fall,
Some hear it scream, in ashes:
Dead warrior’s fierce last call.
1970
*

Bottled Time

Collectors, traveling from far,

Dig in ashes piled behind
The weather-whitened, ghost-town bar:
Whiskey bottles there to find.

A hundred years have come to pass:

Cowboys—gamblers—girls—all dead.
Half-buried legacies of glass
Gleam beneath the rotting shed.
11-02-78
*

Bredon Hill

On Bredon Hill at summer

Lads and maidens lie,
And hear the fife and drummer
Calling lads to die.

But army bunks are laden

With love of lad
For lad, and not for maiden:
Love that Hausman had.

Love he hoped he hid from

People who might see,
Love that one day did come
Forth in poetry.
1968
*

Brevity

Verses too short,

Thoughts abort
In tight, constricted space.
Choking dreams
Hear their screams,
In claustrophobic place.
 05-18-81
*

Brief

Lifting glasses of
Burgundy above
Tables wet with wine,
Wasting youth and love,
Toasting friends of mine.

Friends are only now,

No one worries how
Time will cut us free;
Moments still allow
Drunk dear company.
1967
*

Bright Prospect

Armageddon is a new beginning!

Everybody has a chance of winning—
Free vacation, pays for your expenses—
Warms you, and it stimulates your senses.

Armageddon is everyone’s salvation.

Born again in radiant creation.
Come on in, and turn yourself to ashes!
Melt away your eyeballs and lashes.
11-20-81
*

Brothers

Time’s a tyrant, locking you

In a dungeon, your life through-
Only love or death can free
You of Time’s sure slavery.

Love and death are brothers in

Fights with Time that they can win-
Both are sweeter, sadder, than
Time’s brute bondage over man.
04-25-74
*

Brushy Bill Roberts

(died 1950)

Brushy Bill Roberts was born quite a long time ago;

Eighteen Eighty-Eight, he rode the Cheyenne Rodeo;
He even trained horses in Argentina, he said;
When he rode for the Pinkertons he left a few rustlers dead.

Brushy Bill Roberts had twenty-six wounds that had healed,

 Scars from the horses, and bullets, and knives, he revealed;
His real name and date of his birth are a mystery still,
But he used to break mustangs and broncos for sure, Brushy Bill.

Brushy Bill Roberts went off to a faraway shore,

In the Shetland Islands, roping ponies, Eighteen-Ninety Four,
And down there in Cuba, he was a Roosevelt Rough Rider too,
And he smuggled horses to help Poncho Villa, it’s true.

He went crazy, there at the end…

In 1950…he even surrendered,
To the governor of New Mexico…
Asking for a pardon for his crimes.
It seemed that all those years he’d been
Keeping it hid…
Yes, he even confessed he was…really…
Billy the Kid!
They laughed at Brushy Bill and three weeks
Later he died…

Brushy Bill Roberts was born quite a long time ago,

They still tell his legend ‘way down in old New Mexico,
And he’s still in the saddle like a ghost in a rodeo dream.
You see, sometimes those cowboys are quite a bit more than they seem.
1985
*

Buddhist Monk

Unsullied by the world, with conscience free,

He sits in contemplation, hour on hour,
Of one small point on his anatomy
From which he gathers strength and mystic power.
Not for him the hero’s wide acclaim,
The soldier’s glory, nor the merchant’s prize;
Deaf is he to trumpetings of fame,
Blind to the promise in a woman’s eyes.
For him no cleaving to ephemeral things—
No ties to trap his feet in tangled ways
That snare the steps of diplomats and kings—
No fear of blame, and no desire for praise.
Supremely blessed, the holy Lama sits,
Heedless of bombs that blast the world to bits.
1974
*

Buffalo Skull on the Desert

Buffalo skull on the desert,

White from the wind and the sun,
Sometimes I feel like that buffalo skull—
I really don’t need anyone.

Buffalo skull on the desert,

Spider makes a home in its head;
Sometimes I feel like that buffalo skull
 When I think of those last words you said.

You said to me, “Adios, caballero, we’re crossing the border,

A posse’s close on our trail;
We’re wanted for love, and there’s a price on our hearts—
We’re fugitives from somebody’s jail,
And our ponies are starting to fail…”

Buffalo skull on the desert,

Gila monster scurries by;
Sometimes I feel like that buffalo skull
Under the dry desert sky.

Buffalo skull on the desert,

Might make a good souvenir;
Sometimes I feel like that buffalo skull
On a fence post so far from here.
1985
*

Burgundy Morning

Burgundy morning, too early for drinking, no one tells me what to do;
I see your face in that half-empty bottle, purple reflections of you;
Burgundy morning says goodbye to moonlight, opening doors on the dawn;
Lavender curtains you bought for the window, keep out the light when they’re drawn.

Burgundy morning, the neighbors are noisy, wives kissing husbands goodbye;
‘Wonder what they say about me behind me, they think I don’t even try;
Too young for pity and too old for quitting, ‘guess I’ll write you one more time;
‘Almost ten-thirty, the mailman is missing—service like that is a crime.

Burgundy morning, some children are playing baseball right next to our yard;
I hope they’re careful and watch where they’re throwing, don’t hit that ball too damned hard;
I should be selling this house and be moving no one would miss me that’s right;
Maybe if I just re-read your last letter, I’d see things in a new light.

Burgundy morning, and I’m feeling drowsy, wine reaching up to my brain;

I should be with you, but you kept it secret, making sure I would remain;
Noise in the street won’t keep me from my sleeping, sirens and whistles they scream;
Burgundy morning becomes afternoon and I only hope I won’t dream.
1968
*

By the Side of the Road

You pack up your dreams in a four-by-ten wagon,

It looks like a ship with a sail,
Your neighbors in old Pennsylvania are waving
Farewell…by the side of the trail.

You tell ev’rybody “There’s land up in Oregon,

You’ll find you a farm that don’t fail,
You’ll stop with your children each evening for supper,
And cook by the side of the trail.
 But out in Nebraska there’s late falling snow into April,
You wake up one morning…the frostbite took three of your toes;
Your children are sleeping so sweetly and so sadly so peaceful…
They’ll sleep there together long after the wagon train goes.

You’ll raise some new children when you’re up in Oregon,

And you and your wife will prevail,
But some nights you’ll dream of those little wood crosses
Back there…by the side of the road.
1987
*

Byronic

My senses are a symphony

Of violent disharmony,
Enjoying any melody
That’s sad.

Self-pity’s always sweeter than

Remembering that I’m a man,
And sentimental verses can
Be bad.
09-27-67
*

Cacophony

Now of this and that I hear:

Time and Timeless memory,
Dawn of the ages, ages old.
Birdsong in the morning mists,
Silver strains of swirling spheres,
Time-begotten, Time-bequeathed;
Twilight, end of the centuries,
Violence, Time-dishonoring,
Raucous notes that rend the air
From an orchestra gone mad.
1979
*

Calvary

Stand against them all:

Shoulders on the wall,
Blindfold blotting out
Enemies, and doubt.

Later, after they

Kill you for their pay,
Themselves about to die—
Help them, don’t ask why.
1972
*

Canonization
 St. Jeanne of Arc carols in the pyre,
Sainted for her final song.
Her martyred voice, a human lyre,
Her ashes, immemorially strong.
04-09-86
*

Capitol Hill

She sat in downtown restaurants alone,

And read her book until they shut the doors;
Defiant, seventeen, and on her own,
She made her coffee last an hour or more.
So when I couldn’t find her home I ran
Ridiculously about the neighborhood,
A comic maniac who’d been a man
Behaving like a wounded coyote would:
I circled, almost howling with brute pain
Around dark Washington, through every place
She ought to be but wasn’t—almost insane—
Ashamed of panicking for a mere face.
The restaurants we’re empty of her everywhere:
Could she have drowned in summer’s humid air?
05-11-75
*

Caravan

I.

Ghost-wagons roll in the ruts,

Creaking and clattering on,
Passing the villagers’ huts,
Peasants relieved, once they’re gone.

Spirits ten centuries old,

Ghosts of barbarian tribes--
Tribes whose maraudings are told
Shudderingly by old scribes.

II.

Ghost wagons leave with no trace.

Oh, but where is your child?
There he is! But look at his face!
Savage-eyed. Daemonic. Wild.
09-16-77
*

Carolina Border Dream

Carolina Border Dream, forget me,

Autumn winds are thinning out the trees,
Everything we started now is over,
Button up your coat against the breeze.
 South Virginia summertime was heaven,
Apple orchards, grapes upon the vine,
Something I’ll remember for a lifetime,
‘Sorry yours will never fit with mine.

When you’re young, you never say the right thing,

‘Always much too pushy or too shy,
Carolina Border Dream, I’m leaving,
Autumn clouds are coloring the sky.

Carolina Border Dream, I’m sorry,

Blue Ridge mountainsides are turning brown,
I’ll be heading north to spend the winter,
‘Try to lose myself in some big town.

Carolina Border Dream, it’s ending,

Like they always hoped it would, one day,
‘Hate to make them happy, now we’re parting,
Golden skies are turning into grey.
07-29-77
*

Carpathian Conflagration

Castle of crimson is towering

High on the cliffs in the mist;
Down in the valley are cowering
Peasants who barely exist.

One day a priest is victorious,

Braving the cliffs all alone;
Victory, gory and glorious!
Vampire is powdered like bone.

Garlic and Cross and hot torches

Extirpate pestilence there;
Peasants observe from their porches
Crimsoned-hued pyre all a-flare.
1977 (rev, 09-14-90)
*

Carpe Diem

Your life is like a brief

Elusive, wind-blown leaf
Upon the gales of March. So seize
And clutch it captive from Time’s breeze.

But leaves are hard to hold

In autumn’s coming cold;
Before they powder in your hand
(Right through your fingers, like fine sand)
Enwreathe them in a floral band.
12-29-86
*
 Carrion

The free and defiant Lords

Of Litting-Loo
Knew what to do:
Their trumpets blew,
They drew their steel tempered swords.

They charged on their unicorns

With slack-free reins
Across the plains.
And left remains
Of enemies skewered by horns.
11-09-74
*

Cartographic-Typographic Note

The place known as “hell” should be capitalized,

So print it as “Hell” if you please.
A particular place to where we tumbled from grace
Noosed, as we dance in the breeze.
02-12-82
*

Case Study

The Freudian’s a paranoid,

A schizoid who’s annoyed
When people rend his mask and see
His drooling, voyeur fantasy.

The Freudian’s own mind is split

(The two halves never fit):
Those phallic symbols he erects
Convince you…he’s deprived of sex!

The Freudian’s obsessed—depressed—

By urges long repressed,
Or else projected outward on
His patients till his guilt is gone.
10-28-79
*

Castaway

Winds of worry whip

The sails of your sad ship,
Driving it across
An ocean full of loss.

Over on the other side

Unrolls the foaming tide,
Casting you aground,
Like driftwood, lost, not found.
 02-30-76
*

Cat Query

Why are kitties always “she’s”

Even when they’re “he’s”?
Feminine to look at, true,
Still-their sexes number two.
6-3-78
*

Certainty
(or Bruce Boston)

There’s a certain malaise I endure when I hear

Muttering wind at night,
And a certain alarm when I notice a queer
Gaseous yellow-green light
So ethereal and faint—see it now disappear,
Dimming before my sight.
But I’m certain I saw it, unnervingly near,
Swamp-vision, evil and bright.
10-09-81
*

Chanson de la Mort

Let’s sing a song about Death!

Let’s hear it for graveyards and grue!
Let’s rhyme the word “bones” with the obvious “stones”
Under stereotypical cypress and yew.

It’s charnel house comedy night.

The bones dance around on the grass.
Now the contest’s begun—and the best couple’s won;
A skeleton laddie and lass.
12-18-82
*

Child, Why Are You Crying?

Little child, there’s no reason to cry,

Push the thorns on your pathway apart,
Find the flowers wherever they lie,
Interweave them each in wreathes from your heart.

And how long has it been since you’ve smiled?

Walk a flower-filled path all alone,
Sing your worries away, little child,
Never cry, never sorrow or moan.

Let the songs of the birds fill your ear,

Let your smile, like a sun-ray appear;
Since the morning, great God turns His ear
To the tunes of the birds…and of you.
 09-05-75
by Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)
First English translation
from Des Vers (1880)
*

Chill-Charred Winterlude

December warmth is frozen hell,

Icicles stab your psyche through;
Frigid furnace embers swell—
Frosted flames ignite in you.
12-13-93
*

Choice

Battle-flags unfurled,
Bombs and books are hurled
Hard against the world
That only lets one win.

Cannon-balls are more

Loud, so men ignore
Books, and let the roar
Of bursting bombs come in.
01-28-72
*

Christmas Symbols

November casts its leaves and days away.

The calendar’s last, best, page remains…
December. And our losses and our gains
Are summed across a sky of frigid grey
(Forgiving sins from some far August day),
Our slate scrubbed clear. The month now wanes;
And yet behind December’s sleeted panes
There crackles warmth: an ancient mystery play.
Its symbols are the holly and the scented pine.
Humility, not vanity, at end-of-year,
And peace to our trespassers and our friends.
The English mistletoe—the gift of yours and mine—
And carols that poor sinners, like ourselves, most hear…
Then, manger-ward, a band of seers wends.
1982
*

Circle

Dawn: another name for dying—

Feel the moonlight crying
Palest, silver tears.

Noon: another word for longing—

Dying hopes are thronging
 Feeble from fresh tears.

Night: another kind of burying—

Shadow-mourners carrying
Light that disappears.
09-19-76
*

Citadel Stormed

Hark! The marching feet of fears,

Tramping down your battlefield brain:
An army no one hears…but you. You feel sharp spears
That thrust and hurl with scarlet stain.

Flee! The phantom infantries descend

Massacring angels in your mind
With scimitars that rend. Retreat. Do not defend,
But cower, maimed and blind.

And now: victorious fifers pipe a piercing skirl!

Atop the turret of your soul black flags unfurl.
01-03-83
*

City Hospital

Nervous male nurse quit last night,

Losing all without a fight;
The supervisor shrugs,
“Caught him really good this time,
In Federal high crime,
Concealing, stealing drugs.”
06-05-78
*

Civil War Marker:

Vanderbilt Campus

History’s unpopular these days,

No one cares where Blues shot Greys,
Or where the tons of cannonballs were kept.
Union marker stands aloof, alone,
Monument of bronze and chisled stone,
And students giggle where the Northern troops once swept.
1985
*

Civilization

Mere bravery is obsolete,

Instead of “charge’” men learn “retreat,”
If you can call a male a “man,”
Who lost his gender when he ran.

Society has bred this meek

 Emasculated, servile freak,
Who cringes when he bends to kneel,
With rubber spine that once was steel.
01-14-79
*

Clock

How should I measure the turns of time?

In raindrops, tears or kisses?
In wrinkles, rages, blisses?

How should I count these seasons I’m

Surviving, beyond number?
By snow-by sun-by thunder?

Perhaps to clock them is a crime,

Instead I’ll sing their going,
Their coming-and their flowing.
03-21-79
*

Clock(2)

Forty summers, forty springs

You concentrate on brighter things.
Then forty autumns, forty cold
Decembers…and you’re growing old.
03-17-81
*

Closing Time

When the music stills, as the closing chords are played,

I fancy I hear your name,
I stay behind, and tipsy, I proclaim
A toast! To our once-love, then limp home, passion-lame.
07-08-81
*

Coffee at Fox’s Bookstore:

Nashville

Our conversation was all of books:

He chatted charmingly
Of “firsts” and “points” unknown to me—
Me, that customer who looks
Instead of buys, most frequently:
But whether I bought books or not, the store
(And mind and heart) swung wide an open door.
09-11-80
*

Cold, Cold Hank

(1924-1953)
 The saddest man you ever saw
Sang through his nose, his notes were raw,
His teeth were bad, his voice was flat;
Hank Williams wore a cowboy hat.

A hundred songs upon the shelf,

He loved us more than loved himself:
He sang of you, he sang of me,
To set our shackled spirits free.

His tritest titles bragged of pain,

“Your Cheatin’ Heart,” “You Win Again,”
And “Weary Blues,” “I Saw The Light,”
And “There’ll Be No Teardrops Tonight.”

He loved to drink, but he loved more

Composing melodies meant for
The words he couldn’t always spell,
But sang so well that they still sell.

A limousine, gold in the bank,

Were not enough to ease old Hank:
He cursed his loves, and feared his Lord
Would pay him back the debts he stored.

The debts were cleared on New Year’s Day,

The coroner could only say
That chloral hydrate took its toll
From Hank’s poor self-tormented soul.

You hear that yodeled freight-train whine?

It’s just a ghost, aged twenty-nine,
That left his flesh in ‘Fifty-Three,
But still he haunts Montgomery.
07-13-70
*

Cold-War Liberals

Born-again nuclear warfare foes,

Finally raising their voice,
Now that war’s fashionable to oppose,
Making the comfortable choice.

Now that their suburbs are under risk

(Rather than Japanese),
They spin about face! And manage a brisk
Chorus of “Nuclear Freeze.”
08-09-82
*

Collector’s Clutter

Dealers’ catalogues, they pile

My desk and overflow my file,
My first editions fight for space:
Like weeds, the price-lists choke their place.
06-14-78
*

Colonel House: Administrator

(1585-1938)

With Southern charm

He forged the hold
Of foreign gold
On town and farm.

He gave us two
Proud presidents—
No accidents--
Yet hid from view.

I guess he felt
That Wilson could
Be used, as should
Be Roosevelt.

He coached the game

To win us all:
The Federal
Reserve’s its name.

And he’s to thank

For nations leagued
And then intrigued
Behind One Bank.

You ask my source?

Read his own book,
A blood-bathed look
At rule by force.
02-18-73
*

Coming Attractions

A government so strong it can

Help Everyman
Will help itself to freedom, too:
What else is new?
06-15-78
*

Command Performance

In her palace by the sea

Queen Belafree
Is reigning from a tarnished throne,
Where mosses, algae, climb her walls
Where mildewed, frescoed halls
Peel through plaster to old stone;
 And seagulls scree, waves moan.

Yet she holds a lively court,

Where clowns cavort,
And troubadours sing lilting-sad…
And jugglers toss where acrobats
Spin cartwheels till they lose their hats,
Snatching up the coins she throws…
Outside, the waterline just rose!

Belafree ignores the tide

So high outside,
Instead she smiles and starts to speak:
“Now dance! The show must never stop!”
Heedless that the ceilings creak,
As floors commence to sag and leak…
05-26-78(rev. 1990)
*

Compost

Egg shells, potato peels,

Fruit scraps from meals,
Coffee grindings—
From this…food springs.
06-24-78
*

Condemned

Curse the poets with oblivion.

They haven’t changed a thing.
There still is war and pestilential greed
In spite of how they sing.

Damn the poets to perdition.

They haven’t fathomed Fate.
The grave is still inscrutable, yet near—
No poet makes death wait.

Banish poets to cruelest torture.

They deserve the rack
For promising your heart to me
When rhymes won’t woo you back.
09-23-83
*

Confession

The minor poet with major soul

Plays the petty role:
Overacting his meager part—
Craft at best, not art.

The minor poet with major pain

Speaks words that fall in vain
 Concealing his passion in soft cliché
Blurry, hueless, grey
01-05-80
*

Confidential

After Mama is asleep

Lift the blankets up and peep
At that Purple Cat.
Keep it secret what you saw-
Purple Cat’s against the law-
(So’s the large Green Rat!)
06-26-78
*

Connubial Confusion

Perhaps a third sex will evolve,

As genes revolve,
Regroup, and reappear like new.
Instead of two,
When people love (next century),
It may take three!
07-07-78
*

Constant

I like seasons, each on each,

Shifting sharply, come to teach,
That all is change, and change is all:
Snow and sun, and rains that fall—
Silent air—then winds that call.
02-17-79
*

Construction Site

Once your dreams were chiseled stones

Fitted in with care,
Now they crumble since you’ve grown,
Falling from the air.

Castles topple from the sky,

Better they are gone,
Earth is firm enough to try
Building new ones on.
1972
*

Conviction

A man, to survive must never once care

For what the effete folk think—
Vicarious cowards who, jealous, stare
 And knowingly share a wink.

The cautious exceed the daring, ten

On twenty to one, at least.
They never suspect, for actual men—
Adventure is life’s vast feast.

They tally success by approval’s nod,

Of fashionable acclaim—
Real heroes feed vultures on fear-soaked sod,
No marble to mark their name.
12-04-83
*

Cosmic Snub

I can’t convince Infinity

To notice me,
And galaxies of farther space
Won’t memorize my face.
12-21-81
*

Cosmic Thunder

Perhaps the last few leaves of Time

Are dropping off the Lotus Tree,
Our little earth will gasp its last
And soon be swallowed up in sea.

Then sea and earth divide and part,

Each half dissolve without a trace,
Twin flames that rush with lightning speed,
Disintegrating into space.

We may be sitting on a keg

Of atoms that will soon explode
And little else of us be left
Save ash along the flaming road.

And when we think ourselves secure,

We may be standing on the brink
Of chasms gorged with blood and fire,
Abysms blacker yet than ink.

It may be while we sleep or wake

The world will end, a crash will come,
With cleavage of the earth and sea,
And thunder of the Cosmic Drum.
1974
*

Country Farmhouse

No building long survives Time’s hurricane,

It scatters shingles, rends each roof
 And bares the rafters to the rain,
The skeleton of walls stands proof
That nothing fashioned by mere Man endures aloof.
01-82
*

Country Muzak
(for Justin Tubb)

“The public doesn’t listen long,

A few, few seconds and no more,
So let’s give them an empty song
With melodies we’ve used before—
A formula they can’t ignore.”

Of course the public hardly hears,

They sense our ill-disguised, obvious disdain,
They’d rather hear the songs of years
Ago: the whistles of the train,
Whippoorwills, and country rain.
04-16-78
*

Court Room

You stand before

Judgment of the Pit,
On marbled floor,
No place to sit,
And no time more:
You have squandered it.

The scribe has scrawled

Curses on the scroll,
The priest has called
Doom upon your soul,
The demon’s crawled
Out of his worm hole.
04-27-75
*

Covert Cathedral

Your mental window’s fashioned from

Panes of glinting bright stained glass,
And through them streaming sun rays come.
Your mind conducts its private Mass.
Soft hymns and Sacramental rite,
Holy water at the secret fount.
Communion hidden out of sight.
Inside your heart, an Olive Mount.
1987
*

Crazed Carnival
(for Gary William Crawford , editor of
 Yellow Rider, And Other Fantasy Poems,
by Steve Eng)

The fair of folly arrives in town:

The furled-up banners are flopping down,
The Fool is enthroned as the King of all.
So welcome: idiots, leap and fall.

The clowns cavort on the midway strip,

Revolving acrobats tumble, flip.
The Fool himself on the trapeze wire
Disports himself in a dizzy gyre.

The madness mounts and the crowd joins in,

The laughter of lunatics makes a din:
The circus tent’s an asylum jail—
Imprisoned spectators weep and wail
And Folly triumphs. Fools prevail.
04-09-84
*

Crazed Cavorting

I’ve danced in a clowning jig,

Bells on my nimble toes,
Askew on my head, a wig,
Smile painted over my woes.

I’ve clapped in a rhythm inane---

Jumped in my floppy clothes…
My grease-paint dissolved in rain…
While tear-drop insanity flows.
1987
*

Crimson Witch

Crimson Witch is walking,

See her stealthy stalking
Along the forest trail.
Crimson Witch is grabbing
Children with her stabbing
Fingers—hear them wail.

Villagers are raising

Pikes and torches blazing
As hot as crimson hell;
Witch’s cottage flaring.
Villagers not caring
What the curses tell.

Crimson curses dooming

Villagers, and looming
Immense along the years:
Pestilence descending--
Plague, their bodies rending—
 Crimson colored tears.
01-29-76
*

Crosswalk Encounter

I saw the old Death Angel

Walking ‘cross the street,
Disguised as a pedestrian,
Visage coy and sweet.

I rolled up my window,
‘Didn’t pause to wait—
I drove right past the lady—
“Can’t we have a date…?”
“No time to talk…I’m late…”
03-05-93
*

Cursed
(For Lord Dunsany)

Ancient towers streaming

Shadows on the sand:
City doomed to dreaming,
Wishing not to stand.

Gods go on forgiving
All the city’s guilt,
So it goes on living,
Bitter it was built.
1971
*

Curtain

Tomorrow’s stage will not allow

Us more of Now.
And so our comedy is through:
I’m me, you’re you.
09-01-73
*

Curtain (Finale)

Stand away
From the play
Titled “Life”:
Scenes are cut
From your gut
By Time’s knife.

Stand aside,
Let the wide
Stage collapse.
Stand apart,
 Let your heart
Die, perhaps.

Stand alone
Like a bone
Bleaching dry.
Death’s your scene,
Played between
Sand and sky.
01-05-75
*

Dale Evans Is Riding Tonight

The young girl’s pony is made from the stick of a broom,

With posters of rodeos thumb-tacked all over her room.
She heads off to school with her lunch in a metal lunch pail—
With a picture of a cowgirl and the words “HAPPY TRAILS!”

Dale Evans is riding tonight, on the bright silver screen

In the midst of a young girl’s dream;
Dale Evans is riding tonight—
She’s the Queen of the West, with her red leather vest…
Dale Evans is riding tonight.

The little girl grows up but she clings to her childhood games,
She looks for Roy Rogers but she always attracts Jesse James.
She takes a couple of falls in the rodeo called “married life”—
Now she’s back in the saddle—“Adios” to those years as a wife.

Dale Evans is riding tonight, on the bright silver screen

In the midst of a young woman’s dream;
Dale Evans is riding to night—
She’s the Queen of the West, she’s got fringe on her dress…
Dale Evans is riding tonight.

She’s home on the range with her friend the acoustic guitar;
It’s state fairs and rodeos and too many years in the bars;
Tonight on the stage in Cheyenne she’s raising her hand—
The crowd, gives a roar—she’s married some guy in her band!

Dale Evans is riding tonight, on the bright silver screen

In the midst of a cowgirl’s dream;
Dale Evans is riding tonight—
She’s the Queen of the West, in her cattle-brand vest…
Dale Evans is riding tonight.
1985

Dark Highway

Seattle summertime is all

Forgotten, in an ugly fall
Of fog, and ever-soaking rain
That hammers heavy down
 Upon a woman’s window-pane,
As I am leaving town.

Her only souvenirs are some

Of my romantic poems from
Illusions of an August love,
That left her out of breath—
Before her artist-image of
Me died an autumn death.

October teaches her that I

Had my ambitions up too high,
Imagining I’d ever be
Remembered by a book.
But all of her was offered free
For taking, so I took.
11-08-67
*

Dawn Glory

The gathering gold ascends

Bright on the summer sky,
And summertime morning blends
Yellow and blue up high…
And the shimmering clouds shift by.
1980
*

Dawn-Rite

Out along the east

The grey goes orange at last
Deliciously, like vast
Fruit at some god’s feast.

We adore the sun

With pagan piety,
And wait for Man to see
Ancient faiths have won.
09-01-67
*

Dead March

Armies of the dead

March the roads of red
Bloody with their tread.

Spectral infantry,
Phantom cavalry
Move inexorably.

Romans, Spartans come,

Scots with pipe and drum,
No one knows where from.
 British, Turk, and French
Smell of dead men’s stench,
From their burial trench.

Military ghosts,
Swapping bawdy boasts,
Raising martial toasts….
Armored, zombie hosts.
10-08-74
*

Dead Rainbow

The shade of rage is a gory red,

The glow of love is gold,
The color of your indifference is lead:
The grey of love grown cold.

The hue of hate is ebony,

The wash of faith is white,
The dark of your disdain for me
Is black as a loveless night.
07-04-80
*

Death by Mirrors

I cry in the hollow of my years:

Reverberant despair resounds. None hears.
I run searching down the corridors for you
But you’re not here. Echoes mock anew.
Is this all’s meant by silence, this?
The violence of stillness. Deaf-mute bliss.
On cold, metallic walls, I press a kiss
And realize the surfaces are glass
Mirrors I’ve been passing. Reflected dreams harass
As I fall crumbling, staring at the mass
Of mocking memories that stare right back:
I see you. Me. Then all goes black.
03-10-82
*

Death Cloud

She said she hoped for peace for all mankind,

Made possible by man’s deep-down good will,
And sorrowed when I told her she was blind
To man’s inborn desire to maim and kill.
One universe united under one large law:
Her dream, and dream of countless men before
Who looked at life and made believe they saw
Beyond man’s greed and lust for gore.
Besides, world law meant world police and fear,
I told her gently, and she hated me
For hinting her utopia would not appear.
 For checks and balances on law brings liberty--
But still at least we both agreed to dread
The poison mushroom looming overhead.
08-06-75 (rev. 05-07-78)
*

Death of a Conqueror**
(1907-1979)

Did we murder John Wayne with our nuclear dust?

The “Duke” was invincible when
He won World War II in the films we all knew,
A surrogate father back then.

Did we murder John Wayne? Was it all the bad scripts?

Or cancer, from taxes we paid?
Did he lack the true grit to survive from a bit
Of fallout our precious bombs made?

Did we murder John Wayne? Officials say no,

Those nuclear tests were risk free.
Like John, to us youth, bureaucrats tell the truth
In this nuclear land of the Free.
12-19-82

**The incidence of cancer in the cast of The Conqueror (1956)

Filmed in Utah is 65% above the national average.
*

Death Wings

Ghost-bird flapping loud,

Like a rustling, charnel shroud
Strikes your window frame,
Screeching your last name.
1973
*

December Sky

The moon is misted with rain,

And moon-tears dribble and drain
The length of the sky. They fall
Into the Big Dipper, that catches them each and all.
12-09-78
*

Deception

The emerald grass is high,

And silver dewdrops glaze
Beneath the pale gold sky
Where unicorns still graze.

Their horns are ivory,

And mythical, it’s true:
 But shut your eyes, and see
Them real as me and you.
1977
*
Dedication

Faded roses sadly flung,

Graves and ghosts and grue
From antique balladry, now sung
One more time for you.
1973
*

Dedication of Love
(For Mary Rose)

Your mother is someone I live for and love,

So come, little child, and sit down next to me,
And tell me, did pale golden stars up above
Paint your hair the halo of yellow I see?
Your curls are fringing your forehead with light
The colors of planets that melt with the green
Of your eyes, reminding me, through gaze serene
You will speak of my love, to your mother tonight.
Caress her with kisses of innocent fire,
Your hair and your lips gently carrying my desire,
And when she sees your love has gained something new
She’ll tremble and wonder and murmur a few
Soft words in an answer to love’s gentle kiss,
And stroking your curls, she’ll whisper to you: (remove)
“Whose love are you bringing to me? Is it his?”
08-25-78
by Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)
First English translation
from Des Vers (1880)
*

Dedicatory

Faded roses sadly flung,

Graves and ghosts and grue,
Invocations—maledictions—sung
Sardonically for you.
1977
*

Definition

Love: the warmest weave of flesh and friendship,

Trust, till-the-endship,
Bittersweet, romantic blendship.
03-79
*

Delilah Goes Dancing

 Her Mama says, “Daughter, take care when you’re dancing, the boys,
They don’t step on your feet,
Be fast on your toes. Wear your very best clothes,
You never know who you might meet.
“Cause life is a ballroom, and you’re at the center,
With your dress and your pretty red hair.
So get out there and dance, like a paperback romance,
‘Cause you just might meet Fred Astaire.”

But the ballrooms were closed, and disco was over,

Though in Texas they still like to swing.
The fiddles enchant her, and the cowboys they dance her,
And one of them offers his ring.
He’s not big in cattle, no, and he’s got no oil well,
But he’s got a Texas size grin.
She’s in the family way—he got a raise in pay—
And you ought to see her dance and spin

Now her life is happy, and her life is tragic,

And her life is like yours and mine.
When her hair turns to grey and they lay her away,
Her children walk by in a line.

But sometimes at night you can see dear Delilah by the church at the top of the hill.
She floats on the breeze, in and out of the trees. She dances and she always will…
Delilah goes dancing, she’s spending her life in a whirl,
Delilah goes dancing, that magical, musical dancing girl.
1981
*

“Demora, Goodbye”

I.

I slept, and saw your face again, pale against the dark of dream..
Demora, how you haunt my tossing sleep anew!
“Unfaithful”…this you sigh across oblivion’s black stream
That flows like Lethe in my memory…
I left you, yes—but for that vampire-mistress, Poetry.

II.

She drains my youth and presses brief sanguine kisses on my soul,

And I write sonnets named for her, not you,
Although, Demora, you I rather should extol.
But I was won away by Poetry’s sweet lies,
While you, Demora, stifle sobs and martyred cries.

III.

I woke and saw your face again, bright across the fog of years,
Demora, all too late. Futility remains. All else is through.
For Poetry deserted me, months ago. She left no tears,
But hinted at a younger lover she desired.
Her love for me (like mine for you, Demora), now’s expired.
 IV.

………………………..
10-13-82
*

Depression

Your sky is shadowed with a tomb-dark cloud

That dims our future’s falling, faint far star,
And all your pain wraps us in cold thick shroud,
Till who you were is choked by who you are.
The flame of love that flickered golden-red
Is grey-black ashes in your frozen soul,
As you wish you could sleep, forever, dead
And dreamless, like the love Time saw and stole.
But yet, however bleak the fireless sky,
A shaft of God-light bursts and burns up high,
And glows on you amid the grimmest grey.
And if you find the death for which you pray,
You’ll damp and darken everybody’s day:
So any friends, not just I, will weep their grief away.
06-20-76
by Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)
First English translation
from Des Vers (1880)
*

Desert

Bloody rose-red sun,

Gory drops that run
Crimson on the sky,
Till they scab and dry.

Later, moonshine pales

Skies as sunlight fails,
And the dusk brings night,
Freezing all the light.
1968
*

Deservedly

A poet’s a thief with a knife,

Cutting off pieces of life
Belonging to woman or man,
Running as fast as he can.

A poet’s a sin-happy saint,

Clown covered up with green paint,
A sadist, a soldier, a fool—
Poet’s get kicked out of school.
02-25-77
*
 Destination
(for Gerald W. Lunt)

The bony finger beckons,

The skeleton’s white hands
Invites us all. The skull-pale pall
Of marble juts and stands
Monumental, in the grave-thick lands.

Oblivion’s sweet country

Is glowing moonlit-bright,
The markers loom. Each urn-capped tomb
Is skeletally stark tonight.
Hasten toward the tempting, funereal light…
09-82
*

Devouring Yesterdays

We grind up centuries between our teeth.

We gulp the decades down,
Digesting eras with a self-pleased smile.

We spit out months that taste too green,

But chew up years all brown,
And swallow ripened seasons served in style.

At Time’s vast feast millennia are spread

For banqueting: we glutton gods are fed.
05-18-83
*

Devout

“God is dead,” but women do not know it—

Charmingly refuse to show it!—
Performing major little acts of love:
Little children—little flowers plucked for wearing,
Bigger burdens bearing…graceful caring…
And terrifying doubts, unmindful of.
01-16-82
*

Diagnosis

Insanity
Is vanity,
The narcissistic cry
Of “I, I, I, I, I, I, I.

And happiness
Consists of less
Analysis, and more of trust
In Him Who fashioned us from dust.
1982
*
 Difference

Little girls aren’t little boys,

They don’t make noise,
Well, not quite as much
When they reach to touch
Delicate new toys.
1980
*

Dinner

Time is the vampire that sucks the years dry,

Love is the maiden to die;
Time is the ghoul and your life is the meal
Rich with a gourmet appeal.

Curtains of purple are shredded with rot,

After the banquet, you’ve got
Nothing but age and the end of your love;
Time-vultures circle above.
04-02-77
*

Discovery

I.

My favorite boyhood books portrayed Crusades,

Those glorious struggles for the Holy Tomb,
When Christian bravery and blades
Condemned the Moslems to a gory doom.

King Richard, Lion-Hearted, severed necks

Of enemies to deftly make
A victor’s necklace, dripping crimson specks
From heathen heads, cut off for Jesus’ sake.

And so I fancied I was some bold king,

And for a sword took stick in hand
And made my wooden weapon slash and sing,
To scatter heads of flowers on the land.

For I was lord of trees and open air,

And scorned the castled kings I’d never seen.
To raise a throne, I made a mossy chair,
And wore a crown of fronds, of April green.

II.

I reigned resplendent in my kingdom till

Someone as young as me, walked in on me.
She made my feelings overflow and spill—
I offered her my forest court, for free.
 She sat below the chestnut tree and stared—
Her gaze made me surrender everything,
My royal gems and boyhood stripped and bared…
Her presence could have mastered any king.

So why did I forsake my castles, for a blue-

Eyed golden-colored girl upon the ground?
I felt the way Columbus did, to view
Those first enchanted islands that he found.
07-06-76 (rev. 11-26-90)
by Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)
First English translation
from Des Vers (1880)
*

Dispatch from Kent State

We had to save the land

With armored hand,
We had to empty truth
Into our youth.

We had to take their ground,

Until they’d found
Our patriotic lead
Had splashed them red.
08-17-73
*

Documentary
(for L. Sprague de Camp, author of Lands Beyond)

The wilder is the tale, the more it must not die.

Recorded history’s the lie.
Atlantis and Cibola, and Sargasso Sea
And Flying Dutchman—each, to me, reality.
03-06-82
*

Don’t Let Your Dreams Get Away From You

So many people you see on the street

Are walking heads down with their eyes at their feet,
You tell from how they move they’ve let it die.
You see an old friend and you ask him “What’s new?”
--He changes the topic to talk about you,
He hates to let you see his dream went by.

Everyone says, “Son, you’re wasting your life,

The years come down like a rusty knife
And cut the heart from out of your fantasy.”
It’s damned good advice but the kind you ignore,
You smile and you’re keeping right on like before,
That golden dream is your reality.

Don’t let your dreams get away from you,

 There’s nothing that’s quite as true
As a dream of your own—it’s stronger than stone,
Don’t let your dreams get away from you
There’s nothing that’s quite as true.
1976
*

Doomed Drifters

Orphan children on the run,

Terror-taunted,
Drinking rain and wearing sun:
Highway-haunted.

Roads of wanderlust are home

For the naked
Nameless rebels, born to roam
In self-hatred.
02-28-75
*

Drained

Church of the true sinner’s Saint

Rots under powdering paint;
Still the worshippers file
Down the cold stone-and-brick aisle.

There the masked pagan priest rants

Blasphemy into his chants,
Over the virginal, still
Sacrifice poised for the kill.

“Stab me and I’ll see you soon

Under the vampire-red moon,”
She promised just as he thrust,
Suddenly flaking to dust.

Two short weeks later it came:

Moonlight that dripped a red flame
Over the poor prayerless priest:
Tooth marks showed he’d been the feast.
07-03-77
*

Dream Album

I’ve been a pirate on black seas,

Explorer where the oceans freeze,
A monarch on an opaled throne,
An islander with rings of bone—
Inside the “British Colonies” thick section
Of my boyhood stamp collection.
06-15-78
*
 Dream Death

Silver-limbed lady floats past in a dream,

Body as soft as warm cream,
And her voice like a mandolin.

Why does she visit me only in sleep,

Why can’t I capture and keep
Her soft hair, and her satin skin?

Faint as a feather, she’s blowing away—

Gone are those eyes of soft grey,
Evergone, like her witch-girl grin.
01-11-79
*

Dream Dust

Beyond the plains of Yet-To-Be

Hills of Evermore
Are towered, tall above the sea
Splashing Time’s sad shore.

And yet the sands of What-I-Had

Blow and storm my brain
And batter me with golden glad
Sands of youth in vain.

For sand is sad and ever dry,

Bleaching out my dreams
Beneath a parching, white-hot sky,
Where my pale skull gleams.
09-30-72
*

Dream Haven
(For L. Sprague de Camp)

Lands unseen are always best--

Landscapes in your mind--
Blessed Islands gleaming west
Cartographers can’t find.

Terra Incognita lies

Past all Southern seas,
Under unknown golden skies
That warm the giant trees.

Animals no man has known

Mammoth fruits and plants,
Palisades of precious stone—
The shoreline of Romance.
05-06-79
*

Dream-Hill
 (1863-1947)

The fairies face a moon

That dims and pales,
And chant their ancient tune
Of Roman Wales.

The Mystery will last:

For we still need
The Grail and glories past,
And dreams to read.

So Arthur Machen’s art

Will murmur on,
Till all the elves depart,
Till Pan is gone.
08-03-72
*

Drifter
(in memory: Bliss Carman, 1861-1929)

Give me the road and give me the rain,

Give me the highway pain,
Give me the heat, and the chilliness off the sea:
Hot or frozen, wet or parched. Vagabond-free.
06-05-80
*

Driftwood

Lost is a land I only know

In my dreams:
Farmland and furrows, row on row,
Silver streams.

Barns and the fences, stretching out,

Like long arms,
Clutching the roads and rural route
To the farms.

Yet I must follow, where my boots

Stride and shift,
Tossed like a tree with ripped-out roots,
Blown, adrift.
10-31-76
*

Dumb-Show

Puppets pouting, cursing,

Snarling on the stage,
Manic marionettes rehearsing
Comedies of rage.

Puppet-master beaming
 “Let the show go on,
Ignore the boos and screaming--
Dance till Time is gone.”

Puppet-master working
Strings until they fray,
Painted manikins stop jerking:
Curtain on the play.
04-30-70 (rev. 09-13-90)
*

Earth-Arson
(for Gabriel Eng)

The demon sits astride a star

And rides it down the sky.
And from the planet where we are
We wave as he shoots by
“Hello,” mixed with “goodbye.”

Is he returning here or not?

Nobody seems to know.
The earth is melting, molten hot,
Till flames leap from the glow.
The demon’s fault, I know!
09-11-78
*

Earthquake

Tremble in your mind,

Mash your teeth,
Let the panic grind
Dreams beneath.

Shudder at the sound

Conscience makes:
All your solid ground
Shifts and breaks.
03-02-75
*

Easily Found

There’s a land that is lost, anybody can find:

Follow the fairy stream
Through forests of fable, back in your mind,
In the countryside full of dream.

Oh, so easy to travel and wander back home,

Over the years once more,
Where the elves and trolls are teasing the gnome,
Trying to make him roar.
08-08-73
*
 East Nashville Fire on 15th Street

House burned up one night,

Family was not inside,
I didn’t know how much they cried,
Looking at the charcoaled sight,
In that cruelest morning light.

Not the only one,

One more stands a block away,
Silently, as if to say
“Once the battle was begun
Fire, and not your water won.”
04-09-78
*

Eastland Avenue

The amber of autumn is tinting the trees

Brown with a varnish of gold
From the sun-fall. Crisp, dry, brittle leaves softly die
Like an unfinished story half-told.

The leaves are like pages that nobody reads,

Blowing indifferent on wind
In September, like waste paper scattered in haste.
Barren trees, like my passions: all thinned.
09-20-82
*

Easy Lover

No one ever stops the seasons,

No one made of flesh and bone,
No one tells you half the reasons:
‘Better learn them on your own.

Life is like an easy lover,

Loyal till it’s time to leave;
Later, when you’re thinking of her,
Take a little time to grieve.

Treat her like a lady through

Clear and cloudy years:
Even if she’s cheated you,
Thank her for her time and tears.

Life is like an easy lover,

No one tells you what she’s for:
Just as soon as you discover,
Love her, when she cries for more.
07-28-68
*

Echo
 I hear a howling of Infinity
(A million billionsworth of years),
My ears
Reverberating the immensity
Of spatial, blue-black void that spans
A multiverse that dwarfs this earthen speck of Man’s.
1979 (Rev. 11-11-90)
*

Echoes

People have to learn

Old, old things once more,
Years revolve, return,
Repeat—what’s gone before.

Older ears hear all:

Politician’s lies,
Children when they call,
War-clouds in the skies.
09-20-76
*

Ecstasy

Silver dreams
Tarnish fast,
Nothing gleams
From the blurring past.

Iron dreads
Leave their stain
Black, black reds,
Are like rust-in-rain.

But rain dries,

In the sun,
And silver skies
Are but re-begun!
11-24-76
*

Ecstasy (2)

Rare signed editions never please me anymore,

Their precious, over decorated bindings but a bore,
And I grow sick of sonnets, songs, and psalms;
The must and bookish murk fill me with gloom,
I leave the library where only poems bloom,
And seek the sea in one of its rare calms.

The waters beckon like some woman’s opal eyes,

The splashing on the rocks is like a siren’s sighs,
And draws my feet straight down the sea-wall stairs;
Behind… the library; ahead…the peaceful wet
And welcome water where I soon will let
 Oblivion remove all care.
06-26-78
*

Edgar Allan Poe

(1809-1849)

In the vaulted mausoleum hear the shriek!

Madeline is wresting free
From her tomb-tied agony.

Hear the rapping, tapping of the Raven-beak,

Rhyming at your chamber door
Tritely, tritely, “Nevermore.”

Hear the necrophilic, dream-drugged poet speak

With inebriated breath:
“Ulalume…Lenore…Red Death!”

Wonder at his lust for wasting, waning, weak

Ebbing women, bloodless-white,
Like Virginia, eyes Death-bright.
(Like his wife, before his sight. alternate line)

Ponder why he only lived to search and seek

Death herself, and loved her true.
Sweetest temptress that he knew.

03-15-75
*

Elaine, Ethereal
(for Marge B. Simon)

I glimpsed you strolling as you always used to do,

Graceful as a playful breeze
On the knoll alive with lilies, yesterday.

