Post Vatican II
They're all gone now.
They're lost in the past.
Fish on Fridays
And the Eucharistic Fast.


Honesty in Government
In 1985 they altered the title
To Poet Laureate
From Consultant in Poetry
To the Library of Congress.
Re-naming made no difference.
The same bad legislation resulted.

Congress made the change
Because after much research
It was learned that in all
The nearly fifty previous years
Not a single poet by a Member
Had even once ever been consulted.


Possibly the World's Shortest Te Deum
I said, "God forbid."
And He did.


Platonism
Consider the Unity of the Canine Condition,
All sharing a similar supposition,
From the greatest of Danes to the tniest pug:
The Idea of a Perfectly Unpissed-Upon Fire Plug.


On the Hymns
of Sunday Morning
Out of all churches
Called Christian
Steepled or storefront
Throughout America
With all of their
Squabbling
Contentious
Obstinate and
Contradictory
Theological views

I think God
Chooses to listen
Mostly to Southern
Black Baptist ones
Since God's wide
Creation, I've noted,
Is filled mainly
With two things.
One is Rhythm and
The other is Blues.

On Having a Fellow Poet to Send Stuff To
Think of Shakespeare, finishing a scene
And laying aside his pen,
Saying to himself, "That's one I'll have to
Make sure I show to Ben."


Punctuation
How great an invention is the comma,
The purpose of which is chiefly
To make us pause and think,
Even if ever so briefly.


As Time Goes By
The poor makers of clocks and watches
Are slowly losing their power.
More and more people are checking cellphones
To determine the hour.


At Walgreen's
Illness and injury are good for some in this world.
They are the source of profit for the healing trades.
Think of all the aspirin sold by Bayer
And Johnson & Johnson's bandaging aids.


The Old Formalist Needs Love, Too
Nightly I see TV commercials for services
Aimed at mixing, matching, and mating
And wonder why for the very, very old,
There isn't a site called Carbon Dating.


Curdled Thought
Many mornings I am reminded
Of the acidic state of my soul:
More than once I have unknowingly poured
Sour milk into my cereal bowl.

In the Locker Room
A thought came to me the other day
(As usual it was metered)--
More than one man is appalled
At the way that he's appetered.


Verba Sat Sap
Cliches are clichés because they are true.
There can be little doubt about that.
There is a barrel whose bottom we scrape
And a bag out of which we let the cat.

Anti-Theft
My father lived in a time when men wore hats.
In places like bars they hung with others on a rack.
Carefully in India ink on the inner band he'd printed
In neat upper case, "LIKE HELL IT'S YOURS PUT IT BACK."
His message truly worked, I cannot doubt it.
I never even once saw him come home without it.

Unclipped
I have a sure measure of time.
Unlike my watch, it never fails.
It is the accumulation of grime
Under the edges of my nails.

Oh, No
One's modern life is filled
With many a minor fright:
I looked down and saw
A lit CHECK ENGINE light.

Recent

Mahogany Row Conversation
Said Mr. Rolls to Mr. Royce,
"We are compelled to make
A critical marketing choice."

Said Mr. Royce to Mr. Rolls,
"We'll build limousines for the King
And the wealthiest of souls."

Said Mr. Rolls to Mr. Royce,
"A demographic extremely small.
You've not been thinking evidently."

Said Mr. Royce to Mr. Rolls,
"Oh, God damn it all to bloody hell--
Offer the less well-off the Bentley!"

St. Peter Speaks of Modern Physics
to Sir Isaac Newton
Ike, old boy, I've got some bad news.
I tried to keep it from you,
But I can no longer hide it.

You know that famous apple of yours?
Now they're going around and saying
There's gravity inside it.

Olfactory
Poets in the days that Miniver Cheevy dreamed about
Wrote often of the sweet odors that gardens embowered.
It is well for us to remember that the loves of those poets
And they themselves seldom bathed and never showered.

January 1, 2013

Atavism
Inside my puppy's rubber toy
A tiny mechanical squeak,
Designed I think to evoke in him
A smaller animal's dying shriek.

Missed
Opportunity knocked on my door.
A second knock, then a third one.
He was wearing thick woolen gloves.
Deaf in one ear, I never heard one.

Titles
Fifty plus years of writing verse.
I read over the long, long list:
So many turns of the mind's millwheel,
Such a heap of mealy grist.

Clerihew: Cody
William Frederick Cody
For his Wild West Show hired many a roadie.
He felt the old urge to kill
When anyone called him American Bison Bill.

Conflict of Interest
Benjamin Franklin smiled,
Signing the Declaration,
Proud of the small part
He'd played in the minting of it,

Though he was disappointed
That somebody else's shop
Would get the government
Contract for the printing of it.

Geometers
The old Euclidean Greeks
Derived from what they did
A great deep pleasure.

They held the big round world
Flat in their minds--and then,
They took its measure.

Still They Care Enough
For the most mute of Americans
Summon up a sort of pity
Who have to have their words of love
Pre-written in Kansas City.

 On the Seventh of December
I drive my '95 Nissan up a ramp
And enter Interstate-285's lanes.
Traffic weaves around me in a swirl.
Gleaming Hondas and Toyotas hurtle past,
And I wonder how many other drivers
Recall, as I, the Harbor known as Pearl.

Perdurance
Be of that breed of dog
Whose virtue is "Hold on."
You'll be here when other dogs
Are all barked out and gone.

Orthography
When Auden's first poem was published
How thrilled he must have felt--
Until he noticed that his last name
Was incorrectly spelt.

Meditation on a Word
The other day I ran into the word pratfall
(In a book, where else?) and paused
For a change to take myself a dictionary look
And thought, "Well, kiss my prat."

I remembered the T-shirted guy in the bar
Who threatened to whip my prat,
Whose girl stayed his biceptual arm
And said, "Oh, Ernie, don't be a prat."

And all my testosteronic teenaged friends
Whose conversation was filled all day,
Hanging out on a drugastore corner,
With talk of getting a "piece of prat."

And of each politician, from the President
On down the ticket, office by office,
Who, instead of steering the ship of state,
Does nothing but cover his prat.

I will think about this word now
On many a morning as I unwind
Some paper, not for the writing of poems,
But rather for the wiping of my prat.

But some Sundays, of course, I'll recall
That scene (in the Capital B Book, where else?)
In which Jesus went riding into Jerusalem
Amid waving palms on (what else?) a prat.