Mythology & Folklore

Tinnitus: January, thin rain becoming ice

Now footsteps on shingle. Make of it what you will. Seabirds roost
on the breakwaters, accustomed, of course, to twilight.
The spirit lamp in that house on the headland could easily fall and spill
and the fire burn all night. Some time later a subtle ghost,
yourself  in memory perhaps, might well set foot
up there amid clinker and smoke, the whole place silent and still
except you bring in the tic of cooling timbers, and then the birds in flight.

Now chains through gravel. Make of it what you will.

Swallowtails

The Emperor thought of his heart as a water wheel
flooding the rice fields of all creation
and bloodied the water for a better harvest.
His warriors hoped for a life with wings.
His swallowtails wrote him the same lines
— the secret of life is a resurrected worm —
He told them eventually time would run backwards
in their hands, now empty where a crossbow went.

The Companions in Hades

Since we still had some hardtack
how stupid of us
to go ashore and eat
the Sun’ s slow cattle,

for each was a castle
you’ d have to battle
forty years, till you’ d become
a hero and a star!

On the earth’ s back we hungered,
but when we’ d eaten well
we fell to these lower regions
mindless and satisfied.

Iphigenia: Politics

The stairs lead to the room as bleak as glass
Where fancy turns the statues.
The empty chairs are dreaming of a protocol,
The tables, of a treaty;
And the world has become a museum.

(The girl is gone,
Fled from the broken altar by the beach,
From the unholy sacrifice when calms became a trade-wind.)

Reading Ovid at the Plastic Surgeon’s

No one else with a book, the slick
weeklies gossip amongst

themselves on the side
tables as the ticker rolls the Dow

Jones down down down under
a profile of the marathon

bombers (the older, a boxer). Jove
argues for the removal of a race

of   peoples that do not please
him: What is past

remedy calls for the surgeon’ s
knife. They will take a hunk of my

cheek (cancer) & though I can’ t
see during the procedure, I imagine

the site as an apricot, bitten.
This is a survival mechanism —

Parable of the Desultory Slut

They love me so muchthey have imagined me dead because they fear the loss of my genius above all elseHow literarylike Huck FinnEveryone will be weeping
The Desultory Slut
Do you have one of my books to sign?
Oh nocan you please sign here?
Isn’ t it greatThe old bastard finally kicked

Ta daaa!

Wait, I’ m not dead at all. Here I am. It was all a mistake
Do you realize what this means? This means we’ re free
He’ s dead, he’ s dead. Our enemy is finally dead

The Domestic Life of Ghosts

Whoso list to haunt could do worse than to
Obtain the license, get the picture.
Spook finders must find spooks to put the face,
Name and space coordinates together.
What is kept in the mind perimeter
Retains a wild autonomy through fate.

I will retreat to the precorporate.
Let fate have what is fate’ s and allow
This spirit to slip through time’ s difficult
Nets with the devious fingers of
A wild wind, while I run along behind.

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