Stephen Richard Eng Poetry
Stephen Richard Eng Poetry
(1859-1939)
A Family Visit
A Flat in Paddington
A Plea
A Reflection on Pride
A Simple Song
A Volume of Villon
(French fifteenth century poet)
Across the street is Tootsie’s Lounge, where beer and memories flow;
Nearby, the Grand Ole Opry used to play—
Where “E. T.” helped Loretta face that famous microphone;
Sing “Adios” to Ernest Tubb—he’s the best friend Nashville’s known.
He was Lone Star lean and lanky, with a voice like Texas sand—
And he used electric guitars, `way back when;
Instead of wasting tears tonight, let’s everybody sing—
Sing “Adios” to Ernest Tubb…he made that dance floor swing.
09-07-84
*
Advertisement
Aesthetes
After Sunset
Agoraphobia
Beware! Terror-place
Of freedom where our hearts undress,
And too much candor kills Romance.
Retreat! Go—retrace
Our trail and trek where fear is less,
And sentiment (old-fashioned) has a chance.
04-21-81
*
Aid
You were a friend
To the weak,
Now you pretend
You can’t speak
To the meek.
Algae
Wind in trees,
Rain on eaves,
Fire in grate,
Hour is late,
Till…finally…Hallowe’en
Shapes are seen!
10-31-71
*
Aloha Street
The others always set her high
And latter dirtied her to die,
Until the only thing I found
Was Carol crippled on the ground.
Am I My Brother’s Keeper?
An Idle Question
Humanity!
You’ve little distance left to go
Before you wreak your final crime:
Anachronize
And Blind
When the years come down like snowflakes, and they flutter in your eyes,
I’ll rise up like the midnight sun and I’ll warm your winter skies,
And warm your winter skies.
When your dreams dissolve to ashes laying cold upon the stone,
I’ll build the biggest bonfire your heart has ever known,
Your heart has ever know.
‘Hate to see how you have changed, for God knows time
Has left its lines on me.
Growing old but still I can’t outgrow remembering
What we said we’d be, you and me.
Anne (1)
My heart is a brigantine,
Tossed by a corsair sea,
And you are its figurehead
Carved from a pliant tree.
05-15-69
*
Anne (2)
Cycles spin
Out and in
Like reels
Of our love:
Circles of
Two wheels.
Silver smiles,
Golden miles
With you,
Jeweled years,
Tinseled tears
Of blue.
12-08-76
*
Anne (3)
Anonymous Inquisitors
Answered Prayer
Anti-Communist Manifesto
World Communism’s sure to spread
Where U. S. money’s spent,
And mild reformers turn bright red
As Yankee guns are sent
To kill those who dissent.
Antique
Aphrodite
Approaching Hour
April Flight
Tear-times,
Cloud chimes,
Wind-tunes,
Ice-moons:
Nancy.
Sun-lines,
Spring wines,
Once more
She’ll soar:
Nancy.
07-16-77
*
Archeological Reverence
Arrested Development
Arthur Rackham
(1867-1939)
Arthur Symons
(1865-1945)
Artisans
As Always
Ash
Aspirations
Astral Projection
At the Window
Atmosphere of Houses
Atonement
Aubrey Beardsley
(1872-1898)
Furiously he drew,
Knowing all was through
Too soon. His paling face
Foreshadowed Time’s brief race.
August Storm
Autumn Bloom
(for Anne)
Baby’s Manifesto
The gunfighters came up from Texas; they arrived on the railroad train;
The Cattlemen’s Association was bound to control the range.
They had a sheet of paper, a list of names, of men they had to kill;
And they left some cowboy’s bodies in the Wyoming April chill.
Back then they called us rustlers, ‘cause we fought for our own piece of land,
Back then they called us rustlers, ‘cause now and then we changed a brand.
And you wouldn’t believe it to see me now: I work for the biggest ranch in the state,
And the owner, he’s my very best friend—we overcame our range-war hate.
Back then he’d have called me a rustler, ‘cause I fought for my own piece of land,
Back then he’d have called me a rustler—now and then I changed one or his brands:
With a .44-40 in my hand…
1987
*
Bad Goodbye
Badland Ballad
Baggage
Balanced Books
Balbathon
(for Lord Dunsany. 1878-1958)
Balladeer
Bardicide
(in memory: Stanton A. Coblentz)
I.
II.
Bareback Rider
Bargain
It stings. I blink
But once or twice:
A modest price
To purchase life, I think.
12-80-82
*
Be Good To You
Be good to you,
Love yourself true,
I’ll take care of me,
Whatever else you do, be good to you.
Be good to you,
Look your mirror in the eye,
Give yourself another try,
Clear that cloudy sky,
I’ll take care of me, whatever else you do,
Be good to you.
Be good to you,
Make your color gold, not blue,
It’s just another name for falling rain,
No more pain,
Not as long as you make sure you’re good to you.
Be good to you,
Love yourself true, I’ll take care of me,
Whatever else you do, be good to you.
Be good to you,
Someone else will be
Good to you, you’ll see,
Love loves company
If you want the love you think that you’re entitled to,
Be good to you.
Be good to you,
Find a mountain with a view,
Leave all the tears of yesterday below,
Melting snow,
And you’ll be so good to me, and me to you.
07-06-76
*
Pistol-proud, Virginia-vain,
Deaf to danger, numb to pain,
Born a century too late,
George Patton spat at Fate.
Visionary general,
Prayerful, and profane, and all
This, and something more as well;
Poet, rhyming while bombs fell.
12-02-73
*
Believe!
Beverage
Beverage (2)
Beyond
Biblio-Blaze
Biblio-tourist
Bibliography
Big Foot
He’s the answer and the question, he’s the riddle of our time,
But nobody ever shoots him, since it turned into a crime.
And they didn’t have to pass a law to save his savage hide
For a man who’d hunt the Big Foot would be bound for suicide.
Birthday Eve
Birthright
Black
Black Betrothal
Black Bridegroom
Black Guide
Blanket
Rifles rattle,
Armies battle
On the plain,
Getting glory,
Grief, or gory
Colored pain.
Conscripts giving
Up their living
For a patriotic bed
That is bag-shaped,
Shrouded, flag-draped:
Blue, white, red.
01-26-75
*
Blaze!
Bliss
Bliss (2)
Blood Harvest
Blue Doom
Blue Ridge
Blue Rose
(1943- )
Joni’s coming
Strumming, thrumming,
Hear the humming.
Boarding Party
Ships of morning sail
Out across the pale
Ocean overhead,
Splashing trees and lawn,
Now that night is dead.
Bob Dylan
(1941- )
Bok’s Ghost
(1914-1964)
Bottled Time
Bredon Hill
Brevity
Brief
Lifting glasses of
Burgundy above
Tables wet with wine,
Wasting youth and love,
Toasting friends of mine.
Bright Prospect
Brothers
Buddhist Monk
Burgundy Morning
Burgundy morning, too early for drinking, no one tells me what to do;
I see your face in that half-empty bottle, purple reflections of you;
Burgundy morning says goodbye to moonlight, opening doors on the dawn;
Lavender curtains you bought for the window, keep out the light when they’re drawn.