You wore that tailored shirt of sailor-blue,

Tattered jeans above your knees
And your dust-gold hair in sunny disarray.

Erotic wraith, I know you’ve been untrue!

Death’s the lover whom you please.
He seduced you, pretty phantom—pallid, fey,
In denim-blue and sunlit gold. And I feel grey
As your marker, where I kneel and pray.
09-10-82
*

Elfin Summons

Obey the steady roll

Of some strange drum,
That bids your restive soul
“Come away, come.”
 Forsake your trivial life,
Depressingly mundane,
And heed the fairy fife
Piping Pan’s refrain.

Evacuate this land,

Embark for realms unknown,
Where pink-walled castles stand
Hewn from crystal stone.
1968

Elftune
(for S. Slattery)

Ethereal music cheers the night:

Flute and tambourine,
Fiddle and a soft guitar,
Musician’s never seen.

Fey troubadours stay out of sight,

Where the shadows are:
Little men in gold and green
Who sing to moon and star.
04-09-80 (rev. 1990)
*

Embrace

Time is a loyal lover,

Hugging you to death.,
Lingering to hover
Till your final breath.

Never mind her madness,

Misery and miles,
Kiss away her sadness,
Memorize her smiles.
08-21-73
*

Embrace (2)

Iron-winged angel with riveted wings

Gliding down steel-colored skies
Is fashioned of girders and concrete and brick,
Floating toward you. You thrill when she sings,
Sweet as a jack-hammer—weep when she cries
“Forgiveness” in phrases metallic and thick.
The Angel descends , and industrial fumes
Exhale from her lips. Copper nostrils shoot spumes
Of vapor—the chemical angel now looms.
7-83
*
 Empty Palm

The grasping fingers grip

The straws of life in vain,
They splinter, snap or slip
Away, and naught remain.

The seizing hand holds dust.

Life’s legislated law
Decrees: who clutches, must
Not even keep one straw.
02-22-83
*

Endangered Fowl

The little people pray for peace,

The supplication goes unheard…
The Christian nation’s bombs increase,
And soon the dove’s a dead white bird.
01-26-82
*

Envy
(1757-1827)

If I were William Blake, I’d see

Each star that lights Eternity;
But since my name is something less
I only sense their silverness.
03-23-80
*

Erasing All Trace of Elaine

It’s true, I have forgotten you, Elaine,

Utterly, as leaves when leaving summer trees
Die unremembering, as they coast along the breeze
Toward autumn ground. No souvenirs remain.
Blurred images efface and fade. I cannot see your plain
White dress, bedecked with flowered fineries:
Poppies…yellow, orange, with Death-dark centers. Please
Believe my love’s dissolved, drowned in Fall’s grey rain.
Through dimming years I’ll rarely, any more
View you in my imaginings. Your summer-tinted hair
Of golden tawn recedes. My lust cannot recall
Your criminally-carnal figure, or
Your rose-flushed mouth. Romance lies in Death’s lair.
In winter’s pall, I have forgotten all.
08-80
*

Escape

Evening was draping dark

 Shrouds of yesterday,
Smothering it with stark
Sheets of black and grey.

Now the open graves of night

Free the dawn once more:
Morning moves in robes of light
From the night-tomb’s door.
03-16-75
*

Essential Persistence

The wisdom of the wind is motion,

Wandering ecstatic, yet sublime.
The charity of rain is laving lotion,
Cleansing residues of urban grime.
The genius of the sun is searing passion—
Violent, erotic rampant fire.
But cooling clay and earth we wear in fashion
Finally, when our hot hearts expire.

Our flesh erodes. Our bones flake too.

But souls need neither…born, anew.
1987
*

Etchings

Years arrive and leave,

Winters roll and weave
Lines around your eyes
Making you look wise.

Wise enough to know

Every wind to blow
Leaves its time and trace
Furrowed in your face.

Lines of love and grief,

Hate and disbelief,
Rage, and loyalty,
On your face to see.
02-18-74
*

Eternal Balladry

I hear the songs of working people played

By three-piece bands, sung part off-key
In taverns, with electric amplifiers turned up high,
Or up the mountains where the tunes have stayed
Changeless, for two hundred years of song.
This Anglo-Celtic minstrelsy can never die
So long as mandolins and fiddles cry
Their plaintive songs of true, true love turned wrong—
 Of God—and ghosts—and deaths and birth,
And square-dance reels where clapping couples throng.
Upon the oceans—on the plains—there, the songs are made
For people close to water, dust and earth,
Where love and grief give music all its worth,
And where the troubadours ply their timeless trade.
1982
*

Eternal Soldier

I’ve marched this field before,

Lives past,
I’ll last
A thousand lifetimes more.

I’ve fought with club and gun,

I’ll fight
With bright
New bombs that dwarf the sun
12-10-77
*

Eternal Soldier (2)

I’ve marched this field before

In lives I’ve lived long past,
And yet I’ll strive and last
A thousand lifetimes more
Through smoke and cannon-roar.

I’ve fought with club and gun,

And on and on I’ll fight
Till radiating bright
New bombs as bright as sun
Combust us, everyone.
1982
*

Eternal Timber

The Cross is our crutch: we are lamed and maimed,

Crippling sin in our soul,
Defiled and scourged, our faith defamed,
Golgotha our gloried goal.

The Cross is a bludgeon for smiting down

Death in his sable gown.
It’s Roman-hewn and Jesus-borne,
Encircled with blood-flecked thorn.
12-10-86
*

Ethical Operation
 Transplant the organs, one by one,
And when the surgery is done
Transfer the most important part:
A conscience to his heart.
12-19-78
*

Evaporation

I’m dreaming your face in the silvery dawn,

An opaline image of white,
Evanescently faint, like a hand-painted saint,
Piously pale in the light.

I worshipfully wait for the sharpening lines

To clarify features of you,
But planes in your face are dissolving in space,
And another dull day starts anew.
08-03-82
*

Evening in Spring
(“He will be a rational man, but perhaps never happy.”)

The April moon arrives

Melting us with its rays,
But nothing long survives,
Nothing of April days,
Nothing of Love’s brief blaze.

The April moon departs.

Misty with Spring-sad rain,
And we with false starts
Suffer our moon-made pain,
Lovers who kissed in vain.
03-14-79
*

Evensong

Steeple slashed with shadows

Scales the twilit sky,
Aspiring like an Angelus.
Below, the traffic hurtles by
Indifferent to bricks upthrust so high.
1971
*

Evermore

Hammers of hate beat the steel

Into a helmet and blade.
Blacksmiths and armorers feel
Proud of the death-bound brigade.

Marching past crowds on the curb,

 Clattering heels on the stones.
Later, the crows will disturb
Flesh as it ripens on bones.

Preachers and Popes prate of peace,

Powerless to change history:
Powder, and guns wrapped in grease
Auger what always will be.
09-14-77
*

Everytown, USA

Children whom the schools can’t teach,

Nor the courts can’t reach—
Parents give up, too;
Children for awhile survive,
Later when they’re twenty-five,
Some wear prison blue.
06-10-78
*

Except, Perhaps, Prayer

Curse. Rail. Spit.

In short impress your peers
With your modernity.

Sneer. Scoff. Hit.

But naught will save
You in eternity.
09-15-82
*

Exchange

Silver trumpets rally

Soldiers down the valley
Mustered one by one:
Battle-flags are flying,
Wives and children crying
Futile tears that freely run.

Woman’s work is weeping:

Men are born for keeping
Honored hates of old.
Crimson banners flower.
Pomp…and bankers’ power.
Gore congeals on ill-got gold.
08-25-75
*

Exposed

You really feel too deep,

 You let your sorrows seep
Up the fissures in your soul:
Down your face they roll.
1981
*

Extermination

I stand indifferent to rat-nosed Time who gnaws,

I stride oblivious to Time’s laws,
His ravenous, remorseless years’ assault.
The rat’s teeth sink. Then halt.

My leg withstands, impervious to fangs of Time.

Acknowledging that rodent is a crime.
The vermin soon is mashed beneath my heel
To grease. There—hearken to his squeal.
1987
*

Extrapolation

If my science sounds fictitious,

Then I’ll stick to ghosts and witches,
Where there’s much more evidence
(Such as photographs and documents!)

Than there’ll ever be for ships

Crossing Time is rocket-ships…!
(Or those Martians with green lips,
Refugees from comic strips).
Alternate second verse:
For it’s lunacy to write of trips
In time-traversing magic ships,
Confronting Martians with green lips
Resembling those in comic strips.
08-05-80 (rev. 11-15-90)
*

Faith

Your holy laws

Are witch’s claws
Castrating me
With piety.

Your God is grief:

But my belief
He’s not heard of:
Sweet, sweaty love.
1967
*

Faith (2)

I have clung loyal to my dear poetic line,

 Its stilted constancy,
Its artificial, all too fine
Stiffened symmetry.

For twenty years it has been truly mine,

If borrowed from before;
Old quatrains in the quaint design
Modernists abhor.
1982
*

Faithful in His Fashion

(1867-1900)

Ernest Dowson was a singer of the saddest, tritest tune,

Of the fawning, futile love that poets blame upon the moon,
And his lyrics all were painted on the margin of the page,
So his water-colored lines were barely noticed by his Age.

Wine-and-roses, and Cynara, floating lonesome in the air

Of the foggy yellow Nineties, in a Soho restaurant where
An Italian fickle waitress cracked a poet’s dream, yet made
His exquisite, fragile verses, faintly flower, not to fade.
07-01-72
*

Faithful in My Fashion
(August 2, 1937, Lewisham Cemetery, SE London)

I dreamed I saw the grave of Ernest Dowson

Bleakly set
In some forgotten churchyard corner,
Lone and wet.

The spectral London fog descended cold on

Sentry grass
Where seldom any visitors or pilgrims
Deign to pass.

And in my reverie I bravely scattered

Roses there,
And felt a frail and wispy “Thank you”
Warm the air.
02-17-79 (rev. 06-28-80)
*

Fall Melody

There’s music in the breath of breeze

Exhaling with a wispy wheeze
That scatters leaves on forest floor
And has one hundred years or more
In singing autumns long before.

A hundred autumns of soft wind,

A hundred times it’s thinned
 The branches of their leaves, till bare:
A hundred autumn-times the air
And trees have chorused there.
10-28-79
*

Fall Showers

Summer weeps and grieves,

Rain-tears moisten leaves,
October grey replaces blue—
Autumn cries, anew.
09-15-78

Famine Foretold
(Stalin, 1930, 30 million, and Mao Tse Tung 1960, 42 million, et al)

The land is the lord of men who live

Near yellow and lime-green fields,
Who plant it and till it and gladly give
All their toil, for crops it yields.

Dictators forced them to the modern way,

Profaning ancestral farms,
The land did avenge itself one day
With the prophesied, ancient harms.
01-08-80
*

Fancy

Imagination lights,
A path through all your nights,
For you to follow blind
Across your moon-struck mind.

But deeper in your brain

Are beasts you have to chain
The ancient fears and dreads
That populate our heads.
06-74
*

Far Notes

The age is dead,

And writhing worms are fed
Our books, unread.

But still I read

The warning signs that plead
For us to heed.

Our age has come

 To love the dinning drum,
And bullets’ hum.

Yet still I can

Hear happy tunes of Pan
No bombs, can ban.
11-09-74
*

Far Place

Time is a tunnel of fears,

Funneling years
Down a spiral of darkening dread
Twisting ahead.

Somewhere the passage ends,

After it bends
Millions of labyrinthine turns:
Somewhere Man learns.

Somewhere and someplace we find

We’ve been but blind
Burrowing brutes in the devil’s night,
Shunning Christ’s light.
03-12-76 (rev. 06-22-90)
*

Farewell

Rejoice! The cavalcade of dreams arrives,

Fancies, dreads, mirages too,
The legend-laden caravan unpacks—for you.

Despair! Processional of dreams departs,

Fairies, ghosts recede from view
Parading into mist. Reality obtrudes anew.
1978
*

Farewell (2)

A million melting moons drip

Silver down the sky,
And spatter lunar madness in your eye.
Your brain becomes a moon-ship
Voyaging up high—
So wave your Earth-bound sanity goodbye.
06-17-83

Farewell, Lyrista

The split in the walls of Time

Widens, and you walk through
 Corridors, eons, new…
Why can’t I come with you?

Up towering heights you climb

Seeking infinity
Far, in a sky-black sea…
Left here on Earth is me.

And you hear the centuries’ chime,

Caroling, one by one,
Tolling our time’s, now done:
Hope that is left…is none.

For now that you’ve vanished, I’m

Pining in this bleak place,
Dreaming about your face
Lost—untraced—in Space.
03-02-80
*

Fatal Orgy

There’re seasons for singing and seasons for sinning,

Both of them can combine:
A feast for a glutton is only beginning,
Naked slaves pour out the wine.

The eunuchs are dancing, the minstrels are playing,

When the Black Stranger arrives,
But dukes are too drunk to hear all that he’s saying,
Pawing at dead peasant’s wives.

The crimson cloth curtains are suddenly ripping

Down from the black Stranger’s blade,
And sobering lords are all stumbling and tripping,
Grunting that they’re not afraid.

But too late they unsheathe their swords and discover

Pestilent, putrid Black doom:
A curse from a coffin with worms for a lover;
Black Plague strews rot on the room.
03-77
*

Fealty Avowed
(in memory, King Juan I of Redonda:
John Gawsworth, 1912-1970)
(for J. D. Squires)

Redonda, Caribbean isle, remains

Whipped by the waves and gales of centuries,
The brunt of instant, tropic torrent-rains,
Where birds and royal legend’ries
Combine. Rude rock Redonda! No man stays
For long upon your cactused crags, and yet--
We close our eyes, and glimpse your greys
 And browns: our Empire where no sun has set.
Redonda: realm of loyal, exiled souls
Envisioning your cliffs and silver skies,
Your surf, your shoals, where tide uprolls
Rebuffing mariners amid the sea-bird cries…
Redonda. Quaint, quixotic kingdom, far
And always very near to where we are.
02-15-81
*

Feather on the Sea

It wasn’t very long ago Tomorrow was my friend,

Life was like a river rolling lazy ‘round the bend.
Wasting time and then I found that Time was wasting me:
Took me and it tossed me like a feather on the sea.

Following a fading star I know I’ll never find,

Like a drunken sailor never looking once behind.
Floating like a feather on an ocean full of foam:
One more dream-struck drifter whose horizons are his home.

Feather on the sea, that’s me, without You,

Jesus rescue me from the sea--take me through.
Feather on the sea.

You can be my compass with Your wisdom and Your will,

Jesus help me travel when I feel I’m standing still.
You can be my map and help me reach that far off shore:
Help me weather every storm no matter what’s in store.

Till I found You I was on an ocean of despair,

Using up my future like it really wasn’t there.
Facing every wind of fate no matter how it blew:
Feather on the sea without a friend till I found You.

Feather on the sea, that’s me, without You.

Jesus rescue me from the sea--take me through.
Feather on the sea.
1968 (Rev. 7-74, 1986)

Feeding Place

Vultures in a ring
Circle yesterday
Swooping down to bring
Up their dying prey:
Love that died away.

Love that Time had slain

On the desert sand:
Well-picked bones remain
As the vulture-band
Forages love’s land.
 02-20-75
*

Feeding Time

Floating on the bay

Of green
Are seen
Dragon snakes at play.

Arcing through the air

They thrive,
And dive
Down on sailors there.

See them slide and slip

On the deck
Of the wreck
That was once a ship.
02-03-75
*

Fiend Fodder

Satyrs paw and hoof,

Elves dance on your roof,
Werewolves wail and woof.

Look out in the night,

Water-witch and sprite
Dance in swamp-gas light.

Down below the road

Where the fox-fire glowed,
Hear the demon-toad.

Crawl back in your bed.

Later dawn breaks red:
Two more cows are dead.
06-26-77
*

Fifty Years

At the ancient burying-ground,

Spirits overhead
Hover happily around
Gardens of the dead.

Nightly living lovers come

Quiet to that place,
All the phantoms flutter from
There without a trace.

Lovers take and use the night,

Gone before the dawn
 Leaves a mourning-wreath of light
On the marbled lawn.

Lovers leave before the black

Sky returns to blue:
Fifty years, and they’ll be back
There as spirits too.
06-20-70
*

Fifty-Per Cent

He put ten years on her eyes in a single morning.

He didn’t do much to her except walk away.
He never raised a hand and he never raised too damned much money.
But he left her fifty-per cent of his final pay.

She’s holding two jobs and she’s holding her little heart together
The children make their own beds and breakfast, too.
The women’s magazines provide advice—and coupons.
And her Mama and her sister drop by, to see her through.

There’s no hard feelings, they’re the best of friends, still.

He takes the children on Sunday afternoon.
She’s liberated from love, she’s her own person.
And no one sees her cry except the moon.

She’s taking two classes down at the local college,

A book-keeping course and volleyball 101.
She’s twenty-eight, she’s changed her hair, she’s jogging!
And her friends down at work say her life has just begun!

But you know, fifty-per cent of the American dreams get broken.
One-half of the brides and grooms pay lawyer’s fees.
And fifty-per cent of the couples are coming uncoupled.
But the precise percentage of tears nobody sees.
1981
*

Fighters Reward

Wounded barbarian none gainsay is brave,

Enemies harrying him to his grave,
Trench filled with valiant comrades, struck
And split by the axes, or arrows that stuck.

Orgies have slated and wasted his brain:

Wenches and wine left a mid-morning pain
Dulling his eyes as he slashes and swings,
While straight for his body a javelin zings.

Slowly his sword-arm is losing its strength;

Whistling arrows are leaping the length
Spanning the distance from bow-string to chest,
Encircling his breast like a feather-barbed vest.
 Sagging to sand in a pool of rich red,
Shutting his eyes, he imagines instead
Maidens besprawled on a silken divan…
Valhalla entices the soul of this man…
1980 (rev. 12-29-90)
*

Fill Up A Glass Full of Memories

Here’s to the heroes who’ve left us,

In war-time—or on the freeways—or in the bars.
Here’s to the ladies who’ve known us—
For the kisses, for the tears, and for the scars.

Here’s to the futures we’ve squandered,

Here’s to the songs we play,
Here’s to our friends, both living and dead,
May we all get together one day…

Fill up a glass full of memories,

Drink to the dreams gone by.
Fill up a glass full of memories—
Nostalgia is making me high.
1983
*

Finale

Our tragicomedy was curtained down,

With her still laughing at my crucial lines,
Me tripping on her makeshift, tawdry gown,
Embroidered with a clown’s, not queen’s designs.
More months of bitter letters flowed between
Us, linking us like losers to defeat.
And for an anti-climaxed, encore scene,
We wore love’s death-mask and its winding sheet.
We exited the stage apart, adrift,
Our tattered, rolled-up script tossed in the aisle,
And blushed to think our mutual gaudy gift
For melodrama made the critics smile.
We passed upon the street in early Fall:
It hurt not hurting any more at all.
19-17-77
*

Finale (2)

Poets play it safe when they grow older,

Verse gets carefuller and colder,
Showing youngsters how it’s really done,
When all that’s really done’s the one
Who wrote it. Done! Done!
07-14-81
*

Fire Storm
 Ancient city wall
Pinnacled so tall
Begins to crumble, crack and fall
In the shuddering, brute blast.

Soon the sidewalks shake

Buildings shift and break
Amid the Armageddon-quake
Till even God’s aghast.
09-24-74 (rev. 08-23-80)
*

First Aid

Cut the cancer,

Lance the boil,
Oil the rash,
Gash the unnatural growths
Inside your soul.

And splash on sentiment, afterward:

Cheap antiseptic, but it won’t sting.
08-12-72
*

Fiscal Advice

Coming close means nothing.

Ninety-nine per cent
Equates to zero when God tallies
Up your lifetime’s rent.

So always pay completely.

Try to be on time,
Else Satan will foreclose you,
Eking every dime
05-10-92
*

Five Thirty, P.M.

The fire filling afternoon sky

Blazes bright rose;
Red colorings flower then die,
Afternoon purple…then goes.
1980
*

Flame Feast

Moth upon the wing:

Poet born to sing,
Flutters toward the bright
Bliss inside the light.
 See them turn to ash,
Flaring in a flash,
Wingless, songless, dead:
So the flames are fed.
08-25-71
*

Flame Future
“Shapes in the fire come and go…”
M.P. Shiel, “Phorfor,”
Shapes in the Fire (1986)
(for John D. Squires)

Gypsy tunes at any open fire,

Faces form in the smoky spire,
Like ghosts of the Things-to Come,

Flames revealing your Yet-to-Be,

Shimmering images, musically
In time with the mandolin strum.
1985
*

Flames

Your face fades into its veil,

Spider-web pale,
But we talk idly of books,
Not of your looks.

Your body is smoldering bright,

Flesh will ignite,
And you ask “What have I read?”
All has been said.
10-08-77
*

Flaming Prose
(for Ray Bradbury)

He dared to write another book,

After the last one burned,
We marveled at the chance he took,
Proud that he hadn’t learned.

The media-police arrived,

Lighting the gasoline,
Afraid if one more book survived
Others would be seen.
07-09-78
*

Flash-Backs at Forty-One
(for Charlie Lewis)

Memories sharpen with hastening years…

 Sand-box and shovel and toys
And tree-forts and pranks, and my Sunday-school thanks,
Little boy yearnings and joys.

Later, Tom Sawyer’s the would-be Don Juan,

Highways, and one-night hotels.
Cheap beer at the bar. And an unlucky star
Lighting those furnished room hells.

Finally, faces of long-ago friends

Focus, recede and return;
One dead and some wed…souvenirs in my head.
Brilliant memories burn
Sweeter than incense, within the mind’s urn.
08-20-82
*

Flight

Perfection in a verse has icy shape.

Refrigerated form too cold to feel.
So turn away, effecting your fast escape
From unthawed art, too chill and funereal.
02-03-82
*

Flogged

My eyes are stabbed with spike-point stars,

My heart is flamed by gaseous suns,
My face is carved with wind-whipped scars,
My eardrums puncture from the thunder’s guns.

My dreams divide with earth quake cracks,

I’m buried in volcanic ash---
From wanting you. Love frays and wracks
My soul beneath its studded lash.
07-02-83
*

Flower-Death
(for Christopher Lee, 1922- )

I.

Castle of crimson is towered

High on the cliffs in thick mist,
Where the reddening roses are flowered,
Clutched in the mountainside’s fist.

The roses are red as the curtain

Hung in the dim dining room
Of the vampires. They drink deep, uncertain…
Sensing incipient doom.

Blood from the turret top drains down,

 Giving the roses their shade;
Peasants below in the plains town
Cross themselves thrice, still afraid.

II.

Then: a priest is victorious

Scaling the cliff all alone;
And the roses of blood, once glorious,
Powder to grey like a bone.

Garlic and crosses and torches

Burn out the pestilence there
And peasants can see from their porches
Rose-colored flames in a flare.
10-17-77
*

Flush!

The planet is a toilet for the human race’s waste,

Our toxins poison land and air, and sea,
But luckily we’ve plans for some rockets to ship Man’s
Atomic turds in space perpetually.
02-21-83
*

Flying Dutchman

Time is not a hearse,

It’s just a ship
Bearing your best verse
On one long trip.
07-01-73
*

Flying Dutchman (2)

Time is not a hearse,

It is a skeleton-manned ship,
Its cargo your best verse
Its chartless course a trip
Through hellish sun and gales that whip,
Evading polar iceberg’s grip
Mirage-like vessel vaguely seen
Enlaced with kelp Sargasso-green.
1991
*

Foliage
(The Hold Vehm of Westphalia)

Swords of the Brotherhood, unsheathe and slash,

Helmets of enemies crash;
Blades of the Order, write justice in red:
Vengeance drips bright where it bled.
 Brothers-in-arms sworn to violent pacts
Sealed with the gore of their acts
Wander the highways to rope up some thieves,
Coloring trees like red leaves.
03-77
*

Fond Fright

Legends live:
Witches give
Wicked, withered looks
From old books.

Fairy rings,
Devil wings;
Snuggle down so deep,
Try to sleep.

Demons range
Forth from strange
Empty marble tombs
Toward your rooms.

Wake, and thrill—

Sense the chill
Winds that gust your dreams
Wake with screams!
03-07-73
*

Fool’s Ore

Your mental rainbow arcs across

Horizons in your head—
But pots of gold are only dross
And black expunges green and red.
06-19-83
*

For Amy

Though I’m an easy-mannered man,

There isn’t anyone who can out shout me.
So any woman has to give
Herself up silently, or live without me
11-11-67
*

Foreseen

The gates of Time yawn back,

And let the seas of black
Rushing tidal waves
Turn cities into graves.
 Atlantis went before,
And soon our southern shore
Helps the Ages keep
Their promise with the Deep.
02-18-72
*

Forever

The centuries wind by

On history’s grim sky
Bloody red with stars,
And armies for all time
Enact the ancient ritual crime—
Worshipping of Mars.

Ten thousand years ago—

Tomorrow—or today—we know
Everything’s the savage same,
With Armageddon, Calvary, and
Auschwitz, each eternally
Firing us with shame.
04-15-75
*

Forget

Forgive whoever sent you here,

Forgive the judge:
He only did his duty clear,
So hold no grudge.

Forgive whoever testified

Against their friend,
Forget if anybody lied,
And face the end.
09-03-73
*

Formula

The helmeted cavaliers halt,

And notice a half-hidden vault,
Strangled with swamp grass and weeds,
When suddenly, iron doors creak,
And out rings an echoing shriek—
Riders dig spurs in their steeds,
Plunging through water and reeds.

They later inquire and learn

The vault holds an unhallowed urn
Full of vampire’s remains:
The ashes are centuries old,
Combining with fox-fire and mold
Moistened from overhead drains,
 Coming alive when it rains.
05-03-78
*

Fort Negley at Nashville

(for Joe Hays, Willie Keys)

The color of the fort is green today,

As foliage rends the parapets of stone
Like Yucatan or Angkor-Wat…all grown
With jungled trees, where rampant weeds hold sway.

The uniforms of blue are gone away,

And gone, the sweating blacks who heaved in place
The hand-hewn rocks. Their proud indentured race
Reared walls to hold the troops of grey at bay.

The Civil War was lost as well as won

By all of them. For black—for grey—for blue—
The Pains are healing. Cannon-fire is still.

For time has rusted brown the blade and gun,

And tarnished green, the bugle some boy blew;
Lush green has camouflaged the fortressed hill.
1982
*

Fort Phil. Kearney

Wyoming, 1866

A cairn of rocks announces where

My bed is, in the soil,
Oblivious to earthly care
And worldly, aching toil.

One morning, birdless feathers sailed

On wooden shafts towards me,
And left this Easterner impaled—
Then scalped—beneath this tree.
10-16-80
*

Forward March!

You’re young enough to love

A uniform of tan,
And old enough to shove
A saber through a man.

However you’re too young

To ever have the nerve
To open fire among
The men who make you serve.

Until the volleys fall

And turn us all to dust,
 You’ll all obey the call
Because we say you must.
12-22-67
*

Four Kinds of Lonely

There’re four kinds of lonely, and I know them all,

One of them’s summer, and one of them’s fall,
One of them’s winter, and one of them’s spring—
There’re four kinds of lonely, to each one I sing.

In spring-time I think of that year when we met,

In summer I think how you hadn’t left yet,
In autumn I think how you left like the leaves,
In winter I hear you when wind hits the eaves.

In spring-time I look at those flowers you grew,

In summer I walk through the woods we once knew,
In autumn I miss you, and I always will,
In winter I stand by your stone in the chill.
1981
*

Fragments

Everyone wants to believe

Crystal-ideals can’t be broken,
Later, the same people grieve,
Deaf to the warnings you’ve spoken.
04-28-72
*

Frank James ‘Been Living Too Long

(1843-1915)

The old man signs autographs, telling young boys how a lifetime of crime never pays,
You heard from his legends he robbed a few banks in his younger and turbulent days;
He works at the fairgrounds, he’s starting the horse race, he shoots off his gun with a blast—
They use him for drawing a crowd with the tales of his troublesome, violent past.

He works at the theater, taking the tickets, he works in a Wild West show,
Reporters come ‘round with the same old damned questions, and answers their readers must know:
“Now, say there, old-timer, hey what about Jesse your brother—was he all that bad?
And what about Northfield, and what about Nashville, those narrow escapes that you had?”

Frank James ‘been living too long, and he’s living on memories…
He tells you a story in trade for a drink or a job,
Frank James ‘been living too long, and he’s living on memories….
And how many payrolls and how many trains did he rob?

Now he was eighteen when he joined up with Quantrill to fight in that sad Civil War,
They rode into Lawrence—a hundred and fifty civilians were slain, maybe more;

And after the War both the James’s and Youngers kept riding and robbing, so free—
But Frank James read Shakespeare and raised him a family and hid out in old Tennessee.
 Now Jesse was wilder and Frank James was milder, the difference was easy to tell,
In St. Joe Missouri, his back to a friend, Jesse James took a bullet and fell,
And Frank James surrendered, he came in so quiet, they took him to trial for his crimes—
Now airplanes and automobiles tell the outlaw he doesn’t belong in these times.

Frank James ‘been living too long, and he’s living on memories…
He tells you a story for a drink or a job,
Frank James ‘been living too long, and he’s living on memories…
And how many payrolls and how many trains did he rob?
1981
*

Freedom

Green roads, westering bright

Down the May morning light
Beckon your feet.
Blue dreams, painful last night,
Die in defeat.

Orange hills, tinting the skies,

Daubing paint in your eyes:
Fruit-colored day.
Black winds, yesterdays lies,
All blown away.
02-08-77
*

Freedom Was the Death of Me

(for Chris Wiener)

We rode into Nacogdoches, with our pistols and our Bowie knives,
Volunteers for Texas—we came to risk our lives.
Some of us had families, and others, just the memory,
And some of us they didn’t hardly miss in Kentucky and in Tennessee.
Some of us came for adventure, and others, we came for land;
But at the Alamo down in San Antone we made our last stand.

Some called it glory and some called it greed, and some they called it “Liberty.”
But mostly they called it the Lone Star Republic—so Texas could be free.
But freedom was the death of me.

Colonel Bowie from Louisiana, with a big knife at his side,

He got drunk ‘most every day, but he was sober when he died.
Colonel Travis from Alabama, commander of the Alamo,
He answered Santa Anna with a cannon shot, and he let the world know.
Colonel Crockett, he was laughing—with his men he held the wall.
But the Mexicans, they overcame them, and you know they killed them all.

And the Mexicans kept coming, everyone of them was brave,

But they turned the mission of the Alamo into a heroes’ grave.
Susannah Dickinson, a lady from Tennessee—
Her husband died across his cannon, but Santa Anna let her go free,
With her little girl, she went free.
 Santa Anna he grew careless
Sam Houston he laid in wait
Down on the San Jacinto River
Santa Anna met his fate.

Now the tourists load their cameras, in a San Antone motel,

And they buy postcards and they suck on snow-cones, and they stand right where I fell.

Some called it glory and some called it greed, and some they called it “Liberty.”
But mostly they called it the Lone Star Republic, so Texas could be free.
And freedom was the death of me.
1985
*

Frolic

The children gather on the green

At night, unseen,
And chant the elder rites by rote,
Dancing to each note
With the Piper-Goat.

The ancient words are uttered shrill

In the autumn chill;
While older eyes are fast asleep
Children dance and leap
To the Piper’s peep.
1967
*
From a 23rd Century Text

The gates of Time yawned back,

And let the Western seas attack,
Hurling tidal waves
That turned the towns to graves.

Atlantis sank before—

And then the California shore
Settled out of view
Below Pacific blue.
11-01-91
*

From Your Fiancé

I found your letters yesterday—

Eighteen years ago.
You wisely wrote from Paris in francais
Without the pride, without the show.

I’m glad to note, I feel no more,

Reading you anew
Except to marvel how your closing door
Was shut so softly. Subtle you.

The tactfulness in every line

 Missed me way back then.
Your dignity indelibly divine…
Thanks come slow from certain men.
12-24-81
*

Frost Dirge

You scatter songs upon the breeze

Of August, casting all
Your lyrics and your May-time melodies
Away, before Fall
Descends with desolating pall.

You hear your tunes on autumn gales,

In banshee-echoed sound
Of late November. Music wails
In mockery as storm-gusts pound.
Your summer chords cannot be found.

The dirge of winter-time completes

Oblivion of all you’ve sung.
December weather’s wind defeats
Your muse. With ice, your lyre is hung,
Its frost-snapped strings unstrung.

Your sleet-bejeweled Death’s head strives to sing

Through Time-clenched teeth. But no notes ring.
1982
*

Frozen Rose

We cast away our rose,

Borne upon the breeze
That carries with it those
Summer memories.

Our wind-borne rose descends,

Petals floating down,
And summer love now ends
Like a rose turned brown.

There’s rose-dust at our feet,

Autumn in our hearts
That turns to snow and sleet:
Love’s long winter starts.
04-27-79
*

Full Circle

Fly the flag of fury high

On the red-washed sky,
Trumpet all your anger loud
At the cringing crowd,
 Empty all your cannon at
Them, and they fall flat.

Later, realize that you

Have to suffer too:
Cowardice and death can fall
On you after all;
Drop your battered, bloody blade,
Wishing that you’d prayed.
1968
*

Furled Flowers

The red salvia colors our lawn,

Later their flags are withdrawn
As the winter arrives and destroys
Innocent, red-flower joys.
04-24-78
*

Future Transportation

Levitation may be how

I’ll journey over times and worlds away,
Safer than the highway now
I travel every day.

Maybe, too, my soul will soar

Each night beyond the spheres of space,
Coming home again before
The dawn-light strikes my face.
10-01-78, (Rev.1983)
*

Gadfly

Back and forth, to and fro,

Forth and back, both I go
Fro and too, constantly
In search of elusive, uncapturable Me.
08-80
*

Galactic Gothic

The Age of Man

Is but a brief, abbreviated span
Of seconds ticking in a moment’s course.
Infinity: the final source
Is like a charnel house, with cypress tree
And yew and myrtle, growing in the graves of Space,
Where decomposes Time’s own face.
12-80
*
 Gallatin Road
(Nashville)

The house is sold. It brought a price

The owners took upon advice,
And willingly moved worlds away…
Obscene debasement starts today.

Today the vandal-salvage crew

Arrives to rip up boards and strew
The sundered bricks, and lift the doors
From hinges, and demolish floors.

A super drugstore will replace

The house and once again erase
Tradition. Thus the glass-and-chrome
Of Progress triumphs. One less home.
1980
*

Ganier Ridge, Radnor Lake, TN

Nature affronts the arch-modernist—

Feather and scale and skin and fur,
Crystal and stone and fern and burr…
Challenge his gears that wheel and whir.

Nature consoles the romanticist—

Gaseous fumes and stench of town,
Billowing plumes that bloom with brown…
Hasten him toward the woods’ green gown.
04-15-84
*

Garden Despoiled
(In commemoration,
Mssrs. Thomas Eliot, and E. Pound, esqs.)

Now the purpled poems pale

To fading lavender:
The brilliant orchids that they were
Decline and droop and fail,
And ugly, unpoetic weeds prevail.
1981
*

Garden Guard

Marigolds, the tint of molten sun,

Battled with the aphid horde, and won,
Routing them with pungent, putrid stink,
Beautiful to see…not smell…I think.
06-27-78
*

Garden Guests
 The sunflowers rise
Against the skies,
And eager elves
Climb one-by-one
Toward the smiling saffron sun
To tan themselves.
04-08-79
*

Gardening

I pull up weeds and dig them

Out by blade and hand,
Then gasoline for poisoning
To root them from my land.

The toughest, most resistant

Weeds are colored black:
The choking dread within my head.
I yank, but it grows back.
10-19-82
*

Gem-Siren

Amethyst eyes and a garnet grin

Beckon you from your home:
Marble-white woman with star-spun skin,
Shimmering in the gloam.

Tourmaline facets of light revolve,

Cycles of dazzling bliss
Brilliantly blind you, till you dissolve
Lost in her jeweled kiss.
1971
*

Geography

If there is Heaven, it lies right here,

And not just some farther place:
The joyful crystal of a tear
Hallowing your face.

If there is Hades, it lies…where?

I rather would not say!
Exact location…here? Or there?
Never ask. You know which way.
03-18-82
*

George Sterling
(1869-1926)

His verse was wrought to decorate,

 Embellish, glow, and shed the great
Immortal light of some far flagrant sun
That flares when Time itself is done.
1979
*

Ghosts

Old lace and cut glass,

Antiques of dull brass:
Dim dining room.
Lockets with hair-coils,
Portraits in old oils,
Cracked spinning loom
Paint peeling, tall weeds,
House where old Time feeds,
And the years gloom.
08-08-76
*

Ghoul Treat

Long icicles fall, splinter

On the grey cobblestones,
And silver shrouds of winter
Shield the frozen bones,
Frozen, flesh-full bones.

And ice-gnomes squirm and scurry

Over mossy tombs,
They’re hungry and they scurry
To the feasting rooms,
Marble feasting rooms.
11-01-75
*

Gibbet

The witch-tree stands on the hanging-hill…

Children shun it still!---
Where limbs that lifted flesh to dry
Writhe against dull sky.

It’s there my shamed and convicted kin

Swung in a cage for sin.
Today…we’re cautious in our rites,
Held on moonless nights.
10-31-68
*

Gift

These lines are for Mary Rose

To read when “up” she grows,
And books become her treasure chest,
And poems my bestowed bequest.
 And now you’re on the first fresh page
So set aside your age,
And act as old or young as you
Would like to be: that makes it true.

The golden world is ever new.

01-14-80
*

Gift Wrapped

Christmastime is package-time,
Paper everywhere,
Ribbons, cards, and string, till I’m
Almost bound to swear!
(Scotch tape in my hair…).
12-25-78
*

Glow!

Grandchildren—mirrors of you
Decades ago,
Long before fickle Time blew
Your hair with snow.

Grandchildren chatter and play—

Time disappears—
And their golden hair complements grey
Lighting your years.
11-10-76
*

Go Gentle on the Little Children

Go gentle on the little children,

‘Careful with your heavy hands,
Go easy when you touch their feelings,
Show them someone understands.

Go gentle on the little children,

Precious people half your size,
Sit down and listen to them,
See the future in their eyes.

You know, love needs more than feelings, it needs wisdom,

Good intentions sometimes aren’t enough,
You can try so hard and still be all too careless,
You can wound those little ones you love.

Go gentle on the little children,

One day they’ll be strong as you,
Carry them along with your compassion,
One day they’ll have children too.
09-30-78
 *

Gold Gore

The roads of gold are traveled west

By brigands who would wrest
The Golden Kingdom from the hold
Of kings who clutch at tarnished gold.

The golden gates are battered in,

Barbarians slash and win
The Golden Citadel at last
Where red (on golden bricks) runs fast.
1979
*

Gold Songs

Dreams are coins you toss,

Sweet loss,
Gambled young or old,
Fool’s gold.

Dreams are songs unheard,

Sounds blurred
Like fragile, tinkling chimes,
By Times.
1988
*

Golden Eagle

John Kennedy was not the wisest President we’ve known,

He should have looked the other way, and left this land alone;
But dying’s just another way of learning how to live,
And living’s something you can’t keep--it’s something you must give

John Kennedy was just a man, and men are born to die,
He wasn’t like some eagle that was born to rule the sky,
But even eagles touch the sun and sometimes burn their wings,
And even eagles do get shot, like Presidents and kings.

They shot a Golden Eagle from the sky,

They shot a Golden Eagle from the sky.

I think we lost a little more than Kennedy, you know,

We lost a Golden Eagle born two hundred years ago;
And every witness either dies, or else he disappears;
But maybe we can learn the truth, inside of fifty years.

But money bought the bullets, and some money bought the guns,
And money keeps it quiet just who are the guilty ones;
But how can money measure all the liberty we’ve lost?
They shot a Golden Eagle, but you guess who pays the cost.

They shot a Golden Eagle from the sky,

 They shot a Golden Eagle from the sky.
11-18-73
*

Golden Rings

Our nameless kings

Wear golden rings
On each flabby hand,
In London-town,
New York, or down
Deep in Switzerland.

Their stranglehold
Is ages-old,
Buried for all time,
As teachers lie
And school books try
Blotting out their crime.

But what remains

Are golden chains
Locking tight to bind
All nations to
Obey the few
Rulers of mankind.

Each law, each rule

Is but a tool
Tightening the yoke,
Each war, each peace
Will but increase
Golden links that choke.

It’s nothing new,

A nameless few
Always buy and sell
And trade and loan
The Earth they own:
It’s theirs—they might as well.

Each government,
Each continent,
Bled and ruled by debt
To secret kings
Who wear gold rings,
Nameless, faceless, yet.
01-23-73
*

Golden Spurs on a Silver Screen

Golden spurs on a silver screen,

Here comes the cowpoke, a-riding across the plains…
Tennessee Walking horse taking the reins,
Golden spurs on a silver screen,
 That brave buckaroo in the colorful cowboy suit.
Here come the outlaws, following in close pursuit.

Those bad guys, they always get what they deserve, yeah,
And the hero never kisses the girl, but he gets the horse, of course!

Golden spurs on a silver screen,

When I grew up I found it wasn’t quite all like that:
Sometimes the rustler, he’s wearing a big white hat.

‘Cause those bad guys they don’t always get what they deserve, no,
After they steal your girl, they ride off on your horse, of course!

Golden spurs on a silver screen,

When I die you can bury my body up in old Boot Hill,
And wherever I’m riding, you can say I’m a cowboy still
(You can donate my boots and saddle to the Goodwill!)
1980
*

Golgothan Solace

The wooden frame to which you’re nailed—

(Roman penalty)
With outspread wrists and spikes impaled
Transcends mere agony.

Between your brother thief and you

Upon His wooden span,
Sags a Shape soon raised anew…
Reprieving faith-filled man.
09-05-95
*

Gone

Pastel people with water-color dreams

Melt with the wash of years,
Fading, dimming, their future blurs and streams—
Coloring…disappears.
09-22-80
*

Gossamer Love

Silver-limbed lady floats past in a dream,

Body as soft as warm cream,
And her voice like a mandolin.
Why does she visit me only in sleep?
Why can’t I capture and keep
Her ethereal hair and skin?
Faint as a feather, she’s blowing away—
Gone are those eyes of soft grey,
Everlost, like her witch-girl grin.
01-11-79
 *

Gothic Bliss
(for John C. Moran)

I love an antique tale

Where noble swordsmen never fail
To rescue ladies fair
Or brave the dragon’s lair.

The creaking castle door—

The hidden stairway in the floor—
They each enchantingly
Excite and shudder me.

Romantic terrors thus combine

With Beauty. Old, old wine
Of witchery and wondrous dread
A Gothic castle in my head.
1974 (rev 06-21-83)
*

Grave Call

Green tomb
Shrouded with moss,
Stone room,
Cracked marble cross.

Cold floor,
Tight-chiseled rocks,
Steel door,
Never unlocks.

Noise wails
Moon pales,
Color of fear.

Dead moan
Through the thick walls
White bone
Beckons and calls.
06-26-77
*

Grave Proof

Art: loyalist, longest,

Kindest, strongest
Friend I’ll know.

Art: enemy of Time,

Living when I’m
Clay below.
 Time: enemy of flesh, hair
Bones and teeth, where
Worms but thrive.

Songs: stronger than headstones

Over bleak bones:
Songs survive.
12-11-76
*

Graveyard Verse Verities

I.

Raven, yew and cypress tree

Are emblems of mortality,
Embalmed in woodcuts on each page
Of poems from the Gothic age.

II.

Modern poets’ sense of gloom

Is fear of life, not of the tomb:
That dread which comes when reason rules—
But later, churchyards sleep such fools.
1977
*

Graveyard Verse Verities (2)

(for A. Langley Searles)

I.

The raven, yew and cypress, each

Reminded Man of death’s long reach,
Two hundred years ago: a page
Of wood-cuts from the Gothic age.

II.

Today, the poets’ sense of gloom

Is fear of life, not of the tomb;
And shrouds of existential dread
Enshadow Man’s dank crypt: his head.
04-14-83
*

Green Bride

Green Knight arrives at the gate,

Up slips the wrought-iron grate,
Draw-bridge is down,
Inside the Princess will wait
In her green gown.

Green Knight dismounting inside,

 Princess will soon be his bride
Veiled in grey-green lace
Covering her since she died:
Lichen moss blotching her face.
06-23-76
*

Grey Skater

Over the ageless ice

The Grey Skater glides
And spins as he slides,
Rounding the lakeside twice.

Notice his skull=grey face

Half masked by his coat
That collars his throat…
Ice skates that leave no trace.

Grey as a graveyard stone,

He skates in your dreams
On the frozen grey streams,
Circling you, stark and lone.
1975
*

Grimoire

A demon leaps up from the pages,

Long ages
Waiting for his invitation:
Your invocation.

Too late you slam shut both the covers;

He hovers
Giving you gold in a barter:
Your soul’s the martyr.
07-18-77
*

Growing

A little boy is playing

With his wooden gun;
Already he is saying,
“Where’s a better one?”

“And how long must I settle

For this paper hat?
My hat must be of metal,
Bullets must be flat.”

“When they’re flat they spread out

Wide inside the wound,
It’s hard to get the lead out
Once it has ballooned.”
 For though he’s just eleven,
When he’s seventeen
He’ll send some men to Heaven
Like a good Marine.
1968
*

Growing Young

Autumn eyes
Face new skies;
Ancient ears
Deaf to fears!

