The Four Seasons
Said one leaf to another:
"So...
this is autumn."
Said the snowflake to the icicle:
"Dang!"
Said the radish seed to the onion seed
planted in the garden:
"Race you to the top!"
Said the sunflower
to the flowers in the shade:
"Hey."
Said the body to the grave:
"We'll talk about it
in the morning, babe."
(from Uncollected Poems)
Earth Prime
The bullfrog
makes a space around him
with his bulbous talk.
No one enters through the gate
without a password.
He sits upon his one
Gibraltar of a rock.
The Moon illuminates
all round
a whole platoon of monstrous
shapes,
pays them all in gold
doubloons,
but no one ever finds him out.
No shape was ever made
that matches, pound for pound,
his one hypnotic thought.
He sits
upon the whole world
as an Egg
that incubates
but never hatches.
Mosquitoes seek to take
the truth out with their long syringes;
but people nowadays
stay barricaded indoors
when black-clad crickets try to lure them out
into the portal
where the bullfrog's serenade
initiates the startled
trippers in the dark into the hole
of sound
where the world was started.
(from Uncollected Poems)
A Nation of Foragers
I feel the coming on
of a glorious temper.
I see the Capitol dome in flames.
The Monopoly board is two boards now
and sailing across the Thames.
Paris is a shit hole
and nurse to a plague.
It's a new world now.
Sweep away
The dead horse piles:
the marriage vows, the marriage miles.
We were very good
as liars.
Now we are caught with our pants
down.
A twist of the knife
and the Senate is dead.
And no one will take your money now.
(from Uncollected Poems)
A Strange Attractive Power
It is the cocktail hour.
Too late
for sneaking up the chimney, bounding
out of the bubbly, over the alley,
over the rooftops
of the human
race.
I am not one for saying grace.
I am not one for saying much of anything.
But I will Stand My Place.
I will hammer four stout nails
into the corners of my face.
I will call everyone Bob, and shake
each hand like an ape, and nod
at everyone and everything
to keep myself awake.
I will stay calm.
I will prop an elbow on the mantle,
and stand as if I wore a pistol.
I will allot myself one glass
and sip it all night long,
and no one will be the wiser.
I will say I am a poet
when they ask.
(They always do.)
My eyes will drive home, one by one,
a volley of wooden stakes.
I will be a lone white
poodle.
I will grow smaller
as the evening wears on,
until I disappear
out on the balcony,
where stars, I hear, are strewn for the take
like shimmering diamonds on blue velvet,
and thoughts achieve a strange attractive power;
where higher noon is upside down;
and the Moon...
the Moon is a silver dollar.
(from Uncollected Poems)
Electrum
A flower is a pretty thing,
a fine and dandy weed; why,
there is not anything more dazzling to the eye
(within the range of a devic being)
for a devious being to be.
But I,
being a right stout fellow
and a walker over these,
I prefer the bee
and all things too electrical to a mind
to merely standing in a crooked line.
Things that sit well with their own image
tend to agitate me just a little.
I have a mind for black
and a fist for yellow.
I would have the sound of these
so loud I could not think
without it causing trouble.
I would have swarms of these, and double!
Triple!
Air so thick with thieves
the very molecules would be honey!
Why, I would live and breathe in Nature's
amniotic tummy!
Breasts are disappointing
when you're down to just a nipple.
Love is disappointing
were it that simple.
Me, I would eat bugs
and sell my belly for a hive.
Damn all grand things, and big
beautiful lies.
I think I will not believe anything
that does not crawl in me alive!
(from Uncollected Poems)
Sunbather
I will go out into the garden
and fill a bowl of bright green peas;
and fondle every ripe tomato
till I ought to be embarrassed.
I'll walk right through the sprinkler
on my way to check the carrots;
thump each chest of melon
to see which ones are honest.
I'll check for lice in every
little green-haired head of lettuce;
and walk the ditch a mile or more
to clean the grates, and learn the frogs
back into water (they'll be walking upright
any day now
at the rate they're getting smarter).
And should I chance to startle
that bright green snake of late,
sunbather,
why, I'll strip down to my honest socks
and lay right down beside her.
(from Uncollected Poems)
Fame
The rooster crowing
seems to say
I have no feathers
of my own
for showing.
As if the Sun and he alone
were made for glory.
I pause a moment,
listen,
but I am not swayed.
He tells the same old story:
of light that curls itself into a ball,
rises early,
circles 'round the world
in no particular hurry,
nestles in the Great Nest of the West
with an exceptional flurry!
Just another kind of rooster, really:
masculine, tobacco-chawing;
spitting shadows at the ground;
jawing.
Like the strutting Sun at noon,
he seems to wait for my applause.
But at the moment
I am feeding half a dozen little chicks;
I think
they mean to follow me around
the long duck pond.
Anyway,
I have a mind for making up
its own Resolve.
It takes a long time growing.
(from Uncollected Poems)
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