Burgundy morning, the neighbors are noisy, wives kissing husbands goodbye;
‘Wonder what they say about me behind me, they think I don’t even try;
Too young for pity and too old for quitting, ‘guess I’ll write you one more time;
‘Almost ten-thirty, the mailman is missing—service like that is a crime.
Burgundy morning, some children are playing baseball right next to our yard;
I hope they’re careful and watch where they’re throwing, don’t hit that ball too damned hard;
I should be selling this house and be moving no one would miss me that’s right;
Maybe if I just re-read your last letter, I’d see things in a new light.
Byronic
Cacophony
Calvary
Canonization
St. Jeanne of Arc carols in the pyre,
Sainted for her final song.
Her martyred voice, a human lyre,
Her ashes, immemorially strong.
04-09-86
*
Capitol Hill
Caravan
I.
II.
Carpathian Conflagration
Carpe Diem
Cartographic-Typographic Note
Case Study
Castaway
Cat Query
Certainty
(or Bruce Boston)
Chanson de la Mort
Chill-Charred Winterlude
Choice
Battle-flags unfurled,
Bombs and books are hurled
Hard against the world
That only lets one win.
Christmas Symbols
Circle
Citadel Stormed
City Hospital
Civilization
Clock
Clock(2)
Closing Time
Cold-War Liberals
Collector’s Clutter
He gave us two
Proud presidents—
No accidents--
Yet hid from view.
I guess he felt
That Wilson could
Be used, as should
Be Roosevelt.
Coming Attractions
Command Performance
Compost
Condemned
Confession
Confidential
Connubial Confusion
Constant
Construction Site
Conviction
Cosmic Snub
Cosmic Thunder
Country Farmhouse
Country Muzak
(for Justin Tubb)
Court Room
Covert Cathedral
Crazed Carnival
(for Gary William Crawford , editor of
Yellow Rider, And Other Fantasy Poems,
by Steve Eng)
Crazed Cavorting
Crimson Witch
Crosswalk Encounter
I rolled up my window,
‘Didn’t pause to wait—
I drove right past the lady—
“Can’t we have a date…?”
“No time to talk…I’m late…”
03-05-93
*
Cursed
(For Lord Dunsany)
Gods go on forgiving
All the city’s guilt,
So it goes on living,
Bitter it was built.
1971
*
Curtain
Curtain (Finale)
Stand away
From the play
Titled “Life”:
Scenes are cut
From your gut
By Time’s knife.
Stand aside,
Let the wide
Stage collapse.
Stand apart,
Let your heart
Die, perhaps.
Stand alone
Like a bone
Bleaching dry.
Death’s your scene,
Played between
Sand and sky.
01-05-75
*
The little girl grows up but she clings to her childhood games,
She looks for Roy Rogers but she always attracts Jesse James.
She takes a couple of falls in the rodeo called “married life”—
Now she’s back in the saddle—“Adios” to those years as a wife.
She’s home on the range with her friend the acoustic guitar;
It’s state fairs and rodeos and too many years in the bars;
Tonight on the stage in Cheyenne she’s raising her hand—
The crowd, gives a roar—she’s married some guy in her band!
Dark Highway
Dawn Glory
Dawn-Rite
Dead March
Spectral infantry,
Phantom cavalry
Move inexorably.
Military ghosts,
Swapping bawdy boasts,
Raising martial toasts….
Armored, zombie hosts.
10-08-74
*
Dead Rainbow
Death by Mirrors
Death Cloud
Death of a Conqueror**
(1907-1979)
Death Wings
December Sky
Deception
Dedication of Love
(For Mary Rose)
Dedicatory
Definition
But sometimes at night you can see dear Delilah by the church at the top of the hill.
She floats on the breeze, in and out of the trees. She dances and she always will…
Delilah goes dancing, she’s spending her life in a whirl,
Delilah goes dancing, that magical, musical dancing girl.
1981
*
“Demora, Goodbye”
I.
I slept, and saw your face again, pale against the dark of dream..
Demora, how you haunt my tossing sleep anew!
“Unfaithful”…this you sigh across oblivion’s black stream
That flows like Lethe in my memory…
I left you, yes—but for that vampire-mistress, Poetry.
II.
III.
I woke and saw your face again, bright across the fog of years,
Demora, all too late. Futility remains. All else is through.
For Poetry deserted me, months ago. She left no tears,
But hinted at a younger lover she desired.
Her love for me (like mine for you, Demora), now’s expired.
IV.
………………………..
10-13-82
*
Depression
Desert
Deservedly
Devouring Yesterdays
Devout
Diagnosis
Insanity
Is vanity,
The narcissistic cry
Of “I, I, I, I, I, I, I.
And happiness
Consists of less
Analysis, and more of trust
In Him Who fashioned us from dust.
1982
*
Difference
Dinner
Discovery
I.
II.
Documentary
(for L. Sprague de Camp, author of Lands Beyond)
Doomed Drifters
Drained
Dream Album
Dream Dust
Dream Haven
(For L. Sprague de Camp)
Dream-Hill
(1863-1947)
Drifter
(in memory: Bliss Carman, 1861-1929)
Driftwood
Dumb-Show
Puppet-master beaming
“Let the show go on,
Ignore the boos and screaming--
Dance till Time is gone.”
Puppet-master working
Strings until they fray,
Painted manikins stop jerking:
Curtain on the play.
04-30-70 (rev. 09-13-90)
*
Earth-Arson
(for Gabriel Eng)
Earthquake
Easily Found
Eastland Avenue
Easy Lover
Echo
I hear a howling of Infinity
(A million billionsworth of years),
My ears
Reverberating the immensity
Of spatial, blue-black void that spans
A multiverse that dwarfs this earthen speck of Man’s.
1979 (Rev. 11-11-90)
*
Echoes
Ecstasy
Silver dreams
Tarnish fast,
Nothing gleams
From the blurring past.
Iron dreads
Leave their stain
Black, black reds,
Are like rust-in-rain.
Ecstasy (2)
03-15-75
*
Elaine, Ethereal
(for Marge B. Simon)
Elfin Summons
Elftune
(for S. Slattery)
Embrace
Embrace (2)
Endangered Fowl
Envy
(1757-1827)
Escape
Essential Persistence
Etchings
Eternal Balladry
Eternal Soldier
Eternal Timber
Ethical Operation
Transplant the organs, one by one,
And when the surgery is done
Transfer the most important part:
A conscience to his heart.
12-19-78
*
Evaporation
Evening in Spring
(“He will be a rational man, but perhaps never happy.”)
Evensong
Evermore
Everytown, USA
Exchange
Exposed
Extermination
Extrapolation
Faith
Faith (2)
Faithful in My Fashion
(August 2, 1937, Lewisham Cemetery, SE London)
Fall Melody
Fall Showers
Famine Foretold
(Stalin, 1930, 30 million, and Mao Tse Tung 1960, 42 million, et al)
Fancy
Imagination lights,
A path through all your nights,
For you to follow blind
Across your moon-struck mind.
