The Poetry Marathon

Silky jazz or a jangle banjo’s licks.
Kick off your shoes, roll down your stocking tops.
Weave through the smoke with whiskey on your lips.
Come to me, here, deep in my dream, let’s dance.
I often think I know all of your tricks,
how you can spin a tune that never stops.
The shimmy of your shoulders and your hips
that mesmerize. I never stand a chance.

Why do you come, Louise, to me, a man
you never met so long ago? And why
can I not leave the dreams you seem to bring,
enticing me, in sleep, to love again?

At least you never ask of me to try
more than the slowest dance, you wicked thing.

(I really do dream of Louise, more often than I can explain. Never met her.  Apparently I wish I had.  As for wicked, that sobriquet might be better applied to me, but then it wouldn’t be a poem. )

I’ve spent enough time on my knees
as a monk
to see that there’s value in being
both drunk
on life as a pilgrim and life as a
a rascal.
But can I live both, to the best
that I’m able?

When I left for the cloister, to
never go back,
I took nothing with me,
just books in a sack.
Discarded my dreams and all
my deep vices.
Tore my old dark soul up in bites
and in slices,
assuming I’d never leave, return
‘to my home’.
Never to wander more.
Never to roam.

I spent many weeks and months,
working at prayer,
being a better man
than I had brought there.
I worked and I cared for the pilgrims
who came.
I learned to live and love life
without shame.
But one winter’s day the hour came
and I knew,
I wasn’t to be a monk. That
certainty grew.

I put on my sandals and,
books in a sack,
I closed my old cloister door,
haven’t looked back.

Last night I sat down with friends.
We smoked and we drank.
We told our old stories
with swagger and swank.
I told of my peace and they spoke
of their smut.
I showed them a picture of me
in my habit.

Tomorrow I’ll have roamed to church,
where my friends they won’t be.
but I’ll make that old gesture,
from down on one knee.
I’ll give there my thanks,
as best as I’m able,
for a life that is lived,
a semi-holy old rascal.

You see,

I’ve spent enough time on my knees
as a monk
to see that there’s value in being
both drunk
on life as a pilgrim and life as a
a rascal.
And I plan to live both, to the best
that I’m able.

Brave Hector brought a spear and thought to brawl
outside the walls of Troy beseiged. He held
it loose and felt the grain warm in the grip
of fingers born for battle, borne to throw.
The shaft was dense and smooth, both long and tall.
War-polished in both wood and bronze, it spelled
the doom of all who’d come by horse and ship
to face him in his scorn. How could he know?

Achilles, he had come that day with “Spear
for spear and shield for shield!” carved on his heart.
And mad with grief he howled with his whole breath,
“Come to me, Son of Troy, and bring your fear!”

Andromache felt her whole reason part
for in that voice, she heard her husband’s death.

There are words creeping across the meadow,
here beside
the Queen’s Highway.
I can hear them out there
on their little legs,
all
As
and
Ms
and
Peg-leg P,
no doubt with
that infernal, pop-gun,
piratical pistol.
Please, pardon my alliteration.
They’re making their
plans,
I can hear them out there,
like tiny,
Hitchcockian
highwaymen,
and they’re going to
highjack
the precious hours
of
my day.

I’d like to go out.
I’d like to go sit in my car
in the rain
and watch the people
stroll by with their
gaudy umbrellas
–
Have you noticed that
nobody carries black umbrellas
anymore,
except for those cheap,
awful
little disposable
jimsons?
Everything is
peppermint stripes
or
sunflowers
now,
or starry nights.
I wonder if Van Gogh
owned an umbrella?
–
Or maybe if the rain would let up,
I could go to the park
and listen to the children
flying kites.

As much as I enjoy watching
the kites dart
and rip holes in the
afternoon,
I’d much rather listen
to the joy
of their flyers
because I know that feeling
that exultation.
I fly kites too.

But no.

I’ll sit here with my pen,
capturing those
spidery intruders
as they crawl across
the sunlit floor of my day.

