From Pools of Thou

Towers of Babel bubble and lisp

on the surface of the collective
unconscious.

Primeval swamps possess urges

and gaseous ideas worth wagging tonsils
about.


The first stories inspire folk

to scratch their heads, clean their ears,

and build endless variations on a theme.


Mudslinging around the jobs becomes in bad
taste.

A Moses takes two tablets and is called

a doctor of theology in the morning.


Later comes exegesis, born by mezzanines

and crying in the winds.


And by the time the thirteenth floors are
added

science ties tongues into knots.

Astronomy’s gibberish = **+~x8#?

while biochemistry !:!:! with the finest
whine

and most specific grunt.


Struggling to memorize evolution’s book and
verse

and astrology’s articulate map,

the laborers of the construction site give
up

easily for the down of muck

and mire’s simple nursery rhyme


while gods from amebas goose each higher.

When the first I-beam falls, it isn’t
long

before girders, computer chips,

and invisible fields of energy tumble.


The moan of myth and murk tugs

at the confidence of worker As, Bs, Cs

to replace the birth of tomorrow

with the desire for fantasy of sleep.


With pay checks and a stick the residents

of thin air prepare for the backlash

of species hibernation: shape lips and
blow.


Wee

My concern was always for the nobody, the man
who is lost in the shuffle, the man who is common, so ordinary,
that his presence is not even noticed. – Henry Miller

 

Primal flux feeds eyes to flashing neon
lights,

landmarks, and foot prints from a pool.

The gumballs of young folk lend
themselves

to big bubbles when the flavor is gone.


Parental golf and meat balls
concentrating

on a night on the town bulge in the
cheeks

of regret. Nets set to ensnare anything
current

moving hoist humans behind fishing
trawlers.


The rug pulled out from under feet
defines

itself when each ass flattens on the
earth,

a shot above the head. Somewhere between

a second’s two slashes, solar systems
pass


with the slapstick routines designed to
mimic

the thrills. Under the nose of the serious
ambush,

the metamorphosis drags the chimera
across

waves and particles, always more than groped
for.


Mused

[H]is Muse has whored with many before him. -
Harold Bloom

 

Along history’s dark street the boys

who beneath a lamp mistake lipstick

for a smile engage in scribbling.

The 21st Century readers
continue


to balance themselves on the edge

of their seats for the girls to explain

how it is they have come to write.

Perhaps it involves a pimp and his harem.


A repressed number of Yeatses throw

themselves across their beds – and raise

their pens red with passion. Which ones

will speak for the neighborhood, their
ages,


a culture? Each calligrapher wakes to

the goodbye note on the bathroom mirror

and his pants rifled through. Even big

shot Shakespeare! Somewhere in the ink


each quill wiggler knows it and worries

when. This penguin attempts to embrace

his echo of the past but she is rolled

over and still smoking. May sisters


and daughters have better luck with love.


Credits include the 2008 Gival Press Poetry
Award for my book-length manuscript “Voyeur;” a first book The
Apple in the Monkey Tree; chapbooks Great
Grandfather, Family Secret, Hunting and
Pecking, and Phoems for Mobile Vices, Rescue Lines;
poems in Rolling Stone, Poetry, Grand Street, Trespass, The
View from Here, New Letters, Pank, Segue, Big Bridge, EOAGH,
Fact-Simile, foam:e, and Confrontation; and essays in
The International Journal of the Humanities, Journal of the
Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning,
Reconfigurations: A Journal for Poetics Poetry / Literature and
Culture, Fringe, and Journal of
Ecocriticism.

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