Far Notes
Far Place
Farewell
Farewell (2)
Farewell, Lyrista
Fatal Orgy
Fealty Avowed
(in memory, King Juan I of Redonda:
John Gawsworth, 1912-1970)
(for J. D. Squires)
Feeding Place
Vultures in a ring
Circle yesterday
Swooping down to bring
Up their dying prey:
Love that died away.
Feeding Time
Fiend Fodder
Fifty Years
Fifty-Per Cent
She’s holding two jobs and she’s holding her little heart together
The children make their own beds and breakfast, too.
The women’s magazines provide advice—and coupons.
And her Mama and her sister drop by, to see her through.
But you know, fifty-per cent of the American dreams get broken.
One-half of the brides and grooms pay lawyer’s fees.
And fifty-per cent of the couples are coming uncoupled.
But the precise percentage of tears nobody sees.
1981
*
Fighters Reward
Finale
Finale (2)
Fire Storm
Ancient city wall
Pinnacled so tall
Begins to crumble, crack and fall
In the shuddering, brute blast.
First Aid
Fiscal Advice
Flame Feast
Flame Future
“Shapes in the fire come and go…”
M.P. Shiel, “Phorfor,”
Shapes in the Fire (1986)
(for John D. Squires)
Flames
Flaming Prose
(for Ray Bradbury)
Flash-Backs at Forty-One
(for Charlie Lewis)
Flight
Flogged
Flower-Death
(for Christopher Lee, 1922- )
I.
II.
Flush!
Flying Dutchman
Foliage
(The Hold Vehm of Westphalia)
Fond Fright
Legends live:
Witches give
Wicked, withered looks
From old books.
Fairy rings,
Devil wings;
Snuggle down so deep,
Try to sleep.
Demons range
Forth from strange
Empty marble tombs
Toward your rooms.
Fool’s Ore
For Amy
Foreseen
Forever
Forget
Formula
Forward March!
Fragments
The old man signs autographs, telling young boys how a lifetime of crime never pays,
You heard from his legends he robbed a few banks in his younger and turbulent days;
He works at the fairgrounds, he’s starting the horse race, he shoots off his gun with a blast—
They use him for drawing a crowd with the tales of his troublesome, violent past.
He works at the theater, taking the tickets, he works in a Wild West show,
Reporters come ‘round with the same old damned questions, and answers their readers must know:
“Now, say there, old-timer, hey what about Jesse your brother—was he all that bad?
And what about Northfield, and what about Nashville, those narrow escapes that you had?”
Frank James ‘been living too long, and he’s living on memories…
He tells you a story in trade for a drink or a job,
Frank James ‘been living too long, and he’s living on memories….
And how many payrolls and how many trains did he rob?
Now he was eighteen when he joined up with Quantrill to fight in that sad Civil War,
They rode into Lawrence—a hundred and fifty civilians were slain, maybe more;
And after the War both the James’s and Youngers kept riding and robbing, so free—
But Frank James read Shakespeare and raised him a family and hid out in old Tennessee.
Now Jesse was wilder and Frank James was milder, the difference was easy to tell,
In St. Joe Missouri, his back to a friend, Jesse James took a bullet and fell,
And Frank James surrendered, he came in so quiet, they took him to trial for his crimes—
Now airplanes and automobiles tell the outlaw he doesn’t belong in these times.
Frank James ‘been living too long, and he’s living on memories…
He tells you a story for a drink or a job,
Frank James ‘been living too long, and he’s living on memories…
And how many payrolls and how many trains did he rob?
1981
*
Freedom
We rode into Nacogdoches, with our pistols and our Bowie knives,
Volunteers for Texas—we came to risk our lives.
Some of us had families, and others, just the memory,
And some of us they didn’t hardly miss in Kentucky and in Tennessee.
Some of us came for adventure, and others, we came for land;
But at the Alamo down in San Antone we made our last stand.
Some called it glory and some called it greed, and some they called it “Liberty.”
But mostly they called it the Lone Star Republic—so Texas could be free.
But freedom was the death of me.
Some called it glory and some called it greed, and some they called it “Liberty.”
But mostly they called it the Lone Star Republic, so Texas could be free.
And freedom was the death of me.
1985
*
Frolic
Frost Dirge
Frozen Rose
Full Circle
Furled Flowers
Future Transportation
Gadfly
Galactic Gothic
Garden Despoiled
(In commemoration,
Mssrs. Thomas Eliot, and E. Pound, esqs.)
Garden Guard
Garden Guests
The sunflowers rise
Against the skies,
And eager elves
Climb one-by-one
Toward the smiling saffron sun
To tan themselves.
04-08-79
*
Gardening
Gem-Siren
Geography
George Sterling
(1869-1926)
Ghosts
Ghoul Treat
Gibbet
Gift
Gift Wrapped
Christmastime is package-time,
Paper everywhere,
Ribbons, cards, and string, till I’m
Almost bound to swear!
(Scotch tape in my hair…).
12-25-78
*
Glow!
Grandchildren—mirrors of you
Decades ago,
Long before fickle Time blew
Your hair with snow.
Gold Gore
Gold Songs
Golden Eagle
John Kennedy was just a man, and men are born to die,
He wasn’t like some eagle that was born to rule the sky,
But even eagles touch the sun and sometimes burn their wings,
And even eagles do get shot, like Presidents and kings.
But money bought the bullets, and some money bought the guns,
And money keeps it quiet just who are the guilty ones;
But how can money measure all the liberty we’ve lost?
They shot a Golden Eagle, but you guess who pays the cost.
Golden Rings
Their stranglehold
Is ages-old,
Buried for all time,
As teachers lie
And school books try
Blotting out their crime.
Each government,
Each continent,
Bled and ruled by debt
To secret kings
Who wear gold rings,
Nameless, faceless, yet.
01-23-73
*
Those bad guys, they always get what they deserve, yeah,
And the hero never kisses the girl, but he gets the horse, of course!
‘Cause those bad guys they don’t always get what they deserve, no,
After they steal your girl, they ride off on your horse, of course!
Golgothan Solace
Gone
Gossamer Love
Gothic Bliss
(for John C. Moran)
Grave Call
Green tomb
Shrouded with moss,
Stone room,
Cracked marble cross.
Cold floor,
Tight-chiseled rocks,
Steel door,
Never unlocks.
Noise wails
Moon pales,
Color of fear.
Dead moan
Through the thick walls
White bone
Beckons and calls.
06-26-77
*
Grave Proof
I.
II.
I.
II.
Green Bride
Grey Skater
Grimoire
Growing
Growing Young
Autumn eyes
Face new skies;
Ancient ears
Deaf to fears!
Grief is sin,
So you grin
At a child…
Time has smiled.
10-31-77
*
Growth
Guess Who?
As long as I am under
Covers and a sheet,
The lizard has to wonder
“Who else can I eat?”
01-31-68
*
Guitar Man
If sad and simple songs are near
All I ever play,
That’s what people want to hear
Most, and people pay.