Grief is sin,
So you grin
At a child…
Time has smiled.
10-31-77
*

Growth

My jealousy was crushing:

A friend had shouldered past,
And seized my prize by rushing
Past me, stealthy-fast.

But jealousy can rust you,

Corroding your inside;
I shrug it off and trust new
Friends, and quell my pride.
1981
*

Guess Who?

My mother says I’m fooling

When I say I saw
A silver lizard drooling
Over something raw.

And Father says I’m lying,

When I warn him of
A giant lizard flying
Hungry up above.

As long as I am under
Covers and a sheet,
The lizard has to wonder
“Who else can I eat?”
01-31-68
*

Guitar Man
If sad and simple songs are near
All I ever play,
That’s what people want to hear
Most, and people pay.
1975
*

Gustave Dore
(1832-1883)

He let his fancy dwell

On Paradise and Hell,
Inking them in stark
Engravings all too clear,
Designs of faith and fear
Light opposing dark.

His angels shimmer bright,

Their halos rising white
Over sun-swept skies,
While demons slip and squirm,
(The dragon and the worm),
Hideous in size.
02-15-75
*

Gustave Dore (2)

His fancy chose to dwell

On Paradise and Hell,
Scribing them in stark
Engravings bright yet drear,
Admixing faith with fear,
The light opposing dark.

His angels shimmer white

With efflorescent light
Haloing strange skies.
Below, repulsive, squirm
The dragon and the worm,
Of undulant gross size.
1976
*

H. P. Lovecraft
(1890-1937)

Restoring far-off times,

With stilted, Georgian rhymes,
He tried repealing Fate
Two centuries too late.

And when he saw the worth

Of poems dead at birth,
He turned his pen to write
 Strange fantasies at night.

Then when the morning came,

He signed his unknown name.
To one more priceless page
Forgotten by his Age.

Forgotten, all except

For friends who paid their debt
By publishing him till
His fame no Fate can kill.
08-73
*

H. P. Lovecraft: Friend Out of Time

(1890-1937)

What need to add one more

Tribute to the roar
Of shrill posthumous praise,
Nostalgic, loud in these latter days?

It’s all been said and said:

Paeans, now he’s dead;
But like so many, I’ve
Wished I’d known him live.
01-01-80
*

Hadrian’s Wall, Revisited

Grim stones still undulate across green land,

Mute monuments to legends passing on…
Imperial Roman eagles, rusted, gone
Before barbarians, slaying with a hairy hand.
Squat painted savages rose in a band
Against the sentries on the fortressed wall—
Toppled standards, banners, each to fall
Forever. Caesar’s empire could not withstand.

There looms another siege-wracked wall today:

Poets standing guard—with bureaucrats below
Whose sharpened pencils for their sanguine spears.
The ladders rise—defenders join the fray
As boiling oil is spilled in scalding flow—
But walls are breached. Poets pierced. No one hears.
11-25-82
*

Halo

The hair on my daughter’s head asleep

Is precious as bullion, treasured deep,
A golden reminder and proof that I
Accomplished a little before I die.
06-29-82
 *

Hannes Bok
(1914-1964)

Leap over galaxies,

Swim over starry seas
Awash with the pale of moon.
Drink from the morning dew,
Bathe in the misty blue,
And paint your illusions soon.

Ride every unicorn,

Blow on a happy horn
Abandoned by Pan himself.
Paint with an angel’s brush,
Capture the flower’s flush,
Delineate every elf.
1973
*

Harbingers

Echoes of Spring from the streets,

Laughter and shouting greets
My ear, in a jubilant noise:
Raucous, wild neighbor boys.
02-27-70
*

Hard Homecoming

A wanderer was weeping

Sorrowing to see
A sycamore was keeping
Human company.

His father and mother,

Vomiting in air,
Were facing one another,
Puppets in a pair.

He caused us quite a problem,

Questioning us why
We ever had to rob them,
Roping them up high.

And when he tried forgiving

Some of us instead,
We had to fill his living
Body up with lead.
1971
*

Hardly
 Behaving like a man
Is always harder than
Composing pretty verses that
Fall flat.

But can’t you rise above,

And turn the verse you love
To flames and then to ash
Like trash?
1968
*

Harvest

Squeeze the apple dry

Toss the withered core
Down before
Apple-days all die.

Apple-time is fled,
Like your younger days.
Time obeys
Nothing you have said.

Trees are stripped and bare

Of fruit that you once knew;
Autumn blew
Away on hungry air.
1976
*

Harvest Moon Rite

Enchantment is sown in the early Spring.

Planted by poets who till and sing,
While later they water the crops with tears,
Wept with the pang of years.

Their fantasies rise like ripened yield,

Bountiful, filling the field,
So sowers of wonder return and reap
Magic, to glean and keep.
1969
*

Haunted Heritage
(for Mike Ashley)

Primeval campfire bards intone their tale

Of fairyland, where human beings dare not stray—
A nether-realm of water-sprite and fay,
Evoked by incantations and the banshee’s wail,
From out of ancient balladry, Man’s myths prevail,
As legends from a far-gone pagan day
Evolve, and make their immemorial way
Down centuries. Old ghosts, old magic, cannot fail.
 They live as fiction on the printed page,
To thrill a reader on a winter’s night
In some Victorian book, shelved by the bed.
Such phantoms mock our glib, computer age,
Where even Science cannot point the light
To drive the cosmic specters from our head.
1973
*

Haven

The abyss yawns and gapes,

Inside the blurry shapes
Of demons writhe and roll
And dance, upon your soul.
Beyond the inky space
Of Hell, there looms a space
Of silver stars, and blue
For you to stagger to.
1975
*

He Stopped Song Writing Today

He said “I’ll song-write till I die.”

They said “You’ll wise up in time.”
But as the decades drifted by
His mind was filled with rhyme.

He kept his demos by the bed,

Back to 1972,
And the shit the publishers said,
He’d underline in blue.

Willie Nelson’s picture on the wall.

He went half crazy now and then;
And his best friend, Alcohol,
It helped him guide his pen.

I went to see him just today.

First time I’d seen him in years;
He’d finally passed away
From fifteen thousand beers.

He stopped songwriting today.

They placed him on the funeral pyre.
And they threw his demos in,
And the flames grew higher and higher.

The publishers came by to see him one last time,

Just the way I knew they would,
They clapped their hands and clicked their heels—
This time they’re through with him for good…
1987
*
 Heard! Heard! Heard!

The madness of the maiden is absolute,

She hears the voices no one else could know,
The ancient howling harbingers of who will stay and who will go—
The voices tell the maddened maiden so.

The virtue of the maiden, it is absolute-

She sleeps alone on cold, unloving sheets,
A man becomes her suitor—then in diffidence retreats,
And leaves her with her voices and defeats.

The sorrow of the maiden, it is absolute:

For still the voices ring within her ear;
She hears a whispered name of one who dies this very year—
The name—her own!—reiterates so clear.
03-05-81
*

Heart of the Matter

If children cannot read,

Or write or spell,
Perhaps the teachers need
Some school as well.
06-19-78
*

Helper

Baby scuttles down the floor,

Like a crab ashore,
Room-to-room, upon my heels,
Little pig-child squeals.
06-26-78
*

Her Fault

Across the circus ground

Where bells and whistles sound,
You took a coin and spent
It at the gypsy’s tent.

She spun you in a spell

Of ecstasy and hell,
And charged you some more gold
To have your doom foretold.

She offered you the use

Of stars for an excuse
To blame both years all gone
And yet to happen, on.
 From womb to burial vault,
It’s all the gypsy’s fault,
Yet when she comes once more,
You’ll run to her tent door.
09-09-73
*

Here Come the Cowboys

Now one year it’s this, and the next year it’s that,
And this is the year for the ten-gallon hat,
They wear them in Dallas, they wear them in Spain,
They wear them in London to keep off the rain.

Some cowboys punch cattle and some punch time-clocks,

And some punch the buttons upon the juke-box,
There’s cowboys in offices, cowboys in schools,
And cowboys whose saddle is just a bar-stool.

Here come the cowboys, they’re walkin’ and talkin’ real slow.
Here come the cowboys, just like a movie show…
(And it’s a western….)

Some cowboys are riding the dreams in their heads,

With posters of rodeos hung by their beds,
And some think they’re cowboys when they pick guitar,
In Texas or Tokyo. That’s where they are.
1985
*

Heredity
(for S. F. Willems)

The family album from times ago

Has faces I never knew,
Except…for a tint-type I feel I know
From eighteen fifty-two

The mouth is like mine and eyes as well—

Our cheekbones are high--the same;
But he was reputed to pact with Hell,
And shamed our honored name.

And I shrink at the mention of sorcery—

(The Devil’s work on Earth!),
But whisperings in our family
Have shadowed me since birth.
1973
*

Heritage

In my secret heart I’ve felt

Like a blood-crazed Celt,
Scottish, Irish, either one,
Killing Britons with my gun.
 Or with broadsword or with knife,
Dirk, or dagger, taking life
In an Ulster alleyway,
Or Culloden Moor that day.

Smoke and blood on heather grass,

Celtic reverie must pass,
Like a distant, dimming dream
Drowning in a dank, swift stream.
04-27-75
*

Hester Prynne

The whiteness of her virtue

Bleeds red with scarlet sin;
Her crimson cheeks alert you
To guilt concealed within.

Like sapphires set in ivory,

Or roses wet with snow,
Once-pallid flesh turns fiery:
Her shame for all to know.
10-21-92
*

High-Wire Walk

The tight-rope of salvation

Is a straining, wire-taut strand
You inch along on foot-chafed trepidation
Defying Satan’s law of gravitation,
God’s balance-pole inside your hand.

Below, the audience is cheering,

Your equipoise of faith precludes all fearing—
Your toes assert their knowing, nimble grasp.
The platform, once so far, now’s nearing.
Step upon it! Crowd gives out a gasp—
Satan curses with a hoarse and rueful rasp.
06-24-86
*

History’s Horse-Hooves

History’s horse-hooves are clattering by,

Cobblestones ring with sound,
Dinning our frightened ears
Over the future’s ground,
Signaling coming years.
But hooves trample you and me.
Damned history.
1988
*
 Holocaust Foreseen

Mediaeval alchemist divined

Atomic secrets of the cataclysmic kind,
But veiled them under symbols so
That only Adepts of the Quest would know.
Those alchemists were cautious men—
They sensed potential Armageddon…even then.
10-13-81
*

Homage
(for Jonathan Bacon)

Fairies under toadstool tables,

Unicorns in forest stables,
Beckon me…
Child-believer in a fable’s
Fantasy.

Down along the haunted river

Waving willows sway and quiver
As I pass…
And the Sprite Queen makes me give her
Wreathes of grass.
07-26-76
*

Home-Town Reunion

Have you ever come home after years on the run?

Have you gone through the ruins of yesterday’s fun?
Have the friends you’ve forsaken remained true to you?
Have you paid for their drinks while you asked them what’s new?

Have you listened to names echo out of the years?

Have you tried to feel any laughter or tears?
Have you tried to remember that long-ago love?
Have you heard that she’s got a new name she’s proud of?

It’s a home-town reunion but you feel far away,

It’s a home-town reunion and you don’t want to stay.

Have you come to remember why your friend stayed behind?

And what about all the things you must find?
Is your destiny here or in some other town?
It’s a home-town reunion and you drink the wine down.

For the highway’s a home that you’ve learned to love well.

And the stories you’ve seen no one wants you to tell,
It’s a home-town reunion and you talk of the past,
You must be polite and you mustn’t leave fast.
03-12-74
*

Hope and Doubt

 Columbus looked across the blue,
Imagining a world all new,
Lands nobody thought could be
Beyond the charted, traveled sea.
The sea-lanes mariners had tried
(Ocean avenues well-known and wide)
He left…for unknown earth so far
His only compass was a star,
His fate decreed by winds and waves
Where other sailors found damp graves.

Sometimes he’d halt with weariness

From sailing empty ocean space,
And let the winds and waters press
His ship off course…to some new place.

Just like Columbus, others yearn

For distant shorelines, hard to reach,
Where perfumed breezes waft the beach,
And languid lovers touch…and learn.

On such a beach, beyond all grief,

Two lovers walk beneath the beam
Of some sweet star that lights their dream,
And glistens on the wave-wet reef.

But when a hurricane arrives

The lovers shudder at the sound,
Until it passes—then is found
The sound of Hope in two young lives.
10-08-1978
by Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)
First English translation
from Des Vers (1880)
*

Hound

Red Dog leaps the ridges,

Bolts across the bridges
Every night;
And when I hear his bark, I’m
Afraid to face the dark time
Without light.

My lantern cuts the shadow,

And makes me glad I had no
Clash with him:
For Red Dog runs the valley,
The villages and the alley,
When lights dim.
01-21-74
*

House of Shame
 There’s nothing unusual about the way my day begins,
As I walk up and down the streets with my mail pouch in my hands;
I’ve run this route for years—everybody knows my name-
Especially at the old folk’s home, which I call the “House of Shame.”

The old folks’ home is my last stop, that’s where I end my daily route.
And my pouch is usually empty, by then—not always, but just about,
Except for an occasional letter, and they all wait anxiously
With sad eyes that ask the question “Is there anything for me?”

And I hear their trembling voices as they walk back and forth:
“I guess the children are just too busy to write—
They’ve got a lot of things to do, of course….”
And I try to cheer them up and say things to make them feel better
(And I think to myself, just how little effort it takes to write a letter.)
1980
*

How?

How staunch the flow of love’s hot blood?

How check its ceaseless flood
Sucked by devil-leaches draining pale
A heart once healthy robust and hale…?
07-10-88
*

How Can I Give Jesus Everything That He Deserves?

How can I give Jesus everything that He deserves?

How can I repay Him for His time?
Three long hours he spent upon the Cross of Calvary
That you and I might live eternally.

How can I give Jesus everything that He deserves?

Gold and silver slip right through my hands.
All I have to offer Him is my thanksgiving prayer—
With Jesus, I am rich beyond compare.

He loves me though I’m a sinner,

And He purchased me with all his blood and pain,
And it makes me feel so humble—
His loss upon the Cross became my gain.

How can I give Jesus everything that He deserves?

His suffering and tears have washed me clean.
Forgiving me for all the evil wickedness I’ve done—
Thank God for giving me His only Son.
1985
*

How Do I Sign This Christmas Card?

How do I sign this Christmas card?

Is it from me and you?
 Do we let everybody know
This time we’re really through?

Your leaving caught me off my guard,

How do I sign this Christmas card?

How do I sign this Christmas card?

I hate to forge your name,
I hate to let our people learn
This year we’re not the same.
1982
*

Human Pets

People are easy to train,

Learning to feed us on cue,
Not needing more than a ‘mew’
To let us inside from the rain.
04-30-78
*

I Can See My Husband Riding

I can see my husband riding across Montana plains,

With his uniform of buckskin, and his hands upon the reins,
With his yellow hair a-flowing,
And his eyes like baby blue.
General George Custer, my husband, I love him true.

He’s riding with the soldiers of the Seventh Calvary;

On that river known as Yellowstone, they ride courageously
They’re searching for those Indians,
That tribe that’s known as Sioux—
General George Custer, he knows just what to do.

I can see my husband riding home, to see his loving wife,

He says he won the battle and the soldiers saved his life,
At the Little Big Horn River…
Now the Indian Wars are through—
General George Custer, he knows I love him true.

And that was twenty years ago, it’s part of history,

And I realized my dream was a widow’s fantasy.
I put a wreath upon his grave, and I bid his soul adieu…
General George Custer, in heaven where dreams come true.
1987
*

I Don’t Know Why I Love You

(for Anne)

I don’t know why I love you,

I don’t know why I care;
If love required a reason,
 Then love would not be there.

I don’t know why I love you,

I only know I do.
Some things you never question,
Your heart knows what is true.
1989
*

I Feel Like Columbus (When I Discover You)

Your love is like a harbor where I want to be,

Your body’s like a treasure in a tropic sea,
I can’t believe my eyes each time you smile at me,
I feel like Columbus when I discover you.

I’ve been at sea so long I feel I’m getting old,

The ocean winds are heavy and the water’s cold,
And then I touch your body and it’s pure as gold—
I feel like Columbus when I discover you.

I’ve been a drunken sailor, and I’ve wandered far,

I set my course upon a falling star,
And later when I’m almost ship-wrecked, there you are!
I feel like Columbus when I discover you.

So let me go exploring with you by my side,

We’re making love along the sand, before the tide,
My heart is full of ecstasy, where once I cried…
I feel like Columbus when I discover you.
1975
*

I Keep Running Into You

I saw the blue of your eyes last evening,

Bur her face and her smile weren’t the same;
I pressed her against me while dancing,
Caught myself breathing your name.

I saw your dress walking down the sidewalk,

And I followed for a block or two—
And she turned around and I saw her:
Part of her looked like you.

I keep running into you, everyplace that I go,

It seems like you’re all over town,
I keep running into you, everyplace that I go,
Eyes of blue and hair of chestnut brown.
1980
*

(I’m) A Little More Over You

I’m a little less sad, I’m a little more glad,

I’m a little more over you,
 Well, that’s enough…it’ll have to do—
“Cause I’m a little more over you.

Man: Monday was the first day I woke up without you on my lonesome mind,
Tuesday I began to think your memory was leaving me behind,
And here it is the weekend and I’m getting dressed to go with someone new,
I’m checking all the signs and they all read that I’m a little more over you.

Woman: I still get your mail and people still come by to see if you live here,
My friends all ask about you but I think they understand it all too clear,
I’m getting used to getting by without you, now I know you’ve been untrue….
The weeks are melting into months until I’m just a little more over you.

Woman: I’ve cancelled all our credit cards and I’m putting on my makeup just for me,
I’ve changed the number to my dreams and tried to disconnect your memory;
I’m getting used to getting by without you, ‘cause I know you’ve been untrue—
The weeks are melting into months, until I’m just a little more over you.

Man: Everybody says I’m looking great you know my friends they tell the truth.
I bought myself a cowboy hat to help recapture all my wasted youth.
I wear it to the tavern—perfect strangers there they seem to know my name…
Let’s have another round, the alcohol extinguishes your flame.

Woman: I bought myself a brand-new dress, those magazines they show you how to look;
And every time I meet some man he writes my name inside his little book;
I’m the life of every party and these late nights they’ll be the death of me;
Out there on that dance-floor I’m the fastest little girl you’ll ever see!
1980
*

I Once Had an Angel

I once had an angel—she had silvery wings,

Now the memory of her, it burns and it stings.
We both lived in heaven, till she crashed to the ground,
And I’d rather not mention that devil she found…

Now her wings have turned scarlet

From the shame of her life,
I once had an angel,
I once had a wife.

I try to forget her—as I look in my glass—

But whiskey reflections of her will not pass.
I once had an angel—and the chance won’t come twice;
To hell with salvation. I lost paradise.
07-24-84
*

I Should Be Asleep

I should be asleep by now,

Without you I don’t know how,
I’ll keep singing to the moon,
I should be asleep by noon.
Waiting for the light to show,
 I should be asleep I know.

I should be asleep somewhere,

Sighing softly in your hair;
Promises aren’t made to break,
Five o’clock and I’m awake.
Always had to have my way,
Never let you get your say.

Yellow lines along the blue,

I should be asleep with you,
Turned an angel into stone,
Tell me, do you sleep alone?
Waiting for the dawn to rise,
No one wins when no one tries.

Shadows melting in the sun,

Stars are dying one-by-one,
You should be asleep with me,
I can’t hug that memory;
Never seen you gone this long,
Even I know I was wrong.

I should be asleep.
05-77
*

I Think We Need Another War Today

There’s people losing confidence

In diplomats and presidents,
You can’t believe a single thing they say.
I’ve got the proven remedy
To give this country unity:
I think we need another war today,

I think we need another war today,

Let’s find some lucky country far away,
And let’s send some advisers in
(And find out later we can’t win),
I think we need another war today.

Let’s open up that Navy Yard,

And get those fact’ries working hard,
Let’s give ourselves a little raise in pay.
Let’s spread some blood on foreign soil,
And save the Rockefeller’s oil,
I think we need another war today.

I think we need another war today,

Let’s find some lucky country far away,
And let’s send Billy Carter in
(And notify his next of kin),
I think we need another war today.

Let’s infiltrate the Left and Right

 And find out who’s afraid to fight,
And toss them in a dungeon, damp and grey,
Let’s draft the unemployables,
Those poor folk make expendables,
I think we need another war today.

I think we need another war today,

Let’s nominate some country far away,
Let’s send Anita Bryant in
To entertain our fighting men,
I think we need another war today.

(…keep the choruses going ad infinitum with the third line different each time, such as:

Let’s send Kissinger instead

Of you and me, to face that lead…

Let’s send Lieutenant Calley in,

I’ll bet he’ll know where to begin…

Let’s send Teddy Kennedy.

(He sure could use publicity)…

Let’s send William Colby in,

To torture women and old men…
02-80
*

Ice Dwarf

Eleven thousand feet or more

Of ice you have to pass,
To reach a mountain elf’s front door:
Glacier slick as glass.

And if you haven’t begged the right

Of climbing up his slope,
The ice dwarf in his anger might
Loosen up your rope.
08-13-71
*

Ichor

The sticky green gobs of mist

Seep up from the sea, and twist
Serpent-like, over each spire.
The smell of the salt—the stench
Of fish, and chimney-smoke drench
You, like the odor of mire.

But still you walk through the town,

And wonder why this green gown
Woven of fog must gloom.
The answer: a green curse was laid,
The gods it invoked, obeyed,
 Dripping and dribbling…Green Doom.
12-28-78
*

If You Would Be Heard

Pain is much too personal for verse.

Don’t curse
The reader with your anger-anguished words:
Rhyme flowers, sun and birds.
1966
*

Illiteracy

Children never learn today

Where the meadow-fairies play,
Where the elves bask in the sun
Where their inch-high horses run.
11-02-91
*

Illustrations for Elegies

Raven, yew and cypress tree,

Emblems of mortality,
Survive in woodcuts on the page
Of poems from the Gothic Age
05-80
*

Immersion
(to narrate Bok’s Leaping Man)

Beyond—the minarets and phallic spires uprise,

Above—the craggy cliff and silent skies,
And far below, the blue-black, quiet bay
Welcomes one mad plunging man today.
1976
*

Immortal

The sun in London comes to shine

Above the placid Serpentine
And glimmer, glint and glow
Upon the statue of a boy:
Proud Peter Pan with elfin joy,
Surviving sun and later snow,
A pixie out of long ago.
1968
*

Immortal!

Marble vault draped with snow,

 Grave-winds whimper and blow
Tomb-dust up from the stones
Walling the crypt of bones.

I am the last in line,

One more coffin-space…mine!
Yes, mine. But I’ll never die.
Not while a bat can fly!
09-17-76 (rev. 1982)
*

Immortal Bouquet

The withered arm of Time has plucked the blooms

That crowned the brow of Love and rent the ring
Of roses ‘round Love’s head. Decay consumes
The petals. Powdered grey flecks everything.
Thus shorn of blossoms, Love’s skull draws
Its scalp in wrinkles that retract
And tighten. The first of all Time’s laws
Would seem the last as well: the fatal fact
That life means death. Yet death becomes rebirth:
Love’s phantom sheds its flesh and rides the sky.
Below, its skeleton sinks deep in earth,
The gnarled old arm of Time grasps high—
But cannot seize the cloud as it encloses
In silken mist…gold-ruby roses.
08-06-85
*

Immortal Mansion Macabre

The white house on the hillside

Bright as ivory,
Entombs lost generations,
Coffined lovingly.

The mausoleum glimmers,

Glinting skull-white pale
A marble paradise where
Ancestors prevail…
Hearken! Hear them wail!
1995
*

Immortality

We live forever, or almost;

As long as stone may last,
Engraved with mottoes, carved to boast
Our passing and our past.

We last as long as stone survives,

Encrusted with green scales;
We last beyond our little lives
As long as stone prevails.
 01-25-80
*

Impregnation/Conflagration

I’ll love you on the eve of Armageddon,

Our bodies will exult and cells unite,
Semen I will seed won’t bear fruition,
As humankind aborts in blinding light.
03-13-82
*

In a Glass, Clearly

The politicians croak “Defense!”

Patriot-pretense
Of cowards who’ll not live to see
Results of their obscenity.

Our children’s life spans hewn in half,

Reaped like sickled chaff
By scythes of war. Not “if” but when.
Our sons will never be old men.
10-82
*

In Due Time

The song I sing you will not hear

So sad and bleak is it,
The requiem of Earth’s last year
When Earth becomes a bit
Of poisoned dust—destroyed…unfit.

For Man expends his fleeting day,

And even planets die,
And powder into ashen grey
To strew the once blue sky.
So soon-- atomic cinders fly!
02-07-81(rev. 11-11-90)
*

In Memory of Thomas Lovell Beddoes

(1803-1849)
(for Neal S. Baron)

Yes, Death’s the goal from birth,

From womb to worms-in-earth,
The distance but a second’s crazing race.
Run well, run slack, the finish line, your coffin space.

Yes, Death’s the favored theme

(Mere Life, a tinsel dream)—
Chill Earth is real. Charade of living’s not.
In time, your silk-lined sleeping-box will rot.
 1981
*

In the Name of “Defense”

It’s time to pay taxes once more,

We’ll buy a new war, as before,
And purchase some lead they can shoot in the head
Of a baby in El Salvador.
02-21-82
*

In Vain Pursuit

Limpid nymph amid the leaves

Furtive, as the twilight weaves
Shadow raiments ‘round her limbs;
Naked as the sunshine dims.

Mauvish-tinted pigments drape

Twilight on her supple shape;
Down the forest trails she’ll dart—
Drawing me, with racing heart!
05-31-91
*

Incarnation
(for Donald Sidney-Fryer)

Golden oceans, silver seas,

Old Atlantic memories
Murmuring sadly sweet,
Like the waves that lapped the shore
Of her coral coves before
Her destined defeat.

Bitter gods decreed her fall,

Shattering each wave-shook wall
Suddenly from the south.
…Other ancient lives ago,
I was there—I know—I know!
As water filled my mouth.
04-21-75
*

Independence!

Hear that wagon-master shout

Now keep those wagons moving out,
Stay close together.
We’ll do twenty miles today
And day by day we’ll make our way
Thought sun and snowy weather…
Talkin’ about….
Independence. Independence. Independence……Missouri!

Keep those wagons moving on,

Now we’ve got dreams of Oregon
It sounds like heaven,
Leave New England far behind,
We’ve got a restless state of mine,
In eighteen thirty-seven,
Thinkin’ about….

Independence. Independence. Independence……Missouri!

“Independence” is a word
The sweetest word you’ve ever heard
It stands for freedom.
Like a high-flying bird….

Independence. Independence. Independence……Missouri!

You can’t wait till you get there,

You’ll tie some ribbons in your hair
You’ll make your showing,
You’ll buy a cotton dress or two,
Those city men will stare at you
Until we’re going,
Moving along…

Independence. Independence. Independence……Missouri!

1985
*

Industrial Accident

The dragon repair shop’s closed,

The villagers all supposed
The craftsman ran out of scales,
And horns, and thorn-spiked tails.

No, that isn’t really why

The craftsman let work slide by.
He’s suffering fire-breath burns:
“CLOSED UP, TILL MY HEALTH RETURNS.”
01-14-79
*

Inevitable

No, I won’t show you my prophecies of times to come,

You couldn’t stand the drum
And fife of filing soldiers in the cobbled street,
Your ears are deaf to marching feet.

No, you’d rather not foresee the skull-faced future, no

So turn away and go
In ignorance until you later sadly learn
 That Mars loves Man, and must return.
01-18-80
*

Inscrutable

Is love a poem or just plain prose?

Is it life instead of art?
Is it religion, or a literary pose?
Psychology…or the fragrance of the rose?
Arcane, mysterium of the heart.
04-09-82
*

Inscrutable (2)

You prowl in the weeds in search of a sliver

Of timber from logs where her cabin once stood.
But the structure is gone from the Little Pigeon River,
Its remnants embedded in a mansion in Brentwood.

You hearken for echoes on the hollowed old speaker

At Studio B where the tourists now gape,
Where Joshua—Jolene—and the poor, sinful Seeker
Were captured by Porter on RCA tape.

You pause at the quick-mart for a tabloid injection—

Just how many wigs can one woman own?
And how many escapades dodge our detection?
Three-fourths of her story will never be known.
07-13-91
*

It Feels So Good, Not feeling

I saw you kissing him, but I just smiled,

There was a time that would have drove me wild,
It feels so good, not feeling anymore,
It feels so good, not feeling anymore.

There’s something in the way you said “Hello”,

I guess you’re not that girl I used to know,
It’s just as well, because I’m changing too—
It feels so good, not feeling seeing you,
It reels so good, not feeling, seeing you,

I used to burn my fingers on that torch I tried to bear,

I wrote you all those letters telling you I’d always care,
I hope you threw away those silly letters from a fool,
You always said the brightest flame would be the first to cool.

The waitress comes and she refills my glass,

I never thought I’d see those mem’ries pass,
It feels so good, not feeling, and I’m free,
It feels so good, not feeling, and I’m free.
1978
 *

Italic Horror

The leather covers smooth with moldered Time

Are held by weakened hinges, split with age,
And as I open them with caution I’m
Amazed at underlinings on the ritual page.
05-80
*

It’s a Dusty Road

It’s a dusty road, and life’s its name—

No guarantee of gold or fame,
A cloud of dust for your royal gown,
And a sweaty brow for your regal crown.

It’s a dusty road, all men have trod.

The Devil waits, but so does God.
There’s one companion you must choose—
There’s wealth to win and a soul to lose.

It’s a dusty road, but you’re not alone,

Though your feet are bloody from the ice and stone;
The blizzard comes to chill your skin—
But you travel warm from your faith within.

It’s a dusty road, and it soon is gone,

The rich and poor both travel on.
They might bury you in some gravel ditch—
But if your faith was strong, then your years were rich.

It’s a dusty road, and it’s been trekked before,

Nineteen hundred years and more…
A wooden burden—and some Roman whips came down—
And a ring of thorns for the regal crown.

It’s a dusty road, soon left behind,

A greener valley you will find,
A peaceful pasture comes into view…
And Living Water will cleanse the dust from you.
08-19-84
*

It’s a Nineteen-Twenties Song

It’s a Nineteen-Twenties tune—forgive me, I was born too soon,

Going to fake it anyway, and bring back yesterday.
Inka-dinka-do, that old soft shoe—and I danced with Georgia Brown.
Muskrat rag—“can you spare me a fag?”—
And the stock market came dow-w-w-w-w-w-n!

It’s A Nineteen-Twenties song, the decade didn’t last too long,

Nineteen-Thirties knocked it flat, like a Babe Ruth baseball bat.
Black-face minstrel on a white man’s stage,
 Girl smoking cigarettes, it’s all the rage—

And New York made that music move.

Bath-tub gin in your coffee cup—
Home-town girl acting so grown up—
Those East Coast boys, her Mama won’t approve!

Scott Fitzgerald and his wayward wife,

She danced on the tables while he drank up his life—
And only Billy Sunday told the truth:
They corrupted the nation’s youth!

It’s a Nineteen-Twenties dance—

If you missed it once, here’s another chance.
Charleston, if you can—
Honey, swing that man.

It’s a Nineteen-Twenties beat,

Hotel ball-room, move your feet.
Flapper with the short, short hair—
Young folks, I declare!

Sweet, sweet Sue making eyes at you—

And a gangster named Capone.
Razz-a-ma-tazz, and that Dixie jazz—
And that famous slide trombone…

It’s a Nineteen-Twenties dream---

Make that sweet nostalgia gleam,
Press your ear to the radio—
Will Rogers says “Hello!”
1986
*

It’s Laurie, Laughing

In some big crowd you think you see her there,

A different face inside that same blond hair,
Her voice, it echoes later, down the hall,
It’s Laurie laughing at you, after all.

Sometimes when you’re dreaming, she floats by,

Tempting you to taste another try,
But over breakfast, dreams should go away,
Yes, Laurie’s laughing at you, night and day.

You took her picture down and filled the space,

Can anything make you forget her face?
You put another portrait in the frame,
But Laurie’s laughing at you, all the same.

And Laurie’s laughing at you in your mind,

She always said you were the sober kind,
I’m paying for her wine—it makes her smile—
Yes, Laurie’s laughing at you every mile.
10-04-76
 *

It’s Never Too Late for Love

(for Anne)

It’s never too late for love, no, it’s never too late for love,
It’s never too, never too, never too late for love.

Everybody says “Slow down, don’t you know what time it’s getting to be?”
I don’t watch the clock, I just look in my heart, and it’s time for you and me,

Stop! Wait a minute—it’s time for a time check…

It’s half-past getting to know you, and it’s a quarter-to-a midnight kiss!

Daylight savings time, getting close to you, on a long winter’s night.

You’re always in season, baby, I’m writing your name on every calendar page, as brown hair turns to white.

It’s never too late for love, no, it’s never too late for love,
It’s never too, never too, never too late for love.
1986
*

J. Frank Dalton
(1842-1951)

He rode a twisted trail,

He lied a tortured, fact-faked tale
Of Jesse James and unexpected shames
Of Quantrill’s carnage, powder-smoke and flames.

He wasn’t who he said—

He wasn’t Jesse James, long dead
But something gaudier and grander yet
Imposter-champion none can forget.
1986
*

James Dean at Paso Robles, CA, 09-30-55

Youth and broken glass

Smearing Highway 101:
Other cars just pass
06-19-70
*

Jane Merchant
(1919-1972)

Invalid of flesh (but not of soul),

She let her fancy stroll
Outside her bedroom window glass,
Where she observed the robins pass,
Above God’s trees and spring-green grass.
11-18-79

Jane Merchant (2)

 Invalid of flesh (but not of soul),
She saw Creation whole,
And hymned the seasons come to pass
Beyond her bedroom window-glass—
December trees—and April rain-wet grass.
1982
*

January

I love the winter’s whitened chill,

It brings me close to me:
For man who cannot bear to be
Alone is soft, and lacks cold will.

I loved the summer’s passion-heat

Away from me, awhile toward you:
Enticing me anew.
But then’s not now. Snow. Wind. Sleet.
01-15-82
*

Jesse, I’m Coming to Know You

Jesse, I’m coming to know you,

Better than ever before.
Danger and trouble are leaving our lives…
Children are crawling the floor.

Jesse, I’m coming to know you,

You’re drawing closer to me.
Finding a future and finding a farm—
Thank God, we found Tennessee!

Sometimes at night when I’m sleeping,

Nightmares, they enter my head.
‘Hear people shooting and dying…
Wake up—so safe in our bed.

Jesse, I’m coming to know you,

Even though we’ve changed our names.
‘Worth it to find a new life full of peace—
They’ll never catch Jesse James.

Not while you’re holding me—

In Tennessee……
1984
*

Jesus, Don’t Come Back Today

Jesus, don’t come back today,

I’ve got too much to do,
Jesus, I’ll be ready for you
In a day or two.
 I know it sounds a little strange,
I need at least a day to change,
I’ve got some people to repay,
So Jesus, don’t come back today.

Jesus, don’t come back today,

I’ve got too much to do,
Jesus, I’ll be ready for you
In a day or two.

I need to change the way I live,

I’ve got some people to forgive,
I’m busy learning how to pray,
So Jesus, don’t come back today
1984.
*

Joanne

I struggled writing poetry

For authors of Eternity
To envy, ever after me.
Another summer and I knew…
My immortality was you.
07-28-68
*

Judy Garland Rainbow

Go find yourself a Judy Garland rainbow,

Shut your eyes and see it, oh, so clear.
It draws you like a beacon, and it guides you like a star, so far from here.

Keep searching for that Judy Garland Rainbow,

People say you’re foolish and naïve.
You walk that road of yellow bricks with confidence because you do believe.

And it’s magic, yes, it’s magic, and oh, so pretty.

You’re reaching, yes, you’re reaching that Emerald City.

And when you find that Judy Garland rainbow,

Help somebody else to make it through,
The Scarecrow and Tin Woodman know the secret, and I know they’ll share it too.
1981
*

Jungian Serendipity

The telephone rings and the voice you hear

Repeats the thought in your brain:
Just synchronicity, loud and clear,
Links you on some esoteric plane.

It’s not telepathy, mind-to-mind,

But incalculably doubtful odds,
 Defying coincidence, like a blind
Toss of the dice by the gambling gods.
1992
*

Just Like Joanne

Everybody has somebody, buried back behind,

Someone far too loyal, someone much too kind,
Like a phantom floating in a circle round your pride,
Opening an unmarked grave of tears you thought were dried.

Why are the ones that we cannot repay

Never demanding their dues anyway?
Just like Joanne, never counting the cost
Of the books that she loaned me and lost.

Met her on Friday evening, she was drinking apple wine,

Introduced her very slowly to that wife of mine;
Guess she never realized how I’d stumble on this far;
Told her how I even tried to sing and play guitar.

Why are the ones who have helped us to climb

Always the losers who’ve wasted their time?
Just like Joanne, never counting the cost
Of magazines loaned me and lost.

Back in Sixty-Seven, it was crawl along or quit;

But Joanne stayed there to help the sentence fit—
Rhythms in the stories I was turning into songs;
Won’t somebody help Joanne find out where she belongs?

Isn’t it cruel of someone to show

Feelings she should have killed, four years ago?
Just like Joanne, never counting the cost,
Of the years she loaned me and lost.
05-71
*

Justice

Convicted witch
Who cursed the rich
Will strangle in
A rope-choked grin.

The gallows creaks!

Before two weeks
The duke she named
Collapses, lamed.

His crops decay,

His hair grows grey,
And two weeks more
His lips froth gore.
12-26-77
 *

Keeping on Course

Over the oceans of airy dream

Sailing the ship of joy,
Tossed like a cardboard toy
I steer by a star’s enticing gleam.

There on the rocks the sirens sigh,

“Hearken—ahoy, ahoy,
Hitherward, sailor boy—“
But even in sleep, I sail right by.
Wax-in-the-ears. Deaf to their luring cry.
04-04-82
*

Kensington Gardens

The sun in London used to shine

Above the placid Serpentine
Lost summers all too long ago,
And I recall as best I can
The statue of fey Peter Pan
In sunlight’s glint and glow…
(Winters, Peter Pan wore snow.)
03-21-80
*

Klarkash-Ton
(for Clark Ashton Smith, 1893-1961)

Smith carved words with care,

Setting them like rare
Jewels in a crown,
Molded from old gold,
Brilliant and cold,
And worn with purple gown.

Words of rich romance,

Atlantean chants,
Mystery and myth,
Epic tales and verse—
Decadent, perverse
Proud pageantry of Smith.

Ever out-of-place,
Smith preferred far space
Galaxies away,
Lost in starry lore,
Helping him ignore
The din from his own day.
09-22-74
*

Knell
 Love is but a second’s tick
Recorded by the cruel clock of Time.
Hear those meshing gears revolve and click!
And listen…for Love’s final chime.
06-16-79
*

Knife-Thirst

Time is a rusted blade

Ripping when it cuts
Bone, and fat and guts.

Life is a tragic clown’s charade

Time’s nicked knife will slash;
Props, and back-drops, crash.

Only proud puppets never fade:

Sawdust hearts survive,
Deathless, unalive.
01-26-77
*

Knock

Your body is a tomb,

A vaulted, marble room,
Where some sad spirit lives
Beyond the doom death gives.

Your spirit softly goes

In shrouded coffin clothes,
Across the headstones for
You murderer’s front door.
06-17-74
*

Know Your Lines

Your love is scored with lines:

The thin one of a bitter smile,
Loosening after while,
The legal ones you sign in ink,
Those ‘round the tub and in the sink,
The battle-lines you draw in bed;
Lastly, lines said in your head.
04-30-78
*

Knowledge

Children know so much, today:

Where the fairy folk do play,
Where the elves dance in the sun,
Where their inch-high horses run.
 12-28-78
*

L ‘Envoi

Faded roses sadly flung,

Graves and ghosts and grue:
Such are songs I’ve always sung
And will. I hate the new.
08-03-82
*

Lamia
(for Michael Fantina)

The lady bade me linger for awhile

Beside the cypress in the burying-yard.
She fetched me to a graveside with her smile
And set me on a marker cold and hard.
She smiled. “It all comes down to this, you know,
That kings and merchants, each the same,
Will sleep as brothers in a marble row
Till mosses blanket over each proud name.”
I shivered—mid-November air breathed chill—
And I looked down at my watch. The hour was late.
I said, “However much I’d like to listen still,
My appointment scheduled in the village cannot wait.”
She smiled—and begged my pocket-knife from me,
Then carved my name upon the cypress tree.
04-18-80 (rev. 12-10-90)
*

Lamp Love

I rubbed on my lamp with three strokes,

And our billowed mystical smokes,
Spiraling in a thick swirl:
The Genii said “No time for jokes,
Can’t you see I need a girl?”

I told him my wishes came first,

He said “Then prepare for the worst,
If I don’t get one tonight!”
And so the lamp trembled and burst,
Bathing the room in a rose light.

A lady appeared in the haze,

In robes of shimmering red rays,
Pressing him with a wet kiss,
And with him she loyally stays:
Magical, marital bliss.
05-16-77
*

Lamp Love (2)

(for Anne)
I rubbed on my lamp with three strokes,
Eliciting vaporous smokes;
A lady appeared in the haze
In robes of red glimmering rays,
Pressing upon me a kiss…
And with me she loyally stays:
Mystical, marital bliss.
1988
*

Last

Beyond a blue-green sea

Of mere mortality,
Impassioned poets strive to stand
Implanted on firm sand.

But even those who climb

Toward Timelessness, from Time,
Eventually see their fragile gift
Succumb, when shorelines shift.

At least the poems last

When kingdoms all are past,
And rust is on the crown:
At least they’re last to drown.
08-11-73
*

Last Question

I found you were

Yourself, not her,
And you found he
Was him, not me.
So we’ll discuss
Ourselves as us.
05-23-73
*

Last Spark

A little while is all

You have really got
Before your fortunes fall,
And your teeth will rot.

You’re old enough to see

You’ve lost ears and eyes;
You’re young enough to be
Bitter that Life dies.

The sun can’t melt the snow

Coloring your hair,
But still you feel the glow
 Like a distant flare.

And so the burning blinds

You to Time and truth;
You’re yearning in your mind’s
Flickering lost youth.
01-19-74
*

Last Supper

The vampires are thirsty, the ghouls want to eat,

Season of famine and drought,
No more red-veined virgins, no graveyards of meat,
Food and drink, have all run out.

The priests have placed crosses on every girl’s breast,

The tombs are all guarded at night,
So vampires and ghouls must take second best:
They lunge at each other, and bite.
02-14-77
*

Last Visitor

Who hears my cry in the night?

Who smells the scent of my sweat?
Who sees the pale of my fright?
Who feels my forehead, so wet?

None knows my tremble at all,

None worries whether I die,
None hears beyond the room’s wall,
None hear my panicking cry,
None but that Someone unseen to the eye
Someone oppressing me here where I lie.
10-26-81
*

Late-Night Lady

Late-night lady buys her own beer,

She knows how to get home from here,
All-night loser gets drunk alone,
Late-night lady is on her own.

Worn-out slippers and faded gown,

She belongs in this part of town:
Closing time, and the hour is later…
Try to stop her but she won’t wait.

Very winter the weather’s colder.

Every evening the drunks get bolder,
Just this morning the mirror told her,
“Late-night lady, you’re one year older.”
 Late-night lady, don’t leave so fast,
I don’t care about your bad past,
Long-time waiting to talk to you,
Tell me your story…I’ll cry some too.
12-12-76
*

Late January

The ice has carpeted the grass

That crunches when you pass,
And out there in the mirrored street
Cars careen upon a sheet of sleet.
01-30-80
*

Latest Oasis

Mirelda has thin

Tomb-marble skin;
Where would a vampire begin?

Her color has fled,

Roses are dead;
Where would a vampire get fed?

Her husband knows where,

He’s just been there,
Drinking and draining his share.

Mirelda’s the third

Wife he has lured
Home, where screams often are heard
03-28-76
*

Latin Lesson

I’m just a little bit annoyed

At some obscure new word I’ve heard
Called “sternocleidomostoid”—
An obfuscated doctor’s word.

But now I think, I’m maybe learning--

The definition—clarified:
A muscle meant for turning
Your head from side-to-side.
01-01-80
*

Laugh-In
(For Richard L. Tierney)

I.

Sardonical skulls in the afternoon

 Grin from across the sky,
And their ivory hue is a vista of grue:
Sockets without either eye.

II.

A skeletal yellow’s the face of the moon,

Mocking and smirking, down
At the trivial Earth, whose absence of worth
Conjures up mirth, not a frown.

III.

The teeth form a sneer at the promise of soon,

Total extinction below:
A world catching fire—a suicide pyre—
Nuclear blast. What a show!
Hey-dee-dee, ha-ha, ho!
12-25-82
*

Law

The fruit of life is sweet,

Juicy, till you meet
The apple underneath,
Acid, to your teeth.

And danger, at the core,

Eternal worms will bore,
Following Time’s law
Evermore to gnaw.
07-30-72
*

Leaf-Red

The bushes are bare:

Cold winter air
Has whittled them clean,
Leafless, and lean.

The cardinal lands

Somehow he stands
On branches that dip
While the winds whip.
12-24-78
*

Legacy

I seize a torch, near’ guttered black,

And blow its glow to flame.
And for a moment’s glint of fame
It sparks, then fails. True breath I lack.
 Before the ember coals, I’ll pass it to
Some bolder bard than me,
To breathe its luminosity,
All right. Perhaps…that poet’s you.
01-03-83
*

Lenore

The slouching hills

Brave morning chills
To walk the low
Horizons, slow
And icy as your eyes.

