Whitman, Thou Shouldst Be Living...
Oh, my profligate America--
So many acres of grass set aside
For those who play golf
And those who have died.


On Biographies
I love to read the big fat lives
Of the poets finally dead:
It's so much easier than reading
The life in the lines they said.


Genesis Fragment
Adam had a single son.
Then begat a second.
They grew apart together,
And so The Serpent beckoned.

One turned out a farmer.
The other one a herder.
O primal Western movie!
What issue else but murder?

Curriculum Vitae

Gone are my feverish boyhood years

And those of my adolescent rage.

Ah, grown up now I maturely move

Toward my serene and senile age.

Another Southern Spring

I watch the magnolias flower this April

As the days go by from wet to warm,

Waiting again to see how the blooms

Pass from a phallic to a vulvate form.

Saeva Indignatio

You think the Irish are all dreamy poetry,

Blarney, Guinness, and nothing more?

I remind you: they invented the boycott, kneecapping,

And urban guerrilla war.

The Enthusiast

A bee in his bonnet?

Sakes alive!

That boy, he got himself

A goddamned hive.

Melvillean

There is in each of us somewhere

When told You've Got To

A Bartleby who wants to say,

"I would prefer not to.

Keeping Up with the Oops
Conspicuous consumption is a human constant:
A fact that archaeology reveals.
Even prehistoric man wanted wider caves,
Thicker clubs, and bigger, rounder wheels.



Moralists
Ah, the preachers of my youth--
What a negative crew!
They rained on me, "Don't! Don't!Don't!"
And never a single "Do!"

The First of the Jewish Cowboys

I emigrated from Russia.
The pogroms drove me off.
I came down the gengplank at New York.
Oy, I had such a cough.

They said, Iz, go out to the Vest.
It's vild, but the air is tame.
I'm the foist of the Jewish cowboys.
Izzy Cohen is my name.

And I sing Ki-yi-yippee-ki-yi
And a Hava Nagila, true.
If you vas a Jewish cowboy
You'd sing the same vay, too.

I got me a shooter vot shoots six
And I leased myself a horse.
I named half dot horse Nicholas
After the Tsar of course.

And I sing, etc.

I ride and rope the longhorns.
I drive 'em to Santa Fe
And as I drive them dogies along
I yell out a loud, "Oy, veh!"

And I sing, etc.

I vent with the boys to Miss Kitty's.
Dere was shiksas everywhere
And vot's vorst of all, them shiksas,
Dey ran around half bare.

And I sing, etc.

I'm buying me some kettle.
I've got two dozen head
I'll use the Mogen for my brand
The day I own a spread.

And I sing, etc.

Yes, I'm going to have me a rench
And bring Rachel from New York.
We'll eat brisket cut from our own cows
And never cook up pork.

And I sing, etc.

I'm going to raise me up some sons,
A dozen, maybe more
And ven they're grown I'll set them up
In a Dallas drygoods store.

And I sing, etc.

I'm glad I live here in Texas
And not in a Russian town,
'Cause if I vas to see a Cossack here
I could up and shoot him down.

And I sing Ki-yi-yippee-ki-yi
And a Hava Nagila, true.
If you was to see a Cossack here,
You'd shoot the bestard, too.