1975
*
Gustave Dore
(1832-1883)
H. P. Lovecraft
(1890-1937)
Halo
Hannes Bok
(1914-1964)
Harbingers
Hard Homecoming
Hardly
Behaving like a man
Is always harder than
Composing pretty verses that
Fall flat.
Harvest
Apple-time is fled,
Like your younger days.
Time obeys
Nothing you have said.
Haunted Heritage
(for Mike Ashley)
Haven
Helper
Her Fault
Now one year it’s this, and the next year it’s that,
And this is the year for the ten-gallon hat,
They wear them in Dallas, they wear them in Spain,
They wear them in London to keep off the rain.
Here come the cowboys, they’re walkin’ and talkin’ real slow.
Here come the cowboys, just like a movie show…
(And it’s a western….)
Heredity
(for S. F. Willems)
Heritage
Hester Prynne
High-Wire Walk
History’s Horse-Hooves
Homage
(for Jonathan Bacon)
Home-Town Reunion
Hound
House of Shame
There’s nothing unusual about the way my day begins,
As I walk up and down the streets with my mail pouch in my hands;
I’ve run this route for years—everybody knows my name-
Especially at the old folk’s home, which I call the “House of Shame.”
The old folks’ home is my last stop, that’s where I end my daily route.
And my pouch is usually empty, by then—not always, but just about,
Except for an occasional letter, and they all wait anxiously
With sad eyes that ask the question “Is there anything for me?”
And I hear their trembling voices as they walk back and forth:
“I guess the children are just too busy to write—
They’ve got a lot of things to do, of course….”
And I try to cheer them up and say things to make them feel better
(And I think to myself, just how little effort it takes to write a letter.)
1980
*
How?
Human Pets
Man: Monday was the first day I woke up without you on my lonesome mind,
Tuesday I began to think your memory was leaving me behind,
And here it is the weekend and I’m getting dressed to go with someone new,
I’m checking all the signs and they all read that I’m a little more over you.
Woman: I still get your mail and people still come by to see if you live here,
My friends all ask about you but I think they understand it all too clear,
I’m getting used to getting by without you, now I know you’ve been untrue….
The weeks are melting into months until I’m just a little more over you.
Woman: I’ve cancelled all our credit cards and I’m putting on my makeup just for me,
I’ve changed the number to my dreams and tried to disconnect your memory;
I’m getting used to getting by without you, ‘cause I know you’ve been untrue—
The weeks are melting into months, until I’m just a little more over you.
Man: Everybody says I’m looking great you know my friends they tell the truth.
I bought myself a cowboy hat to help recapture all my wasted youth.
I wear it to the tavern—perfect strangers there they seem to know my name…
Let’s have another round, the alcohol extinguishes your flame.
Woman: I bought myself a brand-new dress, those magazines they show you how to look;
And every time I meet some man he writes my name inside his little book;
I’m the life of every party and these late nights they’ll be the death of me;
Out there on that dance-floor I’m the fastest little girl you’ll ever see!
1980
*
I Should Be Asleep
I should be asleep.
05-77
*
(…keep the choruses going ad infinitum with the third line different each time, such as:
Ice Dwarf
Ichor
Illiteracy
Immersion
(to narrate Bok’s Leaping Man)
Immortal
Immortal!
Immortal Bouquet
Immortality
Impregnation/Conflagration
In a Glass, Clearly
In Due Time
In Vain Pursuit
Incarnation
(for Donald Sidney-Fryer)
Independence!
“Independence” is a word
The sweetest word you’ve ever heard
It stands for freedom.
Like a high-flying bird….
Industrial Accident
Inevitable
Inscrutable
Inscrutable (2)
Italic Horror
It’s never too late for love, no, it’s never too late for love,
It’s never too, never too, never too late for love.
Everybody says “Slow down, don’t you know what time it’s getting to be?”
I don’t watch the clock, I just look in my heart, and it’s time for you and me,
It’s never too late for love, no, it’s never too late for love,
It’s never too, never too, never too late for love.
1986
*
J. Frank Dalton
(1842-1951)
Jane Merchant
(1919-1972)
January
Joanne
Jungian Serendipity
Justice
Convicted witch
Who cursed the rich
Will strangle in
A rope-choked grin.
Keeping on Course
Kensington Gardens
Klarkash-Ton
(for Clark Ashton Smith, 1893-1961)
Ever out-of-place,
Smith preferred far space
Galaxies away,
Lost in starry lore,
Helping him ignore
The din from his own day.
09-22-74
*
Knell
Love is but a second’s tick
Recorded by the cruel clock of Time.
Hear those meshing gears revolve and click!
And listen…for Love’s final chime.
06-16-79
*
Knife-Thirst
Knock
Knowledge
L ‘Envoi
Lamia
(for Michael Fantina)
Lamp Love
Last
Last Question
Last Spark
Last Supper
Last Visitor
Late-Night Lady
Late January
Latest Oasis
Latin Lesson
Laugh-In
(For Richard L. Tierney)
I.
II.
III.
Law
Leaf-Red
Legacy
Lenore
Lesson
Lesson Plan
(Recorded at the Second Conference on the Fantastic)
Lesson Unlearned
Letter to Thoreau
Walden is far,
Unless you prefer,
To open up your eyes, and see.
Liberation
Life
I.
II.
Afternoon is the chapter of life at its close,
As shadows obtrude on your mind,
And lavender twilight turns purple the rose,
And blackens until you are blind.
Light
Light a Beacon
Literature
Literature Class
Pretty funny name for a girl—her name traveled ‘round the world,
“little Miss Sure-Shot” they called her everywhere.
She sure shootin’ earned her fame—“Annie Oakley” was her other name—
She blasted those little glass balls right out of the air…
And a Winchester rifle became that girl’s best friend!
Little Miss Sure-Shot, you shot through our hearts back then;
And the likes of your marksmanship won’t be seen again.
Little Miss Sure-Shot you shot through our hearts back then…
In your cowgirl costume you rode through our Western dream.
Her Daddy died when she was ten—she picked up a rifle and then
She filled up the table with rabbits and quail to eat.
At fifteen she met her man—good lookin’ with a gun in his hand;
He tried to outshoot her but that hero, he got beat.
So he married little Annie—they hit the bull’s eve with their love!
She done pretty good for a girl Her boss he took her ‘round the world—
Buffalo Bill on that Wild West show-biz trail.
From Memphis to Cheyenne—she shook Queen Victoria’s hand,
Little Miss sure-Shot, her aim it never failed….
And she shot a cigarette out of Kaiser Wilhelm’s mouth!
1980
*
Lore
Songs of wandering
Not facts,
But acts
Of some fable king.
02-25-76
*
Lorraine
Chloroform—and then
They skewered her
Like all the rest,
Upon a mounting-pin,
Her dried wings spread,
Inside the case of glass—
Specimen “Lorraine.”
03-03-73
*
Lost
Lost at Sea
Lost Eden
Lost Lady
(1865-1945)
The ‘Nineties were the age for
Poets of the night,
Outside a Soho stage door
In the yellow light.