They seem to see

Through you and me,
They shuffle far
From where we are,
Below the fog-grey skies.
01-16-78
*

Lesson

Civil war trenches filled,

The guns and the legends stilled,
There, where the mansion looms,
An architectural fact
Amid the suburban tract:
Victorian, mildewing rooms.

Perfect-trimmed lawns and trees

Encroaching where once the bees
Tended their hollow-tree hive.
We robbed it of honey back then—
But boys from before are now men,
Are strong--like the house--we survive.
1978
*

Lesson Plan
(Recorded at the Second Conference on the Fantastic)

Across the blackboard of galactic space

Chalks the message Reason can’t erase:
“There are no fantasies that cannot one day be!”
(Epigram-graffiti from Eternity.)
02-20-81
*

Lesson Unlearned

History is hate and harm

Wrought on some small town or farm
By a king who spills the blood
 Of peasants in the mud.

History is never past…

History is here to last
Yesterday and Evermore:
Greed and gold—and smoke and gore!
12-30-74
*

Letter to Thoreau

Walden is far,
Unless you prefer,
To open up your eyes, and see.

Write who you are

And who you were
And who you ever hope to be.

Chart your own star,

Your planet’s whir,
And map your own far galaxy.
07-15-78 (Rev. 1980)
*

Liberation

The prison of Pride is an iron cage,

And it fetters your heart like chain,
As you look out on life with smug disdain
And everyone. Never opening
Your soul so it can sing.

The prison of Hate is a cell of rage

Where you bang on the bars within,
With imagined rebuffs that pierce thin skin:
You never forgive, never call a truce…
Your anger’s like a noose.

The prison of Time enslaves with age,

Where you pine for what can’t be:
But the only sure way you’ll struggle free
Is step out and leave behind
All bars that wall your mind.
07-30-74
*

Life

As a ship plows a wake in the sea,

Or a bird wings a shadow of air,
Life arrives—then is instantly gone!
Like a drowning man crying, “Help me,”
Like a mist that is no longer there,
Evanescently…life passes on.
1978
 by Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)
First English translation
from Des Vers (1880)
*

Life is A Western Movie

They say life is like a sit-com,

“Honeymooners” reruns play on down the years;
They say life is like a soap opera—
You wash your dishes and then you dry your tears.

They say life is like a cop show—

Big blue light follows you in close pursuit;
They say life is like a game show—
You win a set of luggage from the man in the shiny suit.

But I say life is a Western movie,

On the Chisholm Trail you ride through the wind and rain;
Life is a Western movie,
‘Cause every now and then you’ve got to face that high noon train.

Yes, life is a Western movie,

In the California gold rush you just might get rich;
Or down in Texas they might run off all your cattle,
So you might form a posse and string up the son-of-a-gun.

I tell you, life is a Western movie,

Cowgirls watch you when you make that rodeo ride;
But all you really need is one good cowgirl
To stand beside till you cross that Great Divide.

But I say life is a Western movie,

On the Chisholm Trail you ride through the wind and rain,
Life is Western movie,
‘Cause every now and then you’ve got to face that high noon train,
And ride off in the distance just like Shane…
Just like Shane.
1987
*

Life’s Fleeting Day

I.

When the morning expands with a platinum smile,

Horizon-wide, beaming grin,
And the meadow extends, emerald mile upon mile,
The anthems of sunrise begin!

The diamond-dewed day suffices a glow

Roseate on the blue,
While sleepy-eyed people, stirring below,
In renascence, waken anew.

II.
 Afternoon is the chapter of life at its close,
As shadows obtrude on your mind,
And lavender twilight turns purple the rose,
And blackens until you are blind.

The dusk hour descends till it’s shrouding your eyes,

And earth is shoveled in place,
Your eyelids now closed, as existence subsides,
And clods carpet over your face.
1981
*

Light

Sink and swallow salt

Water from the sea;
Drink it up like malt
Brew that’s sold for free;
Think of God whose fault
Everything must be.

Swim and reach the shore,

Start your praying to
Him you love once more,
Now your night is through.
Dim lights brighten for
Dawn is born anew.
02-08-74
*

Light a Beacon

Once I saw an old man, walking all alone,

Searching for a signal light he’d never known,
Searching in the valleys, looking on the plain,
Searching for the beacon burning through the rain.

Once I saw a woman walking in the night,

Wandering and weeping, couldn’t find the light,
Tried to light my candle, so she’d look at me,
But she said that it was me who couldn’t see.

Saw a sinner praying, looking at the sky,

Saw the light around him, made me want to cry,
Got on down beside him, searching for my soul,
Both my eyes were blinded, tears began to roll.

If you’re busy wasting every new-born day,

If you’re busy turning blue skies into grey,
Let me light a beacon, so we both can learn,
Let me light a beacon, let that beacon burn.

Let me light a beacon on your way,

Let me turn the light on you today,
Later, when I feel as lost as you,
 You can light a beacon for me too.
1974
*

Like the Wind on a Winter’s Day

Love used to be the answer.

Now it’s a painful question.
Are you staying, or are you blowing away…
Like the wind on a winter’s day?

Love was the whisper of Springtime,

Sighing around us so softly.
Our rose-colored sky is turning grey,
Like the wind on a winter’s day,

Summertime love full of laughter,

Firing our bodies and our dreams.
Sensuous hot August passion,
Turns cold like December snow…on our skin.

Love is like ice on your fingers…

Burning and freezing at once.
“Goodbye” is a chilly word to say…
Like the wind on a winter’s day.

Love is a Springtime illusion…

Wedding bells ringing in June.
Later, they toll for the heartbreak…
Like the wind on a winter’s day.
1984
*

Linda Did You Ever Change Your Name?

Across a crowded room I heard your name,

But nothing in the sound could fan the flame,
It flickered and it died so long ago;
But still there are these answers I must know.

I looked inside my drink and saw the light

Reflected from a love that once burned bright,
But cigarettes and noise had filled my mind;
But still there are these answers I must find.

Linda, did you ever change your name?

Are the letters in your last name still the same?
Linda, did you ever change your name?

I thought I saw your face across the floor,

A fading phantom from the life before,
It lingered like a lamp across the room,
But then it vanished in the ghost-like gloom.

I wanted to remain but it was late,

I finished up my drink, I couldn’t wait;
 I wandered home and wondered if you’d found
Another man to keep you on the ground.

Linda, did you ever change your name?

Are the letters in your last name still the same?
Linda, did you ever change your name?
1968
*

Literature

We talked importantly as youth must do,

Impressing one another with trite quotes,
Discovering false authors who sound true,
And humming melancholy ballad notes.
Miguel de Unamuno was the man
Who wrote for us, The Tragic Sense of Life,
That made us weep as only lovers can
Who suffer smiling under Time’s sharp knife.

And then The Prophet chafed our wounds and beat

Our ragged senses till they sweetly stung
And smarted like a masochist’s rare treat:
But what else is a poem when you are young?
For I was twenty-one, she seventeen,
In love with book-born love: Time’s blade cut clean.
03-04-75
*

Literature Class

Poetry writes you

If it’s any good,
And leaves you when it’s through,
Numb and dumb as wood.

Poetry kicks where

You are soft and weak,
And yanks you by the hair,
Laughs to hear you shriek.
04-02-78
*

Little Miss Sure-Shot

Pretty funny name for a girl—her name traveled ‘round the world,
“little Miss Sure-Shot” they called her everywhere.
She sure shootin’ earned her fame—“Annie Oakley” was her other name—
She blasted those little glass balls right out of the air…
And a Winchester rifle became that girl’s best friend!

Little Miss Sure-Shot, you shot through our hearts back then;
And the likes of your marksmanship won’t be seen again.
Little Miss Sure-Shot you shot through our hearts back then…
In your cowgirl costume you rode through our Western dream.
 Her Daddy died when she was ten—she picked up a rifle and then
She filled up the table with rabbits and quail to eat.
At fifteen she met her man—good lookin’ with a gun in his hand;
He tried to outshoot her but that hero, he got beat.
So he married little Annie—they hit the bull’s eve with their love!

She done pretty good for a girl Her boss he took her ‘round the world—
Buffalo Bill on that Wild West show-biz trail.
From Memphis to Cheyenne—she shook Queen Victoria’s hand,
Little Miss sure-Shot, her aim it never failed….
And she shot a cigarette out of Kaiser Wilhelm’s mouth!
1980
*

London Was a Lady

London was a lady I met many years ago,

Yellow haze and memories and the grimy, smoky snow,
London was a lady with an icy English smile;
‘Asked her, could I stay with her? She said “For just a while.”

She said “You Americans are really all the same:

Loving girls and leaving them with souvenirs of shame,
I’m a lady you can’t have, two thousand years I’m free,
From the Romans to the Germans, read your history.”

London was a lady with a European heart,

Narrow Soho sidewalks, where the peddler wheels his cart,
Silver Spanish buckles and some furniture from France,
Pretty painted women whom you have to pay to dance.

London was a lady, but she never was a wife,

When you’re tired of London, Mister, then you’re tired of life,
Dr. Johnson said so, ‘couple hundred years before;
“Trade you Rome or Paris for a night with her once more.”
06-05-77
*

Lore

Write of Then and When,

Not Now;
Allow
Tales of god-like men.

Songs of wandering
Not facts,
But acts
Of some fable king.
02-25-76
*

Lorraine

Chloroform—and then
They skewered her
 Like all the rest,
Upon a mounting-pin,
Her dried wings spread,
Inside the case of glass—
Specimen “Lorraine.”
03-03-73
*

Lost

How many years alot themselves

To fairies, sprites and elves?
The fewest number, flying fast—
For childhood flutters past.

Enchanted realms when you were small

Capitulate and fall;
Their palace guards of inch-high men
Seek graves in days of Then.
10-25-80 (rev. 1990)
*

Lost at Sea

The war-winds whip

The sailing Ship
Of State across
A sea of loss.

The war-clouds rain

Their blood to stain
The sails and mast—
Can this ship last?

The war-waves rise

And splash with lies
The Ship’s red deck,
And make it wreck.
1974
*

Lost Eden

A snake upon the Tree

Of Knowledge longs to see
The husband of the wife
Destroy this Tree of Life
That grows behind him tall
And fruitful, till the Fall
From innocence and trust,
When Eden dries to dust.
1973
*

Lost Lady
(1865-1945)
 The ‘Nineties were the age for
Poets of the night,
Outside a Soho stage door
In the yellow light.

So Arthur Symons waited,

Waited till the time
The dancer came and stated,
“Write me in a rhyme.”

But that forgotten writer

Cursed her very name:
She faded, ever whiter,
Prostitute called “Fame.”
08-11-72
*

Lost, Lost

The twists of tiring Time exhaust me,

Enervated with endured despair,
Regretting how I sought and lost the
Rose mirage of a rainbow, some far Where.

The happy Elfland horns that hallooed

Are silent now, to ears of age.
And Little People (and their dreams I followed)
Sadly vanish under Time’s turned page.
01-28-81
*

Lost Mistress

London, Nineteen-Fifty-Eight
Marian and I
Learning just a little late
All there was to try.

Hampton Court and Kensington,

Galleries and guides,
Learning landmarks, one-by-one,
And some more besides.

Such as learning to admire

Art that bored us plain,
Such as damning up desire
After her last train.

First editions purchased cheap,

Coffee bars and blues,
Now the books are all I keep,
All that I can use.

Dreaming for her for a year,

Maybe even more!
 (Not Marian, but dear
London—my sweet whore…)
09-16-70
*

Love

Inside a room
Of book-lined gloom
And loveless life:
He sits and reads
And never heeds
Friend or wife.

For he prefers
Book characters
Who gradually
Begin to speak—
They walk—boards creak—
Fond company.
06-18-78
*

Love Death

One more dreamy dawn,

Lazy as a yawn,
Colors me with you:
Orange, and pastel blue.

Miles and months of Time,

Green as gin-and-lime
In a tall, cool glass:
Even eons pass.

Twilight turns to pink,

Dying sun will sink
Down inside the trees:
Dreams of you all freeze.
05-14-77
*

Love Doesn’t Love Us Anymore

Love doesn’t love us, anymore.

Our pretty ocean shell has lost its roar.
We press it to our ear, but all we really hear
Is silence.
‘Cause love doesn’t love us anymore.
Someone’s changed the lock on love’s front door.
Our key—it doesn’t fit, and on the porch we sit.
And cry.
Once was the time when love was in love with us.
We walked hand-in-hand through love’s wonderland,
But that was then—
And this here is now:
 Love says goodbye to the dreams you and I have planned.

‘Cause love doesn’t love us anymore.

Teardrops never rain, they only pour.
We go our lonesome ways,
But until our final days
We’ll remember:
That love doesn’t love us anymore.
Love doesn’t love us anymore,
Anymore anymore…
1978
*

Love Snare

Time is a ribbon of silver thread

Spun by the spider, Space,
Cob-webbing Man’s bewildered face,
Snarling his dense, doomed head.

Love is the only sure weapon Man

Wields against the net
Time as woven and tautly set,
Sword it as best you can.
03-77
*

Loyal

The land was all we had,

Crops both good and bad,
But good enough to hold
Us till we were old.

And evermore, the land

Has us in its hand,
However frozen hard,
Under the church yard.
11-20-76
*

Lucky Bill
(for Fr. Charles Strobel and his work with the homeless))

Sleeping in a doorway with his body in the rain,

Keeping warm, and keeping wet with whiskey in his brain,
Lying in an alleyway that every loser knows,
Drying out a soggy brain that’s wetter than his clothes.

Knowing every tavern where they let you take your time,
Growing old inside a world where aging is a crime,
Heading for the side of town where drunken drifters stay,
Treading sidewalks like a man who knows he’s lost the way.

Dreaming isn’t easy, when you’ve lost your wife and will,
Living’s one bad lesson, when your name is Lucky Bill.
 Drinking up tomorrow like it isn’t really there,
Winking at the women with a worn-out, weary stare,
Paying for the past with every bottleful of brew,
Saying life is worth it, when he knows it isn’t true.

Call him Lucky Bill when you discover him downtown,

Haul him in for vagrancy and write his name right down,
Free him when you finally get weary of his face,
See him sometime later in his favorite drinking place.

Dreaming isn’t easy, when you’ve lost your wife and will,
Living one bad lesson, when your name is Lucky Bill.
06-18-74
*

Lullaby

“You’d better finish eating this.”

Your mother threatens you,
Whenever Sunday dinner is
A nauseating stew.

A little later in your room

A Princess of the Night
Is weaving wishes on a loom
Of eerie yellow light.

She has a silver lizard who

Is asking to be fed,
Until you send him drooling to
Your parents room instead.
04-14-68
*

Lunatic Lyre

All this sanity’s but a fad—

A fashion the brain
Would assume, then shed. Mad me. Crazed you.

You would rather us not be mad—

Conventional, sane,
And our pulse beats, even and true.

But delusions we’ve lately had

Have spattered their stain
On our souls. Rage red. Sick blue.

Your hand in my hand, let’s wander in a haze.

Crouched monsters await. And both of our minds, ablaze.
1979
*

Luray
 Water seeping through the ground,
Forming limestone, timeless round
Pillars on the ceilings, or
Columns on the cavern floor.

There, where bats escape the sun,

Nature carves, till Time is done,
Castles in Virginia caves,
Like Egyptian, carved-stone graves.
07-22-78
*

Lured by the Looking Glass

I’m running backwards down the hall of years,

Beseeching Time to halt. Time turns deaf ears.
I race down corridors in quest of you,
In vain, in vain. Echoes mock anew,
Reverberating in the tunnel of my dreams
Love’s playback of my heart-recorded screams.

On cold, metallic walls I press a kiss,

Then realize their surfaces are glass
Reflections, nothing more. And as I pass,
Their fun-house images distort and bend.
While down love’s labyrinth I blindly wend.
1983
*

Lycanthropic Liberation

She reads in moldered books

Of legendary men
With weird and wolfish looks,
And deeds to match, back then.

Her husband wonders why

She reads those tales at all,
Until she gives reply
To far-off wolves that call.

And now he lives alone,

He hears the distant bay
And faint familiar moan
Of she-wolves hunting prey.
04-79
*

Lycanthropic Liberation (2)

Her grand-dame, years before,

Had warned her: “Never look
Inside that black-bound book
Of German, legend-whispered lore!”

She opens it today—

 Her husband wonders why…
Until he hears the cry
So bestial, weird and far away.

And now he lives alone,

His health is dimming fast.
But hark! He chills aghast
To hear that distant, female… moan.
04-05-83
*

Magic Bullet

When I was young I had a Western hero,

Shooting magic bullets with his gun,
With his faithful Indian companion,
He rode off into the setting sun.

When I grew up I gave up magic bullets,

Threw my cowboy boots and guns away,
And now I don’t believe in magic bullets.
Hi-Ho, Silver, goodbye, yesterday.

In Dallas, Texas they shot magic bullets,

Seven wounds, two bodies at one time,
Of course, they found themselves a lone assassin,
Magic bullets helped explain the crime.

I wonder who’s behind those magic bullets,

Every witness dies or disappears,
I wonder if my taxes bought those bullets,
We just might find out in fifty years.
1976
*

Magic Mistress

A gypsy offered me
An olive-colored kiss,
Below a willow tree:
Bodies full of bliss.

And after we were done,

She left me in a daze
As sorry as the sun
Twilight turned to haze.

So how can I ignore

A gnawing urge to light
Another pipe, and soar
Back to her tonight.
1967
*

Mail Call
 Ten thousand years at sea
In a star-ship’s dome
I sail the galaxy,
I scribble letters home.

And fifty thousand years

Pass before I learn
Earth-folks’ loyal tears
Weep for my return.
12-01-78
*

Malt and the Muse

The edges of endurance were traversed

A thousand tavern tables back,
The aging process thus reversed
Until I’ve long lost track
How many paper-napkin poems I have blotted beer-spills with.
A Bacchic bard? Myself, a maudlin myth.
1973
*

Manassas

Split-rail fences, stark and grey

Rim the Bull Run battlefield
Where Confederates that day
Forced the Union line to yield.

Cannon still command the hill

By the chiseled monument
Where some of those who came to kill
Sleep…dank earth their tent.

(alternate last line:

Stayed…while others went.)
11-12-80 (rev. 07-19-88)
*

Man-Of-Letters Requiem
(for Kenneth Hopkins)

The man-of numbers, not of “letters,” thrives,

Computer-calculator-Man survives
And shatters stained glass window-panes,
Obsequious of Progress and its promised gains:
Arithmetic of Armageddon reigns.
09-15-81
*

Manger Monument

Had Yahweh picked a palace for the birth

Of Christ, its splendored Solomonic worth
Would stagger calculation: sheeted gold
 Might overspread its cedar walls, and bold
Phoenician carved designs would praise the Child.
But who today would know? Instead, a wild
And rude unlikely cavern cradled Him;
Above--a star millennia can’t dim,
More brilliant than lamps of oil aflame,
Illumining the cave where Jesus came.
Thus Bethlehem endures, a citadel
Within our hearts, where mankind’s chief event
Occurred. Though Nineveh and Tyre each fell,
The manger outlasts every monument.
12-85
*

March Message

The irises arise a yellow gold

Or lavender-tinged blue
And anyone looking out is told:
“Spring is born anew.”
05-09-79
*

Marie Ragghianti: Nashville, 1977-83

The heroine is human, happily

(To sanctify the living is a blasphemy);
And all that matters is her crucial act,
Irreducible, brave crystal fact.
Yet in her home-town, always she’ll bestir
Disdain—and awe: mixed monument to her.
06-19-83
*

Marionette

West, the winds of morning billow,

Buffeting the cloudy pillow
Of a death-grey sky.
East, aborted sunlight stumbles
Up the cloud-stair, where it crumbles,
Tumbles, and the pieces lie
Rain-smashed, as the wind bolts by.

Down below, the merchants tighten

Shutters, awnings—storms will frighten
Customers away.
God and weather know no reason,
Man’s a puppet, any season,
White or gold or green or grey,
Sunny—snowy—rainy day.
09-27-76
*

Marriage is Forever
 The voice in the attic clamors,
As you ascend the stairs--
The sound subsides and stammers—
Just wind. There’s no one there.

Old jewelry and dresses,

Your late wife’s finery,
Her wigs and braided tresses…
You turn—too late you see
She’s coffin less, and free.
03-06-92
*

Mars Cult

Peace flags furl,

War pipes skirl
High-pitched notes of glee,
Soldiers file
Deathward, while
Women weep to see.

Times before—
Evermore—
Young men always will
March in arms,
Leaving farms
For the boys to till.
06-25-77
*

Mary Elaine

Mary Elaine.
Soft as the rain
Washing her Spanish black hair.
She’s like the glass
Mirror you pass
Out in the hall by her stair.
Wrapping her arms like a ribbon around your soul.
Mary Elaine.

Mary Elaine,
Hiding her pain
Under the lace of her shawl.
Violins play,
Begging you stay
Chained like a slave in your stall.
Wrapping their tune like a shackle around your soul.
Mary Elaine

Mary Elaine
Acts like she’s sane,
Later you see what she’s done.
She makes you feel
Everything’s real,
 Making you believe that you’ve won.
Wrapping her arms like a cause around your soul,
Mary Elaine.
10-13-73
*

Mary Found a Mirror

Mary found a mirror,

Now she sees herself within,
Everything looks clearer,
And her smile it looks so thin.

I was her mirror for awhile,

Reflecting rhythms of her smile,
I was the echo of her call,
I was her mirror on the wall.
12-10-73
*

Mary’s Song

Above the sunken lake of Galilee,

Lay isolated disdained Nazareth,
Where misted in obscurity
Was Mary born. Her kin Elizabeth
Gave John the Baptist birth. But Mary wrought
The Motherhood of ages: Jesus, Son
Of Man, Whose prophesied arrival brought
Astrologers and shepherds one by one
To marvel. Mary, in a squalid cave
In Bethlehem nursed Infant Child with care.
The Savior Whose death forgave
Our primal sin too weightisome to bear.
To celebrate that first far Christmastime,
Let carillons of joy inside us chime.
1984
*

Masque de Poesie

Don’t ever bare your soul,

Conceal your psyche’s role
Behind your metaphors and metric lines.
And don’t undress your heart,
Disguise the tragic part
It plays inside your poetry’s designs.
1975
*

May and November

Rainbows half-unseen
Almost out of view
Taunt and beckon you.
 Breathe the rain-wet green,
Smell the spring-sweet dirt,
Senses all alert.

Springs say what they mean,

Unlike human hearts
Acting autumn parts.

Feelings range between

Happiness and grief,
Spring rose and autumn leaf.
06-13-75
*

May Eve
“All thanks for ‘May-Eve’ for
The Arkham Collector” –August Derleth, June 12, 1970

Little Laurie cannot sleep,

Only eight years old;
Moonlight’s making Laurie creep
Out into the cold.

Dancing dizzy on the heath

Round the standing stone,
Laurie’s sweating underneath
Necklaces of bone.

Then before the morning breaks

Burning overhead,
And her family wakes—
Laurie’s home to bed.
06-01-70
*

May Music

Spring song,
Wind strong,
Flutter everywhere;
Spring birds
Sing words
Ringing down the air.
1974
*

Maybe

There’s nothing in the rain

But wind and wet—
Exquisite pouring pain
You love to get.

And after April you

Can hope for sun
To torture you a few
 More times for fun.

Then later when you learn

That pain is sin,
Tomorrow might return
To re-begin.
1967
*

Me, Since You

Love shorn,
Life torn,
Hurt borne.
Spiked thorn.
01-22-82
*

Megaliths

The ancient stones align

In a dim design
Of prehistoric plan
Forgotten by mere Man.

But ancient gods recall

Reasons for the tall
And circled stones that rise
Like fangs against the skies.

They recollect the screams,

Agonies, and streams
Of red absorbed by stones,
The gibbering, the groans.

Three thousand years and more

Listening to the roar
Of rituals, until
The scarlet stones stand still.
1973
*

Melinda’s Mask

The mask you wear

Of clay and hair
Is flesh-colored pink:
A painted smile and steady stare
Of eyes that never blink.

And under it
An inky pit
Of infinite sad space.
Melinda, tell me how you fit
Your mask, where you’ve no face?
04-10-70
 *

Melinda’s Face

Gentle kissing can’t erase

The rumble of the quiet
Violence that rocks your face,
Erupting in a riot.

Revealing feelings cannot be

A very easy task;
My poor Melinda, now I see
Why you once wore a mask.
12-25-73
*

Melodrama

The Gothic Quest had best

Not seek to really wrest
The truth from underneath
Time’s tightly shrouded sheath.

Across each quaint old tale

Is stretched a taut black veil
To cloak the primal dread
Hinted at, not said.

The creaking castle door—

The trap door in the floor—
Mere stage props in your soul:
Each man has a start.
There you play your part.
09-18-76
*

Memorial Day

The flowers all are folded

We children used to wear,
The garlands that we molded
Are withered in our hair.

We’ve given up the battle

Of flowering the world,
We’d rather hear rifles rattle
And see red flags unfurled.

Soldier’s furloughs are better

Than children’s holidays
Though shrapnel-wounds are wetter
And redder, than bouquets.

For Mars returns and bloodies

The sky and sand beneath,
The summer rainfall muddies
 The white cross and the wreath.
07-17-73
*
Memories

Swallows all rise to the sky,

Far from their home-trees they fly,
Coming back, when winters die,
Every spring
To the nests where they first spread each wing.

Man like the birds, flies away,

Wanderer, winter and May,
Haunted by his yesterday
In this town
Where his ancestors’ ghosts still look down.

Later, when years follow fast,

Suddenly he feels the past
Beckoning him home at last
To the sound
Of the church bells above grave-ground.
08-01-76
by Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)
First English translation
from Des Vers (1880)
*

Memories(2)
(for Richard Wiltshire)

Winter is freezing the sky,

Swallows are whistling goodbye;
Later they loyally fly
In the welcoming Spring
To the nests where they first spread a wing.

You (like the birds) flew away

Under a chill sky of grey,
Spurning your halcyon day
In your own native town
Where your ancestor’s spirits stare down.

Now, when the years follow fast

You yield to the tug of the past,
Journeying worm ward at last
To the beckoning sound
Of sad bells by the burying-ground.
1977
by Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)
First English translation
from Des Vers (1880)
*

Mental Sunset
 I have a shining empire in my head,
A kingdom born of books I’ve read and read,
Where palisades and parapets
And pinnacles of minarets
Glimmer through pinkish clouds of Dream.

And so my childish realm of Fancy shines

Resplendent, past the cramped confines
Of flesh and earth and waning years:
The turret of my castle rears
Glamorous, where purple sun-rays gleam.
1976
*

Message from Heaven

April, 1985

Microcosm

Thoreau breathed open air,

Keeping journals where
He knew each star and rock and tree,
Spelled “Eternity.”

Yes. Walden’s all around.

Sky and grassy ground
Spread everywhere you chance to look:
Nature’s open book.
09-28-78
*

Mind-Flight

I look out through my soul

As if through iron prison bars:
Life sentence, no parole,
My sentence measured in Time’s scars.
But still, this convict’s goal
Is brave escape, in dreams, to distant stars—
Giddy, down the galaxies’ space-borne ecstasies!
12-01-80
*

Minor Poet

Work small,
Craft all
You can
Of Man
In microscopic space,
Rewrite, erase,
With miniature grace.
03-10-81
*
 Missing

Black aperture in space

Absorbs me till I disappear,
Ejected with no trail or trace
Of where I gyroscoped from here:
It’s there I’ll spin suspended, till my
Million-billionth year.
02-08-81
*

Mist

There’s something ignored, quite beyond recall—

A voice down a midnight hall—
Or a face in a painting you saw for sale,
Remote, and feminine-pale.

So who was that lady? You quite forget

Her name and her silhouette
As her image dissolves in a blurring haze
Of vapored blues and greys.
10-10-79
*

Misty Ellen

Summer-yellow sunlight
Coloring your hair—
Golden like the air.

Drifting dizzy sunlight,

Dusty summer air
Hanging everywhere.

Summer in your footsteps

Summer in your hair
Departed when I touched you:
Summertime was through.
3-24-69
*

Molecular Divination

You wonder what is going to be,

And how long is eternity?
Explore a minute molecule,
A space-time minuscule.

Eternity glows and gleams,

Illuminating your dreams,
So let your imaginings race
Across Infinity’s broad face.
 04-08-80
*

Monday Morning

I dreamed I was back in the land that lies

In back of the farthest lands
The pastures of crystalline silver grass
Where the brown-sugar castle stands.

And under the opaline-tinted skies

I gamboled with childish glee,
Till rain washed the turrets away, alas,
And the meadow turned mud on me.

Thus slumber seduces with dreamland lies,

I wake up a cynic, and old.
Outside the cacophonous traffic will pass
While I wait for my bus in the cold.
02-09-83
*

Monstro Ligriv
(1914-1970)

Black and white are tones

Seen at night in bones
Bathed by moon and star:
Colors of both good
And of evil, should
Tell us who we are.

Shades of light and dark

Shimmer in the stark
Shuddering fine lines
Virgil Finlay sketched:
See the fears he etched
In bizarre designs.

Finlay used but two

Colors to make do:
Only black and white
Dore, Beardsley now
Step aside, allow
One more ghost tonight.
09-21-74
*
Montague Summers
(1880-1948)

Arcane collector of Gothic lore,

Immersed in luridness and gore,
He wryly catalogued it all…
The ivy-covered castle wall,
The dungeon and the secret door.
 He studied witches and werewolves took
And found the vampire tales were true;
A throw-back to another age,
He loved the Restoration stage,
And smiled…as gossip ‘round him grew.
1977
*

Morsel

The obsolete beast of prey

Out of the bogs and mists,
Is leaving his prints in the clay,
Proving that he exists.

A “mythical beast” indeed!

Fasten your portals tight--
The silver-scaled snake will feed
Somewhere on someone tonight.
12-10-77 (rev. 09-13-90)
*

Mortal Combat

Angels in your brain,

Demons in your heart,
Paradise and pain
Splitting you apart.

Severed into two

Halves that but oppose;
Fractured, riven you:
Cleaved, until Christ rose.
02-26-76
*

Mt. Olivet Cemetery: Nashville

The monstrous spires uprise

But never touch the skies,
Vain, earth-foundationed monuments
To Life’s impermanence.

Expensive markers war with Time

Where lichen mosses climb
And cover up each hand-carved word
That tells of those interred.
06-22-79
*

Mount Airy Station

The ever-yawning distance gaped between

The two of us, those last September days,
And nothing I could say could really mean
As much as all the silence in her empty gaze.
 I packed my summer clothes and hopes,
And dressed for autumn, that last afternoon,
When breezes shook the farm and apple-slopes,
And rain beat down a bitter, time-bleak tune,
Upon the wooden eaves, and winding road,
As we drove down together to the train.
The loss of our idyllic summer showed
Upon my face, like slashing, whip-struck pain—
Her sister on the platform seemed aware
And glad of what was swiftly dying there.
05-06-76
*

Music Season

Spring song,
Ringing along
The avenue arched with trees,
Is swaying the limbs above.

Spring birds,
Singing the words,
Of April’s melodic breeze,
Are chorusing: “Spring is love.”
1977
*

My Lai

Our officers are ordering

Our captives in a ring,
Preparing for a little game
Of target practice on the lame.

A little rifle practice at

Yellow objects that
Provide excitement soldiers prize:
Some targets blinking slanted eyes.
08-17-73
*

Myopia

Samarkand and Camelot,

Carcasonne and kings;
Where legends live, and ruins rot,
Sands conceal all things.

Humans come and build once more,

Blind to what’s below,
Oblivious to Time’s barred door—
Better not to know.

Ignore pictorial evidence—

Rockets carved in stone—
Nor ask who carved immense
 Helmets out of stone.
1976
*

Myopia Cured

I must concede, I must confess

My wisdom’s from unhappiness:
The insight of the salty tear
Stings my cloudy vision clear.
02-06-82
*

Myopie de la Mort

Death has a blood-laced eye,

Bleary from watching the world.
By Christ he is blinded from brightness on high:
Lasers of light at Death’s eyes have been hurled.
1987
*

Nashville: 1978: Marie Ragghianti

Well-manicured and rich

Clandestine fingers spent,
And purchased murder, down in Tennessee.

They meant to kill the bitch

Who hung embarrassment
Upon their cozy aristocracy.

They aimed to slay each snitch

Informing on their permanent
Regime. And two or three
They got, but not their protégé Marie,
Turned nemesis, Marie.
05-31-83
*

Nashville Christmas…1779

Scots-Irish borderers, devout, austere—

With Anglo-Saxons—made their rugged route
West from Watauga, in the chilliest year
Marked in history. Five hundred miles out
Across Kentucky , down to “Tanase”
They trekked with horses, cattle, sheep.
James Robertson led forth this odyssey
That halted opposite where bluffs of steep
And craggy cedar-guarded limestone, rose
Above the Cumberland…a river iced and white,
That Christmas Day when ever rivers froze.
And when the cliff-side landmark loomed in sight
The cavalcade traversed the water’s frigid span.
Then, in their lean-to’s. praised the Son of Man.
 12-19-87
*

Nashville Gentleman

They called him “Mister Howard” when he lived in Nashville town,

He lived inside a house that time has almost tumbled down,
He lived across the river where the wealthy people did,
He was a Nashville gentleman, he kept his real name hid.

Nashville Gentleman, more than hundred years ago,

Nashville Gentleman, someone you all know,
Well-dressed, Nashville Gentleman.

His Christian name was “Jesse,” and his brother’s name was “Frank,”
He made a living making large withdrawals from the bank,
Missouri and Kentucky knew his name was “Jesse James,”
In Nashville he was “Mister Howard” playing poker games.

Nashville Gentleman, with a family,

Nashville Gentleman, living secretly,
Outlaw Nashville Gentleman.

Now Jesse James left Nashville back in Eighteen Eighty-One,

He died a short year later at the barrel of a gun,
And Nashville still has heroes and their eyes are full of stars:
Instead of loaded pistols, now they’re carrying guitars.

Nashville Gentleman, just a memory,

Nashville Gentleman, part of history,
Jesse James of Nashville.
1981
*

Nashville Library

The check-out clerk stamped my date due

Into every book,
And said ”Already, one month through”
With a wistful look.

“Another year has got away

Just like the other years”:
A trite, profound, chance thing to say;
Winter disappears.
03-16-78
*

Natural History

Are faeries really there?

And will they pull your hair
When you walk near?

Indeed they really will,

 They’ll trip you-make you spill-
Then give a cheer…
And disappear.
04-08-79
*

Nautical Galactic
(For Columbus and Armstrong)

I.

Old sailors pine for salt and spars,

New vessels sliding down the slips,
Valiant skippers holding by the helms….

II.

Young sailors dream of reaching stars,

Midshipmen berthed in rocket ships
Trajected far to planetary realms.
09-28-91
*

Necrobibilia
(for Abe Everett and Dick Wald)

No one dares look

In the dark book
Bound in the old witch’s skin
Flayed while she screamed:
She never dreamed
Leather would pay for her sin.

No one will buy,

No one will try
Rarest edition of all:
It sits for sale,
Blood-drained and pale
Down at the street-vendor’s stall.

Book-hunters walk
By it, and balk
Backing away with a gasp!
So it sits there,
Hand-sewn with hair,
Latched with a carved-metal hasp.
01-77
*

Necrobibliophilia

My house of cards is built of books—

And rare first editions—tattered paper-backs—
Photocopied pages (where no scholar ever looks)
Of curiosa, unobtainable, in rows on rows—tall stacks.
 My house of cards all topples when
The gust of passing years exhales
And volumes tumble, like their owner then,
The copies scattered in the dealers’ sales—
And grieve quaint poetry—bizarre forgotten tales
My bookless phantom wails.
03-15-83
*

Neither

Bloody, rose-red sun

Dribbles gore to run
Crimson on the skies,
Till it scabs and dries.

Later, moonlight pales

Skies, as sunshine fails,
And the dusk brings night
Freezing all the light.

Thus the moods of Man

Clash, until they can
Melt the sun and moon,
Midnight meeting noon.

Either faith or sin:

Which is bound to win?
Watch the color-wheel,
Watch them both unreel.
08-22-74
*

Never

We fight for God or glory,

Which, I can’t recall;
The second oldest story—
The first was Adam’s fall.

The second was a killing,

Brothers fighting fierce;
A story we’re fulfilling
As blades and bullets pierce.

We never stop to wonder

Never hear the cry
Of conscience, muffled under,
The stifled, sobbing “Why?”
08-28-71
*

New Order

Let the open, rolling rains of reason

Wash the lies to sea,
 Let the tyrant’s treachery and treason
Pay the penalty.

Let the pulsing, pounding waves assemble

Truth and Time as one,
Hear the shattered shoreline shake and tremble,
Now the flood’s begun.

Let the ruler of defeated man be driven

Drowning—doom to him,
Now the ocean-elves are grandly given
Glory, where they swim.
09-29-72 (rev. 07-04-91)
*

New Year’s Revelation

A dozen months of living lie ahead,

Another year’s unrolled its scroll,
And on opaque parchment is concealed, unread,
The future of my flesh and striving soul.

Will I use up my months and days as well…

Or better…than I’ve spent the ones now gone?
The future fades until I cannot see or tell,
But I set forth my foot, and trek right on.
01-26-80
*

Night Caress

Ulayla’s floral essence scents the room:

Funereal-sweet perfume
Enticing you to stay
And pass an indolent erotic night,
Dallying with slow delight
Until the nighted sky meets day.

You linger with Ulayla, vampire-queen,

Limpid on a couch of peacock green,
Arousing and caressing you
With kisses carnal and corrupt.
Suddenly she halts—abrupt!—
Then vanishes as the day breaks new.
1968
*

Night Gaunts
(for H. P. Lovecraft, 1890-1937)

Imagination lights
A path through all your nights,
For you to follow blind
Down your-moon-struck mind.

But deeper in your brain

 Are beasts you have to chain:
The ancient fears and dreads
That populate our heads.
1975
*

Night-Knell

Drums of morning beat their tune,

Tapping on the dying moon,
Welcoming the sun;
Rhythms of the day keep time,
Rapping on my brain till I’m
Happy night is done.

Happy that the mournful sound

Of the evening is drowned
Dumb before the day;
Melancholy music taunts
Me each evening, and haunts
Drams as werewolves bay.

Now they’re silent, stifled, still,

Muzzled, muffled, till
Twilight once more groans,
And the restless banshees’ wail
Hits the shutters hard as hail,
Rattling them like bones.
1968
*

Night Songs

Night songs on the radio,

Disc jockey popping pills,
Accepting payola from Satanists…
Blood, on the turn-table, spills.
04-14-92
*

Night Trip

The dream-doors open wide…

I plumb the vast inside
That consciousness has hasped and locked,
Bolted, barred and blocked.

The doors are latchless, free,

The portals spread for me—
I voyage bodiless, so far
Past the furthest star.

Thus fetterless I fly

Across the dream-spun sky
Entering my body when red
Morning lights my head.
 03-08-79
*

Nightscape

The City of the Sunset gleams

At the rim of Dreams,
A purpling-orange the color of
Fruit that gods could love.

Delicious-tinted walls that rise,

Scrape magenta skies,
And I keep questing through my deep
Purple-citied sleep.
03-17-79
*

Nineveh

“And there was life in Nineveh?”

--Dante Gabriel Rossetti, “The Burden of Nineveh,”
Poems (1870)

“Where are the dreams of Nineveh now?

—Robert E. Howard, “Dreams of Nineveh,”
Echoes of an Iron Harp (1972)

No silver songs at the golden throne,

No captives, chained to stone,
No petty prayers from the eunuch-priests,
No orgies following the feasts.

No jesters juggling for jaded kings--

No courtesans in the wings,
No flatterers, no more spies to fear,
No gossip…nor bold intrigues to hear.

No troubadours, no more ringing rhyme,

No slaves to dance in time,
Just toppled turrets and vine-split walls,
Where drifts a ghost…down ruined halls.
10-02-75 (rev. 1990)
*

No

No friends but pen and page—

Hear your words of rage.
No wife but words and wit
Rhymed to tightly fit.
No mistress but tears
Treasured down dim years.
No gods but gods of song
Now, but not for long.
No enemy but Life
 And its rust-dull knife.
1977
*

No Matter

”The best is bad, the bad is worse,”

You hear the poets say
Inside a suicidal verse,
Or a one-act play.

It doesn’t matter if your life

Is beautifully at bliss;
The world is happier in strife,
Poets trade on this.
09-26-71
*

No Sex

Sex cannot be in poetry.

The details might offend,
So when in verse, pretend
It’s never done by you or me.
10-10-83
*

No Valhalla: Death of Robert E. Howard

(for Don Herron)

Battlefield flows red,

Celtic swordsman dead
By his own remorseless hand,
Carried on his shield
Down the skull-strewn field
By embattled comrades from his band.

How can gods forgive

Craven warrior terrified to live…?
Will his ghost win peace?
Or haunt this patch of post-oak land.
05-19-84
*

No Words for Anne

She hasn’t any answers, but she covers me with questions all the time,
They never seem to rhyme,
For I’m not a white magician, just a man,
And there ain’t no words for Anne.

She never even listens to the lyrics of the latest, greatest song,
She‘d rather sing along
With a melody she’s stolen from the birds,
Who ain’t got no use for words.
 She’s shouting in a whisper in my ear,
Making all the ringing disappear
With any demons she can ban—
Oh, there ain’t no words for Anne.

She’s waiting at the temple, for the carnival that’s coming through the town,
Worshipping her clown
In a chapel that could use a coat of paint,
For I’m her pander and her saint.

She’s holding up a mirror to my mind,

Punishing my preaching with a kind
Of prayer, as best she can—
No there ain’t no words for Anne.
05-30-69
*

No Yearning

London lies too deep,

Buried back behind
Mirrored in my mind
Only when I sleep.

It’s just as well it’s fled,

Fading like the gleam
Of a starry dream
Flickering down dead.

Soho Square and wide

Parks and Oxford Street,
Notting-Hill and sweet
Longing that has died.
02-06-75
*

Nobody Knows Where the Good Times Are Gone

There’s winners and losers and sometimes the dif’rence ain’t nothing,
Sometimes the losers in love must learn how to laugh,
There’s not use reliving the past, or those twelve years of trying—
That woman, she emptied your wallet…except for that old photograph.

Now, nobody knows where the good times are gone when they’re missing,
Did you misplace them? Or did they just walk out the door?
And nobody knows where the good times are gone when they’re over—
You wake up at four in the morning and wish you won’t wake up no more.

Nobody knows if the woman or man

Was at fault, but you try and you try as you can
To recapture the love and the years that are just moving on.
Nobody knows why her love had to cool,
Why the future from here is a vinyl bar-stool,
But it’s over. Nobody know where the good times are gone.

Now, what kind of man prefers sad country songs in the morning?
 --Same kind of man that begins a new day with a beer.
And what kind of man still remembers each one of their birthdays?
--The same kind of man they’ll discover one day…with a note that’s too clear.
1981
*

Nocturne

Stretch your words across the sky,

Snare the stars that fail and fall,
Net them anyplace they lie;
Catch a comet’s flaming ball.

Spin a song around the moon,

Paint your melody ghost-white,
Hum a haunted, hymnful tune,
Sing the sacraments of night.
08-28-77
*

North-Man
(For Robert E. Howard, 1906-1936)

You stand against the savage throng,

Hewing arms to stumps,
Cutting limbs in clumps,
And chant the battle-song.

But as they rise and overrun,

You retreat alive,
Eager to survive
The very slaughter you’ve begun.

A fierce Cimmerian,
You can sell your blade
Somewhere else in trade
For treasures that please a man.
06-09-75
*

North-Sea Lament

“Oh, where is my lover, these long years gone,

Where is he, off at sea?”
The waves roar an answer, then roll right on:
“Woman, you’ll see, you’ll see.”

“Oh where is my lover, these sad years flown,

Where is he—some far land?”
The wind laughs an answer that sears my bone:
“Soon you will understand.”

“Oh, where is my lover, where indeed,

Where is he—fare he well?”
The rain raps a message, so loud to heed:
“Woman, tonight will tell.”
“Oh, there is my lover—he’s coming back—
Here he is—mine once more!”
In canvas and rope, all hanging slack,
Wet from the ocean floor—
Scraping against her door!
09-05-80
*

Nostalgia

Sorcerer wearies of casting

Spells that nobody can feel,
Ghouls are impatient with fasting,
Death-knells no longer will peal.

Churchyard is grown up with wild weeds,

Marble tombs settle and crack,
Will-o-wisp dies in the marsh reeds,
Leprechauns never come back.

Vampires without an oasis,

Banshees with nothing to moan,
Ghosts who can’t find where their place is,
Skeletons, grave-less, alone.
09-22-77
*

Nostalgia (2)

My frozen, ice-stiff heart

Is bidding you depart
From lofty crags above:
Depart, lost love!

But if you once look back

And trace our twisted track,
Be glad we once had time
For Love’s sweet climb.
03-13-79
*

Not For Sale

Roads you’ve missed,

Are highways you never can find,
Dreams you’ve kissed
”Goodbye”…ever fade in your mind.

Friends you’ve lost

Are souvenirs squandered away;
Precious the cost
For all of your used yesterdays.
12-08-77
*
 Not Really

Do you still prefer

The memory
Of things you were,
Nevermore to be?

