Opening Act

Surreal anthems from the fire escape, forsooth.
Mending his mind with strips of thin Scotch tape, forsooth.

He wrote “Apostasy” at age sixteen –
Flushed with the blood of Baudelaire’s grape, forsooth.

Brooding lad from Eastie, precocious tippler,
He wrapped himself in Superbard’s cape, forsooth.

Young and difficult under the triple-deckers,
He got himself into more than one scrape, forsooth.

He learned the right words for all the wrong things
And sang mellifluously as any ape, forsooth.

Nursed his wounds by the cramped bedroom’s window.
A breeze from the back would startle the drape, forsooth.

He carried The Map of Love wherever he went.
His dream (dark Beatrice!) took shape, forsooth.

Grabbed rhetoric, Rimbaud-like. Twisted its neck.
Poems sprouted like hairs on the nape, forsooth.

Saint of the city. Columbus of the Blue Line.
Sage subway litany, blighted landscape, forsooth.

He cracked sarcastic jokes. More tame than Wilde.
He was the victim of his own crude jape, forsooth.

Dylan’s performance during the opening act
Left friends and enemies speechless, agape, forsooth.

Ghazal from Qatar

Formality in verse might not please Sabrina.
The eye rejoices whenever it sees Sabrina.

The skies of Amherst are thick with snow-clouds.
Behold, a poetaster on his knees, Sabrina!

It is 1990 and I am twenty-one.
I drink large draughts of wine to the lees, Sabrina.

You like Public Enemy, I like the Cocteau Twins.
I love your voice, a soothing breeze, Sabrina.

My love is a fever, a mania, a spell …
A happy madness, a healthy disease, Sabrina.

You are my sovereign queen, but please don’t say
Anything nice about the New York Yankees, Sabrina.

You are springtime in December, gentle warmth
Giving life to the shyest leaves of trees, Sabrina.

I love you in your fierce disconsolacy,
In the righteous wrath that I cannot appease, Sabrina.

Dylan the doltish worships you from afar
With your jet-black hair and torn dungarees, Sabrina.

Sestet

‎’70s music makes me travel back
To those days when the world was young and new.
The mellow, sentimental soundtrack
Of Karen Carpenter, Marilyn McCoo,
Of “Summer Breeze,” “Brandy,” and “American Pie.”
Hard to believe four decades have gone by.

Contra WSM

I must confess I haven’t read enough of William
Stanley Merwin to produce an adequate parody
but I have opened one or two of his more recent
books and have seen the endless verse paragraphs
of slippery prosy English unpunctuated with nary
a word that sticks in the mind for longer than thirty
seconds and they give this fellow a phucking Pulitzer
I give up I simply give up I don’t know what’s wrong with
the world today I am sitting drinking coffee at my laptop
incredulous over this state of affairs to paraphrase
Villon where are the Dylan Thomases of yesteryear where are
the poets who’d come out with trumpets blaring
the poets who blazed across the heavens like fiery comets
who erupted with irrepressible life like verbal
volcanoes where is Hart Crane where is Father Hopkins
anybody but this octogenarian Buddhist bore to whom
everything including conventional punctuation is illusion

when estlin cummings drank

when estlin cummings drank
the moon and stars would dance
him i should like to thank
for his great innocence

an understanding child
who sang as trees would sing
amid the zephyrs mild
of an eternal spring

so praise sir estlin yes
the wise and happy fool
whose laughing gentleness
defeated every rule

Winter Rhyme

I like to party in the blistering snow
When temperatures are roughly ten below
And eaves are fanged with drastic icicles
And streets are free of summer’s bicycles
And lips exhale an icy dragon-smoke
And words freeze hard as soon as they’ve been spoke
And flowers are crisped to flakes by the searing chill
And arctic draughts creep past the windowsill

I like to party beneath glacial lights
That dot the cold black sky these winter nights
As darkest air is blurred with magic stars
That frolic to the tune of blind guitars
And slam-dance in a polar vertigo
I like to party in the blistering snow

American Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for levee’d Chevys,
For jesters playing for the queen and king,
For the pick-up truck of a lonely teenage buck;
For February-shivering paper-deliveries,
For good ol’ boys that whiskey-and-wryly sing
As the music dies in a stroke of rotten luck:

All things rocking, rolling, rhythm-and-bluesing;
Every heart-rending pluck of a guitar-string;
Songs heard on the radio, oldies often played;
Boys and girls, glad-brash, sad, crashed; dancing, boozing –
Whom God hath made.