Lost, Lost
Lost Mistress
London, Nineteen-Fifty-Eight
Marian and I
Learning just a little late
All there was to try.
Love
Inside a room
Of book-lined gloom
And loveless life:
He sits and reads
And never heeds
Friend or wife.
For he prefers
Book characters
Who gradually
Begin to speak—
They walk—boards creak—
Fond company.
06-18-78
*
Love Death
Love Snare
Loyal
Lucky Bill
(for Fr. Charles Strobel and his work with the homeless))
Knowing every tavern where they let you take your time,
Growing old inside a world where aging is a crime,
Heading for the side of town where drunken drifters stay,
Treading sidewalks like a man who knows he’s lost the way.
Dreaming isn’t easy, when you’ve lost your wife and will,
Living’s one bad lesson, when your name is Lucky Bill.
Drinking up tomorrow like it isn’t really there,
Winking at the women with a worn-out, weary stare,
Paying for the past with every bottleful of brew,
Saying life is worth it, when he knows it isn’t true.
Dreaming isn’t easy, when you’ve lost your wife and will,
Living one bad lesson, when your name is Lucky Bill.
06-18-74
*
Lullaby
Lunatic Lyre
Luray
Water seeping through the ground,
Forming limestone, timeless round
Pillars on the ceilings, or
Columns on the cavern floor.
Lycanthropic Liberation
Magic Bullet
Magic Mistress
A gypsy offered me
An olive-colored kiss,
Below a willow tree:
Bodies full of bliss.
Mail Call
Ten thousand years at sea
In a star-ship’s dome
I sail the galaxy,
I scribble letters home.
Manassas
Man-Of-Letters Requiem
(for Kenneth Hopkins)
Manger Monument
March Message
Marionette
Marriage is Forever
The voice in the attic clamors,
As you ascend the stairs--
The sound subsides and stammers—
Just wind. There’s no one there.
Mars Cult
Times before—
Evermore—
Young men always will
March in arms,
Leaving farms
For the boys to till.
06-25-77
*
Mary Elaine
Mary Elaine.
Soft as the rain
Washing her Spanish black hair.
She’s like the glass
Mirror you pass
Out in the hall by her stair.
Wrapping her arms like a ribbon around your soul.
Mary Elaine.
Mary Elaine,
Hiding her pain
Under the lace of her shawl.
Violins play,
Begging you stay
Chained like a slave in your stall.
Wrapping their tune like a shackle around your soul.
Mary Elaine
Mary Elaine
Acts like she’s sane,
Later you see what she’s done.
She makes you feel
Everything’s real,
Making you believe that you’ve won.
Wrapping her arms like a cause around your soul,
Mary Elaine.
10-13-73
*
Mary’s Song
Masque de Poesie
Rainbows half-unseen
Almost out of view
Taunt and beckon you.
Breathe the rain-wet green,
Smell the spring-sweet dirt,
Senses all alert.
May Eve
“All thanks for ‘May-Eve’ for
The Arkham Collector” –August Derleth, June 12, 1970
May Music
Spring song,
Wind strong,
Flutter everywhere;
Spring birds
Sing words
Ringing down the air.
1974
*
Maybe
Love shorn,
Life torn,
Hurt borne.
Spiked thorn.
01-22-82
*
Megaliths
Melinda’s Mask
And under it
An inky pit
Of infinite sad space.
Melinda, tell me how you fit
Your mask, where you’ve no face?
04-10-70
*
Melinda’s Face
Melodrama
Memorial Day
Memories(2)
(for Richard Wiltshire)
Mental Sunset
I have a shining empire in my head,
A kingdom born of books I’ve read and read,
Where palisades and parapets
And pinnacles of minarets
Glimmer through pinkish clouds of Dream.
Microcosm
Mind-Flight
Minor Poet
Work small,
Craft all
You can
Of Man
In microscopic space,
Rewrite, erase,
With miniature grace.
03-10-81
*
Missing
Mist
Misty Ellen
Summer-yellow sunlight
Coloring your hair—
Golden like the air.
Molecular Divination
Monday Morning
Monstro Ligriv
(1914-1970)
Morsel
Mortal Combat
Music Season
Spring song,
Ringing along
The avenue arched with trees,
Is swaying the limbs above.
Spring birds,
Singing the words,
Of April’s melodic breeze,
Are chorusing: “Spring is love.”
1977
*
My Lai
Myopia
Myopia Cured
Myopie de la Mort
Nashville Christmas…1779
Nashville Gentleman
His Christian name was “Jesse,” and his brother’s name was “Frank,”
He made a living making large withdrawals from the bank,
Missouri and Kentucky knew his name was “Jesse James,”
In Nashville he was “Mister Howard” playing poker games.
Nashville Library
Natural History
Nautical Galactic
(For Columbus and Armstrong)
I.
II.
Necrobibilia
(for Abe Everett and Dick Wald)
Book-hunters walk
By it, and balk
Backing away with a gasp!
So it sits there,
Hand-sewn with hair,
Latched with a carved-metal hasp.
01-77
*
Necrobibliophilia
Neither
Never
New Order
Night Caress
Night Gaunts
(for H. P. Lovecraft, 1890-1937)
Imagination lights
A path through all your nights,
For you to follow blind
Down your-moon-struck mind.
Night-Knell
Night Songs
Night Trip
Nightscape
Nineveh
No
No Matter
No Sex
She hasn’t any answers, but she covers me with questions all the time,
They never seem to rhyme,
For I’m not a white magician, just a man,
And there ain’t no words for Anne.
She never even listens to the lyrics of the latest, greatest song,
She‘d rather sing along
With a melody she’s stolen from the birds,
Who ain’t got no use for words.
She’s shouting in a whisper in my ear,
Making all the ringing disappear
With any demons she can ban—
Oh, there ain’t no words for Anne.
She’s waiting at the temple, for the carnival that’s coming through the town,
Worshipping her clown
In a chapel that could use a coat of paint,
For I’m her pander and her saint.
No Yearning
There’s winners and losers and sometimes the dif’rence ain’t nothing,
Sometimes the losers in love must learn how to laugh,
There’s not use reliving the past, or those twelve years of trying—
That woman, she emptied your wallet…except for that old photograph.
Now, nobody knows where the good times are gone when they’re missing,
Did you misplace them? Or did they just walk out the door?
And nobody knows where the good times are gone when they’re over—
You wake up at four in the morning and wish you won’t wake up no more.
Now, what kind of man prefers sad country songs in the morning?
--Same kind of man that begins a new day with a beer.
And what kind of man still remembers each one of their birthdays?
--The same kind of man they’ll discover one day…with a note that’s too clear.
1981
*
Nocturne
North-Man
(For Robert E. Howard, 1906-1936)
A fierce Cimmerian,
You can sell your blade
Somewhere else in trade
For treasures that please a man.
06-09-75
*
North-Sea Lament
Nostalgia
Nostalgia (2)
Nothing
November Canvas
Now
Now (2)
Nuclear Aqua-Archaeology
Oasis
Kingdoms fall,
Coffins call,
But I’m
Doped with dreams,
Drinking streams
Of Time.