And are you really safe

Inside the chain?
Don’t the shackles chafe
When you stretch and strain?
12-26-77
*

Nothing

Nothing from the night time lives,

All the black goes grey;
Like a traitor, morning gives
All your dreams away.

Once your dreams were chiseled stones

Fitted in with care
Now they crumble, once you’re grown,
Falling from the air.

Castles topple from the sky,

Better they are gone;
Earth is firm enough to try
Building new ones on.
01-26-74
*

November Canvas

Red dogwood limbs spike the sky-line

And molten yellow oak
Combines its gold with red this fall.
Thus God has signed His by-line,
With paint-brush masterstroke
On the blue-glazed sky, with
Pigment trees, so stately tall.
11-08-82

November 22, 1963

(for L. Fletcher Prouty)

The story hurts to tell: *

He braved the crowd

And waved them all farewell--
Hired guns belched loud.

And waiting vulture birds

Swooped down to eat:
He heard their cackled words,
 Their black wings beat.
07-15-79
*

Now

A spinning, whirling waste of space,

A useless Earth allows a race
Of humans swarming on its face
Like animals—
Attacking one another for
A festival of war, we bore
Into each other to the core,
Like cannibals.

We human maggots only mill

In circles senselessly, until
We make believe we have free will,
Forgetting the
Magnetic moon and mighty sun
And stars can cancel anyone,
And anything we’ve ever done
Or dared to be.

And anyway we’re only a

Possession of the far away
Forbidding parasites of prey
About to make
Another meal off mankind!
Invading aliens remind
Us human happiness is blind,
And a mistake.
12-21-67
*

Now (2)

Your life is like a brief

Elusive, wind-blown leaf,
So grab it, March or May—
Don’t even wait a day.

For leaves are hard to hold

In autumn’s coming cold,
They crumble to the touch—
So never wait that much.
06-29-72
*

Now Hear This!

Didactic verse is good for you

No matter what they say.
Constrains your vice till you think twice
Before your morals stray.
 It’s literary spinach, yes…
Eat your vegetables in verse:
Avoid all booze, lewd lust refuse
And never ever curse.

A poem must be purposeful

`Else should not exist.
Advise and preach—best bards beseech
Temptations you resist!
1977
*

Nuclear Aqua-Archaeology

The map was inscribed upon a scroll.

It marked where the land fell under.
The floor of the sea became my goal,
Submerged Atlantis’ unplumbed wonder.

Past stones sunk in sand, grown green with slime,

I swam through remaining arches standing,
Aghast, to discern, from ancient time
An algae-crusted airstrip landing.

Metallic devices were moored in place,

Cylinders balanced steady,
With barnacles clinging upon their face,
Otherwise aimed and ready.

The rustless contraptions were set to spring,

I noticed a coral-coated lever
Still cocked like a cannon, set to zing--
I pulled it—released the lethal thing—
The missile smashed half of Denver!
07-08-85 (rev. 09-28-90)
*

Oasis

Here comes death,

Smell its breath,
But still
Time can die
If I try
With will.

Kingdoms fall,
Coffins call,
But I’m
Doped with dreams,
Drinking streams
Of Time.
08-08-75
*

Objectivity
 The art creates the man
As often as it can:
Be careful not to overplay and act
Your fiction, as if fact.

Beware—don’t try to be
A Buccaneer at sea
Or a superman in bed…!
Stay home and write instead.
02-13-80
*

Observation

I found you were

Yourself, not her,
And you found he
Was him, not me.
So we’ll discuss
Ourselves as us.
05-23-73
*

Ocean City

Immortal day, that far July ago,

We dug our toes inside a Maryland beach,
And didn’t let our first faint feelings show:
Invisibly, they floated out of reach.
And then like anyone who feels unease,
We talked and talked—but all that really did
Was beat and batter us like ocean breeze,
And bloody all the nerve-ends we had hid.
That evening at home we ventured far too near
For safety—both too reckless of how much
We frightened one another, fighting fear
That festered under every bruising touch:
The ache erupted in her furnished room,
And we both felt that first foretaste of gloom.
03-04-75
*

Ocean Hurt

Sea-time,
Salt in my eye,
Rock slime
Green as the sky,
Gulls chime
And the winds cry.

Tides slip
Out from your toes,
Waves rip,
Wester-wind blows,
 Sands whip
Flesh without clothes.

Beach-dream
Drowns in the gale,
Birds scream,
Sea-feelings fail.
You seem
Bored with me, stale.
1979
*

Ocean Victim

Regret in runnels flows

Downward to the sea
Of voided love. Emotion goes
Flotsam-like toward nullity.
We’ve drowned in salt what cannot be.
07-19-88
*

October

Autumn invades the air,

Crisping the leaves with chill,
As summer goes, who knows where?
Leaves fall, losing their will
10-14-79
*

October Odds

When I was splashing in the lane,

The colors of the rain
Were ribboning my April sky
Bright hues of years gone by.

Too soon, the boy became

A gambler in a game
Of crushing odds and devil-loaded dice,
The weather weeping ice.

Maturity. I damn the dice that roll

And dare not probe my soul
Where equilibrium is reaved in half,
Where perching gargoyles laugh.
07-04-67 (rev. 1988)
*

October’s Death

Dead walk,
Tombs do talk,
Banshees must grieve;
Bone dust,
 Ghoul-lust,
November Eve.

Bats rise
On the skies,
Vampires in thirst;
Graves yawn,
Dooms dawn--
November first.
05-02-76
*

Old Accounts

Lessons are late sometimes,

Payment for old, old crimes,
Relearned when you almost forgot:
Sins of another day.
Karma or vengeance pay
Back for goods wrongly got.
01-07-77
*

Old House: Demolition

The brick and masonry give way—

Crumbled red and grey
Are buried as the workman yanks
Beams and paintless planks.

Another piece of Past expires.

Better that, than fires
Inflaming it some August night—
Still, I’ll miss its shabby sight.
10-07-79
*

Old Maid

Glissandra spins gossamer nets

Of sticky white webbing that gets
Her all the captive she needs:
Her spider-string oozes like sap,
The unicorns step in her trap—
Soon they will serve as her steeds.

Glissandra rides out from her lair,

The wind singing tunes in her hair,
Unicorn under her thighs;
With spider-web stirrups and reins,
Glissandra rides hillside and plains
Under the thunder-split skies.

She gallops the high road to town,

But gates in the walls clatter down,
Sentries with crossbows appear—
“Turn back, pretty rider, turn back”
The sentinel cries through the black:
Darts whistle close to her ear.

Glissandra returns to her nest,

Resuming what she knows the best,
Weaving her webs—her life’s chore!
But sometimes she pines for the life
Of being some villager’s wife—
No one wants her—as before!
05-31-78
*

Old Witch

Figurines fall from the shelf,

Death to the elf,
Puppets are sawdust once more,
Crushed on the floor.

Soldiers of Old Witch arrive,

Nothing’s alive,
Nothing but troops come to scorch
Toys with their torch.

Doll’s house is wantonly burned

Tea-tables turned
Over and everything’s spilled:
Rocking-horse killed.
10-22-74
*

On Keeping a Journal

Crops grow,
Years flow,
Birds go,
And come, each year anew.

Map their
Flight where
The air
Evolves from grey to blue.

List all
Bird’s call
Each squall
And whistle heard by you.

Write brief
Each leaf,
Each sheaf
Of pages chart what’s true.
08-17-78
*
 On Learning of a Third Claimant
to the Throne of Redonda

Redonda’s mystery abides,

Luring soul toward soul
Across Atlantic’s calms and tides,
Questing for the goal.
But all is mist. Redonda hides,
Its truth inscrutable upon its royal scroll.
1982
*

On Meeting for the Last Time

Contempt becomes your beauty not at all

When adolescent passions pall.
Your mockery, like my rebuked regret
Should long ago have nulled and numbed. Forget.
12-25-81
*

On Reading Timothy Steele’s “Missing Measures:

Modern Poetry and the Revolt Against Meter”

If you like poetry written today

As blunt as a newspaper journalist’s prose,
its rhythms the cadence of trucks in the street,
with rhyme in the ash can,
banished by Eliot, and Pound, his accomplice,
then this book is HERESY.
(Its professor-author, having published, should
perish!)

But if you revere poems you learned in your youth,

Mellifluous measures that capture the ear,
Like Keats’s Grecian urn (when Beauty meant Truth),
This book is a zephyr of sense blowing clear:
Wind-chimes of reason, some won’t want to hear.
1975
*

On Rewriting a Song

The chorus isn’t right,

It’s crowded up too tight,
And what is far, far worse,
It hardly seems to fit the verse.

Rewrite it one more time,

And change that trite, trite line,
And simplify the tune.
(That minor chord came all too soon.)
09-78
*

On Seeing Joan Baez

 Close the Grammy Awards Show,
February 23, 1983

She came on at the end,

An old nostalgic friend,
And “Blowin’ in the Wind”—they let her do that song.
But yet the lyrics blurred—
The last lines were not heard
About “how many deaths?” that still are wrong.
El Salvador: Vietnam—Joan never will belong
On television. Flower-soft and soldier-strong.
02-24-83
*

On Unloving A. E. Housman
(1859-1939)

Housman piped a pure sad note

Blue as misted hills,
But the perfect poetry he wrote
No longer lifts and thrills.

Why, he would have understood

Youth decays at last,
Verse tastes bad that once was good,
Bitter like years past.
1979
*

On Viewing New Buildings in Washington, D. C.

(for Natalie Eng)

Man’s lofty hopes once soared in stone.

His architecture sought God’s sky,
In spires uprisen, sprung from earth.

Today, man’s mood is crudely shown

In concrete cubes that smite the eye,
Brute paleoliths of stone-age worth
That future archeologists, amazed, will scan,
And ponder… did ape-like artisans evolve from man?
05-18-83
*

Once

Friends are west and very far;

Seas are hard to cross,
Blanketed by sky and star:
Ocean full of loss.

Friends are north, and lying cold

Underneath the ice
Of forgetfulness and old
Times that won’t live twice.
11-17-70
 *

Once Again

I’d rather wander crazy,

All alone instead
Of following a lazy
Loser who is dead.

But anything I’m saying

You could say to me:
We’d better let the graying
Twilight cut us free.
1967
*

One or Two

Of all the songs you write and sing

Before your wife, before your king,
You wonder which will still be known
When you are under sod and stone?

Not the ones for coins in hand

Nor for flag and fatherland,
Just the one or two you play
To ease yourself, at end of day.
12-14-70
*

One Too Many Memories

‘Woke up sad and hung over, alarm clock is ringing my brain,

‘Fell out of bed, I was grabbing my head,
The dreams of you remain.
‘Tried my best to cook breakfast, I’m burning my toast like a fool,
‘Can’t concentrate on the eggs on my plate,
The morning hits me cruel.

One too many memories, one too many dreams,

One too many nights alone, when love ain’t what it seems,
One too many memories, one too many dreams,
Of you…

Tried my best to get rolling, I’m starting for work right on time,
‘Stopped for a glass, and I felt my day pass,
The way I live is a crime.
Six o’clock in the tavern, it’s peanuts and popcorn and friends,
‘Talking till two, and the subject is you,
The story never ends.
1980
*

Only

Only dreams remain

 Within Man’s mind;
To weave and wind
Patterns in a chain
Connecting brain to brain.

Only dreamers are

Untied and free:
Their slavery
Is to some faint star,
Enchanting, yet so far.
03-16-74 (rev. 10-11-90)
*

Onyx Beach
(for Gary William Crawford)

Gold ships
Ploughing through storms in your brain.
Gale rips
Canvas with ebony rain.
Black stars
Reaching with magnetic hands.
Gold spars
Strewn carelessly on black sands.
Dementia…
That none understands.
1988
*

Or Longer
(1878-1958)

Jorkens, Rory, Bran,

Watch with Welleran
While the Witch of Fame
Mutters one more name.

“Lord Dunsany” rings

Down the marbled wings,
Down Pegana, through
Theaters for you.

With his name through time,

Echoes that of “Sime”
Down the river Yann
For as long Man.
02-19-74
*

Orchards of Wonder

The dreams are all sown in the early Spring,

Plated by poets who hope to bring
A harvest of splendor in early fall,
Fantasies blooming tall.
They water the crops with their childhood tears,
Wept with the pang of passing years,
And sunned by the joy of the aging child,
Bold, unafraid and wild.

The plants soon arise with their ripened yield,--

Fantasies filling the fruited field!—
And readers of wonder arrive and reap
Glamour to glean and keep,
09-27-80
*
Oregon Trail

In-pine-sweet air
In humus soil
Is where I rest, away from care,
And trail weary toil.

One morning feathers filled the air,

With wooden shafts that sped
And left this traveler to lie
With poisoned arrowhead.
10-16-80
*

Originality

I get my nature out of books—

Literary valleys, crags, and books.

I borrow other poets’ themes—

Voyeuring their surrealistic, dangerous dreams.

Of love alone, I’ve evidence—

Data culled from close-controlled experiments.
1977
*

Originality (2)
(for Anne)

I get my Nature out of books,

(Literary fields and brooks).
Vicarious poet stealing themes:
(Other poets’ clearer dreams).
But I have first-hand knowledge of
Yourself. You rhyme my lines of love.
11-10-80

Ounce of Prevention

The lady robot doesn’t take

Her birth controlling pill,
She knows it could be one mistake…
Untested drugs can kill.
 She doesn’t want a deformed child,
With gears and wheels all out of place,
Or with three metal mouths that smiled
Upon its baby face.
01-02-80
*

Over and Over and…

The greatest skill a writer learns

Is licking stamps on envelopes,
And what goes out, too soon returns:
A boomerang of battered hopes.

Revise, rewrite, submit once more,

Until your tongue is dry
From posting manuscripts that bore
The editors who (won’t/can’t) say why.
11-18-80
*

Paper Tomb

Scholars squander sunny days

Coffined in their cloistered nooks,
Where a wise man never stays
Buried, bored, by books.
11-09-69
*

Paradox Pieties

A child asleep is wiser than

A waking, book-befuddled man.

A nursing mother’s mightier

Than all the kings that ever were.

And blind old men, decrepit, lame,

Are visionaries all the same:
Seers of divine, immortal flame.
02-17-82
*

Paresis

Blue elves biting your shoulder,

Fantasies cold as the wine,
Blue elves gnawing, each bolder—
Shudders convulse your sick spine.

Blue elves burrow your brain now,

Worming their way in your head,
After you’re labeled “insane”, how
Will those blue elves be fed?
 02-01-76
*

Pawnshop Down In Nashville

In a pawnshop down in Nashville, there’s a cracked six-string guitar,

Now the fellow who abandoned it found out how tough things are,
Underneath the guitar there’s a box of diamond wedding rings;
You can take in your most prized possession, find out what it brings.

Underneath the cuckoo clocks there is a baby’s silver spoon,

It was picked out by a grandma, it was traded in too soon,
There’s a hunting rifle purchased for a husband by a wife;
You can take in all your birthday gifts, and start a fresh new life.

Some musicians in from Florida are walking toward the back,

They’ll be buying cowboy hats and all those costumes that they lack,
They’ll be buying leather jackets with the fringe upon the sleeve;
When they turn their backs on Nashville, they’ll have something when they leave.
1970
*

Payment

Who is it who walks along

His head all brown with blood?
“Just someone who did me wrong,
Whose grave is in the mud
A mile from here.”

He is dead but yet I see him

In the paling moonlight.
You’re my friend or else you’d be tim-
id for your soul tonight
A mile from here.
1965
*

Perception

The silver grass is high,

And silver dewdrops glaze
Beneath the pale gold sky
Where unicorns still graze.

Their horns are ivory

And mythical, yet true:
I shut my eyes and see
Their golden hooves anew,
As real and me and you.
08-13-79
*

Periodical Horror
 Ephemeral pulp magazines survive
In readers’ memories
Or microfilm archive reels,
Where desolate graveyards are still alive
And shapes under cypress trees
Arise, as the death-knell peels.

The sensuous covers are livid red

Or luminous greenish-blue
Where maidens fend off some beast,
Within: certain stories endure, undead,
The classics of fear and grue
Where literate ghouls still feast.
12-09-83
*

Personality of Houses: A Tennessee Trilogy

(for Ted P. Yeatman)
I. Murmuring Mansion

Old house strives to speak,

Crying out to creak
When the wind blows in,
And the storms begin:
Tales of joy and sin

Marriages and death,

Birth, and infants’ breath—
Hear the ghostly tears
Sobbing down the years:
House of faith…and fears.

II. Lesson

Civil War trenches filled,

Most of the legends, stilled,
Yet the old mansion stands—
An architectural fact
In a suburban tract,
Rent of its sold-away lands.

Perfect-trimmed lawns and trees

Thrive where the tireless bees
Once had a hollow-tree hive
Robbed by young boys, now men.
How many seasons since then?
Mansion, teach me to survive.

III. Artifacts of Feeling

Old lace and cut glass,

Antiques of dull brass:
Dim dining-room.
Lockets with hair-coils,
Portraits in old oils,
Cracked spinning loom.
 Paint peeling, tall weeds,
House where old time feeds,
And the years gloom.
11-18-78
*

Phil

She had a fellow Quaker waiting back

Behind at school for her Fall return:
My inner rage went red, then inky black,
As coal-hard hate began its bitter burn.
She called him soft—a coward! So I thought,
A pacifist, a scholar, and a boy,
And in brute bloody fantasies I fought
And fractured him like some cheap toy.
She seldom spoke of him, but when she did
It always caught me with no good defense,
And so the jealousy was hardly hid,
A stinking cancer she could smell and taste and sense:
It ate like acid at our August days,
The dread distrust that when it enters…stays.
09-05-75
*

Philosophy

Philosophers have schemes and schools,

Teaching sophistries to fools
Who analyze the stars and define
Their empty universe…not mine.

They cannot understand how a tree

Lives beyond a century,
Or how a hummingbird fashions its nest,
Or what the wind says, sighing west.

Nor can philosophers quite explain

Music of a needed rain,
Or perfumed fragrance scenting the air,
Exhaled by pine-trees breathing there.

Philosophers try hard to explain, yes,

But you cannot grant their premises
Which contradict each other, each in turn.
(If they’d walk in the woods, they’d learn.)
02-29-80
*

Phototropism

I.

The grave is the adolescent goal,

Death’s the teenage cult,
Byronic, the melodramatic role,
 With suicide, oft the result.

II.

Transcending malaise is the urgent task,

Evading those marble tombs;
Your soul in Sonlight beams must bask,
Defying Death’s crypt-like gloom.
10-28-94
*

Pie-Supper Summer

Blueberry and cherry, and home-made apple pie,

Country girls bake them, the apple of your eye;
Each pie’s got a number—which one will you choose?
Look at all those country girls, looking right at you.

It’s a Pie-Supper Summed, in Nineteen and Thirty-Eight,

Down at the school house—you know you can’t be late;
Lemonade and coffee, wash that pie right down;
Your friends and your neighbors, from the hills and from the town.

It’s a Pie-Supper Summer, in the Ozark mountain hills,

Mighty big appetite--you know you’re going to get your fill;
It’s a Pie-Supper Summer in ht Ozark mountain hills:
You can shut your eyes…you can see that picture still.

Billy brings along his Gene Autry, Sears guitar,

He likes Tex Ritter, and those cowboy picture stars;
Bill buys a pie prepared by Becky Lou—
Look at all those young folks…sneaking off two-by-two!

Becky. She says “Now Billy, I think we’d better get hitched soon—
I can see Daddy’s shotgun reflecting the Ozark moon!”
So they get married down in Arkansas, late one Saturday—
Billy’s dropping out of school…now he’s baling hay.

Pearl Harbor comes along in December of Forty-One—

On an Okinawa Beach, Billy tests out his M-1 gun—
His mama gets a Gold Star—and he never got to know his kids,
And Becky, she don’t say nothing…she keeps those feelings hid.

And you know that Time, Time, Time has a way of adjusting
All your dreams,
And the years, keep right on flowing
Like an Ozark mountain stream.

Becky lives in Springfield in a high-rise all alone,

And her son performs in Branson, in a theater all his own;
On Decoration Day she puts a wreath on a hero’s grave,
And she shuts her eyes and looks at yesterday.

It’s a Pie-Supper Summer, in the Ozark mountain hills,

Mighty big appetite, you know you’re going to get your fill,
It’s a Pie-Supper Summer, in the Ozark mountain hills—
You can shut your eyes…you can see that picture still.

Blueberry and cherry, and home-made apple pie;

Country girls bake them, the apple of your eye;
Each pie’s got a number—which one will you chose?
Look at all those country girls, looking right at you.
09-07-89
*

Pillage

Skies are helmet-grey,

Ship-roads shower spray,
On the deck
Of the dragon-boat;
Will it live to float?
Will it wreck?

Vikings face the gale

Beating mast and sail:
War-gods bless their trip.
Muscles press each oar,
Sword-men splash ashore,
Axes slash, knives rip!
11-29-76
*

Pinned

Like birdshot at the sparrows,

She has shot her sympathy:
She anchors you with arrows,
Perched upon her tree.

Why don’t you fly to freedom?

Are your broken wings impaled?
The branch is good to see from,
Why not stay there, nailed?
1980
*

Pizarro
(1476-1541)

Our enemies across the sea

Are darker than they ought to be:
They’re heathen full of heresy
They’re greedy with their gold.

And so the temples have to burn,

So that those savages will learn
Religion and respect, in turn,
As Spanish flags unfold.
12-25-73
*
 Playing By Ear
(for Michael Eng)

My fingers find the rusty strings

And force them to the frets,
And play a melody that rings
Of love, and old regrets.

The ancient tune is ever-new,

The saddest song that’s sung.
The minor chords—the color blue—
For fools who once were young.
1981
*

Playing Piano, Just Like Making Love

(for Melba in Portland))

She plays piano in the hotel bar,

Collecting dollar bills inside her jar,
She makes the oldest melodies sound new,
She always takes the time to joke with you.

She is a famous singer to her friends,

She know that every daydream always ends,
She knows she doesn’t have a well-known name,
She makes believe she doesn’t miss the fame.

She’s part of every song she’s ever sung

She makes the late-night traveling folks feel young,
You wonder how she keeps her constant smile,
You wonder how she keeps that old-time style.

She plays piano creating melodic ecstasy,

She plays for money, nothing good comes free,
The people clap and beg her for one more,
They know that music’s what she is made for.
11-24-74 (rev. 03-23-89)
*

Playthings

Grown-up boys
Use women-toys
Until they break
With soft, soft noise,
And muffled ache.
04-28-78
*

Plea

Grown ups, take a peek and look:

Perhaps you’ll like this little book,
Maybe you’re still young inside,
Perhaps your Wonder hasn’t died.
 12-25-78
*

Poem-Pyre

I wrote my best, too long, long past,

Words from my heart, not head,
I grab my pen, I clutch it fast,
But all my art is dead,
All of my art is dead.

As dead as dreams that died of age,

Tired from a weary wait,
My rhymes unprinted on the page
Expire in fireplace grate,
Ash… in fireplace grate.
02-16-76
*

Poet-Birth: 1961

At school I found the spaces in between

Her letters lengthened as the days grew brief,
And letters that I wrote were still as green
As spring before the fall inflames each leaf,
That tumbles to the pavement, brown and dead.
I read her final one that Saturday,
As rage and fierce revenge throbbed in my head,
I knew how futile to believe that she, not he, would pay.
But still I sampled other faces and sweet hair
And throbbing sighs, that couldn’t really last:
In someone else’s eyes her ghost danced there,
Reminding me of grief ahead, not past,
As winter worsened and I learned to write
My first bad poems, full of self-hurt spite.
05-21-76 (rev. 06-16-90)
*

Poetaster Manifesto

Irreverence to us is All-Sacred,
Light lampoons, devoid of real hatred,
Our metrical crime
Is limerick rhyme:
We’re strippin’ the stuffed-shirts bare naked.
1983
*

Poetry Collection

I’ve bartered up my youth for books.

And now my future looks
Like one long glassed-in, book-lined shelf:
Fairy poems. rhymes-of-elf,
And dragon runes…and songs-of-self.
1981
 *

Poetry Rules

Speak your heart as women can,

Yet be brutal as a man,
And like a little child, use rhyme,
Then like the very old, brave Time.

Take from Nature, take from town,

But write your observations down,
And steal from ancient poets, too
(But leave no fingerprints, no clue).
1982
*

Poet’s Paramour

Sweet Goddess, Personification,

You’re not an abstract ideation,
So listen to this supplication:
“Love me, and my verse creation.”
01-01-80
*

Port of Call

The hills are high

Against the crowds
Of frigate-clouds,
Mooring them upon the sky.

The valleys down

Below are seen
As ocean green,
Burnt to seaweed-brown.
08-26-74
*

Portland Spring

Columbia, Willamette stream

Forth their gentle run,
As salmon glint beneath each beam
Of a Northwest sun.

The rain-swelled rivers rise and roll

Back where they began,
Like ups and downs of someone’s soul:
Seasons of a man,
02-16-76
*

Posthumous Cuckold

‘Why are you wiping your knife so clean?

 And isn’t that blood on your handkerchief?”
(Goodness, my husband is angry I’ve seen,
Wishing he’d dried it upon a leaf,
Out in the forest to spare my grief.)

“Why are you staring at me, so cold,

Oh Darling, he wasn’t my lover, wait—“
(Jealousy’s making my husband bold,
Slaying my lover—venting his hate—
Suddenly stabbing me!—oh, Fate…)

(Finally peace is upon my heart,

I’m resting beneath an expensive stone.)
“Join me, my lover, we never will part,
Up from our graves, out of rags and bone,
Floating as one, in the Vast Unknown,
Leaving my husband…alive…alone…”
10-12-81
*

Post-operative Report

Can you scalpel the soul with the knives of your science,
Separate sin with your blade—
And dissect human psyches with all your reliance
Placed in experiments made?

Empirical evidence augurs for “yes”—

Instinct suggests “maybe not”—
And there’s gore on the table. The wound is a mess.
Wisdomless knowledge you’ve got.
1979
*

Prayer

When my standing turns to falling,

Lift me toward my petty perch.
When my running runs to stalling
Goad me back again to search.

Horizons widening ahead

Re-sparked! All languor shed.
06-18-84
*

Precipice

The easy road I never took—

The mossy path beside the brook
Or highway with the signs so plain—
Walking cliffs in the rain.

Below are bones to mark the place

Where other climbers fell through space.
 But dying…striving not to fail:
I’d rather trek the slippery trail.
02-25-77
*

Precipitation

The sky was sheeted with grey rain,

Color of dull pain,
Like lost Elana’s ash-toned eyes,
Grey with wanton lies.

Elana, blurring into patterned grey

Grief, from yesterday,
While desolating showers pour
Grey, outside my door.
12-25`-79
*

Prehistoric Precision

I.

Stonehenge wrought of bluestone

Each massive megalith
Positioned by shamans (date unknown)
For timing the heavens with.

II.
Cheops’ awesome pyramid
Aligned with compass care,
Demarking distance, map-like grid,
Emplaced, finitely, there.

III.

Star-clocks and calendars,

Astronomic gauges,
Immortal instruments, sighting stars,
For scientists and mages.
03-03-92
*

Preview

I peer through mists of coming years,

The present disappears,
The crimson clouds of war blow past—
Utopia—world peace at last.

No famine, plagues or hunger then,

World law among all men,
Complete coerced security,
The subtlest sort of slavery.
07-05-78
*
 Prices

The way to buy

The sympathy you lack
Is but to die,
And hope her fickle eyes look back.

The way to live

Is even easier:
You merely give
Her up, and be the man you were.
09-29-73
*

Priority

We need another planet now,

A star to store our waste,
A far-off, floating garbage-scow:
So find one, with all haste.
11-29-1978 (Rev. 01-23-1990)
*

Processional

Imperial centuries march by,

Purple canopies, and gold—
Enameled chairs that slaves lift high
Pass before me. Pompous. Bold.

Immortal Time himself rides past,

Borne along in grand parade,
A monarch from the first to last—
Skeleton in gilt brocade.
Time, the cruelest cavalcade.
03-16-82
*

Progress

Modern ears of Man

Hear no pipes of Pan,
Nor the fairies’ happy flute—
So it falters, mute.

Mankind’s modern eyes

See no magic skies,
No more crystal castles there,
Only smoky air.

Man’s immortal soul

Fractures what was whole,
Severed, now, in twain apart,
Splitting head from heart.
04-05-76 (Rev. 06-25-90)
 *

Progress (2)

Modernity has ravaged golden thrones,

The Kings are toppled, ornate crowns displaced,
That roll and ring upon the palace stones:
Decapitated, those heads the crowns once graced;
And severed, all the links of language with the past.
Dumb, unlettered beasts, we grunt and snort
Among the vine-choked, fluted pillars. No words last.
Antiquity’s philosophies abort
Inside the wordless womb of Now. We swine
Have overthrown the ruined emperies,
Boar-tusk crude, we rove--barbaric and bovine.
The parchments all are shredded. Smashed, each frieze
Of carved Hellenic majesty. We root
Amongst the marble rubble where weeds shoot.
1989
*

Prosody of Pain

The poet of lonely rooms writes on,

Of wine-drunk dawns and new love gone,
And landlords rattling at the cracked, thin door—
And there…her hairpins taunt him from the floor!
02-02-81
*

Proud Pinnacle

Tower on the plane:

Sun and driving rain
Alike to kiss the stones
Rising in a spire,
Spearing clouds of fire,
Or clouds as grey as bones.

Tower of the grey

Monks, who pray and pray
Inside the polished wall,
Slippery to climb,
Worn by winds of Time
And Faith—one day to fall.
11-30-70
*

Proud Princess

A cloud of white fluff

She floats like a puff
Extending a tail
Wide as a sail:
Arrogant, fat
Angora cat.
 06-02-78
*

Pruned

There is not long before the severing of all.

Sheared off in bloom the rose will fall,
Crushed underfoot, on life’s stone walk.

The moments left to bloom are prized ones still,

Split-second, flowering!—until
Black snipping scissors clip life’s stalk.
10-09-83
*

Purple-Clouded Prose
(1865-1947)

Amazing M. P. Shiel…
To read him is to feel
The pulse of pounding poetry,
And surging ecstasy.

His heroes dart and dash—

Whole nations—races!—clash
In cataclysmic fervid prose
As fancy grips and grows. A prophet—novelist,
A seer-scientist,
Eccentric Shiel endures through Time.
Perverse. Bizarre. Sublime.
04-72 (rev. ~1990)
*

Questionnaire
(For L. Sprague de Camp)

How do mermaids mate?

No one seems to know:
In their naked state
Nothing seems to show.

Who needs unicorns?

Aren’t they obsolete?
With their silly horns,
Keep them off the street.

How to vampires breed?

Is it by the bite?
Does it make them bleed?
Why don’t they like the light?

How can witches fly?

Is it by sheer will?
Why don’t zombies die?
Why do curses kill?
 Where are all the ghouls?
Who sent them away?
Don’t they know the rules?
Picnic-time today.

Why do ghosts return?

Why to dreams foretell?
And I’d like to learn,
Where’s the wishing well?
05-30-77
*

Rabid Curs

The war-dogs chew at the throat of Man,

Killing as canines can,
With drooling jowls and fetor that fouls
The air, with harrowing warrior-howls--
They herald the End with their yelps and yowls.
08-80
*

Rainbows and Daydreams

I’ve chased a thousand fading rainbows, but you’re the first one that remained,
You fill up my horizons with the colors of your loving, every day.
I’ve lost a thousand dying daydreams, but you’re the first one coming true,
I open up my eyes and can’t believe your love has really come my way.

Rainbows and daydreams, they come like a gift from above,

Sometimes I lose them, and sometimes they linger with love…
Rainbows and daydreams of you.

I’ve faced a thousand cloudy mornings, I’ve weathered all those stormy years,
My night fears turn to daydreams when the rainbow of your loving falls on me.
And when my eyes grow dim and misty, I’ll see your love light shining through.
I’ll close my eyes one final time and see your rainbow shine eternally.

Rainbows and daydreams, they come like a gift from above,

Sometimes I lose them, and sometimes they linger with love…
Rainbows and daydreams of you.
1983
*

Raison d’Etre
(for Joey Froehlich)

Why undertake to write another verse,

When Undertaker Time and his black hearse
Will bear your poems to their final resting place
Interred without a stone, in some small weed-thick space?

Because—regardless of the tolling knell,

As long as there are whispered tales to tell
Brave poetry can help deter brute Time
A moment more until he tolls his final chime.
 11-29-80
*

Reader’s Block

I’d always rather read than write,

But if I want to win renown,
I’ll lay my magazine back down
And stay up typing, half the night.
01-12-80
*

Realism

I only rhyme things I can see,

Facts irrefutably true
Like the elves in the shade of a lollipop tree,
And fairies of green and blue.

To “civilization” I’m blind:

Cities and factory smoke
Are scenarios out of a lunatic’s mind,
And “progress” and “peace” the last joke.
02-10-82
*

Reassurance
(After reading Joseph Payne Brennan’s Creep to Death)

Hour ticking late,

The kindling you plied
Is embered. Charring sticks fall
Down in the grate.
December’s outside
And shadows ascend the wall.
Listen!—and wait—
There—someone just cried—
The chimney wind? Or a wraith’s call?
“It’s nothing, no, nothing at all!”
1983
*

Reborn

Kick the coffin all apart,

It’s rotted through;
Oblong box around your heart
Cannot ‘prison you.

Open up the rusted lid,

Corroded by your tears,
Never mind the things you hid,
Shrouded by your fears.

Climb out of the toppled tomb

To face the seasons yet
 Allotted you, leaving room
To live, and to forget.
07-17-73
*

Recompense

Free verse is what I mostly write,

For editors whose money’s tight,
Who pay the customary fee,
And print my poetry for …free.
01-17-80
*

Recurrent Dream

Inside a harbor inn

Where fateful voyages begin
An old man waits for me…
I enter, recklessly.

The barmaid brings the jug

And pours him out a frothy mug,
And lights a lamp for him
To read by, in the dim.

The old man wears a mask;

I hear him humorously ask
“Perhaps you care to look
Inside my ledger book?”

Instead, I flee that place—

For he unmasked a grinning face
Whose every crease and line
Was mine, was mine, was mine.
08-07-73
*

Red and Grey

You’re looking deep inside for

Sentimental blue;
We maybe should have tried more
Colors than just two.

But two are all we’re living,

Red and empty grey.
Red is for the giving
Back and forth each day.

Grey is for the going,

Empty, without pain;
You might as well be knowing
Feeling blue’s in vain.

Red is the color of grocery-store wine,

Grey is a bus station waiting-room line.

But blue is when you’re singing

In a minor key,
Pretending that you’re bringing
Tears to you and me.
08-18-71
*

Red and Grey(2)

North come the Riders of Grey,

Grey as the early dawn fog
Bathing each swamp-tree and long,
Rising like gloom from the bog.

Grey-Riders enter the day

Dawning across swamp and plain,
Riding through yellow-mist rain,
Riders of death and grey pain.

Peasants are running away,

Panicked as grey shapes appear,
Grey and as a gruesome fear,
Grey as stone-sharpened spear.

Too late to plead or to pray:

Grey-Riders’ pikes and spears flash,
Swords of grey sever and slash!
Colors of crimson now splash.
04-05-76
*

Red Arrows
(For Mary Kangas)

The feudal lords are at our door

To tell us what our land is for,
And how to plan and lead our lives:
Ancient tyranny arrives.

We peasants know it is no joke,

Our farms and fields inside a yoke
That chains and collars men born free:
Vassals of a barony.

And so we serfs will soon arise

And give the nobles a surprise,
And shrug off shackles binding tight,
Loading crossbows for the fight.
11-24-74
*

Red Clouds
 Rusted plow upon the field
Farmer’s furrows, all are healed
Scars upon the sod.

Nothing planted there but dreams,

Buried, watered not by streams,
Nor by tears of God.

Fields and fathers, all asleep:

Sons have other crops to keep
Kept by force of arms.

Cindering the foreign skies

Billowing white clouds to rise
Poisoning strange farms.
03-04-72
*

Red Rhymes

Another would-be writer,

Wrapping up a fist
Of fingers fading whiter,
Razoring his wrist.

Instead of decent dying,

He begins to think
Excitedly of trying
Crimson-colored ink.

He’s prettying the pages

Scarlet, with a spurt,
Imagining the Ages
Care about his hurt.
02-23-69
*

Red Surf
(In memory of George Darley, 1795-1846)

Water-witches wailing,
Hear them in the waves,
Toward them we are sailing,
Willing siren-slaves.

Soon our ships are crashing,

Crushed on fang-like rocks,
Shattering and smashing,
Feel the fatal shocks.

Lured by grotto lamp-fires,

Lulled by sweetest song,
Bled by mermaid vampires,
Thirsting in a throng.
12-13-75
 *

Reflex

Holstered magnum gun:

To use or not to use?
Choices, choices—choose!
‘Hope it’s the right one
06-19-78
*

Refraction

Though Time has dwindled me to motes,

My dust remains in sunset’s light—
A pattern faintly forms and floats
Discernible before your sight.

Indefinite and vague, yet there,

A wisp of what I was persists
Split-second long upon bright air—
Then vanishes in violet mist.
1976
*

Regal Revenge

The twelve-cursed king,

Defies the maledictions, one by one:
“You cannot kill me with your imprecations”
He utters to his wizard foes.

“Your insults ring

But cannot slaughter me or even stun.
Exhaust yourself in futile fulminations.
My royal thunder strikes down blows.
So writhe to death…in final throes.”
07-11-84
*

Regeneration

Suburban farmers till the ground

With rotor-blades that spin around
Slicing clods in two.
Suburban Eden, lost—then found
Every Spring, anew.
05-30-78
*

Regicide

We harvested so many grapes each day,

Our hands and lips were purpled, stained
The shade of royalty: kings gone away
To die with queens, till rust remained
 Of each tarnished throne and crumpled gown.
Inside her bed at night she floated far from me,
And like a knight that tugs a queen’s great gown,
I knew my enemy was brute Eternity,
That crushes kingdoms made of stone or dreams.
She often mentioned autumn—back at school,
Her words like shears, slicing well-stitched seams
Upon the royal tapestry, a cruel
And fitting ending to the fading myth,
Once woven lovingly, now scissored with!
04-24-76
*

Regret

How sweet to be a critic, and be sure, sure, sure

Of who is great and who comes only near,
And what is flawed and what is pure
And what is certain to endure—
And foist it all upon you without fear!

How sad to be a writer, and be dense, dense, dense,

Uncertain of what is, and isn’t art,
With the wit or confidence
Or critical omniscient-sense
To rip my latest manuscript apart.
01-25-81
*

Regrettably Yours

“He had grown up in a country run by politicians

Who sent the pilots to man the bombers to kill
The babies to make the world safer for children
To grow up in.”
Ursula K. LeGuin, The Lathe of Heaven (1971)

The Japanese were herded into prison pens,

The pigmentation yellow was their crime
(Their savings and their precious farms we stole in time)
But things like that regrettably occur in war.

We genocided Dresden, Hamburg, and Cologne,

Incinerating families alive
(But babies born of Germans needed not survive),
And things like that regrettably occur in war.

We shipped the Russian refugees in box-cars back

To certain death, or slave camps—who could care?
(Our soldiers shot the ones resisting-in-despair.)
But things like that regrettably occur in war.

We dropped the warning leaflets on the Japanese,

Those stupid Orientals didn’t take the cue
So atom bombs were needed to convince them, too,
That things like that regrettably occur in war.
 In “Operation Phoenix” many thousands died,
Some pushed from planes—from pegs punched through the ear—
Electrodes on the genitals—no one wants to hear
The things America regrettably has done in war.

The cockroach and the spider will inherit all,

Uncaring why the human species burned
Itself away, and why our leaders never learned
Exactly what regrettably occurs in war.
06-02-82
*

Reincarnation

The flaring torch of Time

Flickers down and I’m
Plunging into black.

Later the dark damp

Brightens with the lamp
Of the flame I lack.
04-21-75
*

Rejection Slip to Editors

I cannot sing to the wax-eared deaf,

Nor paint for the color-blind,
So flunk my verse with the grade of “F”
Sheer praise of the highest kind.
09-08-91
*

Rendezvous With the Reaper

I can’t remember the date of my death

For the life of me.
I scribbled it down on a fragment of brown
Paper bag. Now where can it be?

For I’d hate to miss out on that vital event;

I have to be there,
With everyone dressed in their ebony best—
Else they’ll think I had nothing to wear!
04-13-92
*

Reptile-Rhyme

Dragon is under “D,”

Next to “E,”
There on the page he’ll stay—
“Myth,” you say.

Obsolete lizard? No!

 Dragons grow
Dinosaur-large, in you:
Dream them, true.
01-14-79
*

Requiem

A song for you, dear Wind,

Whine it when you wail
And howl it in the gale
Though no one hears.

I wrote it for you, Wind,

Take it as your own
And let it moan and drone
On Man’s deaf ears,

And sing it always Wind,

Down Eternity
In memory of me
And my brief years.
04-21-81
*

Requiem for Rhymesters

You have stood against the crowd,

Indifferent as it hooted loud
And leering at your maundering.
But the crowd forever wins
Its vast, collective Death’s Head grins,
And all you poets are Life’s underlings.
1982
*

Response

“Poetry!” I begged from life

She answered with a knife
Plunged hilt-high hard into my breast,
Aware I wear no metal vest!
1985
*

Retort to Time

The crispness of your knife goes snick!

Cutting up my dreams like celery,
To make hors d’oeuvres that you, Time, pick
And gobble till you’ve swallowed me.

But while you cut, your blade will knick

Hard upon my iron bone;
It trims me to the very quick—
But still, my skull will dull its hone.
 1992
*

Retreat From the Cold

(for Denise Dumars)

I.

Green tomb
Shrouded with moss,
Stone room,
Cracked marble cross.

Cold floor,
Tight-chiseled rocks,
Steel door
Never unlocks.

Moon pales,
Color of fear.
Noise wails—
Can you not hear?

II.

No, no,
Soundless and still.
Let’s go
(Wind brings a chill)
Homeward, away from this shivering hill.
1975
*

Retribution

The table was running with ale,

The wizard was starting his tale.
The barley-drunk swordsmen slouched near,
And tore at some dry hunks of bread,
And scowled as the sorcerer said:
“Come close and listen and fear—“
But they only glared at their beer.

Their leader unslung his long blade,

Said “You’re the one should be afraid,”
And severed a head that went thud!
The story remained never told,
The warriors pushed north in the cold,
Next Spring, they’re found frozen in mud,
Their hair matted, smeared with black blood.
07-11-78
*

Retrospect

I.
The margin of memory is stretched along
The edge of waking eye:
A glimpse of a field of yellow years—
A flicker of sun, a tinge of tears—
Nostalgia’s blue-gold sky.

II.

The hope of Forever extends across

Horizons in front of you,
The mellowing mist of dewy grass—
The rim of the rainbow’s tinted glass—
A kaleidoscope-colored view.
1985
*

Return

Avalon is rising
From Atlantic seas;
Arthur is surprising
England’s enemies.

Over all the ages,

Battlefields and bones,
Arthur roars and rages,
Clattering the stones.

Hear his armor clanging,

Hear his sword once more
Splitting skulls and banging
Helmets to the floor.

See him once more drinking

Dead men’s blood with zest,
See him once more sinking
Down into the West.
09-09-73
*

Reunion

The gratings will groan,

The tomb-winds will moan
When Lorna wakes from her sleep
And lifts back the stone,
Her heart full of vows she must keep.

And watch-dogs will smell

The odors that tell
Them something decaying is near,
The stench will but swell
When Lorna in shrouds will appear.

Her lover who nailed

 Her coffin had failed
To fasten the wooden lid tight,
So, Lorna, unjailed,
Will make this love story end right.
03-77
*

Reunion (2)

December winds moan,

As tomb-gratings groan,
With Lorna bestirred from her sleep;
She slides back the stone
Committed to vows she must keep.

You cuckold!—you’ve nailed

Her coffin, but failed
To fasten the wooden lid tight.
So Lorna, unjailed
Returns to set certain wrongs right.

The castle dogs smell

The odors that tell
Them something putrescent is near—
“No, Lorna!” you yell—
(Of you, that’s the last your dogs hear).
12-26-90
*

Rev. Montague Summers

(1880-1948)

Arcane collector of Gothic lore,

Immersed in luridness and gore,
He wryly catalogued it all—
The ivy-covered castle wall,
The dungeon, and the secret door.

He studied witches and werewolves too,

Discovered Slavic vampire tales were true:
A throw-back to another age
He loved the Restoration stage
And smiled…as gossip ‘round him grew.
01-20-81
*

Reverie

Far over the mountains and lands away

From all that you’ve ever seen
Are valleys of shimmering silver-green
Where delicate fairies play.

In meadows of velveteen moss and grass,

The unicorns graze and browse,
Along with the crimson-colored cows,
 Where fluttering dream-birds pass.

The region is reached by an old, old trail,

By you, if you love to muse,
And shutting your weary eyelids, lose
Yourself in the fairy-tale.
02-28-80
*

Reverie (2)

Far over the mountains and lands away

Expands a voluptuous scene:
Lush valleys of dewy, silver-green
Where frivolous fairies play.

In meadows of velveteen moss and grass

The unicorns graze and browse,
While over the crimson-colored cows
Pterodactyls slowly pass.