Ironing Board

Somebody might not be able to sing certain words. It’s like working with Elton John or Bryan Ferry. You can’t put a phrase like “ironing board” in a lyric because they can’t sing it. But luckily Glenn can!

– Chris Difford, songwriter for the band Squeeze
(here)

*

I am a bachelor, aged forty-two.
Through many lands, mostly alone, I’ve wandered;
And one thing, above all, I like to do:
I keep my blithe apparel freshly laundered.
I wash the clothes, oh, every other Sunday –
A fortnight’s laundry cannot be ignored!
You’re indispensable, you’ve never blundered,
O neat and necessary ironing board.

You press my Arrow and Van Heusen shirts
Until they’re stiffer than my evening drink;
You crease my slacks so sharply that it hurts –
You’re more domestic than the kitchen sink!
O foldable flat surface, thee I thank!
For wrinkled clothes are things I can’t afford.
You are sartorial splendor’s stilted plank,
O neat and necessary ironing board.

Excellent at their humble offices,
The washer and the dryer are both great –
A pair of useful smart appliances,
More awesome than a knockout of a date!
But you, O simple sturdy smoother-out,
You really take the cake! You strike a chord!
Your steady service I can’t do without,
O neat and necessary ironing board.

O patron saint of the last spin-cycle,
Angel on high, defend me with your sword!
O Blessed Lord, dear Lady, good St Michael:
Make sure nobody steals my ironing board!

middle age

the trouble with my poems recently
too much lawrence welk not enough mick jagger
not enough sex machines indecently
cavorting with a histrionic swagger

too much tennyson too much modesty
not enough mudwrestling not enough beer
too much lucidity too much honesty
not enough lies told with a practiced leer

too much risk-averse pre-strategizing
not enough whiskey too few cigarettes
too much calisthenic exercising
no chances taken too many hedged bets

too much looking back on early promise
no royal madmen raging on the heath
too much millay too little dylan thomas
no black eyes no wrung necks and no smashed teeth

Song

Dark art thou, and lovely.
Sun-bright, thy soul. Thy smallest gestures I venerate.
Thine eyes deal death to cold despair,
Thy lips and voice are as the spring’s delight,
Thy silences are luminous
Even as the constellations of the nighttime sky.

Stealth cannot steal, wealth cannot win
Thy clear and gentle speech
Whose words disdain mendacity
But bid the soul rejoice.

The light of love transfigureth thy face.
Thou knowest that nothing flourisheth
Apart from the grace of God.

More beautiful than mountains, than rivers flowing fair
Are thy hands clasped, is thy head bowed,
In morning orison.

Through grasses green and meadows mild,
With feet that kiss the earth,
Thou walkest, my lady, my sovereign, my only light,
In happiness and peace.
Thou hast slain sin, thou hast given my soul new life.

Fragment

Cold air, the wakeful blast,
Blesses the undressed skin with dreadful force.
Wind sears the flesh
And gives the naked face a wine-red blush.
Dead verdure’s hearse
Hisses down streets which winter’s fangs have kissed.

Down desolate thoroughfares,
The moon spills frozen light to guide the lost
Who roam the night
Searching for home : some haven benedight
Safe from the frost,
Some hearth which warms this bitter vale of tears.

Limerick

My rhymes are a bit Ogdennashian:
I write with more humor than pashian.
I can praise winter snows
But must curse all those shows
On TV with the sisters Kardashian.

New Year’s Eve

I can’t improve on Tennyson’s
“Ring out the old, ring in the new;
Ring out the false, ring in the true” –
The best of year-end benisons.

The louts, the churls, the girls that shout,
The vandalizing gusts of wind,
December’s trees, spiky, unskinned –
I’d rather be inside than out.

Give me a gathering of friends,
A cup of kindness, “Auld Lang Syne,”
An evanescent jug of wine –
Glad company as one year ends.

Give me the joys of church and home,
Companionable solitude
Away from rowdies brash and rude:
I need not travel, need not roam.

Give me the safe and simple things,
A bed, some books, a cup of tea –
Grace, peace, and continuity
As January’s first bell rings

The death-knell of the haggard year,
The new year’s infant christening,
As champagne-corks pop, voices sing
And midnight pyrotechnics flare.

It would seem fitting now to pray
With cautious and expectant hope;
We pray we might have strength to cope
With all vexations of the day.