08-08-75
*
Objectivity
The art creates the man
As often as it can:
Be careful not to overplay and act
Your fiction, as if fact.
Beware—don’t try to be
A Buccaneer at sea
Or a superman in bed…!
Stay home and write instead.
02-13-80
*
Observation
Ocean City
Ocean Hurt
Sea-time,
Salt in my eye,
Rock slime
Green as the sky,
Gulls chime
And the winds cry.
Tides slip
Out from your toes,
Waves rip,
Wester-wind blows,
Sands whip
Flesh without clothes.
Beach-dream
Drowns in the gale,
Birds scream,
Sea-feelings fail.
You seem
Bored with me, stale.
1979
*
Ocean Victim
October
October Odds
October’s Death
Dead walk,
Tombs do talk,
Banshees must grieve;
Bone dust,
Ghoul-lust,
November Eve.
Bats rise
On the skies,
Vampires in thirst;
Graves yawn,
Dooms dawn--
November first.
05-02-76
*
Old Accounts
Old Maid
Old Witch
On Keeping a Journal
Crops grow,
Years flow,
Birds go,
And come, each year anew.
Map their
Flight where
The air
Evolves from grey to blue.
List all
Bird’s call
Each squall
And whistle heard by you.
Write brief
Each leaf,
Each sheaf
Of pages chart what’s true.
08-17-78
*
On Learning of a Third Claimant
to the Throne of Redonda
On Rewriting a Song
On Unloving A. E. Housman
(1859-1939)
Once
Once Again
One or Two
Tried my best to get rolling, I’m starting for work right on time,
‘Stopped for a glass, and I felt my day pass,
The way I live is a crime.
Six o’clock in the tavern, it’s peanuts and popcorn and friends,
‘Talking till two, and the subject is you,
The story never ends.
1980
*
Only
Onyx Beach
(for Gary William Crawford)
Gold ships
Ploughing through storms in your brain.
Gale rips
Canvas with ebony rain.
Black stars
Reaching with magnetic hands.
Gold spars
Strewn carelessly on black sands.
Dementia…
That none understands.
1988
*
Or Longer
(1878-1958)
Orchards of Wonder
In-pine-sweet air
In humus soil
Is where I rest, away from care,
And trail weary toil.
Originality
Originality (2)
(for Anne)
Ounce of Prevention
Paper Tomb
Paradox Pieties
Paresis
Payment
Perception
Periodical Horror
Ephemeral pulp magazines survive
In readers’ memories
Or microfilm archive reels,
Where desolate graveyards are still alive
And shapes under cypress trees
Arise, as the death-knell peels.
II. Lesson
Phil
Philosophy
Phototropism
I.
II.
Pie-Supper Summer
Becky. She says “Now Billy, I think we’d better get hitched soon—
I can see Daddy’s shotgun reflecting the Ozark moon!”
So they get married down in Arkansas, late one Saturday—
Billy’s dropping out of school…now he’s baling hay.
And you know that Time, Time, Time has a way of adjusting
All your dreams,
And the years, keep right on flowing
Like an Ozark mountain stream.
Pillage
Pinned
Pizarro
(1476-1541)
Playthings
Grown-up boys
Use women-toys
Until they break
With soft, soft noise,
And muffled ache.
04-28-78
*
Plea
Poem-Pyre
Poet-Birth: 1961
Poetaster Manifesto
Irreverence to us is All-Sacred,
Light lampoons, devoid of real hatred,
Our metrical crime
Is limerick rhyme:
We’re strippin’ the stuffed-shirts bare naked.
1983
*
Poetry Collection
Poetry Rules
Poet’s Paramour
Port of Call
Portland Spring
Posthumous Cuckold
Post-operative Report
Can you scalpel the soul with the knives of your science,
Separate sin with your blade—
And dissect human psyches with all your reliance
Placed in experiments made?
Prayer
Precipice
Precipitation
Prehistoric Precision
I.
II.
Cheops’ awesome pyramid
Aligned with compass care,
Demarking distance, map-like grid,
Emplaced, finitely, there.
III.
Preview
Priority
Processional
Progress
Progress (2)
Prosody of Pain
Proud Pinnacle
Proud Princess
Pruned
Purple-Clouded Prose
(1865-1947)
Amazing M. P. Shiel…
To read him is to feel
The pulse of pounding poetry,
And surging ecstasy.
Questionnaire
(For L. Sprague de Camp)
Rabid Curs
I’ve chased a thousand fading rainbows, but you’re the first one that remained,
You fill up my horizons with the colors of your loving, every day.
I’ve lost a thousand dying daydreams, but you’re the first one coming true,
I open up my eyes and can’t believe your love has really come my way.
I’ve faced a thousand cloudy mornings, I’ve weathered all those stormy years,
My night fears turn to daydreams when the rainbow of your loving falls on me.
And when my eyes grow dim and misty, I’ll see your love light shining through.
I’ll close my eyes one final time and see your rainbow shine eternally.
Raison d’Etre
(for Joey Froehlich)
Reader’s Block
Realism
Reassurance
(After reading Joseph Payne Brennan’s Creep to Death)
Reborn
Recompense
Recurrent Dream
Red Arrows
(For Mary Kangas)
Red Clouds
Rusted plow upon the field
Farmer’s furrows, all are healed
Scars upon the sod.
Red Rhymes
Red Surf
(In memory of George Darley, 1795-1846)
Water-witches wailing,
Hear them in the waves,
Toward them we are sailing,
Willing siren-slaves.
Reflex
Refraction
Regal Revenge
Regeneration
Regicide
Regret
Regrettably Yours
Reincarnation
Reptile-Rhyme
Requiem
Response
Retort to Time
I.
Green tomb
Shrouded with moss,
Stone room,
Cracked marble cross.
Cold floor,
Tight-chiseled rocks,
Steel door
Never unlocks.
Moon pales,
Color of fear.
Noise wails—
Can you not hear?
II.
No, no,
Soundless and still.
Let’s go
(Wind brings a chill)
Homeward, away from this shivering hill.
1975
*
Retribution
Retrospect
I.
The margin of memory is stretched along
The edge of waking eye:
A glimpse of a field of yellow years—
A flicker of sun, a tinge of tears—
Nostalgia’s blue-gold sky.
II.
Return
Avalon is rising
From Atlantic seas;
Arthur is surprising
England’s enemies.
Reunion
Reunion (2)
Reverie
Reverie (2)
Reward
Rhyme of a Reincarnate
Rigged Game
Riposte
Riven
Road
No gods to please
No soil to seize
And spread my roots,
Just gypsy boots.
No chains to link
Just sky to drink
And sun to feast
On like a beast.
Road Ruts
Rodeo Rainbow
Rodeo Troubadour
And the melody rolls like the wind off the Pendleton plains.
When his trophies are tarnished or pawned, his song remains….
Romany Toy
Rose-Crumbs
Flowers of fame
Bloom with your name
For a brief day,
Then wilt away.
