Rhymed Stanza

“Breadth. Circle. Desert. Monarch. Month. Wisdom. (for which there are
No rhymes)” was just the title, and I only read that far.

That was because I felt like some old agent-of-the-Czar
When a new plotter swims within the scope of his exertions,
And I was scared this hothead would start hedging his assertions
Before I had him dead-to-rights. (A Chekan’ s or a SMERSHian’ s
Lot, you know, is not an happy one.) He might retract.

I wonder what the Greeks kept in these comicstrip canisters.
Plums, milletseed, incense, henna, oregano.
Speak to me, trove. Tell me you contained dried smoked tongue once.
Or a sorcerer or a cosmetologist’ s powders and unguents.
And when John Keats looked at you in a collection of pots
it was poetry at first sight: quotable beautiful
teleological concatenations of thoughts.

Pigfoot (with Aces Under) Passes

The heat’ s on the hooker.
Drop’ s on the lam.
Cops got Booker.
Who give a damn?

The Kid’ s been had
But not me yet.
Dad’ s in his pad.
No sweat.

Margaret Are You Drug

Cool it Mag.
Sure it’ s a drag
With all that green flaked out.
Next thing you know they’ ll be changing the color of bread.

Ginsberg, Ginsberg, burning bright,
Taunter of the ultra right,
What blink of the Buddha’ s eye
Chose the day for you to die?

Queer pied piper, howling wild,
Mantra-minded flower child,
Queen of Maytime, misrule’ s lord
Bawling, Drop out! All aboard!

Finger-cymbaled, chanting Om,
Foe of fascist, bane of bomb,
Proper poets’ thorn-in-side,
Turner of a whole time’ s tide,

In my heart the old love
Struggled with the new,
It was ghostly waking
All night through.

Dear things, kind things
That my old love said,
Ranged themselves reproachfully
Round my bed.

And fleetingly it seemed to him
That in between one eye blink and the next
Time paused, allowing time to be installed
Within that countless interim,
Coiled up, on hold,
A memory predicted and recalled.
Now, that weak muscle flexed,
All that contained him started to unfold

A range of clouds banked up behind the peak
Of that apocryphal
Blue mountain, with a wide, oblique
Burst of late sun
Projecting at the east’ s receding wall

A film of what the day so far has done:
A wind that tries to scrape
The breaking waves up as they run
Across the bay
And shatter at the foot of Fluted Cape

In tern and gannet-printed veils of spray;
And trees the wind has caught,
Which seem too self-contained to sway
When they are blown,
And only move as a pleasing afterthought.

The great gold apples of night
Hang from the street's long bough
Dripping their light
On the faces that drift below,
On the faces that drift and blow
Down the night-time, out of sight
In the wind's sad sough.

Purveyor of  rot and whatnot,
entrepreneur of  I forgot,
with wrists hard as hammers —
that birthmark a slot —

grip it, strip it, flip it hard —
ramp my shard.
If  fear be sexy, a synch
& a match —

Gone the way of  wax & worms —
gone like November 2011 —
sweet by nature, mean by culture —

“Goodbye, luck, you idiot,”
said the Fox to the Grapes.
“I love you,” replied the Grapes.

Does no dishes, dribbles sauce
across the floor. Is more dragon
than spaniel, more flammable
than fluid. Is the loosening
in the knit of me, the mixed-fruit
marmalade in the kitchen of me.
Wakes my disco and inner hibiscus,
the Hector in the ever-mess of my Troy.
All wet mattress to my analysis,
he’ s stayed the loudest and longest
of any houseguest, is calling now
as I write this, tiny B who brings the joy.