LINES FOR MY FATHER
I floated by, enjoining father not
To re-direct his rapture into tears.
"Weep not," I said, "for truthfully I bought
Cocaine to quench the burning, wasted years."
TO HIS BRAZEN MISTRESS
"Thou trollop," quoth the luminary, "thy
Unworthy executioners of lust
Directly claim thy naked deeps, whilst I
Require no squalid kiss from lips unjust."
TESTIMONY IN RUINS
Extinguished are the monastery's fires,
Its Rule forlorn. Inquisitors have hurled
Its buttresses to earth; its sagging spires
Now witness to the wasting of the world.
STOIC BALM
When dealing with explosions of the soul,
A straightened entrance to the heart will be
What matters; not a public, daring goal
To halt emotions, seen as bravery.
CABLE CAR FOLLIES
(or, A Trolley Named Desire)
The rotary motor award
For technical lovers who scored
By jilting, by golly,
At night on a trolley
Makes Eskimos vote for a Ford.
TOO MANY COOKS
Equivalence of any untried cooks,
Though each is excellent at oxtail soup,
Cannot be known by quarreling or by looks.
A plain but jagged blade will judge the group.
THE PRICE OF WISDOM
In donjons clocks are striking notes of rage,
While mages' swords unsheathe, and jades with eyes
Of flint partake of fools to spite the sage,
Believing it is anguish to be wise.
WITHERED MAGIC
In poverty, his sugared words were few,
His wizard's bright anemones bleached white
By fornicators' juleped breath breathed through
Equator's heat, molasses-thick with light.
YOGI AND BULLWINKLE
GET DRUNK AND MISS LUNCH
If hanged exactly over jugs of juice,
A ham will stump the rich and famous bears
Who misbehave with poor affected moose.
Their mouths find drink and, jeepers, no one cares.
LEILANI WED
To Kilauea's fiery judgment hall
The off'ring bound was brought; and dancing yet
Though naked flames she faced, with no regret,
She prayed, and laid her down, and yielded all.
AFTER THE OVERTHROW
Then quietly down wooded ways she fled
Forgotten. Secretly she gazed again
Between the scattered leaves her fated bed
To find, and slept, unmated queen of men.
TEARS FROM THE MOUNTAIN
There was reunion once of golden calves
Between the water's and the valley's depth.
Remember how the second time the halves
Of God's two witnesses looked down and wept.
KUBLA'S PASSING
Far lonelier than blistered desert sands
Stood Xanadu, its fruited trees struck down
By nameless winds and stripped by wasting hands,
Consumed in shadow all its bright renown.
FETTERED PRAYER
As incense my inquiring rose on high,
Then, trapped like pearl within a swinish sty,
It pitched to earth. Once wingèd, now my heart
Lies furled in me, a leaden world apart.
(This was an attempt at doing a complete sonnet.
The longer the poem,
the harder it is to keep continuous meaning intact.)
THE MAKING OF A KNIGHT
My soul's hejira, horizontal flight
Through looted lands with followers of light
To Zanzibar, was questioned and decried
By bloody jesters hired by darkness' side.
Reverberating round the unhewn stone
Of inappropriate desire, a lone
Assassin's noontide prayer of silent joy
Re-opened snowbound archways. To destroy
In such rhapsodic bliss, in vortex thick
With blist'ring pitch, that tilted, massive wick
Begotten by the love of murder, made
The broken runner stand forth unafraid.
I gazed within my armour's new-forged flame,
And lauded still the kindling Liege-Lord's Name.
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