Rubble
Rudder
My life is a tool
Obeying the rule
Of vast supernatural force
With faith for my fuel
To rocket me forth, on course
08-27-83
*
Rude Road
Sabbat-Revel
I.
Sorcerers beneath
The moonlight on the heath
Circle, circle, spin…
Now the rites begin.
II.
Sacrifice Recalled
I.
II.
Salt-Water Lunch
Salvage
Sandra’s Temperature
Golden-gloss skin,
And hair that’s the same,
Legs brown and thin,
And lips bright as flame.
Real as a fire,
She burns in your arms
Smoldering hot wire,
She sets off alarms.
Santa Fe Turquoise
Sea-Burial
Sea-Dread
(for John L. Wynne-Tyson, King Juan II of
Redonda: 1970-97, from Redonda’s
Duke of Nashville: 1997- )
I.
II.
Sea-Reverie
(for Donald Sidney-Fryer)
Sea Trial
Seashore Scene
Secret
Seer
(In memory: August Derleth, 1909-1971)
Seismic Prophecy
(for Bruce Boston)
Self-Evaporation
Self-Strangle
Barbed-wire words
Wrap my neck around,
And noose me, sanguine-tight,
Feet kicking off the ground.
12-21-83
September’s Showers
Shackled
Imagination lights
A path through all your nights,
For you to follow blind
Down your-moon-struck mind.
Shaftesbury Avenue
(Street in Soho: 1895)
Sharp Turns
Snow drains
Ice from the sky,
Green rain,
April walks by.
Pink sun,
Summer comes down,
Orange fun,
Sunburned red-brown.
Sleet-blue,
Sheets of sharp ice,
Strike you:
December’s dice.
05-17-76
*
Shattered
He stands
Above
The happy sounds of sidewalk songs and children’s joy:
He’s deaf to all.
His hands
Shake love
Until it crumbles from his grasp, a cast-down toy
That he lets fall.
03-26-81
*
She never got back from ‘Frisco, she never got back from Frisco,
When I kiss her she’s two thousand miles from me;
She never got back from “Frisco, she never got back from ‘Frisco,
She makes believe her mind’s in Tennessee.
Shelley
(The Birth of Science Fiction)
I.
Young Shelley at Eton imbibed the mystique
Of science romanticized into extremes:
He gave his poor tutor a shock and a shriek—
Electric jolt!—eliciting screams.
II.
Explosives and fire-balloons were his joy,
Chemicals tainting his fingers and arms,
Steam engine blew-up—(another mere toy).
Mad Shelley continually causing alarms
III.
His tutor named Walker is wholly forgot—
Blueprint for someone whose name we’ve all read—
Frankenstein’s prototype, likely as not,
Mixed up with Shelley in wife Mary’s head.
9-23-91
*
The years have passed her by, and so do men when they see her,
Her eyes are full of all the dreams that were,
The only men who dance with her are drunk, so they don’t care,
They make believe there’s gold still in her hair.
And ev’ry body knows her and they tolerate her tears,
And now and then they tell her, “No more beers.”
And if you haven’t met her, you’ve met someone much the same,
The story never changes, just the name.
Shhh!
Siamese
Sick Circle
Sideshow
Silence
Skeptic’s Song
Marble philosophies
Quarried by slaves,
Hewn out by pedants,
Polished by knaves,
Worshiped by sycophants
Tower-like headstones!—
Over Ideology’s graves.
1-24-89
*
Sky-Clock
Slash!
Slavery
Slim Chance
Slimming Down
Smashed Reflection
Snap!
Snow-Prayer
Snowy Night
So Can You
So Do Unicorns
Soft sound
Some Things
Something Comfortable
Come to my room,
Wear your perfume,
Take off your tears,
Hang up your fears,
And slip into something comfortable,
Like my arms, like my arms, like my love,
Something comfortable.
Resist
Alluring, fatal notingness—
Oblivion’s numbed, gloved caress—
And live. The valiant do no less;
So brave all ill.
Exist
And more, enjoy! For graveward we
Must soon enough descend. Fight free.
Above the ground, toward victory.
For earth is chill.
11-06-81
*
Soon
Soon (2)
I cursed cursing
And I blasphemed no more,
My sinner’s soul rehearsing
To face evermore.
1981
*
Souvenir
Spartacus
(1748-1830)
Spatial Symphony
Spelunker’s Cave
Split-Second
The arches of the rain
Are color wheels, that chain
Like wreathes around the clear
Silver skies so near.
Infinity is wound
About me, all around,
And then it goes once more,
And I’m like before.
08-09-73
*
Spoken by a Sprite
Spring is Fall
Squirt!
St. Germaine
(17? -1874?)
Stand Up Singing
Star-Street
Steppe-Spirits
Still Sounds
Still There
Still Voice
Stilled Voice
(for John Gawsworth, 1921-1970)
Storm Cycle
Striking Out
(for Charles Lewis)
Suburban Sidewalk
An ancient hitching-post survives
Too strong and stable to tear down;
The horse-drawn cart no more arrives,
For Time has altered Man and town.
05-83
*
Summit
Survivor
Susan’s Soldier
Sweet Armaline
Sweet Sanguinora
Hungarian heritage
I’ve heard her mention, yes;
Her loveliness
(Inherited) knows no age.
Sword-Song of a Paretic
I.
II.
III.
“Better get back on the road, ‘hope your senses are not slowed,
Too much beer is in your head, clear your brain or you’ll be dead.
Drinking coffee when you drive, singing songs to keep alive,
Maybe they can help you lose those Tacoma truck-stop blues.
Make believe you love the life, leave your children, leave your wife,
Leave those other trucks behind, hear that diesel sound unwind.
Waitresses and wives agree: truckers only think they’re free;
Driving fast but you can’t lose those Tacoma truck-stop blues.
1976
*
Tavern
Tavern Bill
Time-feast:
The ghouls are all gobbling the years,
Space-beast:
Is drinking Eternity’s tears—
At least:
The Death Angel pays for our beers.
12-08-77
*
Tavern Music
Tears
Teenage Taps
Telepathy
Tete `a Tete
Terror
You know she missed her period and she missed graduation,
And she missed those wedding bells.
And her daddy’s shot-gun missed the boy next door—
Where he’s gone nobody can tell.
It’s a simple operation—her sister recommends it—
Her daddy’s going to foot the bill,
It’s the All-American Ladies Choice…
It’s a legalized license to kill.
The Ancestor
The Clown
The Festival
(for H. P. Lovecraft, 1890-1937)
I.
II.
III.
Officials up in London thought the father and the Kingdom both were crazy;
They hoisted up the Union Jack to claim the island for their bloody own.
The story of the Kingdom still survives in all its tarnished, royal splendor;
And high up in the sky the birds look down upon the island all alone.
The island that was found was called “Redonda,” with a legend left behind.
The kingdom that was crowned is called “Redonda.” It’s a royal state of mind.
The Kingdom of Redonda…
The little boy grew up and went to London where he earned to be a writer,
And on his death, the Kingdom—like a legacy—was left unto a friend.
The Kingdom lost some glory down the years, but it acquired some jaded wisdom.