So track the meandering, winding trail

That wends through your restive mind—
Relaxing your weary eyelids, find
Your path to the dappled dale.
12-26-90
*

Reward

What keeps you in the running

Is the race and not the prize.
Though you falter—even fall
With the winner seizing all—
The loser is the one who never tries.
1975
*

Rhyme of a Reincarnate

Forgive my love for antique things.

But ancient visions light my mind.
Imagination spreads strong, spacious wings
And soars me backward where I find
Myself alive—in other lives behind.

I was a troubadour for kings,

And at their sumptuous tables, dined.
I donned their silks and wore their sapphire rings,
And with their courtesans, I wined.
Three thousand years ago, soft hands were kind.

Contrast it with corrupt “Today.”

The Present is a haggard whore,
A foetid vampire sucking dreams away.
I’ve lived a hundred, better lives before.
 Their memory is my golden door.
1974
*

Rigged Game

Life is a laugh of the grinning gods,

Mockery dinning your ears;
Finicky fortune arranges the odds:
Losers in Life win the tears….
09-29-81
*

Ringing Up the Till

I’ve said before,

And say once more
A poem’s monetary worth is nil.

It’s heart-wrung cost

Is always lost
Inside the cash-drawer of the till.
02-28-82
*

Riposte

Retaliate with beauty when the world’s too harsh on you,

Poetry is poison to your foes.
Metaphors and meter will annihilate those few
Philistines you quietly oppose.
06-18-80
*

Riven

Fools believe in fantasy.

Skeptics see through all.
Devout and doubting, both in me,
Divided by a schizoid wall.
05-17-83
*

Road

The road is sharp with ice and shale,

But neither bloody foot will fail,
As long as you persist ahead…
As long as wounded feet can tread.

The roads are torturous to trek,

And Man who hikes them is a speck
Of immaterial dust. But still
There’s glory in your ceaseless will.
12-21-79
*
 Road Rhyme

No gods to please
No soil to seize
And spread my roots,
Just gypsy boots.

No chains to link
Just sky to drink
And sun to feast
On like a beast.

For life is best

That rambles west
Till roads erase
My sense of place.
1967
*

Road Ruts

The wheel of failure, rolling near,

Crushing each and all
My flowers, till they disappear
(April-sweet and Summer-tall)
Flattened in the muds of Fall.
09-29-81
*

Rodeo Rainbow

His belt buckle’s holding his courage up,

It’s polished and engraved, like a golden cup,
It’s a bronze bucking bronco he wears with pride—
It’s a symbol of a man born to ride.

His horse trailer’s parked by that old truck stop.

A plate full of pancakes on the counter-top.
The waitress is serving him her breakfast grin—
His eyes are open ranges…and she rides right in.

And she sees Indian silver—she sees Oklahoma sun—

She sees Montana blue, and those prizes he’s won,
She sees blood on the horns of a devil steer,
The picture’s so clear,
It’s a rodeo rainbow,
It’s a rodeo rainbow.

The date on his buckle’s “1988”—

He tucks a dollar bill under his plate;
He says, “Honey, I’d like to take you dancing some time,
But I’m on that come-back ride, and it’s a climb.”

A highway patrolman drops by around nine,

He says, “Some motorist ‘been drinking…and he crossed the solid line—
 Influential and he’s wealthy—and some cowboy’s dead…”
By that hot greasy griddle, she bows her head.

And she sees Indian silver—she sees Oklahoma sun—

She sees blood on the horns of a devil steer,
The picture’s so clear,
It’s a rode rainbow,
She sees a rodeo rainbow…for a long, long time.
1982
*

Rodeo Troubadour

The scars on his guitar were made by the rowels of a spur.

He strums it so sweetly, pretending he’s picking for her.
But she’s back at the ranch, and he’s penned in this Utah motel:
He’s the rodeo troubadour, with bronc-busting ballads to tell.

A guitar’s not a cowboy, it only gets better with age.

Its bones seldom fracture, and its corral is the bun-house or stage.
It makes getting tromped in the dust sound like wild Western fun.
Fir the rodeo troubadour, the music’s the best prize he’s won.

And the melody rolls like the wind off the Pendleton plains.
When his trophies are tarnished or pawned, his song remains….

Red Sovine…Red Simpson…Dave Dudley, they sing of those trucks.

Roy Acuff…Boxcar Willie…they don’t know that horse when it bucks.
He might be an ex-Champion, or a cripple in a Calgary bar:
He’s the rodeo troubadour, and his fingers, they ride the guitar…

(coda) “…up and down, up and down…yippie…ti…yi…eeee”

1981
*

Romany Toy

Little doll, who smiles in glee,

Sitting up where she can see
Over the curio shop,
Take her home and presently
Your heart will seize and stop.

Stopped by the Romany curse,

Placed by the old gypsy nurse,
Under the hand-painted smile;
Keep your coins inside your purse…
The doll can sit unsold awhile.
05-13-77
*

Rose-Crumbs

Flowers of fame
Bloom with your name
For a brief day,
 Then wilt away.

Petals you clutch

Crush with your touch,
Powdering to
Dust before you.
04-19-76
*

Rubble

The hand of Art writes small

Across the crumbling wall
Of human years:
But bullets’ burst and spark
Engrave a deeper mark
Than poet’s joys or tears.
04-29-72
*

Rudder

My life is a tool
Obeying the rule
Of vast supernatural force
With faith for my fuel
To rocket me forth, on course
08-27-83
*

Rude Road

The grinding wheel of Duty turns,

The axle bears the friction, burns
Beneath the burden of the load,
And spills the cargo in the road.

The driver wrests it from the mud

Back on the wagon flat-bed—thud!—
Repair the axle from a tree,
Resuming Duty’s destiny.
07-17-76
*

Running After Ruby

Running after Ruby, from Seattle to Los Angeles and back,

Following a trail of rumors and tears she left for me to track.
Running after Ruby, trying hard to put together every clue,
Finally I reached the wise conclusion maybe she and I are through.

Found her trail in Frisco in an alley where I almost lost my life,

Found a man who knew her, who was interested in showing me his knife.
Running after Ruby is an exercise I don’t believe I need,
Ruby’s like a cancer looking for another that she can bleed.
 Running after Ruby in Tijuana getting close to Hell or worse,
Getting drunk and getting scared I would cross the border in a hearse,
Ran into some bandits and I handed them my wallet and my belt,
Swam across to Texas and I told the border guard the way I felt.

I was optimistic when they let me out of jail in San Antone,

Headed back to Oregon where the people tend to leave a man alone,
Running into Ruby on the sidewalk, but I quickly passed her by,
Ruby’s running after me, I guess I’m fool enough to let her try.

Running after Ruby, now I find she’s running after me.

09-22-74
*

Sabbat-Revel

I.

Over plains and hills

The night-time quakes and chills…
Hark! A yelping yowl…
Hear the werewolf howl.

Sorcerers beneath
The moonlight on the heath
Circle, circle, spin…
Now the rites begin.

Ghosts and gnomes arrive

And demons once alive
Strip the gallows bare,
Seize what’s hanging there.

Feed each hungry fiend:

And bring the guillotined
Heads that crows have picked…
Dead that worms have licked.

II.

Suddenly the dawn

Is sprinkling light on lawn,
Causing all to flee
Morning’s brilliancy.

No more blood to slurp;

As insects chatter, chirp
Roosters crow and clack!
Pink skies blot the black.
02-17-1975
by Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)
First English translation
from Des Vers (1880)
*

Sabbath, 1966, 1984

 Those motel memories return.
The colored comic pages opened first
And water bubbling in an urn
And powdered coffee slaking my communion thirst.

Montana windswept plains outside.

Stark desolation’s existential rites within.
But earth I’ve trekked since then rolls wide:
And prayer, not newsprint, now assuages sin.
08-05-84
*

Sac Prairie People

(For August Derleth)

Hidden lives inside the village streets,

Little victories, unsung,
Whispered and unchronicled defeats,
Ancient hearts, and young.

Stories told in sighs and guarded grins,

Tales unwritten yet,
Selfless sacrifices, secret sins,
Pride, and veiled regret.

Then a poet-novelist arrives,

Jotting it all down:
Rolling seasons, shifting little lives,
Saga of a town.
10-28-78
*

Sacrifice Recalled

I dreamed that by a grey-blue sea

Familiar columns beckoned me,
An onyx temple rearing stark
Against the surf so dark.

But in the temple drawn-out screams

Destroyed nostalgic dreams—
The screams were mine, some four
Millennia ago, in life before…
Black deja-vu, on Time’s far shore.
09-17-81
*

Sahara Doom Scape

I.

Whitening sands upmirror desert glare,

Glinting, underneath my mind’s burnt sun…
Paling, dream expanse.
And there I wander, rootless in some Netherwhere—
 Mental vagabond, my trek begun…
Picaresque romance!

II.

Whitening bones appear by poison springs,

Dread oasis, tempting me to drink.
Shining, silver pool,
Mirage aglow. A maiden floats on glassine wings—
Beckoning me toward the toxic sink.
Reckless, I sip cool
Blighted waters. Thirsty fool.
05-20-83
*

Salt-Water Lunch

City hands reach in the trap,

Dodging claws that snap—
Sea-green squirming, panicked crab—
Spread the tongs, then grab!
11-03-78
*

Salvage

Gallows-birds swoop for their meal,

Down to the cross-beams and chain,
Gibbet-rust flakes in the rain,
Reddening bones with the stain.

Criminals crushed on the wheel,

Swinging their cages on air,
Gallows-birds pull out their hair
Taken for nests far from there.
09-19-76
*

Sand in the Wind

Sand in the wind off the desert,

Burning my face in the breeze,
Sand in the wind is a demon,
Scaring the leaves off the trees.

Sand in the wind knows you’re leaving,

Hammering my window-pane,
Sand in the wind without mercy,,
How many weeks without rain?

Stuck in a South Oregon cabin,

Hiding my eyes in the sun,
Sand in the wind says it’s over,
‘Wonder which one of us won?

Sand in the wind blowing angry,

 Hope you’re some place where it’s cool,
Sand in the wind dry and dirty,
Maybe I’ll go back to school.
09-27-77
*

Sandra’s Temperature

Golden-gloss skin,
And hair that’s the same,
Legs brown and thin,
And lips bright as flame.

Real as a fire,
She burns in your arms
Smoldering hot wire,
She sets off alarms.

Later she cools,

And you’ll chill as well,
Joining the fools
She’s frozen in Hell.
06-04-79
*

Santa Fe Turquoise

I’ve got a reason for buying you dinner,

I heard your jewelry is Indian blue,
I hear your diet has made you much thinner,
All of that jewelry you’re wearing is new,
Santa Fe turquoise looks so good on you.

I heard he bought you with silver and leather,

Somehow it doesn’t quite go with your smile,
Open-air restaurants are fun in this weather,
Let’s eat on table of Mexican tile;
Santa Fe turquoise will keep you in style.

I’ll tell you jokes and I hope you will listen,

Stop if they get too dirty or old,
Firelight reflections on silver will glisten,
Making your arms look like soft Spanish gold,
Santa Fe turquoise and feelings unfold.

I heard you gossiping rumors about me,

How can that jewelry hide all that you feel?
I’d like to hear, were you happy without me?
Santa Fe turquoise makes you look unreal,
Santa Fe turquoise has much to conceal.
10-21-76
*

Scent in the Air

(for Julia Severs Eng)
 Hummingbird and hungry bee,
Sharing in the free
Honeysuckle growing sweet…
Fragrant summer treat.
05-22-80
*

Sea-Burial

You’re riding a river of old regret

Down the years,
Refusing to forget
Tides of tears.

You’re sailing a sea of your used-to-be

Hard to drink,
The salt of surf and memory
Soon to sink.
04-06-74
*

Sea-Dread
(for John L. Wynne-Tyson, King Juan II of
Redonda: 1970-97, from Redonda’s
Duke of Nashville: 1997- )

I.

A giant on the bleakened sky

Strides across horizons, high
And haughty overhead from me,
Edging purple twilit sea.

The giant suddenly dives deep

Down from lofty clouds, so steep,
And swims where staining sun has set—
Red transcends toward violet.

II.

The giant’s gone, and so is day,

Darkening the mauve-hued bay,
But still I trace his outlined shape
Monstrous on the oceanscape.
1974
*

Sea-Reverie
(for Donald Sidney-Fryer)

Ocean islands gleam

In a glowing dream
Glimmering pale white,
Where the mermaid school
Within a rock-rimmed pool
Dives in mad delight.
 There I long to play
At the close of day,
Swimming in my sleep
In an opaled sea
As green as gypsy tea,
Where the sea-elves leap.
1972
*

Sea Trial

Stand alone right where you are,

Sinking sand’s a narrow bar
Underneath your stubborn feet,
Where your toes and ocean meet.

Angry surf is ages old,

Ancient tide has ebbed and rolled,
Round the centuries of Man:
Keep your footing if you can.

Keep your footing: what comes in

Leaves if only to begin
One more time, both in and out:
Stand, and stifle dreads and doubts.
12-23-76
*

Seashore Scene

Riders on the Cliffside, ocean below,

Banners from their lances, see the flags blow
Billowed on the breeze,
Pennants painted red, streamers of white,
Colours of the ancient Order, born to fight
Demon enemies.

See the riders on the beach by the bay,

Sabers flashing anything in their way:
Dragons, water-elves,
Serpents, devils, all fall to their blades,
Victims of the Riders on their fierce raids,
Slain by tens and twelves.
1969
*

Second Cup of Coffee

You’re sitting in your bathrobe at the dawn,

Sunrise painting yellow on the lawn,
Your second cup of coffee almost done,
Telling you your headache’s just begun.

Another empty morning coming true;

There’s nothing in a love son’s really new:
 You’ve heard this one, how many times before?
When you’re over thirty, it’s a bore.

I’m sitting in a restaurant far away,

Eating one more breakfast off a tray,
My second dup of coffee tasting good…
Everything inside of me is wood.

I guess we taught each other not to feel;

The songs upon the jukebox don’t sound real,
I play them one by one, just like a game…
Coffee, tea, and songs, they cost the same.
08-20-71
*

Secret

There’re poems enough, so why one more

Cluttering up the page?
The best were written long before
Unrivaled by this age.

The answer is only known to those

Fools of verse and rhyme
Who jingle their measures, till life’s close
Uncowed—unbowed!—by Time.
05-11-82
*

Seeing Sammi Smith in Nashville

(Printers’ Alley, June 7, 1983, 1:00 AM)

“Fell in love with her in Oregon

A dozen dreams ago,
And two hard thousand miles away.
Juke box in a reeking tavern
Took my quarters in a row
So one same song incessantly could play.

Now the distance is foreshortened—

Scant twenty feet or so—
My minstrel-mistress sprung from yesterday
Makes love-by-microphone across the night-club floor,
Beguilingly, like countless times before.
06-07-83
*

Seer
(In memory: August Derleth, 1909-1971)

Nature knows, and Man does not

Secrets that the sky has got,
Secrets that the old tree knows,
Tales in every wind that blows,
Concealed—until some poet tells
The message that Creation spells.
 04-03-79
*

Seismic Prophecy
(for Bruce Boston)

If ever Everafter seems

Inscrutable to you,
Remember, visionary dreams
At times come all too true.

The city by the bay will fall,

It’s Golden Gate to lie
Submerged, with skyscrapers once tall—
Metropolis must die!

The angel-city farther down

The shifting shore will be
Another, underwater town,
Punished presently.

So heed the bardic omens no

Mere scientist dare read—
Pacific coastal millions will go
Help the fishes feed…
03-29-69
*

Self-Evaporation

The vaporous, blurring drift

Of malaise over masks your mind
With a gauze of fatiguing grey.
The cumulous gloom won’t lift,
But intensifies. Clouds loom—lined
In your brain as you grope your way
In the haze of a dissolving mist.
And you notice…you no more exist!
*

Self-Strangle

Barbed-wire words
Wrap my neck around,
And noose me, sanguine-tight,
Feet kicking off the ground.
12-21-83

September’s Showers

Summer weeps and grieves,

Rain-tears moisten leaves,
Grey replaces blue—
Autumn cries anew.
 *

Seven Years Old

“Why don’t I have your last name,

Also, tell me why
Father’s package never came.”
Tell her, though she’ll cry;
Better than to lie.
05-01-78
*

Shackled

Imagination lights
A path through all your nights,
For you to follow blind
Down your-moon-struck mind.

But deeper in your brain

Are beasts you have to chain:
The ancient howling fears
Hammering your ears.
*

Shaftesbury Avenue
(Street in Soho: 1895)

Put the cigarettes away,

Blow the gobs of smoky-grey
Illusion from the room.
Put away (where they belong)
Purple wine and purple song
That celebrate the gloom.

Rise, and try to brush aside

Powdered verses, crushed like dried
Flowers in a yellow book.
Clear your head, and never think
Of tears you tried to drink,
Or laudanum you took.

Rise, and open windows up,

Overturn the oily cup
Of evening, and then creep
Weary, westward, down the clear
Early-dawning air, and hear
The sound of Soho’s sleep.
04-21-71
*

Sham and Sorcery

The Super-hero swings his sword

Down clang, clang, clang,
It rang, rang, rang,
 Went bang, bang, bang
On his foeman’s thick, thick skull.

The publishers commission more

Such tales, tales, tales,
(More sales, sales, sales!)
And males, males, males
Will imagine they’re Conan or Kull.
04-10-80
*

Sharp Turns

Snow drains
Ice from the sky,
Green rain,
April walks by.

Pink sun,
Summer comes down,
Orange fun,
Sunburned red-brown.

Sleet-blue,
Sheets of sharp ice,
Strike you:
December’s dice.
05-17-76
*

Shattered

He stands
Above
The happy sounds of sidewalk songs and children’s joy:
He’s deaf to all.

His hands
Shake love
Until it crumbles from his grasp, a cast-down toy
That he lets fall.
03-26-81
*

She Never Got Back From Frisco

She had cable cars in her brain,

And she said she loved the rain,
She had Golden Gate horizons in her eyes.
She said she had to get away
To that city by the Bay
For a vacation under California skies.

And now she’s come back home,

But I feel her memories roam—
She hung a San Francisco poster on our wall.
 Now I work hard every week,
But late at night I hear her speak
In a whisper on a long-distance call.

She never got back from ‘Frisco, she never got back from Frisco,
When I kiss her she’s two thousand miles from me;
She never got back from “Frisco, she never got back from ‘Frisco,
She makes believe her mind’s in Tennessee.

Now I feel I don’t belong

When she plays her favorite song
—you guessed it—Tony Bennett, from so many years ago.
And how I hate to see
Those old movies on T.V—
Clint Eastwood—and Bogart—and San Francisco!

“I lost my wife to San Francisco…high on a hill…she cheated me…!

1985
*

Shelley
(The Birth of Science Fiction)

I.
Young Shelley at Eton imbibed the mystique
Of science romanticized into extremes:
He gave his poor tutor a shock and a shriek—
Electric jolt!—eliciting screams.

II.
Explosives and fire-balloons were his joy,
Chemicals tainting his fingers and arms,
Steam engine blew-up—(another mere toy).
Mad Shelley continually causing alarms

III.
His tutor named Walker is wholly forgot—
Blueprint for someone whose name we’ve all read—
Frankenstein’s prototype, likely as not,
Mixed up with Shelley in wife Mary’s head.
9-23-91
*

(She’s As Sad As) An Old-Time Country Song

The years have passed her by, and so do men when they see her,
Her eyes are full of all the dreams that were,
The only men who dance with her are drunk, so they don’t care,
They make believe there’s gold still in her hair.

And ev’ry body knows her and they tolerate her tears,
And now and then they tell her, “No more beers.”
And if you haven’t met her, you’ve met someone much the same,
The story never changes, just the name.

She’s as sad as an old-time country song,

 A pretty girl who wanted to belong
To something other than this honky-tonk she lives in…
(You buy her one more beer and then she gives in);
She’s as sad as an old-time Country song.

They find her in her room, her hand is on the telephone,

The story ends just like I’ve always known,
The liquor wrote the lyrics and some man, he wrote the tune:
(you see…) She loved me, and I left her all too soon.
1980
*

Shhh!

The purple giraffe

Makes children laugh,
But don’t laugh too loud,
It’s not allowed,
You might wake your folks
With purple creature jokes.
07-15-78
*

Siamese

Kittens flurrying like fluff,

Pussy-willow soft and tiger-tough,
Biting and slapping--ramping rough
Then sprawling asleep when they’ve had enough.
09-23-79
*

Sick Circle

We cut the country up in two,

Till family and friends I knew
We’re reddening the street
Beyond the barricade we threw
Up blocking their retreat.

And after we had over-run

The ancient order and begun
Another one as great,
I fathered fighting in a son,
Becoming what I hate.
09-23-68
*

Sideshow

Across the sawdust circus ground

Where bells and penny whistles sound,
The gypsy reads your fate for gold,
Good fortune, or dire doom, foretold.
 She scans the stars, consults the gods,
And reckons up your life-death odds:
You tremble at what lies in store,
Then stumble from her tent front door…
1983
*

Silence

The witch-tree stands atop the hanging hill,

Children shun it still,
Where limbs that lifted flesh to dry
Writhe against the evening sky.

It’s there my shamed, convicted kin

Hung, and swung, for sin.
Today…we’re cautious in our rites,
Held on moonless nights.
08-78
*

Sing a Song of Roses

Came from California, looking for a place to fall:

Portland’s good as anywhere, and now it’s best of all;
Learned to love the roses, and the rivers full of rain;
California drove me north, and Portland drove me sane.

Leaving all my memories back behind where they belong,

Sang a song of roses, and I let it make me strong,
Lifting up my life inside my hands to make it grow
Tall as any mountain rising mighty in the snow.

Sing a song of roses,

Dreams of me and you,
Portland love encloses
Dreams of me and you,
Sing a song of roses.

Gentle people welcoming you, with an open hand,

Mighty people not afraid to fight to keep their land;
City on the river floating ships from overseas;
People soft as roses, people tough as Oregon trees.

Been a long time coming, but I’m here to rest awhile,

Never mind the highway, never mind the weary mile;
You and me and roses, and the salmon in the streams;
Can’t believe were thriving, Portland rain has washed our dreams.
08-18-74
*

Sing Your Own Song

You’ve listened to my little tune,

And now you ask me why
The heroes sell themselves too soon,
 And tyrants never die.

The world revolves another turn,

And no one understands
The reasons martyrs have to burn,
And kings have dirty hands.

I wish I knew the answers too,

Why black is white, and red is blue,
And will the earth remain for long?
When you find out, then sing your song,
Sing your own song.

You’ve got a gift as good as mine,

We breathe the same fresh air,
And both of us can gulp the wine
Of life and find the lesson there.

And if you finally quench your thirst

For truth and find the answer first,
Then beat the drum and ring the gong,
And let me hear you sing your song,
Sing your own song.
1973
*

Sixteenth Avenue South

(Nashville, TN)

Battered guitar cases,

Dreary, dream-cursed faces,
Trudging the street;
Hometown hopefuls come,
Strings and fingers thrum
Glory-in-defeat.
03-18-78
*

Skeptic’s Song

Marble philosophies
Quarried by slaves,
Hewn out by pedants,
Polished by knaves,
Worshiped by sycophants
Tower-like headstones!—
Over Ideology’s graves.
1-24-89
*

Sky-Clock

Spring rain damping the grass,

Misting the mid-April moon,
Veiled in a vaporous mass;
May-time hovering soon.
 Spring—and I’ve scarce begun
Work that could take me all year;
April, nearly dead, done:
Months flit furtive, past here.
04-24-78
*

Slash!

Hear the bugles sputter

Notes upon the air,
Hear the leather drum-heads mutter
Music of despair.

Hear the trumpets stutter,

Stammering their tune,
Salute the flag, and cut her
Enemies down soon.
02-08-75
*

Slavery

Magnetic moon and star

Determine who we are,
And for how long, and why,
And when the aging earth will die.

For Time is only loaned,

And all our years are owned
By galaxies of space
And astral laws that know no place.
08-12-73
*

Slim Chance

The Earth’s a speck of trivial mud,

Thumping with a thud
Some other planet presently,
Spattered in Time’s spacious, stellar sea.

The oceans and the rocks will splash--

The stars together smash—
And will our species splatter, too?
Or, will it escape—prevail—anew?
08-01-78 (rev. 10-14-91)
*

Slimming Down

I strive for simple life and simpler deeds,

Cut down on needs,
And minimize the multiples of me,
And wriggle free
 Of whirligig complexity.
06-19-80
*

Smashed Reflection

The parody of caring

Is sentimental love—
When bliss becomes despairing,
It crashes from above.

Love’s mirror no more pleases

With smiles as once before—
It shatters into pieces…
Sharp shards upon the floor.
1980
*

Snap!

I’m fond of foolish poetry

As any silly girl,
And love a laughing summer sea
Around me in a swirl.

I run the shoreline like a boy:

However, if you wreck
A sandy castle I enjoy
A man will break your neck.
03-30-68
*

Snow-Prayer

Rain-wet winds unroll

Showers on your soul,
Autumn’s dripping damp
Dowses summer’s lamp.

Pray December’s sun

Shows the good you’ve done,
Hope the frozen light
Shows you, you were right.

Else you’ll lose the will

To survive the chill,
Blaming weather then,
Like most winter-men.
01-27-76
*

Snowy Night

The snow fields ring with frosty echoes of

The singing silence of the winter chill.
Until you hear a howl that floats above
 The ice…a dog complaining to the winds that kill.

All the sounds and songs are quieted,

All the flowers faded, folded, crushed by cold,
And naked trees stand up like bones, so dead,
Like spectral skeletons, malign and bold.

The moon beams down its icy yellow light

Upon the sea below of eerie, snow-locked land;
The paling gold of moon melts on the white,
And glimmers like a gem on some cold hand.

The tiny tortured birds hang barely to

Their branches, wishing they were in the nest,
Afraid they won’t last one more bleak night through,
Their feet like ice, the death cold in each breast.
07-08-76
by Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)
First English translation
from Des Vers (1880)
*

So Can You

Inside the cinders of the town

Are modern battlements of brown
That try to circle me, as if
I feared to climb the cliff.

But I can climb up to the Son

Of all Eternity, and run
A silver-sanded shore of joy
Where Time’s a toy.
05-17-72
*

So Do Unicorns

Even dragons dream

Thirsting for the gleam
Of a maiden’s green, green eye,
Preferably with some
Brave fool knight who’ll come
Trying to save her, or else die;
“St. George, St. George,” the warrior’s cry.

Dragons need the thrill

Of a knight’s fierce skill,
Thrusting lance, and flashing spur;
Otherwise, how dull,
Munching on the skull
Of some luckless traveler:
Dragons dream of days that were.
01-24-77
*
 Soaring

The selfishness of poetry

Consists of rhyming “me”
Instead of “you” or “him” or “her”:
Myself reflected, I prefer.

The selflessness of poetry

Consists of being free
Enough of me to shackle “I”--
Effaced, yet visible to God’s vast eye.
12-08-81
*

Soft sound

Glass illusions shatter

Splinters in your brain,
Words and phrases batter
Walls that still remain.

Finally Life’s violence

Shudders, and is still,
And you hear the silence
Of your own true will.
08-23-73
*

Soldier and Civilian

(1842-1913?)

Cloaked in a Civil War Cape

Swaggered the fierce
And fearless and cavalier shape:
Proud Ambrose Bierce.

Editor, author and wit,

Bierce had the zest
And courage and cunning to fit
Well in the West.

Then when his days dwindled lean,

Bierce rode away;
Old Mexico swallowed him clean,
Gulping her prey.

Cynics like him are the last

Men to seek fame,
So bitterness out of the past
Still dims his name.
10-19-73
*

Some Called Him “Pig”

A bullet ended life:

 Another pensioned wife,
And little children who
Recall a suit of blue,
And father they once knew.
06-28-78
*

Some Things

I know some things are true,

I know one of them’s you,
Let’s hope the other is me.

I know some things are true

Like the songs we once knew
Singing them made us feel free.

Some things are true, like a baby’s first cry,

Some things you just have to feel,
Some things are true like a grandmother’s eye,
Some things nobody can steal.

Some things are cruel like a letter unsent,

Promises made and forgot,
Some things are empty like rooms that won’t rent,
Down by that old vacant lot.

Some things are bright like your eyes in the sun,

Some things are easy to love,
Some things are true like the good that you’ve done,
Some things are worth singing of.
04-10-77
*

Something Comfortable

Come to my room,
Wear your perfume,
Take off your tears,
Hang up your fears,
And slip into something comfortable,
Like my arms, like my arms, like my love,
Something comfortable.

Come here, sit down,

Take off your frown,
Remove your pain,
You’ll see things plain,
And slip into something comfortable,
Like my arms, like my arms, like my love,
Something comfortable.

We can lock the world away, our love is like a key,

Come a little closer, let’s unlock some ecstasy,
Step into the light and let me look into your eyes,
We can make this last until the morning sun will rise.
 Here’s what to do,
Let me take you,
And you take me,
And then you will see,
Me slip into something comfortable,
Like your arms, like your arms like your love,
Something comfortable ,
Like our love, like our love, like our love.
09-17-78
*

Somewhere, Under the Rainbow

The ghost of Judy Garland

Is visible at night:
Amphetamine-white phantom
Floats through the moon-mist light.

The Emerald City’s toppled,

The yellow bricks are dust,
And Dorothy’s dead in Kansas;
Tin Woodman’s gone to rust.

The ghost of Judy Garland is audible as well—

New York, New York’s her kind of town—
Manhattan-angel’s Hell.
10-92
*

Song for Self-Immolators

Resist
Alluring, fatal notingness—
Oblivion’s numbed, gloved caress—
And live. The valiant do no less;
So brave all ill.

Exist
And more, enjoy! For graveward we
Must soon enough descend. Fight free.
Above the ground, toward victory.
For earth is chill.
11-06-81
*

Song of the Stellar Assassins

Can you hear the blades revolving

Within the crystal sphere?
Hear them descend—rotate and rend—
Your scalp and half your ear!

Can you hear the pilots chorus

Their extra-earthly tongue?
A stately hymn—your requiem—
 The space-sprites now have sung.
02-25-93
*

Soon

If ever Everafter seems

A mystery to you,
Remember…visionary dreams
Often tell what’s true.

The city by the bay will fall,

And all its towers lie
Inside an ocean, after all
Its tomorrows die.

An angel-city farther down

The shifting shore will be
Another, underwater town
Punished by the sea.

Forget about the omens no

One even wants to read,
Forget how millions have to go
Where the fishes feed!
1969
*

Soon (2)

I cursed cursing
And I blasphemed no more,
My sinner’s soul rehearsing
To face evermore.
1981
*

Sounds and Stillness

November rustles in with noise:

Winds, and leaves that little boys
Kick and scatter loud as boys will do.
November breathes in Autumn’s ear:
“Winter’s gusting very near,
Soon exhaling silent snow on you.
11-16-80
*

Souvenir

I sail on a sea of crystal dream,

Far from Reality’s shore,
And notice a phosphorescent gleam
Lighting the ocean floor.

The towers of deep Atlantis shine

 Underneath water and moon,
And mermaids above form a chorus line
Crooning a siren tune.

Escaping their lure I set my sail

Heading for home instead,
And wake up to find a mermaid scale
Dripping, beside my bed.
01-18-82
*

Spartacus
(1748-1830)

Two centuries ago

All Europe came to know
Of Adam Weishaupt’s plan
For ruling every man.

The circles that he drew

Around him only grew
In shadows, never seen
But felt—by Cross and Queen.
06-30-73
*

Spatial Symphony

The song of the planets echo on,

Long after Earth spins still.
Gyroscopic cosmic will
Revolves when petty Man is gone.

Infinitude’s rhapsody is the score,

Played by the starry choir:
Spheric strumming on God’s lyre
Endures melodic, evermore.
1982 (rev. 1991)
*

Spelunker’s Cave

The icicle cave is deep;

Down in the caverns creep
The hideous dwarfs from the Frost-Queen’s court:
Ice-elves, so malign and short.

Explorers quest for the Queen

Never is she even seen
As long as the gnomes she dispatches block
Climbers with ice and rock.
03-08-79 (rev. 09-11-90)
*

Split-Second
 The arches of the rain
Are color wheels, that chain
Like wreathes around the clear
Silver skies so near.

The rainbows tie the blue

Together, in my view.
And for a moment I
Notice God go by.

Infinity is wound
About me, all around,
And then it goes once more,
And I’m like before.
08-09-73
*

Spoken by a Sprite

Soft and unsubstantial , me,

I’m feathery, ethereal mist
Slipping into hazed obscurity
Through the fingers of life’s fist.

Later, when you see the dew

A-dazzle on the silver green,
Know my vagrant spirit’s born anew
In the crystal morning. Near. Unseen.
11-19-82
*

Spring is Fall

West of dawn the day is tall,

Towering up blue;
Everything, and nothing’s, new,
Summer’s winter, spring is fall.

Hear the unicorn’s faint call

Hear the fairies’ tune;
Daybreak’s dusk, and midnight’s noon,
Summer’s winter, spring is fall.
06-01-70
*

Springdale Confederate Cemetery, Chattanooga

“Sacred grounds. Please don’t trespass” –legend on bronze tablet

Secluded cemetery flaunts a flag

Unflown much now on Southern land,
Where wooden markers once proclaimed
Lost names and ranks from Bragg’s Command.

Hospitals disgorged this dead—

One hundred fifty-five in all;
 Today, anonymously one stone
Stands for stalwarts born to fall.
09-18-89
Burger King, Brainerd Rd.,
Chattanooga, TN
*

Squirt!

Plant of purple spews

Grape-colored gas in space,
Painting the rocket ship crew
Mauve, as they pass that place.
09-28-78
*

St. Germaine
(17? -1874?)

Wearing a mythical name,

Shrouded in shadowy fame
A wanderer casting a spell.
Plotter against the French king?
Loyalist…through everything?
The history books cannot tell.

Living off magical gold,

Alchemist, centuries old,
Comporting himself as a prince.
Friend of the court and the queen,
After his “death” he’s been seen
Innumerous times ever since.
05-08-76
*

Stand Up Singing

Stand up singing when they push you till you fall,

Stand up singing, laughing through it all,
Come on ev’rybody, come on, ev’ry woman and man,
Stand up singing, while you can…

Some people tell you, “You can never win,”

And they do their vest to wipe away your grin,
But later when it’s over, they’ll be singing too—
It’s something people love to do.

Sometimes it hurts too much to laugh or cry,

So you lift your voice and make it touch the sky,
And maybe Someone hears you someplace up above,
So stand up singing with your love.

Brothers and sisters let your vices ring,

Let the universe applaud you when you sing,
And you can lose your money but you’ll keep your soul,
So stand up singing, let it roll.
 1978
*

Star-Street

Evening is like a shroud:

Winter’s winding sheet
Of frost, and twilight-tinted cloud,
Coffining the street.

Walk the windy air and sweat

From the icy blaze
Of stars, that glitter with their wet
Metal-melted rays.

Wander reckless on a stroll

Down the starlit stones,
Do not admit you have a soul
Shackled in your bones.

Easier to never face

All you hid behind,
And let the moonlight of this place
Burn your vision blind.
09-19-69
*

Steppe-Spirits

Forbidden, sacred sight!

Potala gleaming white
Reflecting Asian light;
A shrine of mystic might.

The monks conspire inside

Old Lhasa’s palaced pride,
With mummies spiced and dried,
Reviving priests who’ve died.

Tibetian spirits raise

And cast resentful rays
Through memory’s thick haze;
Avengers from old days.

They float across the air,

Descending when and where
The unbelievers dare
Not worship them, nor care.
08-19-75
*

Still Sounds

The walls of words all crumble,

Sentences now tumble,
Down in raucous rumble.
 Silence settles slowly,
Ruined cities know me,
Quietly I grow free.

Free as any rover,

Mutated grass and clover
Silently, world-over.
12-06-74
*

Still There

Samarkand and Camelot,

Carcasonne, and kings,
Legends live and ruins rot;
Sands conceal all things.

Underneath the crumbled rock

Secrets shrivel tight,
Buried under Time’s own lock,
Shrouded out of sight.

Humans come and build once more,

Blind to what’s below,
Better off that they ignore;
Better not to know.

Better not to know the law

Bending Time around,
Blind to what the ancients saw
Feasting underground.
12-01-73
*

Still Voice

Talk away the pain inside,

Utter hurt your heart has cried;
Hope by then the wound has dried.

Later when you are full at peace,

Let your troubled talking cease;
Let the silence spread, increase.
12-30-74
*

Stilled Voice
(for John Gawsworth, 1921-1970)

Poetry is easy, life is hard,

And so the bravest bard
Begins to buckle with the weight of brutal years—
His singing disappears.
1981
*
 Stonehenge
(for Huitzilopochtli))

Four thousand years ago the Celt

Raised a ring of rocks around
Patterns on the English ground.

And there the Druid maidens felt

Bronze-age daggers at the heart,
Hacking, hewing them apart.

Then the pagan priests began

Chanting prayers and splashing red
Till the glutton gods were fed.

And thus the rituals of mere man

Echo clear the ancient call,
Haunting Mankind since the Fall.
06-18-76 (Rev. 1991)
*

Storm Cycle

Lift a vice in the wind,

Let it sing in the rain,
Till the storm clouds have thinned,
And the sun dries your pain.

And the skies—once so dark

And so menacing grim—
Roll the rainbow’s bright arc
On its circling red rim.

And as you walk below

You remember the wet
Will return when winds blow
With the rains of regret.
03-06-76
*

Storybooks and Treasure Maps

The kings and their crusaders are forgotten,

No one reads about them anymore,
The flowers that the princess held are rotten,
Crushed beneath her slipper on the floor.

The chivalry of knights-in-armor’s ended,

Fading like a fable into Time,
The castles and the walls are undefended,
Empty like an ancient nursery rhyme.

Let’s you and I be brave, and not surrender,

Keep those dreams of yesterday we knew,
The grown-ups ‘better listen and remember:
 Storybooks and treasure maps are true.

The dragons and the demons all are sleeping,

Cinderella’s hair is turning grey,
The witches and the wizards now are weeping,
Pining for those years of yesterday.

So you and I must stand against tomorrow,

Fighting off the fear of growing old,
And dreams aren’t something you can steal or borrow,
You can’t beg them back once they’ve been sold.
08-29-72
*

Street in Soho: 1895

Put the cigarettes away,

Blow the gobs of smokey-grey
Illusion from the room.
Put away where they belong
Purple wine and purple song
That celebrate the gloom.

Rise, and try to brush aside

Powdered verses, crushed and dried
Up flowers in a yellow book.
Clear your head, and never think
Of the tears you dried to drink,
Or laudanum you took.

Rise, and open windows up,

Overturn the oily cup
Of evening, and creep
Weary, westward, down the clear
Early-dawning air, and hear
The sounds of Soho’s sleep.
1972
*

Striking Out
(for Charles Lewis)

The color of lemonade washing the sky—

Popsicle memories revive
Of baseball connecting with ash wood, hit high
In an arcing, outfield drive.

Are summers forever? Or only a day?

Moth-eaten , major-league hat…
December’s the umpire, miscalling the play,
And there’s ice on my Louisville bat.
03-09-85
*

Suburban Sidewalk
 An ancient hitching-post survives
Too strong and stable to tear down;
The horse-drawn cart no more arrives,
For Time has altered Man and town.
05-83
*

Summit

West the towers of old time are looming

Under autumn-colored sky that’s glooming
Grey at afternoon.
Slow we trudge the rocky trail unwinding,
Patient pilgrims bound for somehow finding
Sainted glory soon.

Up the path we stumble, foot sore, sick and bleeding

Questing anywhere our mad crusade is leading,
Towards the pinnacle:
There amid the castle ruins we all stand
Scanning countryside and sky and far land
Till our souls are full.
11-16-74
*

Survivor

Winds from the hills

Weaken your friends,
Frozen with chills,
Meeting their destined ends.

Brittle, they break,

Snapping in two;
Mourn them--but make
Haste, or you’ll join them, too.
11-21-73
*

Susan’s Soldier

When I was young, I thought I knew the answer

To the riddles written in the sand,
I stumbled like a drunken dancer
In and out of Susan’s hand.

Yes, I confess that I was Susan’s soldier,

Marching like a martyr in a line,
Her conscience carried on my shoulder
Scribbled on a cardboard sign.

And I fought for her so well,

But her enemies that fell
On the ground refused to die,
And their laughter split the sky.
 Our Carolina summertime is wasted
Like the flags I flew when I was young,
All the battle-cries we tasted
Soon were bitter to the tongue.

Instead of soldiering your youth to ashes,

Listen to the lesson that I sing,
And run before her cannon crashes
And your soul is in a sling.

Am I warning you too late?

Are you finding out your fate?
Paper soldier, up for hire,
Is your uniform on fire?
07-21-69
*

Sweet Armaline

Down in the town of Nuevo Laredo

The riders of Don Carlos came:
They kidnapped a captive to take to their leader,
And sweet Armaline was her name.

And I had to run,

I hadn’t a horse or a gun,
I was seventeen,
Like sweet Armaline.

I worked for a year, and I bought me a saddle,

A horse, and a gun of my own,
And everyone saw from the look in my eye, and
The way that I walked, I was grown.

Down Old Mexico,

I asked everyone, “Do you know,
Has anyone seen
My sweet Armaline?”

Onside a cantina I finally entered,

I knew that I wouldn’t look far:
A Mexican woman who looked six months pregnant,
Was wiping the beer from the bar.

She drew me a beer,

But otherwise wouldn’t come near,
My border-town queen,
It was Armaline.

Don Carlos came up with a Remington rifle,

But he bought my beer and he smiled;
I drank to his health, and I drank to his woman,
And drank to their soon-born child.

He said, “Better ride,

Or else commit suicide
 If you come between—
Forget Armalene!”

My hand it was quick and my rifle was ready,

But Armalene laughed in my eyes;
I waved them farewell and I rode out of town then,
Back under wide-open skies.
09-27-70
*

Sweet Sanguinora

How many hundred years

She’s lived, I cannot say;
She’s mine today
And all my caution disappears.

Hungarian heritage
I’ve heard her mention, yes;
Her loveliness
(Inherited) knows no age.

Her kisses make us one,

(My sweet unsanguined wife)
Immortal life
Is ours!—if we but shun the sun.
04-10-80
*

Sword-Song of a Paretic

I.

The echoing din of hammered steel

Anviled and tempered strong,
Resounds in your head like a blacksmith’s song—
Clanging till you feel
The heat of the weapons shop.

II.

Old Thor and apprentices, forging new

Weapons for gods to wield:
The clatter of crafted blade and shield
Deafens and maddens you—
Your brain is their weapons shop.

III.

The gods go to battle, valiantly.

Clattering swords engage
Each other, as breakers surge and rage
Up from the storm-struck sea—
With throbbing that will not stop
As waves—and the broad-axe—chop!
08-02-82
 *

Tacoma Truck Stop Blues

Trucking down from Canada, through Northwest America.

Feeling every lonesome mile, you can rest in just awhile.
Southwest of Seattle town, there’s a place where you sit down,
Drinking, trying hard to lose those Tacoma truck-stop blues.

“Better get back on the road, ‘hope your senses are not slowed,
Too much beer is in your head, clear your brain or you’ll be dead.
Drinking coffee when you drive, singing songs to keep alive,
Maybe they can help you lose those Tacoma truck-stop blues.

Make believe you love the life, leave your children, leave your wife,
Leave those other trucks behind, hear that diesel sound unwind.
Waitresses and wives agree: truckers only think they’re free;
Driving fast but you can’t lose those Tacoma truck-stop blues.
1976
*

Take Arms Against Adversity

Punctured psyches leak their essence out,

Seized by fear, diminished by the lees;
Courage, perforated by the brain’s fool doubt,
Unreservoired, cascades towards Death’s black seas.

Dyke your valor, dam your pooled-up will!

Panic breaches sea-walls in your heart.
Brave the craven ocean’s salty chill
Till cowardice recedes, its tides depart.
1982
*

Take Back Your Tears

Take back your tears, you gave them to me.

Give back your years that used to be.
Leave me alone for a long while,
Thanks for the loan of your fake smile.

So take back your tears,

The dream disappears,
Go, take back your tears.

Take back your frown, take your tears, too.

Polish your crown, a smile will do.
Take your tears back, cry on the train,
I’ll help you pack, dreams down the drain.
1970
*

Tavern

Life is the song of a drunken man,

 Strumming a cracked guitar,
Singing off-key as best he can,
For coins in back of the bar.

Death is the song of the drunk man’s girl,

Crooning with whiskey breath,
Choked with cigarettes’ stink and swirl,
A bar-room ballad of Death.
1981
*

Tavern Bill

Time-feast:
The ghouls are all gobbling the years,
Space-beast:
Is drinking Eternity’s tears—
At least:
The Death Angel pays for our beers.
12-08-77
*

Tavern Music

Life is the song of a drunken man,

Strumming a cracked guitar,
Singing off-key as best as he can,
For coins in the back of the bar.

Death is the song of the drunk man’s girl,

Crooning with whiskey breath,
Choked with the cigarettes’ stink and swirl,
A bar-room ballad of Death.
11-27-76
*

Tears

Confusion-clouds curtain the sky:

Smoke from your smile
Brings cinders and salt to my eye,
Stinging awhile.
12-05-77
*

Teenage Taps

When all the rosy ribbons fade

A bloody red to brown,
The military wreathes they made
Are rotting on the ground.