I’ll capture them
pinning them to paper.
And I’ll be safe for a while,
from those words.
And I’ll feel a different
exultation,
one which will be doubly
ecstatic,
when I fold and paste
that rough, first-draft page
into a kite
and join the children,
tearing holes in the sky
of an afternoon.
I’ll have nothing to fear
from the words
that will be frightened enough
of me
that they’ll retreat and regroup
to assault me some other time,
on some other rainy day,
in the inky darkness
beside the Queen’s Highway.

For the Tang Immortals
Especially for Li Po
One of my Favorite Poets
In a Style He’d Like

Twelve jars of wine beside a river bank,
each one a friend and for a friend to break
the seal of, letting out the breath of grape
and age and love and how all things must end.
My friends are never with me when I’m rank
and drunk beside the water, so I shake
my fist up at the clouds and let the shape
of all my sorrows flow like them again.

Shaped clouds, like vines, like rivers, and the wine,
divine in every way that heaven knows,
are always friends. I answer as they pass,
for drunkards hear cloud voices in sunshine.

The jars are empty. Wine’s like friends, it goes
away, and leaves me, cloudy, on my ass.

An Elegiac Sonnet For Wilfred Owen,
One of My Favorite Poets,
Killed 4 November, 1918,
Canal de la Sambre à l’Oise, France

Eleven months, eleven days, and where
were you when they began to ring the bells
to tell the world that everything you had
fought with such horror for, was done again?
They’d stilled the demon war once more and there
was shouting in the streets and toffs and swells
who’d read your words, and thought them sad,
put them aside, to take out now and then.

Do you suppose they knew just where you’d gone?
That words were all they’d ever know of you?
Or were they lost in dreams of hope and glory,
not caring who had paid, and was withdrawn?

I read your words and know it’s never true.
Dulce’s never been pro patria mori.

Ten little cabbages. Ten little pink pigs.
Ten times the whistle-man, whittled whistle twigs.
Whistle for the pigs, boy, whistle for the pigs.
Whistle till the cows come home, wearing piggy wigs.

Ten great big cabbages. Ten chickens lay eggs.
Everything time a chicken lays, the whistle-man begs.
Begs for an omelet. Begs for dancing eggs.
Begs for the cows to come, dancing on two legs.

Why not a rooster? Why not a hen?
Why not a rabbit-pirate, shooting up the pen?
Why does the whistle-man whistle piggies in?
Where has the rooster gone? How high? And when?

Ten little dancing piggies, et up all the omelets.
I wish they’d et up all these words, then they’d make sense.

Nine times I’ve watched the ancient, sacred hill,
each time with more determination than
before. I knew that if I would only stand
there long enough, I’d see you come along.
But mornings passed, then afternoons, and still,
though I would praise your names, and praise again,
nothing stood upon that hill but grass, and
that’s not why I was there. So, was I wrong?

If I watch and believe, please, will you come
and speak to me in words of love, of lust,
of myth, of what you will? I’ve lost the sight
of you and without that, I’m stricken dumb.

Calliope, Euterpe, Erato, must
all of my muses bathe in mortal light?

” ‘ate ‘im up, ‘e did,” the storyteller said,
‘an spat ‘is bones out wicky-ticky tat.
‘e hewsed ‘is skin to line ‘is truckle bed,
‘is tongue to scrape ‘is toes there hon the mat.
Hit goes to show youse, hwoman, man an’ buoy,
that dragons isn’t naught to trifle ’bout.
An’ nuffin’ in the hworld, not purty gurl ner buoy,
kin stan’ ’em up agin a dragon’s snout.”

“Saint George did,” so I said, “and that’s the truth.
He killed himself a dragon, whiff a sword.
The princess loved him, so they say, forsooth!
And George got all the girls and all the hoard!”

His breath smelled like a dragon’s when he hissed,
” be ware the stoory-teller when ‘e’s pissed!”

Seven long hours ago, I saw the sun
sprawling on my lawn, with no real need
to notice it beyond that night was done.
I watched it creeping up with no real speed.
I hadn’t dreamed. No work today. No cause
to roll out of my bed. I’m staying home.
Yet still it crept, according to its laws,
and still I lie here, all ‘not brushed’, uncombed.

Should I go out and see where morning’s gone?
Do I care if all the world is cooler
than I am, in my blankets? Is a yawn
all I need today? Or’s sleep the answer?

Seven hours from now the moon will creep.
But I won’t know it, being fast asleep.