May Heaven grant to wounded hearts
The healing of their every ill;
May starving bellies have their fill –
Lord, vouchsafe, as this year departs,

To hear the cry of strife-torn lands,
To lift the poor man from his heap,
To give the dead a restful sleep,
To hold the frail child in your hands.

Addenda

Glacial midnight
drinking cold water
overheated room

*

Sunday evening
spent with Our Lady
and CatholicTV

*

Late night snack
peanut-butter’d bread
and carrot “stixx”

*

Doctor from India
whom I quite despised
la vache sacrée

*

Troubled by dreams
of a friend dying
– awake now, thank heaven!

*

Ashberyana
lasting or ephemeral?
Only time will tell

*

Feliz Natal
to & from
the Brazilian barmaid

*

(after Issa)

Dewdrop
contains a world
of altercation

*

Concatenation
of small poems
a haiku rosary!

Sunday

Too tired to write
so what shall I do?
Write anyway!

*

First true wintry freeze
bundle up
for the walk to church

*

Give a dozen books
to the Book Rack
make space for new ones

*

Philosophy consists
in a shave,
a shower, a haircut

*

Bed and Bible,
coffee-mug:
indispensables!

*

“Do nothing wrong
and praise God
for an hour each day”

*

I hope that my friend
across the continent
gets her gift on time

*

there is an art
to seeming artless
but it takes much work

*

purity of heart
courage of the martyrs
never tell a lie

*

These experiments –
are they worth more
than dandelion seed?

*

Catholic Zen?
repeating the mantra
Miserere mei

*

Winter morning
all alone
hugging the pillow

*

O for another hour
of rest, of sleep,
of holy restoration!

Vigil of Advent 4

Silence, silence to do when earth grew loud
In lairs and asylums of the tremendous shout
~ Dylan Thomas

*

Less is more
the acting coach
the writer, Emily of Amherst

*

Not sure where to go
— sit still
let the Spirit come

*

Below freezing now –
December
feels like December

*

Sages do not shout
— grace
gets lost in loud noise

*

New Mexico icon
of the Theotokos
has not yet arrived

*

Nine thirty prayer
ten o’clock, ideally, sleep
time is in God’s hands

Five morning haiku

Ragamuffin shouts
from behind the funeral home
could wake the dead

*

Walk to the pharmacy
and if so inclined
stop at Spy Pond

*

Thermostat that gives
outside temperature
stuck on forty-five

*

Why am I sure
of a connexion between
coffee and poetry?

*

Frost-whitened grass
outside my apartment-house
season’s greetings

Nocturnes in three lines

Craving the peace
of bed, of books, of prayer,
the weary soul sighs

*

Brittle dogmatist
open your clenched heart
to the flame of love!

*

With hands outstretched
we beseech the Giver of gifts
for our daily bread

*

Drunks, whores, thugs –
grace can alchemize
any of these lives

*

Theories about life
are not worth nearly as much
as one flake of snow

*

Mourning for lost love
yields to gratitude
for old and new friends

*

Chasing butterflies
with imaginary nets
O happiest pastime!

*

Peace on earth, we pray
in vain if we have not yet
pacified ourselves

*

Urban espresso
chatting in Harvard Square
with a wise old guide

*

December wind
breezes us blind –
walk up Beacon Hill

*

Night has covered
my section of Planet Earth
with a starry blanket

12 Haiku

Quiet noises
wind against the flagpole
rain beneath car tires

*

Like a parched land
I thirst, I thirst –
water does not help

*

Heart speaks to heart
across the miles
love thrives

*

Adoration
has something to do
with silence

*

Unfrantic, compassionate,
human — the hallmarks
of a true healer

*

Iconographers
fast and pray
before they write Heaven

*

Buses rumble
down Medford Street
coffee is brewing

*

Doctor Williams
just might have been
poetry’s St Francis

*

Etoile noire
semblable au Dieu
shine relentlessly

*

Busynesses manyness
crowds & throngs & shouts
when will you subside?

*

Francis Thompson
played from his bleeding heart
bless his clotted clay!

*

these verses I send
like benedight fireflies
across a continent

Viva voce

(being a nonsense rhyme)

I miss the plank timber, the spank
limber, the cheese which stands
alone. I miss the slap tuba, I miss
the rap Cuba, I miss the sunny
funny bone. I miss the mop topping,
I miss the flop hopping, I miss the
graceful queen of quirk. I miss the
trek shutter, I miss the speck flutter,
I miss the lazy days of work.