I’m in a hero’s heaven now

With warriors who have died:
A bed of lead that won’t allow
A single worm inside.
 Instead of gathering to grieve,
Agreeing war is bad,
You women-hearted men believe:
What fighting fun I had!
01-11-69
*

Telepathy

I sat up writing one long verse-filled night,

I wrote self-pitied, literary lies,
That shrank and shriveled in the scornful light
Of dawn, across the mocking saffron skies.
That very morning she walked in on me,
As if I’d willed her through Time’s speed and space.
She said she’d just come by to stop and see
If I still lived at the same one-room place,
As if we were old friends and nothing more.
I felt my cracked illusions knit and mend,
I hoped my once-wet wounds were drained and dried.
05-11-78
*

Tete `a Tete

Decrepit atmosphere of decadence!

Battle scenes on ancient tapestries
Hang upon the cob-webbed wall
Within the Count’s deserted dining hall,
Silent with the pass of centuries.

But now in vacant-eyed somnolence

The Count arrives with guests to dine,
Silent while they chatter on—
Remaining till banqueters are gone
Sipping his glass of gore-red wine.

He lounges with erotic, languid indolence,

Till one exquisite lady guest returns,
Smiling as the Count smiles too,
“I knew you would come back—I knew
Virgin blood like yours desires…and yearns.”

And later in the tarnished, antique opulence

Of his apartment, there he knows she’ll stay—
Candles gutter low and dim
Around one shadow: her…and him.
Now the Count and his plaything play.
07-14-80
*

Terror

On a night when I slumped in my chair

I sensed something suddenly there—
 And I shudder with panicking fear
At the presence of something unknown,
And unnamable, soon to appear.
I sat trembling, so taut and alone,

As I felt someone lurking behind,

Soon to laugh at me, cruel and sick.
But the silence roared loud in my mind,
While I feared he would touch my hair quick,
Or my shoulder, and clutch it so tight,
And I’d die from it, heart stopped from fright.

And it seemed even closer to me:

Was it real, or a fool’s fantasy?
Like some storm-beaten birds from the sky,
My words shivered, unable to fly,
As unmoving as my legs and arms,
Both immobile with icy alarms,

Till my teeth echoed, rattling like bones,

Like the dead, restless under their stones.
Then a creak splintered silence in two,
And I shrieked in stark horror, and fell
Over faint with the force of my yell,
Dumb, unknowing if my fears were true.
06-26-76
by Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)
First English translation
from Des Vers (1880)
*

The All-American Ladies Choice

(for Dorothy and child)

You know she missed her period and she missed graduation,
And she missed those wedding bells.
And her daddy’s shot-gun missed the boy next door—
Where he’s gone nobody can tell.
It’s a simple operation—her sister recommends it—
Her daddy’s going to foot the bill,
It’s the All-American Ladies Choice…
It’s a legalized license to kill.

God help me Jesus, forgive what we’ve done,

Did we murder a daughter, or a rambunctious bouncing son?
God help me, Jesus, please hear my voice—
Forgive me…for making the All-American Ladies’ Choice!

The weary old world takes a couple rotations

And she marries someone new,
But every year ‘round Mothers’ Day,
She’s unaccountably blue.
Ten years later in a ‘Frisco apartment
A cowboy tunes his guitar….
He’s been educated in the Land of the Free
That your songs reveal who you are.
 He sings, God help me Jesus, forgive what we’ve done,
Did we murder a daughter, or annihilate a rambunctious, bouncing son?
God help me, Jesus, please hear my voice…
Forgive me…for helping her make the All-American Ladies’ Choice.
1986
*

The Ancestor

The ancient man was laying cold,

Dying on the white, white sheets;
His face was ninety long years old,
His heart was pumping its last beats,
When suddenly his voice began
Reciting seasons of the man:
The decades that had drifted past,
The pleasures that escaped too fast,
The agonies that seemed to last.

“Is this a dream, or memory?

I see morningsful of sun,
Fermenting sap inside the tree,
Forgotten youth forever done.
Is this a dream, or memory
Of times that nevermore can be?
I remember, I recall
The summer fading into fall,
I remember, I recall.”

“Is this a dream, or memory?

Breezes scattering my hair,
Desire that rises wild in me,
With every throbbing gust of air.
Is this a dream, or memory
Of April wind to set me free?
I remember, I recall,
Those April years—I see them all,
I remember, I recall.”

“Is this a dream, or memory?

Listen to the noise inside
My chest—it’s pounding like the sea,
My thoughts are drowning in the tide.
Is this a dream, or memory?
I walk a beach in far Eternity,
I remember, I recall—
I hear my forebears’ ghosts that call!
I remember, I recall.”
05-26-78
by Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)
First English translation
from Des Vers (1880)
*
 The Answer

The ruins loom and leer

At travelers through here;
And still we push ahead
When all our hopes are dead.

Does anybody know

Whatever makes us go
Through all the doom and dust,
And why we think we must?

The answer’s in the rain,

The answer’s in the pain
Of every footsore mile;
We’ll learn it in a while.

The answer’s everywhere,

The answer’s in the air
And in the grass and sod--
Our journey reveals God.
05-01-72 (rev. 1987)
*

The Answer is Anne

I asked why should I keep moving along?

Everyone knows you can’t live on a song;
I asked who brings out the boy in the man?
I hear the answer, the answer is Anne.

I lived for no one, a long time ago,

Blown like a bird on an ocean of snow,
Drifting wherever the cold rivers ran,
Now the wind answers, the answer is Anne.

Anne is the answer, the question is me,

Sometimes I’m deaf, and I often can’t see,
Why are we blind when it’s all very plain?
I see her love like a light in the rain.

Living is harder than loving, they say,

Tears and temptations and joys of each day,
She takes me better than anyone can,
I love the answer, the answer is Anne.
02-25-77
*

The Armageddon Hour

As children playing with a dangerous toy

Who think it sport to make the toy perform,
No matter what it will soon destroy
And maim the innocent in fiery storm
So men of might, in momentary rage
Under cover of enforced democracy
 Let loose upon an unsuspecting age
The curse reserved to scourge humanity.
Not quite content with their appalling deed
They vie with Woden, ape the mighty Thor,
And toy with thunder that will surely breed
A raging whirlwind whipping flames of war.
When men make playthings of so great a power
The times portend the Armageddon hour.
1978
*

The Battle of Northfield’s Begun

Somebody special just rode into Northfield,

Somebody famous and bold,
Long linen dusters concealing their pistols,
They’ve come to steal all our gold.

James boys and Youngers, they’re up from Missouri,

Riding so slow into town,
Mighty warm welcome in South Minnesota,
We’re going to cut that gang down.

Peace-loving farmers, we’re New England Yankees,

Swedes and Norwegians here too.
We’ve got a college and we’ve got some churches,
We’ve got a bank, yes we do.

Up to the windows and ready your rifles,

The Battle of Northfield’s begun!
Blasting those bandits right out of their saddles,
Dropping them dead in the sun,
The Battle of Northfield’s begun,
The Battle of Northfield’s begun!

Mister Gustavson, he couldn’t speak English,

He didn’t do what they said,
After they killed him they murdered another:
Bank-teller shot in the head.

Out in the street, now we’re using our shotguns,

This time we’ve evened the score.
‘Couple of outlaws stretched out on the sidewalk:
They won’t rob banks anymore.

We’ll put Cole Younger in Stillwater Prison,

Twenty-five years in a cell.
Time to think over September the seventh,
Northfield turned into hell.

Up to the windows and ready your rifles,

The Battle of Northfield’s begun!
Blasting those bandits right out of their saddles,
Dropping them dead in the sun.
The Battle of Northfield’s begun!
1982
 *

The Bird Catcher

The bird catcher “Love” has a name

I think everybody has heard:
A name that is earning him fame,
His cage overflowing with game—
He traps and imprisons each bird.

By morning he stretches his thread

Until a long piece is unwound:
It’s here that the birds will be fed,
With seeds, and small pieces of bread,
And glue, in the traps on the ground.

He crouches where birds never see,

Behind the stone wall and the hedge,
Or back of a rock or a tree,
Wherever a bird ought to be:
Up mountains, or by the sea’s edge.

The finches drop down from the air

Where lilies-of valley conceal
Whatever he’s covered up there:
A wicker or willow-wand snare,
That birds never spot, only feel.

The myrtle is violet-blue,

The hawthorn is flowery-white,
And both of them shelter from view
The steps where the little birds flew:
The bird catcher “Love”…stops their flight.
05-22-78
by Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)
First English translation
from Des Vers (1880)
*

The Boston Massacre

In Boston they threw ice and oyster shells

As the British troops marched coldly by.
Till soon the streets were ringing with the yells:
“Lobster-backs!” the righteous raucous cry.

The troops retreated till they could retreat no more,

Nine men against one hundred strong,
Till suddenly the muskets made their roar,
Scattering hot lead amid the throng.

Ant though the Boston public howled in outraged hate

Someone softly spoke the soldiers’ case:
John Adams arguing their very fate
Seeking justice in that hostile place,
 A patriot who helped us spurn the British crown,
Rescued six lost British lives,
Against the sentiment of his own town…
One more reason Adams’ name survives.
03-29-80
*

The Cast-Down Cup

(1808-1893)

The Rubaiyat still murmurs misty-sad

Of youth’s romantic dreams we all have had
And lost, along the years of laughter, love, and tears,
Like once-sweet wine fermenting bitter, bad.

Is mere self-pity poetry or art?

Fitzgerald thought so, and he squeezed the heart
Until he bled the pain that fell like wine-red rain,
Proud passion punctured by a poet’s dart.
05-04-75
*

The Clown

My condescending friends but smiled in sympathy and shame,

That I had not selected someone slightly prettier;
They didn’t know I hoped I’d trade my name
For something somewhere back inside of her.
Around her I was awkward, quiet, cold,
Sweet agonies like a grey and graveless ghost,
Or else too loud, impressing her with manly noise,
That was but adolescent, clumsy bold
Bravado that at best but bores, annoys,
And at its worst tells people you’re unsure
Of love and life, and of yourself the most.
And so I struggled silly through the pure
I harried friends to make them see her charm—
They changed the subject with their half-amused alarm.
06-13-75
*

The Dead’s Doom

The ghost had a dream of his death,

Shaking his shroud with fear.
Eternity then blew his breath
Cold in the ghost’s grey ear.

The ghost asked Eternity—“Why.

Why should I perish twice?”
The answer was: “Even ghosts die—
Crushed in Time’s torture device!!!”
08-02-76
*

The Death of August Derleth: July 4, 1971

 (for Richard Fawcett)

The summer air hangs still.

Hawk and whippoorwill
Wing mournful down the graying skies…
Hearken to their cries!

And then the faintest breeze

Murmurs in the trees…
And at the Lonesome Place
Spirits sigh in space.
04-20-94
*

The Death of August Derleth (2)

(1909-1971)

Wisconsin winds are chill:

Hawk and whippoorwill
Are mourning in the skies
When their poet dies.

And at the Lonesome Place

Spirits fill the space
With whispers on the breeze
Billowing the trees.

Wisconsin winds will blow

Summers into snow,
But winds of Fame will sing
Evening in Spring.
1971
*

The Defrauding of the Worms

The ashes of the years diffuse in dust,

Their motes exuding mauvish glow
That alters grey to black. But I’ve no trust
In Time, that cut-purse thief, who robs us so.
For, graveward borne, my gathered decades shorn
From off my limbs, my soul but cuts adrift
And cheats the maggotry of Death. Forlorn
And cheated, Satan rues my flight! Christ’s gift
Of sweet perpetuation foils those worms of Earth
Who rend my flesh when nothing live, lives there.
My human husk decays…to ‘wait rebirth.
Ethereal, my soul’s exultant, where
Abide infinities of angels…white
And efflorescent…beaming lucent light.
1989 (rev. 92)
*

The Dell and the Desert

It’s a wet place, where the words live,

 Where dreams rain, and they all give
The words life.
It’s a dry space, where the words die,
It’s a rock-place, and it’s all dry
From hot strife.
06-09-74
*

The Demise of Death

The gleaming warriors of Light advance

Aflame with Life, their shields aglow with gold
And lambent fire a glint from sword and lance.
Their silver battle-axes flash and flourish, bold
And brutal in mad massacre. The hordes
Of Death are falling, black-plumed helmets split
As skulls within explode. The scything swords
Have fringed the banners with each rending slit.
Death’s men have floundered, failed,
Skewered by the jeweled lance that spears the brain,
And reeves the heart, weak-shielded and ill-mailed…
Infantries of Death are cruelly slain.
The battlefield’s now sodden with the gore
Of ebon warriors. Onyx helmets lie
Trampled, some with heads within, before
The gilded hooves that clatter, sanguine, by.
Death’s flag with bone-white-face
Is rags. His ink-hued armor plate is rent
And shattered by Life’s spike-thorn mace.
Death’s sword is sundered and his pike staff bent.
And he himself lies maimed upon the moistened sand,
His cypress standard in his gnarling hand
Till tired black fingers spread…and let it fall.
1978
*

The Dragon Troops

Veterans of countless crushing winters,

Frozen riders stop outside the tavern,
Sabering the swinging sign to splinters,
Then stride inside the beerful cavern.

See their emblem, it’s a leaping dragon,

Woven in a crest upon fine leather;
Hear them toast the devil with each flagon,
Then curse December’s demon weather.
09-28-75
*

The Elder Fear

Tallow fueling up the pyre,

Bodies flaring in a spire
Of yellow candle-light:
Our kinsmen at the stake
 Centuries ago, to make
Bright beacons in the night.

Centuries have blown away;

Still we dance the rites of May,
Our sacrifices hid
In the ancient ring of rocks,
Fearful every Equinox
To die as careless kinsmen did.
04-20-71
*

The Festival
(for H. P. Lovecraft, 1890-1937)

Witches on the west wind,

Goblins on the east:
Everybody destined
For the ancient feast.

Will-o-wisp and ghoul ride

With the poltergeist,
Toward the rite of Yuletide,
Older than the Christ.

Spirits soon are dancing

See them weave and wind
Patterns in their prancing
Older than mankind.
06-01-70
*

The Figurine’s Fate

The crystalline princess is museum-old,

Waiting in vain to be sold;
She sits in dismay on the thrift-shop shelf,
And sorrows inside of herself.

Antiquity fashions its filigree lines

Scoring her face with designs;
Rivulet tears eroding her white face
Dissolve her without a slight trace.

(Original second verse:)

And crystalline tears leave their rivulet lines,

Etching her face with designs,
Till she softens and then dissolves in tears,
And--so wistfully--disappears.
03-12-79 (rev. 08-02-90)
*

The Forest Gift

 The tree was cut and roped by boys
Who brought it home to guard the toys
And treasures stacked round its rootless base:
The pine has found an indoor resting place.

And underneath the tree are set

The gifts of Christmastide--for yet
Another year and tree have come to mark
His birth, with fragrant needles, cones and bark.
11-29-79 (rev. 12-25-87)
*

The Gallery of Gothic Princesses

I.

On the right is Emily Bronte,

Bard of Yorkshire moor—
Her talented, tormented family
Wrote novels which still endure.

II.

On the left’s Christina Rossetti,

Who chastely did refuse
The goblin’s fruit of ecstasy;
Pre-Raphaelite recluse.

III.

In the center’s a filmy mirror,

Dusty-looking glass;
You rub it till it’s clearer
And see a skull-faced lass—
Yourself…at Requiem Mass.
09-28-92
*

The Ghost of 1955

He was headed East of Eden,

But he never did arrive,
For he had to die so he could live
In nineteen fifty-five.

He was heading toward Salinas

On that highway all alone.
He was dying, trying hard to find
The peace he’d never known.

Now he was a famous actor

Living every part he played,
Like a rebel with a cause
That somehow had to be obeyed.
 He just threw his helpless body
In behind that steering wheel,
And they found him sometime later
In that coffin made of steel.

The Ghost of Nineteen Fifty-five,

September 30, ‘Fifty-five,
The Ghost of Nineteen Fifty-five.

Now he tried his best to be a man,

But he was still a boy,
And he threw away his future,
Like it was a broken toy.

But he left behind a legend

No man’s ever equaled yet.
And he had to die to win
That fame he never lived to get.

And he looked inside of people

From a pair of lonesome eyes,
Like a saint who knows he’s going to sin,
No matter how he tries,

And we dressed and looked the way he did,

I guess we felt the same,
And enough of us remember,
So we’ll keep alive his name.

The Ghost of Nineteen Fifty-five,

September 30, ‘Fifty-five,
The Ghost of Nineteen Fifty-five.
04-14-74 (rev. 1976)
*

The Good Artist: Carl Barks

(1901-2000)
(for Donald Duck)

The wry old enchanter wove dreams

For the thousands of children now grown,
Immortal fun enjoyment that seems
The dearest that we’ve ever known.

He took us to everywhere fun

Atlantis—the moon—at top speed
And now his last pages are done
We read and re-read and re-read.

He made sure the heroes prevailed,

At least every time that he could;
Though sometimes they stumbled or failed,
The laughter, and lessons felt good.
04-01-79
*
 The House Beyond the Hill

I shall make my last abode

In the House beyond the hill
Where there runs no further road
And the winds are hushed and still.

There the sun will shine no more

And the moon will not be seen.
Locked, the windows and the door;
Shut, the shutters and the screen.

In the house beyond the hill

Very lonely I will be.
Praised though once I was for skill,
None will come to visit me.

Then my home will look so bare,

And its halls will seem so chill,
None will knock or seek me there
In the house beyond the hill.
09-01-68
*

The Illuminati: Spartacus

(1748-1830)
(after reading Karl Grosse’s
Horrid Mysteries, 1792-95)

Two centuries ago

All Europe came to know
Of Adam Weishaupt’s plan
For ruling every man.

The circles that he drew

Around him only grew
In shadows, never seen—
But felt—by Cross and Queen.

But legends whisper on,

The circles, are they gone?
Or do they reappear
With other names—right here?
06-30-73 (rev. 1990)
*

The Isle of Torturers

(after Clark Ashton Smith)

The Silver Death was ravaging the realm

Of Yoros, slaying with a Silver agony,
Except for young King Fulbra at the helm
Of his blackened royal barge, adrift at sea.
And later he was cast on island sands,
Imprisoned by fierce natives who enjoyed
Unspeakable sick pleasures with their hands:
 King Fulbra’s flesh was tortured with…and toyed.
They tempted him with hope, and then withdrew
All promise of escape once proffered him,
Redoubling all his suffering anew,
Until all faith inside him died down dim.
But when they seized King Fulbra’s magic ring,
Then Silver Death smote torturers and King.
03-17-79
*

The King of Empty Lands

I am the King of Empty Lands,

Where sunlight westers and then subsides,
And drips its purpling blue before it hides
Below horizons with violet rays.
As dusk diminishes the reds to greys
I pace my ruined parapet and sing.

I am the King of Empty Lands,

And I sing languid and lonesomely
Of pomp and emperies of Used-to-Be,
And fierce crusades out to the world’s far edge,
And then the leather-shielded driving wedge
Of fiends whose blades we soon were bloodying.

I am the King of Empty Lands,

And I hear spears on castle stones below…
My guards are slain! I am the last, I know,
And still I sing upon the evening air,
Indifferent if brutes ascend my stair—
I crave oblivion their axes bring!
1977
*

The Kingdom of Redonda

(in memory of M. P. Shiel and John Gawsworth0

In eighteen sixty-five an Irish merchant found an island in the ocean.

It rose up so majestic like a crown upon the Caribbean blue;
He claimed it as an undiscovered Kingdom that he swore would last forever:
He named his little boy as “King” to make a father’s fantasy come true.

Officials up in London thought the father and the Kingdom both were crazy;
They hoisted up the Union Jack to claim the island for their bloody own.
The story of the Kingdom still survives in all its tarnished, royal splendor;
And high up in the sky the birds look down upon the island all alone.

The island that was found was called “Redonda,” with a legend left behind.
The kingdom that was crowned is called “Redonda.” It’s a royal state of mind.
The Kingdom of Redonda…

The little boy grew up and went to London where he earned to be a writer,
And on his death, the Kingdom—like a legacy—was left unto a friend.
The Kingdom lost some glory down the years, but it acquired some jaded wisdom.
The troubadours and jesters and the Dukes declare the Kingdom has no end!
 1985
*

The Last Escapade

The ivy-clad castle is cracked at its base,

The foundation is crumbled with Time,
There’s grass on its floor and there’s moss on its face,
And there’re towers nobody will climb.

Then two ancient people appear at the gate,

They’re all bent and decrepit with years:
A man and a woman discarded by Fate,
Until Death, ‘round the corner appears.

But out on the meadow the sun is aflame,

And the butterflies mirrored the light,
And both of the people, stooped, withered and lame,
Begin edging out toward the worm sight.

They drink in the sun and their eyes feel its fire,
And like children they go hand-in-hand,
With canes, and old bodies that threaten to tire,
They’re exploring the fragrant green land.

And there in their path is the moss-coated stone

Of the bench where they sat long ago,
The feel in their flesh and inside of each bone
The return of that far-away glow.

A bird in the distance exults with its sound—

And it echoes down far-away years,
Arousing old love in their heats before long,
Till their kisses bring rapturous tears.

But joy turned to anguish for years that are dead,

As they feel what the decades have done,
Their hearts burn as chill as a lump of grey lead,
As they’re ending what they’ve just begun.

The woman succumbs from the strain of their joy,

And the knowledge her body is weak,
Collapsed in his arms like a broken-down toy,
With no energy even to speak.

He jumps up to run off and find her some aid,

But he stumbles and clumsily falls
Face down on the grass on the floor of the glade,
And the wind of the evening calls.

The shadows descend and they’re shrouding the two

Silent motionless shapes on the ground—
The slugs and the insects are only a few
Of the creatures who pass with no sound.

The rain showers down on those shapes on the grass

 Still alive, as they tremble with cold,
But after the storm and the night comes to pass,
They are still: all their story’s been told.
04-79
by Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)
First English translation
from Des Vers (1880)
*

The Last Guest

Enshrouding years came thronging all as one,

Oppressing him, reminding him of Time
Lichening his castle walls, all blackening with grime
Where never shone the golden glimmer of the dawning sun;
The Count had lived for centuries with none.

Magenta dusk was gathering once more,

As evening came shadowing the hall,
He, the red-lipped Count, a-striding restlessly, so tall
And stately on the granite floor.
Then inward…swung…the outer door.

Ethereal lady…a visitor at last,

Assuaging decades of despaired retreat.
Thus he takes her arm and guides her to a chair
Till suddenly the crimson Count falls back dismayed, aghast—
She smiles. “Don’t ask my name. Your time is past.
Decrepit vampires cannot everlast…”
07-09-80, (Rev.1990 and 04-30-92)
*

The Last Laugh

Love laughs at life,

Scorns the scourging whip of years,
Dulls life’s sawing knife
And watersheds its tears.

Love smiles at death,

Soul withstanding soil,
Heaped upon the flesh whose breath
Expires. Love’s Death’s foil.
10-15-88
*

The Last Victorian

Stanton Coblentz
(Aug. 24, 1896—Sept. 6, 1982)

He was an Atlantean seer decades ago

In “science fiction” though he’d not yet heard the word:
In poetry his fantasies would flow
Ecstatic toward the stars. A stellar, lyric bird,
Then—Armageddon’s shadow seemed to grow
And cloud his verse. He warned…but was unheard.
 11-05-82
*

The Lens of the Future

I.
From three-power up to nine—
Telescope tunnels through space—
Galileo scanned God’s vast design:
Thirty-power soon found its place.

Then Jupiter’s moons loomed in view.

Heresy! Earth wasn’t right
In the midst of Creation—a new
Insight suffused its strong light.

Could people traverse what lay there?

Hypothetical pioneers far…
Ascending the galaxies’ stair
Ladder-like, star after star.

II.

The moon was the goal to reach,

Johannes Kepler briskly agreed—
Like Columbus toward Salvador’s beach,
Borne at incredible speed.
09-21 & 22-91
*

The Man Who Won World War II

He joked with the nurse till her face, it turned red,

She laughed at those things that the old soldier said;
His barracks was a Veteran’s Hospital bed.

His body was busted but his eyes were bright,

He told her his war stories every night,
She shaved him and she bathed him and she tucked him in tight.

From the Normandy Beach to the banks of the Rhine,

He fought in the front of an infantry line,
He got wounded twice but he struggled on through;
He’s the man who won World War II.

He battled the bottle but he called it a truce,

His liver was pickled from too much abuse;
The doctor just shrugged and he said, “It’s no use.”

The nurse she sure missed him like she knew she would,
His jokes and his memories, they’d made her feel good…
His family, they said they’d have come if they could…

From the Normandy Beach to the banks of the Rhine,

He fought in the front of an infantry line,
He got wounded twice but he struggled on through:
 He’s the man who won World War II.
1980
*

The Mandarin’s Sleep

The moonbeams of mother-of-pearl on the plain

Color the porcelain towers below,
And the ladies who gossip are all that remain,
Where the moonbeams shimmer and flicker and flow.

There on rugs made of silk, in the gathering grey,

Mandarin Von-Thong is closing his eyes,
As the lantern diffuses its flowering ray,
And the vagabond wind scatter suffering sighs.

Across the vast ceiling the lantern-flame glows,

Firing the room in a flower-red gleam,
Like a purple-plumed bird swooping down on a rose….
Like a fluttering thought in a mandarin’s dream.
09-27-76
by Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)
First English translation
from Des Vers (1880)
*

The Mercenary

The skies are scarleted the shade

Of a bayonet’s red blade.
The sun is yellow as the gold
That keeps a fickle soldier sold.

The wind is grey as cannon smoke,

That makes civilians choke.
The faces of our enemies
Are white as rain about to freeze.

The grass is green as banker’s greed,

Or else Mars-red where bodies bleed.
And powder’s black as gunner’s hands
That slay for you on foreign lands.
02-27-77
*

The Modern Version

The subtlest sort of vampiry

Will leave you with blood-full veins,
But drain you of identity
Till nothing of “You” remains.
07-09-80
*

The Moonbeam
 Have you hear of the Moonbeam? That’s me!
Do you know where I’m from? Look up there,
See my mother, Sweet Moon, bright and free,
Now she sends me on water...on air…
On the ground…up the trunk of the tree,
Like a bandit who creeps from his lair
See me tiptoe on grass silently,
Watch me climb up a wall without care,
See me light up the lovers at play,
Se me shroud them, as I ease away.

No one really knows everywhere I creep,

For I don’t disclose secrets meant to keep.
Secrets learned at night at some window glass,
With my soft, sure light beaming where I pass.
Only birds above, warblers, nightingales,
Watch me watching love, never telling tales.

My mother pulls the tides up each pebbled shore,

Where my luster slides in and out once more.
My glimmer fires and pales every passerby.
Walking forest trails past the moonstruck sky.
My glow inspires rare dreams in some sleepers brain;
Other times my beams drive young lovers sane.

And then I touch a doe, startling her as she rises up to go,

Sensing what might be.
The hunters she can smell, drawing ever near,
Or buck as well, lusting to appear.

Have you heard of the moonbeam? Say “Yes,”

That you’ve noticed my silvering light,
Have you ever been lost in the forest? Confess
That you have, and I saved you that night.
Have you heard of the moonbeam? Of course!
You nave seen me descend…then return to my source.
10-28-78
by Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)
First English translation
from Des Vers (1880)

*
The Muse At Four A. M.

The pre-dawn ennui of sleeplessness

Chafes raw the nerves of poetry,
As tensing cadences of song caress
The rain with mist-vague melody.

The mind becomes a frescoed wall,

Mad metaphors are muraled there:
Pastels and paling pigments sprawl
Tableauxed…translucent…brushed with air.
07-19-88
*
 The Muse of Immolation

Black wings are beating a sharp tattoo,

A-tattering on your skull.
A raven is perched on all of you
There is: a bone-white hull.

The love of your youth, she floats in mist.

Your triumphs and brave defeats
And manhood expire. No dreams exist.
Just bones, where the black wing beats
1977
*

The Music Makes you Free

You see him washing tables in a San Francisco bar,

He works a week or two and then he’s gone.
He’s heading back to Texas or maybe Canada—
At least he’s got his guitar out of pawn.

His music sounds like Nashville but his voice you just can’t place—
The labels on his suitcase tell the tale.
There’s scratches on his guitar and there’s paper taped on top:
It’s got a list of songs that never fail.

He’s a little bit of you,

He’s a hell of a lot of me,
And the message is that
Music makes you free.

He yodels like a brakeman, and he sings those prison songs

(He’d like to make you think that he’s been bad);
His voice, it stats to weaken when he sings of shattered love
And children growing up without their Dad.

(spoken) “and if he dies when things are good, you’ll read it in the news”…
(Most likely he will fall without a trace):
It doesn’t really matter—no!—the music’s all that counts,
And there’s always some new fool to take his place.
1979
*

The Music of the Moon

The restaurant was dirty,

But her smile was clear and clean;
She was forty looking thirty,
And her dress and eyes were green.

Like a fairy story fable,

She was sitting all alone,
She was eating at the table
Underneath the telephone.

I pretended I was calling

 Someone somewhere far away,
And she saw that I was stalling
Making up the words to say.

And I looked up at the ceiling

Like I’d lost something up there,
And I told her I was feeling
Like I’d seen her face somewhere.

Her voice was like an old familiar tune:

Her voice was like the music of the moon.

But the early evening laughter

It was hard to keep alive,
In the sleepy morning after
When the questions did arrive.

While the breakfast, it was cooking,

She asked me what to do,
And she told me she was looking
For a chance to start anew.

And I saw that woman groping

For the years that all were spent,
And she told me she was hoping
For a job to pay the rent.

So I gave her half my money

As I went out the door,
And she laughed, like what was funny
Really wasn’t anymore.
09-22-73
*

The Norm

The folly of fear is a fetter-chain

Winding around the brain,
Imprisoning Fancy inside a cell
Of caution: the coward’s Hell.

The manacles link mediocrities,

Cuffed in their slaveries
Like prisoners collared in rings that chafe:
Controlled and curtailed. Safe.
02-18-85
*

The Oldest Battle

Time is a wine that you drink to the dregs,

Love is a shackle that locks to your legs,
But which of the two is best?
Time is the enemy Love tries to kill,
Over a lifetime of battle, until
The sun of your life sinks west.
 01-20-72
*

The Oldest Song

I.

The rhythm of war is the ancient roll

Of the tattering, martial drum,
The slick of the boots—and the perfect salutes—
The drummer boy’s dum-da-dum.

II.

The lyrics of war are the usual ones

Politicians can spout with aplomb:
“God bids us begin—and this war we can win
--He blesses our cause and our Bomb.”

III.

The tune of the war is the ancient cry

Of mothers’ and sisters’ moan
(And the children’s and wives’) with the heart of their lives
Down under a flag-draped stone.
08-09-68 (rev. 04-25-82)
*

The Pioneer Waltz

Now the wagons rolled out of Missouri,

Heading west on the Oregon Trail,
Through the blizzards and ice-covered mountains,
And the winds, and the rains, and the hail.

We crossed every river and desert,

And we never gave one backward glance,
And if we weren’t too weary each evening,
We’d take out the fiddle and dance.

We’d dance to the Pioneer Waltz, in time,

And the mandolin played right along,
And the children, they clapped, and the old people napped,
And the Pioneer Waltz was our song.

When the heat or the cold overcame us,

Then we pioneers lightened our load,
And we left half our precious belongings
Cast away by the side of the road.

And we sometimes left little wood crosses,

The graves, they were sometimes quite small,
But we finally set foot up in Oregon,
And the music helped us through it all.

Now the years hurried by without warning,

 And we pioneers built us a town,
But you can still hear that old fiddle
Now and then, when the sun has gone down.

We dance to the Pioneer Waltz, in time

And the mandolin plays right along,
The children, they clap, and the old people nap,
And the Pioneer Waltz is our song.
1986
*

The Price of Love

(for Leilah Wendell)

She was fashioned of nothing, wind and whispers, and sighing air,
Yet she floated visible and taunting there,
Faint phantom with ethereal, wispy hair.
And she said, “Come sleep with me”
In a voice like murmured, sombrous sea
On the shoreline of Eternity.

And I yearned with longing, thirsting for her liquid kiss,

In a night of drawn-out, clinging bliss…
Still she hovered, teasing the air, and whispered this:
“Beware, it’s understood
In a bed of carven ebon wood
On a black silk sheet we’ll sleep for good.”
07-12-81
*

The Queen of the Mojave Desert

The old man lived out by the desert, selling postcards and gasoline,
He sold road-maps and Navajo silver, and True West magazine.

And under his Gabby Hays beard beat the heart of a dashing young man;
With arthritic fingers he cleaned off my windshield…he once was a Dapper Dan.

He said “Take care on the desert, carry plenty water to spare—

And look out for mirages that float like a dream—there’s all kinds of dangers out there.

“And you better watch out for that sweet senorita, the travelers all agree…
They call her the Queen of the Mojave Desert…but she once belonged to me,
Yes, she once belonged to me…”

I thought the old man was demented, from too many years in the sun;
But there in his gas station office I noticed a Winchester gun…

And I saw a faded brown photo—a Mexican beauty was she…

Right next to a newspaper clipping…about a murder in 1953…

Then later that night on the desert, my car overheated and died—
And I saw the Queen of the Mojave Desert…with a bullet hole gaping wide!

So I hoofed it on back to the station, ‘left my automobile behind…

And that grizzled gas station attendant, he told me one final time—
 “You’d better look out for that sweet senorita, the travelers all agree,
They call her the Queen of the Mojave Desert…but she once belonged to me,
She was unfaithful to me…back in 1953…she was unfaithful to me...”
1984
*

The Robot and the Ghost

The robot fancied he could write,

And so he scribbled through the night
And without fail sent off each tale—
Soon the world would know his name!

His levers clicked, his motors purred,

His gears and little wheels, they whirred—
But all came back with printed black
Notices that read the same.

At last the robot hired a “ghost”

Who fixed his manuscripts till most
Of them were placed, and soon they graced
Magazines—for cash and fame!
03-21-81
*

The Sahara of My Soul

I.

The gales of Hell, they gust my soul;

I shutter up in vain--
Cracked windows of my storm-rent brain,
Shuddering as wind-tides roll.
Rattling rhythms wrack my soul.

The wind-voice screeches out my name

With banshee-clarity and tone
Skirling, high-pitched, like a lone
Lover who slew herself in shame—
Wind-wraith woman howls my name!

II.

The winds wax silent, shorn of sound,

A pall afflicts the land,
Breezeless, arid, bone-strewn sand
There my cerements are found
Rotting on the charnel ground.
7-28-89 and 8-9-89
*

The Sea-Shell Game

The tide came in and took our towers made of sand,

Like some mad giant smashing castles with his hand,
While our drifting dreams were drowning in the waves,
The ocean took our castles to their graves.

I wrote the letters of your name upon the shore,

But the tide erased my message with a roar,
And after it had rolled away, it left behind
A shifting beach of shining shells for us to find.

One of us has changed, and one is still the same:

We really never win or lose the sea-shell game.

We tried to hear ourselves above the pounding sea,

All we heard were echoes of what used to be;
Our bodies came together like they used to do,
But all we heard was silence after we were through.

One of us has changed, and one is still the same:

We never really win or lose the sea-shell game.
11-09-72
*

The Song of Silence

Singing lovers have their season,

Till their melodies are mute
And their words expire with lyrical regret.

Yes, our music had its moment,

Feeble notes upon the flute
And a minor-chorded tune we’ll soon forget.

Never hearken for the encore.

Never listen for the lute,
For the strings are scraping rusty on each fret.
04-22-82
*

The Summer of My Time

Seattle was the summer of my time,

The view was good, the hills were fun to climb,
And there I found myself, and you found you;
The yellow fog was fading into blue.

Nineteen-sixty-six was sadly strange;

I stood outside my soul and watched it change,
Like rain upon Seattle window sills
That turns to sun and settles on the hills.

The Saturdays that didn’t want to end,

When I was learning how to be my friend,
I drank the days like they were home-made wine,
And realized the life I led is mine.

I knew that soon or later I would leave,

As sure as people laugh, and people learn to grieve,
 In order that they learn to laugh once more,
Like sunlight melting mist along the shore,

The fog upon the sea,

The walks with Dorothy—
Seattle was the summer of my time.
10-19-75
*

The Tritest Song

“Renewal…Easter,,,April love…rebirth”
Are easy, archetypal terms for when
Fresh shoots begin to green the thawing Earth
And fill with sweet clichés this poet’s pen.
At least I know what Spring is not—
The “cruelest” month’s not April, no,
In spite of Mister T. S. Elliot
Whose Spring and soul were both of snow.
But he was young. Age brings surcease,
And Spring, forsythia and daffodils,
As flowered sonnets sprout, increase,
And decorate the rain-swelled rills.
Thus, in the landscape of my autumn brain
The hues of yellow and of green remain.
03-23-83
*

The Troubadour King: Prologue

The song of the monarch of minstrelsy

Hums down the hall of years,
It echoes and rings in each gallery:
The tune never disappears.

Never, my child, no never my dear

Venture away from here,
Remain right at hand in a battle-red land
With sword and your thirsty spear.

Mother, I hear in the wind at night

Voices that say take flight.
They bid me to flea this insanity
Away from this age-old fight.
1981
*

The Troubadour King

The Troubadour King is an emperor,

Over the realms untold
Of mountainous height—of rivers and bright
Deserts of sandy gold.

The Troubadour King is a balladeer,

Ruling by song or sword,
 And his enemies reel to the slash of his steel
Swung by the poet-lord.

And the royal refrain

Is a chorus of rain,
And sadness, uttered in song:
“Every life is so brief
For a king--for a thief!—
And nothing endures for long!”

Now, plotters abound in the halls of the state,

Bowing with grace and guile
With their faces a mask, as they set to their task,
Forcing an opaque smile.

The monarch suspects, and so he ordains

Sumptuous banqueting,
Of spices and meats, and some sugary treats…
Afterwards, he will sing.

The plotters lean back, with a belch and a sigh,

Bored as they’ve been before
Then they gag—and grow weak—as the poisons wreak
Death as they slide to the floor.

And the royal refrain

Is a chorus of rain
And sadness, uttered in song:
“Every life is so brief
For a king—and a thief!—
And nothing endures for long!”
08-02-81
*

The Vietnam War Ain’t Over Yet (It Takes a Long, Long Time)

His daddy died from workin’, the boy dropped out of school,
He should’ve hid out in college, that patriotic fool.

His mama, she was weepin’ that day he raised his hand,
He wrote her almost ev’ry week from a Southeast Asian land.

He led his men in battle, he risked his ass each day,

He hit the dirt but not in time when a bullet came his way.

A purple decoration—rehabilitation, and an ex-wife—

And now his nation’s awarding him…just twenty years to life.

The details they don’t matter, no, it’s just some Veteran’s crime,
The Vietnam War ain’t over yet, it takes a long, long time.

Psychiatrists and lawyers, they fashioned his defense,

They tried to make him crazy, but the jury took offense.

Now he don’t sniff that cocaine, no, and all he drinks is beer;
But he’s got memories in living color, they re-run all so clear.
He hears those people screamin’, he sees the bombs’ bright light—
It all came back one fatal night…inside that bar-room fight.

The details don’t matter, no, it’s just some Veteran’s crime,
The Vietnam War ain’t over yet, it takes a long, long time.
1984
*

The Windmill

I saw before me…

In the mists of the moonlight, a silhouette tall
On the hill like a monster, gaunt arms clutching wide:
A huge windmill whose blades only rise up to fall,
Carving arcs in the shadows upon the hill’s side.
Thus I saw in the haze, like a dream up ahead,
An immensity looming, that shook me with dread,
With a forehead that scraped on the star-sprinkled skies,
An old mill that continued to thrust up and rise,
With its sails a-spinning, circling galaxies of
All those stars ringed in haloes of light far above,
Stealing gold-dust from robes of the comets so far
That old Time himself seemed a prisoner of Space,
Yet the windmill on earth still revolved in its place,
Going down, then back up, circling each distant star.
08-12-76 (rev. 12-10-90)
by Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)
First English translation
from Des Vers (1880)
*

The Witch Tree

The witch tree stands on the hanging hill,

Children shun it still,
Where limbs that lifted flesh to dry
Writhe against dull sky.

It’s there my shamed and convicted kin

Hung, and swung, for sin,
Today…we’re cautious in our rites,
Held on moonless nights.
1967
*

The Witch of Prague

(after F. Marion Crawford)

The wan and weary Wanderer arrived

In Prague, in search of someone lost from him—
Dear Beatrice, whose love for him once thrived,
But now diffused in daydreams, misty-dim--
The days were damp with darkened dew.
Instead he met that siren-mesmerist
Unorna—seductive, subtle witch who drew
 The Wanderer to her within a tangled tryst.
She pulled him backward through the centuries
Exhibiting a horror in the graveyard gloom,
But still he spurned her wanton witcheries,
Aware that yielding only promised doom…
At last his Beatrice returned, once more
And lost Unorna vanished…out Death’s door.
03-23-80
*

The World’s Way

The old and young are seldom near,

Their voices sound apart:
What makes one laugh, brings one a tear,
Each has a different heart.

The young think Love’s a Tragedy,

And older men are fools;
The old reject youth’s honesty,
And challenging of rules.
11-17-81
*

The Woman’s Victory

From the ivory heights of heaven

I am catapulted down
To the bottom side of Nothing
Where envy gilds my crown—
Separation, subjugation,
Force my frantic frown.
Rev. 1991
*

The Yellow Danger

(after M. P. Shiel)

Poor Yen-How only asked for one small touch,

The English girl refused to give:
A tiny kiss, not really very much;
Thus scorned, he swore the English wouldn’t live.
For Yen-How had for years lived in the West,
Absorbing Occident lore and skill;
Now he would lead the Orient and wrest
The heart of England out, in one slow kill.
All this because of unrequited love?
For sure—the Continent caught fire and charred,
As Mars, the War-King smiled from up above,
And England fought Chinese in her backyard:
Till finally the hero of the age—
John Hardy—won against the mighty Yellow Rage.
01-31-79
*
 Theft

The Goat-God stands,

We clap our hands
And bow below,
And pray that he
Will slaughter the
Old god you know.

The Goat-God grins,

The rite begins upon the sod;
Your senses reel,
You whirl and wheel,
And lose your god.
01-26-74
*

There’s A Little Girl Inside of Every Woman

There’s a little girl inside of every woman, you can find her if you try:
It’s not in her figure, and it’s not in her hair…it’s right there in her eye.
She plays with the boys, but not in a tree fort—she’s out on that hardwood floor—
That girlish giggle—but the way she dances, she ain’t a tom-boy no more.

Cinderella fell for a truck-driving fella, but he left on a rainy night.

The morning comes and that damned fairy godmother ain’t anywhere in sight.
Instead of a doll, she’s got a real baby—he cries and he coos and he wets.
Instead of a tea-party, it’s called life, and love’s late-night regrets.

There’s a little girl inside of every woman, you can find her if you try:
It’s not in her file at the welfare office…it’s right there in her eye.
She locates employment in a fried-chicken palace, and she’s working for the minimum wage.
She keeps her eyes open for the next Prince Charming, but she never volunteers her age.

There’s a little girl inside of every woman, you can find her if you try:
It’s not in the date on her birth certificate…it’s right there in her eye.
1980
*

Think Small

You wonder what I’m speaking of,

Little words like faith and love,
Flowers by the garden wall,
Little children, two feet tall.

Like a little paper boat,

Like a one-page, thank-you note,
Like a little rubber ball,
See it bouncing down the hall.

Like a soft and warm “hello”

Little words are big, you know,
Compliments that you let fall,
Think small, that’s all, think small.
 1981
*

Thirsty Troops

You’d better fear the phantom feet

Of warriors who will not retreat
A step until you’re dead:
Imaginary little elves
Invading you to make themselves
A home inside your head.

As soon as you have heard the tramp

Of infantry who come to camp,
You’ll tremble at their tread,
Remembering they’re coming in
A mighty flank, to suck your sin
Until your soul is bled.
10-15-68

(This Just Might Be) The Last Old-Time Train Song

Come on little children, put your ears upon that shiny silver rail.
You know that train is comin’ and you know this time it isn’t going to fail,
So listen in the distance, you can hear the whistle whining in the air,
So hurry to the station, bring your neighbors, ev’rybody will be there.

This just might be the last old-time train song,

Sing it one more time for you and me,
Kickin’ up cinders down the line,
The engineer, he’s a
friend of mine,
This just might be the last old-time train song.

Hurry to the platform, try to see the train, it’s just a mile away,
And listen to those drivers poundin’, bringin’ back the sounds of yesterday,
The engineer is waving, all the little boys, they seem to know his name,
The station’s full of people, and the train is here, and ain’t you glad you came?

Now the whistle’s blowing, now the fireman’s stoking up a little steam,
The passengers are boarding and I wonder, is this really all a dream?
And is that train returning, or will it be gone forever down the track?
It doesn’t matter, we’ll keep singing, just as if that train is comin’ back.
1985
*

This Poem is Dedicated

You don’t understand poetry,

It’s far too clear for you,
Its crystalline sublimity
Offends, because it’s true.
03-17-79
*
 Thrust Home

I strive to smelt my feelings in a crucible of art,

I plunge them into tears until the hissing starts;
And after they are cooling, then I hammer them with zeal:
A rapier forged of supple, double-edged poetic steel.

I lunge it at my enemies imagined…usually,

Or raise it in salute to valiant friends, so loyally,
Or turn the weapon on myself, then finally
To stab my pretenses, skewered with “Why me?”
12-04-83
*

Tiana, I Will Always Love You

Sam Houston was governor of Tennessee,

When he went off to live with the Cherokee,
Kicked out of his bed by his wife so he went away…
Sat under a tree and he got drunk ‘most every day.

Tiana was Scottish, she was Indian, too.

When she saw that big man, she knew just what to do—
She kissed him, and she caressed him, and she tended his broken heart.
Sam Houston, he told her, “Tiana, we’ll never part.”

“Tiana, I will always love you, Tiana, I will always care.”

Sam Houston loved Tiana, and you know she loved him…
Ah, but that was a long, long time ago…

Texas came calling, it pounded like a drum.

Sam Houston he answered, they knew he’d come.
“Remember the Alamo” became his battle-cry…
Sam Houston and Texas, and the Lone Star was flying high.

The Cherokee were shoved right off their land—

Four thousand of them died, I understand.
And General Sam Houston, he shared their pain;
(And the grave of Tiana was washed away with the rain…)

“Tiana, I will always love you. Tiana, I will always care.”

Sam Houston loved Tiana, and you know that she loved him…
Ah, but that was a long, long time ago…
1987
*

Time Colors

Time’s a silver trumpet loud

In your soul’s inner ear,
Calling you beyond the crowd
Into some gleaming, silver year.

Follow reckless down the days

And embrace a brave fate,
 Leaving the ugly dull brown and greys,
For the Silver Time: don’t be late!
1975
*

Time Colors (2)

Blue years,
Deep as the snow,
New tears,
Starting to flow.

Green days,
Crumbled to brown,
Mixing with greys.
Leaves tumbled down.
02-19-76
*

Time-Jail

Do you still prefer

The memory
Of the things you were,
Nevermore to be?

Are you really safe

Inside the chain?
Don’t the shackles chafe
When you twist and strain?
02-20-75
*

Time’s Palmistry
(for Rose Wolf)

Between your fingers slip the diamonds of each day;

Seconds, minutes, hours as well
Are strewn like cinders in the muddy mire away,
Tamped and trampled where they swiftly fell.

Inside your palm, faint diamond shapes remain—

Outlines, etched from clutching tight—
These lines remind you of gemmed years upon the wane…
Diamonds gone. Soon comes the onyx night.
02-18-83
*

Tiny Linguist

In Baby’s Book we log

Her latest word—it’s “dog”’
She calls us each by it…
(I hope it doesn’t fit!)
06-02-78
*
 Tiny Teacher

Babies remind you you’re you,

Needed to
Be yourself—someone to grasp—
Small hands—clasp!
08-28-78
*

To Lie

All poets lie:

Self-dramatizing every hurt,
Or otherwise, exaggerating bliss.

All poets lie

(When life extinguishes) in dirt,
And lips that used to sing, the grave-worms kiss.
06-08-81
*

To Not Return

There’s an arc of a rainbow ringing

‘Round the horizon’s rim,
And the colors collect on the brim
Of the world. I hear singing,
But of angels’ (or sirens’) it’s not clear.
Either way, they entice me afar from here.
12-23-83
*

Today’s Style Sheet

Rhyme is a crime,
A misdemeanor or more.
And cadence is worse—a rhythmical verse
Is a felony critics abhor.

“Love” gets a shove

In the ash-can where Beauty “belongs”.
Psychosis is “in”—optimism’s a sin:
Down the toilet with heart wringing songs!
02-16-83
*

Tombstone, Arizona

In eighteen-eighty two, the town of Tombstone, Arizona found its fame,

Inside its streets and cemetery it began to live up to its name;
The silver mines were making men as rich as they could ever hope to be,
And all the gamblers and the gunmen and the madams wrote its history.

October twenty-seventh was the day that no one ever can forget,
But what exactly happened there nobody quite agrees on, even yet;
 But we all know for sure is some men stood and shot some other men who fell;
The good and bad and black and white are something no one knows enough to tell.

But legends live when men begin to die,

And no one knows what’s true, and what’s a lie,
And Tombstone, Arizona died a long, long time ago…

The cowboys all were cattle thieves who died inside of Tombstone’s streets that day,
The lawmen who had killed them all were gamblers who’d do anything for pay,
The bodies, they were buried with the truth, inside the graveyard out of town;
When Wyatt Earp and both his brothers met those men, they gunned them to the ground.

The marshals won the battle, but the time for men like them was running short;
Then Wyatt lost his brothers, but he didn’t take the murdererto a court;
He killed the killers, so they even swore a warrant for his head;
But Wyatt Earp died in nineteen twenty eight, so peaceful in his bed.
07-07-73
*

Tomorrow’s Rain

Indians and trappers now have parted,

The trading post’s a ghost-town in the sand;
I wonder if they saw it when they started
How they’d lose their freedom and their land?

The open range is prisoned now with fences,

There’re no more antelope left to kill,
The sound and smell of rawhide leaves your senses,
Now the cowboys work down at the mill.

The rivers that we used to swim are flowing

As muddy like the color of the sky,
The birds that used to gather here are going
North to find a cleaner place to fly.

But what’s the use of standing softly singing,

There’s nothing really changed by one more song,
Tomorrow’s getting closer and it’s bringing,
Showers that are overdue too long.

Everybody knows the frontier’s faded,

Everybody says it’s worth the gain,
No one sees the paradise we’ve traded
Now is melting in tomorrow’s rain.
10-23-72
*

Too Few

Everybody’s dreams get sold,

Even poets growing old,
All but those who ride the wind
Free and floating, like Bob Lind.

See the others trade their gift

 For the gold too great to lift;
Lind, and all too few remain,
Owned by sunlight, owned by rain.
09-09-72
*

Top of the Stairs

What’s behind the door?

Was I here before?
In faded lives ago?
Store-room full of dust,
Open if I must
The room I used to know.

Who was I back then?

Saint, or scourge of men?
The dust will never tell.
Store-room old with mold
(Attic dim and cold),
Conceals my ghost as well.
05-25-76
*

Tourist Attraction

One morning proud Prince Paradine arose,

Donned his velvet, regal clothes,
And took three hours till he was dressed—
‘Even had his stockings pressed!
Patent leather shod his feet,
His scented wig was white as sleet,
A golden girdle rode his hip,
Mustache on his upper lip—
“Behold,” he told his mirror, “Look,
Is it not worth the time I took?”

And then the guard said, “Come, it’s Three,

Everybody’s here to see.”
And thus the Prince went out to climb,
Thirteen steps to end his time,
Last reward for princely crime:
A plunging blade—and then Eternity.

Today, Parisian courtyard stones

Display a cache of princely bones.
Primping phantom floats on air—
Preening—pirouetting!—there.
11-19-90, (rev. from 1979)
*

Tracks

Children know
That giants grow,
Ghosts are true,
 And witches too.

Grown-ups don’t,
And so they won’t
Hear things wail
Inside the gale.

“It’s an owl
Or some cat’s yowl,”
They insist
With whitened fist.

You know more:

You lock your door,
Snuggle deep
And pray you sleep.

Then at dawn
Behold the lawn:
Sunrise glints
On fresh prints.

Bones have walked,

Ghosts have stalked,
Tombs have stirred,
And you, YOU heard.
03-31-77(rev. 09-28-90)
*

Transmutation

Leather-bound books on the sorcerer’s shelf,

Offer a perch for the magical elf,
Watching the chemicals fume:
Vapors of sulfur and alchemist’s brew.
Melting to gold in a mystical stew,
Stinking the cob-webbed room.

Then the mad sorcerer grabs his small friend,

Saying, “An elf will add zest to my blend,”
Plunges him into the vat;
Later the sorcerer’s body is found
Horribly scalded to death with no sound,
Elf-prints all over his hat.
12-25-74
*

Transplant

The scalpels are out,

The doctors cut off a pig’s snout,
Soon it will replace
The nose missing on a man’s face.
12-09-78
*
 Trash Collector

The corrosion of caring creeps up at last,

Rust all around your heart
As flakes of red-brown flutter, powdering down,
Filling the scavenger cart
Of ashes and dust from the past.
It rolls away, fickle and fast.
1977
*

Treading Water (Willingly)

Adrift, adrift (my usual trip)

In icy, unmapped sea,
A splintered spar my only ship—
I clutch it willfully.

Afloat, afloat, each nerve alive,

I brave what is to be,
Instead of cowering, to but survive
On land, secure, not free.
09-02-80
*

Treasure Map

The antique barn has treasure, junk,

Stacked together in the dust,
Some worn-out tools, and one old trunk,
Massive padlock sealing it with rust.

What hides inside? Some rare old book?

Heirloom brooches of old gold?
We pay five dollars, and we look—
Rotting newspapers, must and mold!
07-09-78
*

Tree-Limb Jurisprudence

The hempen rope chokes

As you manage some jokes
With your wrists bloodied, thong-lashed behind,
And your bandana’d eyes, bound and blind.

They shoot off a gun—

And your horse jerks to a run,
And suspends you to lurch off the ground.
You gurgle. Men ride. Then…no sound.
1968
*

Trek

Roads untaken fade

 Into misty shade:
New decisions bravely made.

Roads for taking spread

Risks and ruts ahead,
Underneath your tiresome tread.

Foot-sore, bloody, you

March courageous through
Torture-trails out-stretched anew.

Highways taken flow

Wet with blood and snow:
Feet—in wanderings, still go.
12-21-74
*

Trip

March to the roll

Of your own drum,
Calling your soul:
“Come away, come.”

March to the fife

Piping so far
From your dead life:
Leave where you are.

Leave and arrive

Somewhere insane
Where fairies thrive
Thronging your brain.
01-16-76
*

Troubadour-Tribute

I love the songs of working people played

In cabins and at dances, and along
Highways where the vagabonds wander by,
Unchanged since days of early English song.
The English, Celtic minstrelsy can never die
As long as mandolins and fiddles cry
The ancient ballads of true love turned wrong—
Of God—and ghosts—and deaths and birth,
Wherever people and their folklore throng.
Out on the sea (or prairies) where the songs are made
Of people close to water, dust and earth:
Elements that give music its true worth
As folk song singers ply their timeless trade.
03-30-80
*

Trove
 “Vacation” always means antiques---
Victorian mirror, rimmed with gilt---
Capacious dresser, sturdy-built;
And a country kitchen chair that creaks.

There’s painted oak, to sand and strip;

And look!—that broken rocking chair;
But nothing old’s beyond repair
(Knowing fingers…graying hair)
From an August back-roads trip.
11-02-78 (rev. 08-30-89)
*

Truck Driver’s Woman

A truck driver’s woman stays home and she raises the children,
She talks about daddy, and how he’s at work far away,
And sometimes she wonders how some women marry the lawyers,
And bankers, and college professors who come home each day.

A truck driver’s woman is lucky to see him on weekends,

She’s happy to have a man who calls her up each night,
From Boise or Memphis or someplace she never has heard of,
“Say, hello there, honey, I hope ev’rything’s going right.”

The years hasten by and they’re starting to show in her eyes,

A truck driver’s woman can’t help it if sometimes she cries,
The children are growing so fast she can’t keep them in clothes,
And they talk of that daddy the littlest one hardly knows.

The truck driver’s woman can’t stand anymore so she changes,

She rides in the truck now, to keep her tired husband awake,
The children come too and they sometimes miss out on some schooling,
But they’re all together, this family is too strong to break.
1981
*

Tutor

The cutting edge of Fall

Shears the leaves from trees,
Exposing them as ramrod tall
Soldiers soon to freeze.

These warriors of wood

Battle with the gale
Defiantly they’re braced, and should
Be, when Fall-winds wail.

Are we as brave as well?

How will we bear the burn
Of winter’s sleeted, bone-chilled hell?
Trees, help us learn.
10-28-78
*
 Twenty-five Cent Temptress

Across the circus ground

Where bells and whistles sound,
The gypsy charges you some gold
To have your doom foretold.

She blames the stars and gods

For lessening your odds—
And yet when she returns once more
You run to her tent door.
09-09-73
*

Twilit Orgy

Dawn bathes my eyelids with gold-dust,

Blue burning into bright red,
Morning confessing its old lust
For the coy daylight ahead.

Dusk wipes away afternoon-light,

Orange melting into dark grey;
Dark blue seducer, the new night
Rapes the last ghost of the day.
06-02-76
*

Two Flowers

My daughter picks a golden

Flower from the grass
To wear within her hair, so proud:
She’ll stand out in the pre-school crowd.

But flowerings of final

Smoke will come to pass,
And pick out her. Mushroom cloud
Plucks children. Oh! So loud!
05-13-82
*

Two Kinds of Poets

The Timeless and the Timely are so close and yet so far,
The former scans beyond the Earth and sees the farthest star.

The latter reads the fashions of the fleeting trends today.

Tailoring his poems, fearing what the critics say.
1981
*

Tycho Brahe’s “Fortress of the Heavens”

(1546-1601)

His citadel headquarters mirrored his mind:

 “Uraniborg” perched on the island of Ven,
With turret-topped towers each flanking a kind
Of onion-shaped globe—his alchemist’s den
Emboweled within, with polished brass sphere
Engraved with the stars, their locations made clear.
1978
*

Unfollowed Advice

Has the fire in your dreams burned dim

And light that they cast, fluttered out?
Are you living your life by whim,
Irresolute, dying from doubt?

Then recover yourself once more

In the face of a friend made new,
Sing a song to some children, or
Whatever frees you from you.
1974
*

Unheard Plea

I brave the winds of wintered sky,

Snowflakes in my eye,
And trek the fields of frozen white,
Gleaming skull-face bright.

I clutch my hand-carved amulet,

Trudging bravely yet,
And pray the gods will somehow lift
Snows that pile and drift.
1976
*

Unless You Want It To

Love you like a cavalier, swords and poetry

And anything to take me near where I want to be.
Love you like a troubadour, second-hand guitar
And just three chords, and nothing more, take me where you are.
Love you like a sorcerer, spells to hold you fast
For just as long as you prefer: nothing has to last.
10-13-70
*

Unprecious Metal

The corrosion of Time

On your iron-wrought rhyme
Is the color or reddening must.

Though you write what you feel

It is iron or steel
Never gold, so it powders to dust.
 06-22-81
*

Unrecovered
(for Alpha and Laura Castro)

Connecticut summers recede and flow:

Thirty-two years ago
I first felt the breath of the pine-sweet air
Whisper a welcome there.

I walk through the bramble-thick paths and look

For a lost, little laughing brook,
I find it at last, still I cannot now see
Boyhood that used to be.
1980
*

Upon Reading of Lovecraft’s Death

Sauk City, 1937

Thank Hastur August Derleth paused

Upon the railroad bridge, and caused
His grief to turn itself around,
Till firm resolve made his heart pound.
A friend’s death—a friend’s book!—
And never once a backward look
With each sure step that giant took.
04-02-79
*

Used Paperback Bookstore

They trade you one for two,

Within the same price range,
Their formula won’t change,
And later when you’re through
You’ll swap them for some new.

But when my life is done,

Will books I’ve written be
Recycled, mindlessly,
Will there be even one
Collectors hunt, for fun?
03-23-78
*

Used Up

The painter in his cap sits there

On a front porch chair,
And no one asks him to paint—
“He drinks,” is their complaint.

There was a time he got those jobs,

Now the liquor slowly robs
 His reputation till it goes—
But still he wears those painter-clothes.
05-09-79
*

Vacant Verse

I haven’t anything to say,

Or any tale to tell,
Admitting that I might as well
Refuse to write today.

There isn’t any crueler crime

Or evil any worse
Than writing nothing in a verse,
And setting it to rhyme.

But other poets I have read

Have often written to
Impress themselves, or else a few
Professor-friends instead.
11-10-67
*

Vain Hope

I hope you love the land

Enough to raise your hand
And beat a warning drum
Of fiery rains to come.

I hope you are sane

Enough to see the pain
Our kings can only hide
With palaces and pride.

I hope you hear the clash

Of warnings, and the crash
Of Destiny down hard,
That deals the demon’s card.

I hope you see the fate

And miss the jaws of hate,
And stand outside your Age,
To laugh as others rage.
03-10-72
*

Vaingloria

Vaingloria, chieftainess imperial

Hums a tune of love and springtime lost,
For now the seasons of her greying hair is Fall
Flecked with harbingers of coming frost.

And yet she reminisces of her early years,

 Courtesan of rare erotic arts,
Remembering she left a king and courtiers in tears,
Aristocratic, regal broken hearts.

And she recalls Zemorda who she couldn’t win,

Sorcerer who spent a night with her
Of ecstasies, and spells no man should spin,
Rousing shapes no man should disinter.

Zemorda told Vanigloria, “Vanity

Governs petty human hopes and aims.”
And sneered at her as she moved temptingly,
Cold to her sincerest passion-flames.

He left her in the greying phantomed gloom

Thick with spirits that he’d raised,
Vaingloria, naked in her satin-bedded room,
Weeping all alone, unloved, afraid.

Zemorda’s ghosts and curses haunt her yet:

Poor Vaingloria lives with them as well.
An empress who sleeps with tears of old regret
Shed for him who slept with her from hell.

Vaingloria, empress, attempts to smile,

Watching armies with her banners in review.
But then the saddest word returns to her the while
“Vanity,” and with it pangs and poignancy anew.
“Vanity,” Zemora told her—and the necromancer knew.
1970
*

Vanished
(for Alpha, Dick, Laura, Tony and Carmella Castro)

New England vacations and summer sky:

Thirty-two years since I
First heard the breath of pine-sweet air
Whisper its welcome there.

I walk through the bramble-thick paths and look

Tracing the same old brook.
I find it at last, but still cannot see
Boyhood that used to be.
1978
*

Vengeance

The vampire bats go out on strike,

Cats show dislike,
Refusing to ride through the gloom
On a straw broom.

They’d rather not always be stark

Beasts in the dark,
 They tire of the witch-work at times,
And its night-crimes.

Myrcalla wrings withered old hands,

Magic wand stands
Next to a stew-pot of toads—
Caldron explodes.

Explodes—and the room is a soup,

Cats`n bats regroup,
Attacking Myrcalla by turns:
Witch woman… learns.
12-26-77
*

Very, Very Soon

Unease…approaching panic in me grew,

As I walked out confronting carnage everywhere,
Radiation-rotted corpses fouling all the air,
Bodies bare of clothing, hair and skin,
Slain by war that men thought men could win.
The very carrion worms seemed ready to expire.

And my internal clock was slowing…that I knew,

Retarding with the halting tick of run-down Time,
Tocking till the final knell of Doom would chime,
Calling me to topple toward polluted grass,
Letting life (not worth knowing) pass…
Atomically contaminated earth, my bier.
05-07-80
*

Veterans’ Encampment

Armies of the dead

March the roads of red
Bloody with their tread.

Spectral infantry,
Phantom cavalry
Move inexorably.

Romans, Spartans come,

Scots with pipe and drum,
No one knows where from.

British, Turk and French

Reek of charnel stench,
From their burial trench.

Hear their phantom toasts,

Soldiers swapping boasts,
Raising martial toasts…
Armored, zombie hosts.
1976
 *

Veterans’ Hospital

Nervous male quit last night,

Losing all without a fight;
The supervisor shrugs,
“Caught him really good this time,
In a Federal high crime,
Concealing, stealing drugs.”
03-19-78
*

Victory

Sun devouring skin and bone,

Radiation eating at
Muscles, organs, fluid, fat,
Powdering us like soap-soft stone.

Withering us slowly white,

Rays of age inject the slow
Steady death of life, we know
Wins, no matter how we fight.
01-13-75
*

Victory (2)

This thousandth time I vow to strive.

Nine hundred ninety-nine I’ve lost.
But one more try proves I’m alive,
And heedless of life’s countless cost.
05-01-82
*

Vigo Street, Soho

No one cares to glance inside

Your powdered verses, pressed and dried
Like roses in a vellum, gilded book.
Never mind your youthful dreams:
They drown along the drugging streams
Of laudanum you took.

Nothing lingers very long,

The purple wine and purple song
Dissolve in Soho’s yellow-blearing mist,
Blurring into purple haze,
The mauve of fading yesterdays
Like violets ground to grist,
Crushed blossoms in Time’s fist.
1972
*

Village Daybook
 Crops grow,
Years flow,
Birds go
And come each year, anew.

Map their
Flight where
The air
Evolves from grey to blue.

List all
Birds’ call
Each squall
And whistle heard by you.

Write brief:
Each leaf
Each sheaf
Of pages, chart what’s true.
08-17-78
*

Villon Revisited
(After Francois Villon, b. 1431)

I.

I’ve been a hero at Culloden

Though my sword was made of lath,
And my Redcoats were imagined in my mind—
My other playmates looked, but they were blind.

I’ve walked the streets of Tombstone.

O. K. Corral was where
I would face (with boyhood pistol in my hand)
Embattled cowboys making their grim stand.

II.

Now I raise my grown-up weapon,

A poet’s pen against the foe.
But my ink is watery and swiftly fades,
And pens cannot replace boys’ wooden blades.

Valhalla. Dodge City. No longer near.

Where are the six-guns of yesteryear?
01-27-84
*

Vincent Millay
(1892-1950)

Hair the shade of fire

Flaring like a spire
Over the sad space
 Of her gypsy face:
Candle colored red
Burning down and dead.

Candle in a breeze
Of eternities,
Edna flickered faint,
Charring like some martyred saint
Scarlet at the stake,
Embered… for art’s sake.
1983
*

Virgil Finlay
(1914-1970)

Shades of light and dark

Shimmer in the stark
And shuddering fine lines
That Virgil Finlay sketched:
You feel those fears he etched
In bold, bizarre designs.

Finlay favored two

Colors while he drew:
A somber black and white
As black as castle stones,
As white as powdered bones,
As pale, pale moons at night.
1974
*

Vision

The years are a veil of gauze and mist,

Memories writhe and twist in the web but to no avail,
For Time is a shroud of hazing years
Frosting your eyes that fail.

But suddenly light appears at last—

Rays of the sun gather fast—
Soon horizons are beckoning, blue;
And grand-children brighten your years
Making you see anew.
03-18-80
*

Vision Voyage

The castles fashioned in your mind

Are citadels of stone:
Parapets and towers thrown
High against magenta skies
Where grinning gargoyled turrets rise.

Such castles are the easiest to find:

 You close your worldly eyes
Firmly. Then your spirit flies
Towards the Castles of Unknown
Where purple birds of dream have flown.
03-28-80
*

Vow

The unmowed grass thrives high

And chokes the moss-marked stone,
Above the earthen mound where I
Long have slept, alone.

I used to lie in shrouds,

But now I float on air
Across the somber, moonless clouds,
Graveless, in despair.

I’m looking for my wife—

(Her lover murdered me)—
I’ll haunt her lie-stained, faithless life
Past Eternity.
05-16-79

Alternate third verse:

Around the world I’ll trace
Two murderers who’ve fled:
My wife—her lover—soon will face
Justice from the dead.
1986
*

Voyage

West the winds of morning hurry

From the eastern shores of night,
In a furious, futile flurry
Billowing the sails of white
Over seas of yellow light.

East I slowly turn and waken

On a west-bound ship of day;
Shoals of night fade far, forsaken,
Drowning in the dawning spray
Splashing me upon my way.

West the ships of sunrise leave the

Ports of night, and harbored hate,
As the winds of dawning weave me
Sails of freedom, sails of fate,
Sails unfurling, not too late.
04-27-75
*

Warrior
 Time is a trickle of tears that seep
Through the veil,
Wet with moisture of years that weep
Sob, and wail.

What does it matter is they drip down

Your aged face,
Furrowing lines, and forcing a groan?
Grief has grace.

Grace and a dignity all its own,

Worn with years,
Tears, and the battle fought all alone,
Braving fears.
07-10-75
*
Waste Harvest

Fields lie dead

Under lead
Clouds ahead.

Cities crowd
Fields unplowed
Once so proud.

Wasted seeds:
Nothing feeds
Now but weeds.

Weeds and fumes:

Poison plumes.
10-19-74
*

Wasted Warning

A rather hungry man’s

Enjoying all the meat
And gravy in the cans
Of garbage on your street.

The day they disappear

And none of us are fed,
Your Majesty can fear
The future of his head.
07-28-68
*

Weapon
(Upon Finding a Rose in a Book of Emily Dickenson)

Yes, rose petals battle with Time,

They sever and slash Death down,
So fling me a rose when I’m
 Jailed in Death’s grim town.
I’ll swing it at Death’s iron crown,
Ribboning Death’s black evening gown.
02-27-79
*

Weather Report

Yes, we deserve March snow,

For we deserve to know
That seasons own themselves;
It’s not for us to care
The temperature of air,
Or cut the fickle year in twelves.
03-18-78
*

Weather Song

The wind has a banshee call

Every Fall,
It whines and wails and never fails
To sing insane outside my wall.

The wind has a searing sound

Come to pound,
Upon my ears as winter nears,
It whips unwilling leaves to ground.

But I love its lonesome cry:

Wind and I
Are friends till death, when wind’s shrill breath
Will sing my passing to the sky.
1979
*

Wee Melody

Voices of wind-chimes tinkle,

Laughter of children’s glee
Sprinkle the air with music
Under the ice-cream tree.
03-24-86
*

Wee Music

The soft blue fairies sail on azure wings,

All embellished with flower rings
And garments of woven weeds.

Without a sound they come down from above

To the mossy carpet ground they love,
On their tiny blue fairy-winged steeds.

And then they sing and strike up their band,

And dance around, hand-in-hand,
As they blow on their fluted reeds.
07-15-79
*

Wee Watchers

Little brother, look and see

Fairy eyes that peep at me,
Peep at me and peer at you,
Fairies wearing leaves and dew.
10-02-81
*

Wee Wishes

The idle elflings play,

While parent elves sit by,
And watch the reddened sky
Turn mauve, at end-of-day.

The happy elflings stop

As dusky twilight falls—
Their watchful mother calls—
Toward home they skip and hop.

The elflings sit and eat

A dinner of delight:
It’s thistle-broth tonight,
And deep-fried dragon-meat.

And then they go to bed

They dream of boys and girls
In trousers, skirts and curls—
They envy them instead.

But they wake up…themselves,

And shake their dreams aside,
And open eyes up wide,
And shrug, “We’re glad we’re elves!
04-22-79
*

Wee Wraith

The little boy is seen upstairs

With cherub-golden hairs,
And pale pink features fading dim
Whenever you see him:
A child of faint Victorian memory—
Who died in the last century.
06-29-79
*

Welcome Home, Sister

 She wears a metal bracelet, oh, so proudly,
With a POW’s name upon her arm.
She earns her living working in an office,
Typing letters and filing all those forms.

The girls down at work, they tend to gossip,

They talk about her, but not in an unkind way.
But all the same, sometimes it gets too personal…
On the coffee-break, you ought to hear what the girls say.

Welcome home, sister, tell us about Vietnam,

Welcome home, sister, tell us all about it, if you can—

Now what possessed a girl like you to go over there?

Were you running from yourself?—that’s what we heard.
Did you go for the thrills, did you go for the men, did you like those uniforms?
To carry it on this long, it seems absurd.

Yes, I played Country music for the G.I.’s,

I made that USO club tour scene.
And I rode with body bags in the helicopters…
And I saw a night-club blown to smithereens.

And yes, I go to D.C. on vacation,

I spend a lot of time beside that cold, black wall.
I recognize some names upon the surface…
Sometimes it feels just like I know them all.
11-03-89
*

We’re Passing Through Life On a Song

From the nursery-rhyme tunes of the children,

To the funeral dirge played at the end,
You wander through life in the arms of a song,
And the music’s your favorite friend.

From those rock-n-roll songs with your sweetheart,

To the music on her wedding day,
The organ was playing and your eyes were blurring
As you watched her and him drive away…

The song doesn’t last, no, it’s fading too fast,

And you can’t hold the note very long,
It’s a little off key but it warms you and me:
We’re passing through life on a song.

From those uncensored songs when you’re drinking,

To the taps at the soldier’s farewell,
Those lullabies crooned to your very first child,
To those hymns that brought you home from Hell.

As hamlet might say, the question in this:

To sing or not to sing?
The answer’s so easy and I know you know—
Yes, your life is a song on the wing…
 1983
*

Wet Yule

Christmas rain, instead of snow

Cannot quench the glow,
Cannot still the bells that chime—
(Maybe snow next time!)
12-23-79
*

What Hath Keynes Wrought

Increase the supply

Of money and see,
When you go to buy,
How high costs will be.
06-02-78
*

What Was His Name?

Someone left some guitar strings in circles on her floor,

Cigarettes and bottles in the garbage by her door,
Someone left his cowboy shirt across her kitchen chair,
Is he coming back? Or did he mean to leave it there?

What was his name? What was his name?

One too many mem’ries, till they all look just the same,
What was his name? What was his name?

Someone left some money on the dresser by her bed,

Didn’t leave a letter, ev’rything is best unsaid,
Someone said he loved her, or was that just in her dream?
Ev’ry time this happens she can feel her senses scream:

What was his name? What was his name?

Don’t you think she’s getting sick of losing ev’ry game?
What was his name? What was his name?

Someone left a souvenir it takes nine months to bear,

Mother dies in labor, and the father’s who knows where?
Little girl is raised up by a loving family,
Never learns the secret, that’s the way it has to be.

What was his name? What was his name?

Never ask the question, no one really needs the blame.
What was his name? What was his name?
02-03-78 (rev. 08-27-85)
*

When the Tears Outnumber the Years

Everyone said we were crazy, our love wouldn’t last out the year,
But we’ve been together a dozen—we fooled them awhile , didn’t we dear?
 Our first years were ragged and tough ones, harder by far than the rest,
We had our love and a big stack of bills, but I think those first years were best.

How do you measure your losses, when the love in your life disappears?
Is it in heartaches—or houses—or automobiles?
….When the tears outnumber the years,
When the tears outnumber the years.

Everyone says we are wise now, sensible people at last,

Making the grown-up decision—tearing the page from our past.

But I question my own calculations, did I figure everything right?

Did I total the times with the children? Did I add up each sweet loving night?

How do you measure your losses, when the love in your life disappears?
Is it in in-laws—or court laws—or who keeps the dog?
…When the tears outnumber the years,
When the tears outnumber the years.
06-28-84
*

While Reading Brennan’s Creep to Death

Hour ticking late.

The kindling you plied
Is embered. Charring sticks fall
Down in the grate.
And shadows ascend the wall.
Listen!—and wait—
There—someone just cried—
The chimney wind? Or a wraith’s call?
“It’s nothing, no nothing at all!”
1983
*

While You Can

The roadside ruins rise

Around you, scraping skies
Like cannibal sharp teeth
Jutting on the heath.

The ruins boast

Of goblin, ghoul and ghost
That craves a home somewhere:
Traveler, beware!

Beware the standing stones

That stab the sky line like bones
Along the time-gouged track.
Tremble, and turn back!
01-18-75 (rev. 10-02-90)
*

Whispered
 Tell your secrets to the cat,
He’s so quiet that
No one else can learn or guess
What the cat will not confess.
12-25-78
*

White Witch

Northwest of the night-land,

Over on the edge
Of dreams, her white hand
Clawing at the ledge
Is slipping fast:
The White Witch is slipping fast.

Finger nails of bony

Hands upon the cliff
Of ice, and shattered stony
Shale, she wonders if
Her hour is past.
The White Witch tumbles toward the past.

Body of the whitened

Sorceress, on rocks
That hold her, moonlit-lightened,
Till all Time unlocks
Her soul, and breaks his fast;
The ghoul of Time will break his fast.
10-03-70
*

Who Cares

The flowers that I handed you are fading fast,

The lines we spoke dramatically weren’t meant to last—
Who cares? Who cares?
The Christmas gifts I bought for you have been returned,
Too late for loving, both of us have finally learned
Who cares, who cares.

Who cares if both of us have tried so long?

Who cares if they’re still playing our last song?
The words, they come so trite,
And I can’t find the tune.

Explain it to your relatives as best you can,

I’m sorry that you told them that you’d found a man
Who cares, who cares.
Everything is over that we just begun,
I hope both of us can find a new someone
Who cares, who cares.
11-09-75
*
 Why

A woman’s always wondering

Why wars begin at all,
Why sons are bred for plundering,
Why those bugles call.

But fathers know the reasons why:

How it makes them proud
To have a son who’s born to die;
Hear them brag aloud.
08-20-73
*

Wife

Self-pity is my mistress and my muse.

Her softness is erotic and sublime,
And later when she vampires all my time
I’ll bid her leave. But she’ll refuse.
03-08-82

Wilde
(1854-1900)

Dear Oscar was a darling for a day,

In fashion with the fawning, fickle press,
Who later laughed his dignity away,
And saw his soul unbutton and undress.
The once delightful dilettante was stilled,
His unborn epigrams aborted in his mind,
His future poetry and plays each killed,
His fancy faltering mute, deaf and blind.
For Oscar’s art was not enough to check
His masochistic challenge of propriety,
So into Reading Gaol they locked the wreck
Of Oscar Wilde, whose wit once fluttered free:
In tears and blood he scribbled and he scrawled—
The butterfly that once had flown, now crawled.
01-79
*

William Blake
(1757-1827)

He saw too far, too deep

To linger long
Amid the zombie throng
Of men who are asleep.

He spied the angels near

Enough to touch;
He painted such
Exquisite visions clear.

He painted them with lines

 And with his words:
Immortal birds
That fly in dream-designs.
06-09-74
*

Wind Bound

Brittle, till you crack,

Made of bone, you lack
Softness to survive,
Rigid as a rod,
Righteous as a god,
You’re not long alive.

Powdered bone to dust,

Blown with one good gust
Through the withered trees,
Flecks of boney grey,
You float far away
Billowed on the breeze.
06-75
*

Winds of Red: 1792

Winds of red blow down

Cross and crown,
Trampled in the mud,
Scabbed with blood.

Winds of red congeal

As the steel
Guillotine has crashed,
Crimson-splashed.
11-11-74
*

Wing-Song Macabre

Ghost-bird flapping loud,

Like a rustled shroud
Strikes your window frame,
Screeching your last name.

Like the legend said,

Death-wings overhead
Shudder like a drum
When your hour has come.
02-08-78
*

Winner

I wore a laurel wreath

Placed on me, by me,
 My new-crowned head beneath
Sneered triumphantly.

I wore the offal flung

Vengeful by the crowd,
Instead of laurel, dung.
Either one, worn proud.
07-21-80
*

Winner (2)

The fickle hands of Fate may toss

Dice against my soul,
But I defy the odds of loss
And cheat their reckless roll,
And seize the high-set goal.
09-19-81
*

Winter Renewed

February coughing more snow

In the face of our premature thaw,
Is chilling us back to a few weeks ago…
Fickleness: Nature’s own law.
02-05-84
*

Winter Reprieve

The snow is slowing down

The heartbeat of the town,
Except for mine, that is.
The reason for it—this:
I like excuses to
Stay home, avoiding work. Don’t you?
02-01-79
*

Winter Wail

Far and near the dogs still bark

Down the streets so bitter dark,
As if determined howling could deter
December come to chill their fur.
12-26-79
*

Wishful Writing

A poem is an easy way

Of urging freshmen girls to say
They’d rather read some more with me,
At their apartments willingly.
 And even handier than this,
The poet knows the better bliss
Of being left alone to shirk
The drudgery of common work.
11-08-67
*

Witch-Time

Far, the fields of summer glimmer,

Near, the heated highways simmer:
August noon
Hovers humid, baking, burning,
See the summer colors turning
Autumn soon.

Bleak, the August people gather

Burnt and browning, in the weather
Soon to fail:
Summer dreams and autumn fearing,
Feel October panic nearing
Bone-white, pale.
06-26-75
*

Wolf-Meal

The witches’ wolves prowl,

They yelp and they howl
On Hallow-Mass Eve,
And savagely prowl:
Next mornings…wives grieve.
1968
*

Women Need Words

“Good morning, dear, how are you? The breakfast tastes so good,
I’ll call you from my lunch break, the way I said I would.
And I’ve got one word for you that’s in my vocabulary,
And that word’s “forever” and it’s in your dictionary!”

The Army wrote your mother “With the deepest of regret,”

And the police told your sister, “We ain’t found your little brother yet,”
And the preacher gets the final words, upon the wind-swept hill,
But I just said “I love you,” and I know I always will.

Women need words, yes they do,

Women need words, sincere and true,
Women need words—such as “I love you.”

Wedding ceremony, and somebody says “I do,”

And later he says, “I’m sorry,” and the lawyers say “its through,”
Women need words but they don’t always get the ones they need,
They get “separation” and “visitation” and liberation.” Indeed!
 Women need words in the morning,
And they need them in the afternoon,
Women need words at the crack of midnight, underneath the moon.
1993
*

Wood-Witch

Pale grey priestess appears in the glade

Clutching a magic blade,
Carving out circles in air overhead,
As rituals of grey are said.

Misty grey is the mantle she wears,

Leather and silver and warm werewolf hairs,
Grey like the color of her witchly eyes—
As grey as Hallowmas skies.
09-24-79
*

Writer’s Block
(for Michael Eng)

I miss the tragic days

When all the blues and greys
Of lovelessness influenced me
Toward blue-grey poetry.

How sad that all the sadness died!

And turned to joy inside,
It brims my heart with warming love…
No sorrow to write poems of!
12-25-79
*

Wyoming Winter

It’s a Wyoming winter--there’s snowflakes and sleet coming down,

The cowboy is hiding away from the trouble in town.

Now, the gambler he cheated the cowboy of wages,

With cards that he chose to conceal,
So the cowboy he pulled out a pistol and shot it,
And the gambler, he lost his last deal.

Then the cowboy, he rides toward the line-shack and stays there,
While Wyoming winter-winds wail,
Soon the store-keeper’s daughter arrives with provisions,
And a posse that’s close on her trail.

Now the posse gives up and turns back in the blizzard,

While Wyoming winter winds roar,
Then the lovers, they travel from Cheyenne to Denver,
And they marry, and open a store.

It’s a Wyoming winter, there’s snowflakes and sleet coming down,

 It’s a Wyoming winter, they’re safe from the trouble in town.
03-27-79
*

Yawn

Oh, oh, and—repetitiously—oh

How fatigued and dulled with ennui am I,
Slow, slow, so never-endingly slow
Flow the moments as this lazy life slides by.
01-21-81
*

Year End

I’d rather drink December snow

Than your dishonest tears,
I’d rather feel the bitter blow
Of wind upon my ears
Than lies that each one hears.

Let’s strip away the metaphors

That hide the things we say;
The trees are bare, the wind will roar
And leaves are blown away
And skies (like love) go grey.
01-01-79
*

Yellow Rider

Now the villager’s are waking from the dreams inside their heads,
They’re locking doors and windows, and they’re hiding in their beds;
It’s a yellow rainy morning with a mist across the sun…
You can hear the hoof beats coming, terrifying everyone.

It’s a legend sprung to life, and it’s a horror story true,

You listen in the silence and you know you hear it too,
And the sound is getting closer till it’s beating in your bones,
And it’s hammering and clattering upon the cobblestones.

Yellow Rider coming

Through the early light of day,
Hear the hoof beats drumming…
Too late for you to pray.

And the Rider’s coming closer still you stay inside your room,
You’re looking at his saddle, and his giant hat and plume,
But you cannot see his face because it’s hidden by the brim,
Still you recognize his saddle so you know it must be him.

For it’s silver-mounted leather from a Gypsy caravan,

His uniform is yellow silk imported from Japan,
And his sword is Spanish-crafted, and his pistol made in France…
And there’s nobody escaping, everybody’s had his chance.
 Yellow Rider coming
Like a bandit through the rain,
Hear the hoof beats drumming…
Till they echo in your brain.

Now the Rider is departing just as swiftly as he came,

He’s taking someone with him and I will not tell his name,
But it’s either you or me or maybe someone else we know…
Now the Yellow Rider’s leaving as the sun begins to show.

And the people are appearing at their windows and their doors,
The merchants all are opening their markets and their stores,
And the villages will make believe he never came at all…
But away out on the high road you can hear his mournful call…

Yellow Rider going,

And he’s taking someone new,
Someone we’re both knowing,
Is it me or you?
Is it me or you?
1983
*

You

I call your name aloud. This time.

Not carefully in lyric rhyme,
But shrill and all too recklessly
Devoid of pretty poetry:
“YOU!!!!”
…But penned, as spoken words, from me
Are each the same: Futility.
(“…you….”)
11-02-81
*

You Look Like a Soldier to Me

They drafted my body for South Vietnam,

I said take a look, Can’t you see what I am?
A queer and a Commie and I take LSD,
They said “Son, you look like a soldier to me.”

Although I protested they were being unfair,

They volunteered me for a vacation out there,
And then they sent me home on a hospital ship.
Writing poems of protest about the whole trip.

After I learned them upon my guitar,

I wondered where all of the folk singers are?
Are all of them out, is something else in?
I went back home to start over again.

I sold my guitar for a five dollar bill,

And purchased some pleasure inside of a pill,
That softened my head where it used to be hard,
 And bought me some bagpipes on my credit card.

Too many songs, too many rhymes,

Changing my instruments to keep with the times.
1983
*

You Music
(for Anne)

There’s music today, and the melody’s you,

Progression of chords is new
But exquisitely right, and the rhythm is tight,
And the lyric’s so magically true:
Written in laughter, written in pain
But it’s you, and the echoes remain.
1989
*

You’d Better Not Mess With the I.R.S.

I got a letter in the mornin’ mail.

It said “We’re gonna get you. You will go to jail.”
It said “We’ve got some questions on your tax return.
It’s people just like you that never seem to learn.”

“We know you’re earning money that we just can’t see.

Yet ev’ry other year you’re pleadin’ bankruptcy.
We got you in the middle of a big-time lie.
Your ex-wife, she has promised she will testify.

I called up my attorney but he wasn’t there.

They said he’d flown to Mexico, but who knows where?
He’s just been audited for filing five years late,
And claiming business dinners he ain’t never ate.

And then I called my congressman, but he said “No.

I’d love to help you son, but I’ve just got to go.
I just received a letter from the I.R.S.
My secretary’s telling them my business.

So I picked up my papers and I went on in,

I got down on my knees and then I said, “You win.”
They told me they were sorry, but it’s their mistake.
I pinched myself to see if I was still awake.

They said that their computer got my last name wrong.

They said I had a refund comin’ all along.
I said, “Well thank you folks. I’ll see you next year.”
And then I went and hid myself behind a beer.

You’d better not mess with the I.R.S.

Or you’ll be messing with your happiness.
1979
*
 Your Servant

I am your bayonet, spiking the peasant’s child,

I am the phallus, raping the peasant’s wife,
I am the maggot, boring the corpses piled;
I will protect your “way of life”
For I am War—deployed by you
On missions civilian hands won’t do.
01-21-83
*

Your Television Set Don’t Love You, Darlin’

You’re wasting your weekends on electronic lovers,

They float by like ghosts on the screen,
You’re kissing Clark Gable and you waltz Fred Astaire
In re-runs you’ve already seen.

You’re changing the stations—you change your emotions—

From channel to channel in vain.
The six o’clock news man is laughing at you,
And the talk show believes you’re insane.

Your television set don’t love you, darlin’

So how come you watch it from bed?
Your television set don’t love you, darlin’,
So why don’t you love me instead?

Down at the tavern my Budweiser loves me,

There’s a TV set over the bar,
And the girl on the screen, she reminds me of you,
So I get up and go to my car.

I drive through the night and the windshield wipers

Remove all the rain from the glass—
It’s like a wide screen, and our show’s off the air…
Our soap opera just didn’t last…
1987

You’re Passing Through Life On a Song

Those lullabies became a funeral dirge when your Mama passed away.
Then you studied love, and rock’n’roll, on the radio in your Daddy’s Chevrolet.
And that wedding organ music, it took Sue from you that sad June day.

You bought your first guitar so you could protest a war you didn’t have to fight.
But your best friend from Eleventh Grade, they played those military taps for him just right.
You got the news, and you got drunk, and sang his favorite songs all night.

You laughed at Country Music till some woman laughed at you, and left you broke and blue.
For the next two years, those old Hank Williams songs, they all came true.
Then some television gospel singer with a toll-free number saved the soul in you.

Your children love those nursery rhymes that Daddy takes the time to sing.
You hit that dance floor with your wife—she stands beside you in spite of every crazy thing.
And when that preacher reads those final words your friends will make their voices ring!

From your birth to the end, the music’s your friend,

And you were born to sing along.
You’re a little off-key, but you sound good to me:
You’re passing through life on a song.
03-27-84
*

You’ve Taken Her for Granted

You call her without warning, late one Friday night,

She says “Give me half-an hour…,” and she leaves on the light.
‘Comes the morning after, eggs and bacon, coffee black—
You’ve taken her for granted, but she always takes you back.

She isn’t quite as flashy as those others you prefer,

But like some lonesome boomerang, you return to her.
She’s got old-fashioned compassion, that these “Nineties ladies lack—
You’ve taken her for granted, but she always takes you back.

Could it be that she loves you?

Or else got nothing else to do?
She understands you like a sister—
She’s the best friend that you knew.

Now the twisting road is narrow, when the years come crowding in,
And you look inside your glass, and see the man you might have been.
She’s got two children—she’s got a husband—and you, you’ve got the railroad track,
You’ve taken her for granted, but she always took you back
Until she found somebody new…somebody true.
05-04-86
*

Zombie Bards

Poetry turns from the common man,

Turns on its arrogant heel,
Stalking away toward the cloistered academe.

Nothing is duller or deader than

Poets unable to feel
Love—or compassion, or dream the lofty dream.

Thus poetry turns from you, from me,

And talks to itself, indulgently,
And nobody hears. Quite understandably.
1983
*