The troubadours and jesters and the Dukes declare the Kingdom has no end!
1985
*
They drink in the sun and their eyes feel its fire,
And like children they go hand-in-hand,
With canes, and old bodies that threaten to tire,
They’re exploring the fragrant green land.
I.
From three-power up to nine—
Telescope tunnels through space—
Galileo scanned God’s vast design:
Thirty-power soon found its place.
II.
The nurse she sure missed him like she knew she would,
His jokes and his memories, they’d made her feel good…
His family, they said they’d have come if they could…
The Mercenary
The Moonbeam
Have you hear of the Moonbeam? That’s me!
Do you know where I’m from? Look up there,
See my mother, Sweet Moon, bright and free,
Now she sends me on water...on air…
On the ground…up the trunk of the tree,
Like a bandit who creeps from his lair
See me tiptoe on grass silently,
Watch me climb up a wall without care,
See me light up the lovers at play,
Se me shroud them, as I ease away.
*
The Muse At Four A. M.
His music sounds like Nashville but his voice you just can’t place—
The labels on his suitcase tell the tale.
There’s scratches on his guitar and there’s paper taped on top:
It’s got a list of songs that never fail.
(spoken) “and if he dies when things are good, you’ll read it in the news”…
(Most likely he will fall without a trace):
It doesn’t really matter—no!—the music’s all that counts,
And there’s always some new fool to take his place.
1979
*
The Norm
I.
II.
III.
She was fashioned of nothing, wind and whispers, and sighing air,
Yet she floated visible and taunting there,
Faint phantom with ethereal, wispy hair.
And she said, “Come sleep with me”
In a voice like murmured, sombrous sea
On the shoreline of Eternity.
The old man lived out by the desert, selling postcards and gasoline,
He sold road-maps and Navajo silver, and True West magazine.
And under his Gabby Hays beard beat the heart of a dashing young man;
With arthritic fingers he cleaned off my windshield…he once was a Dapper Dan.
“And you better watch out for that sweet senorita, the travelers all agree…
They call her the Queen of the Mojave Desert…but she once belonged to me,
Yes, she once belonged to me…”
I thought the old man was demented, from too many years in the sun;
But there in his gas station office I noticed a Winchester gun…
Then later that night on the desert, my car overheated and died—
And I saw the Queen of the Mojave Desert…with a bullet hole gaping wide!
I.
II.
“Renewal…Easter,,,April love…rebirth”
Are easy, archetypal terms for when
Fresh shoots begin to green the thawing Earth
And fill with sweet clichés this poet’s pen.
At least I know what Spring is not—
The “cruelest” month’s not April, no,
In spite of Mister T. S. Elliot
Whose Spring and soul were both of snow.
But he was young. Age brings surcease,
And Spring, forsythia and daffodils,
As flowered sonnets sprout, increase,
And decorate the rain-swelled rills.
Thus, in the landscape of my autumn brain
The hues of yellow and of green remain.
03-23-83
*
The Vietnam War Ain’t Over Yet (It Takes a Long, Long Time)
His daddy died from workin’, the boy dropped out of school,
He should’ve hid out in college, that patriotic fool.
His mama, she was weepin’ that day he raised his hand,
He wrote her almost ev’ry week from a Southeast Asian land.
The details they don’t matter, no, it’s just some Veteran’s crime,
The Vietnam War ain’t over yet, it takes a long, long time.
Now he don’t sniff that cocaine, no, and all he drinks is beer;
But he’s got memories in living color, they re-run all so clear.
He hears those people screamin’, he sees the bombs’ bright light—
It all came back one fatal night…inside that bar-room fight.
The details don’t matter, no, it’s just some Veteran’s crime,
The Vietnam War ain’t over yet, it takes a long, long time.
1984
*
The Windmill
There’s a little girl inside of every woman, you can find her if you try:
It’s not in her figure, and it’s not in her hair…it’s right there in her eye.
She plays with the boys, but not in a tree fort—she’s out on that hardwood floor—
That girlish giggle—but the way she dances, she ain’t a tom-boy no more.
There’s a little girl inside of every woman, you can find her if you try:
It’s not in her file at the welfare office…it’s right there in her eye.
She locates employment in a fried-chicken palace, and she’s working for the minimum wage.
She keeps her eyes open for the next Prince Charming, but she never volunteers her age.
There’s a little girl inside of every woman, you can find her if you try:
It’s not in the date on her birth certificate…it’s right there in her eye.
1980
*
Think Small
Thirsty Troops
Come on little children, put your ears upon that shiny silver rail.
You know that train is comin’ and you know this time it isn’t going to fail,
So listen in the distance, you can hear the whistle whining in the air,
So hurry to the station, bring your neighbors, ev’rybody will be there.
Hurry to the platform, try to see the train, it’s just a mile away,
And listen to those drivers poundin’, bringin’ back the sounds of yesterday,
The engineer is waving, all the little boys, they seem to know his name,
The station’s full of people, and the train is here, and ain’t you glad you came?
Now the whistle’s blowing, now the fireman’s stoking up a little steam,
The passengers are boarding and I wonder, is this really all a dream?
And is that train returning, or will it be gone forever down the track?
It doesn’t matter, we’ll keep singing, just as if that train is comin’ back.
1985
*
Time Colors
Blue years,
Deep as the snow,
New tears,
Starting to flow.
Green days,
Crumbled to brown,
Mixing with greys.
Leaves tumbled down.
02-19-76
*
Time-Jail
Time’s Palmistry
(for Rose Wolf)
Tiny Linguist
To Lie
To Not Return
Rhyme is a crime,
A misdemeanor or more.
And cadence is worse—a rhythmical verse
Is a felony critics abhor.
Tombstone, Arizona
October twenty-seventh was the day that no one ever can forget,
But what exactly happened there nobody quite agrees on, even yet;
But we all know for sure is some men stood and shot some other men who fell;
The good and bad and black and white are something no one knows enough to tell.
The cowboys all were cattle thieves who died inside of Tombstone’s streets that day,
The lawmen who had killed them all were gamblers who’d do anything for pay,
The bodies, they were buried with the truth, inside the graveyard out of town;
When Wyatt Earp and both his brothers met those men, they gunned them to the ground.
The marshals won the battle, but the time for men like them was running short;
Then Wyatt lost his brothers, but he didn’t take the murdererto a court;
He killed the killers, so they even swore a warrant for his head;
But Wyatt Earp died in nineteen twenty eight, so peaceful in his bed.
07-07-73
*
Tomorrow’s Rain
Too Few
Tourist Attraction
Tracks
Children know
That giants grow,
Ghosts are true,
And witches too.
Grown-ups don’t,
And so they won’t
Hear things wail
Inside the gale.
“It’s an owl
Or some cat’s yowl,”
They insist
With whitened fist.
Then at dawn
Behold the lawn:
Sunrise glints
On fresh prints.
Transmutation
Transplant
Treasure Map
Tree-Limb Jurisprudence
Trek
Trip
Troubadour-Tribute
Trove
“Vacation” always means antiques---
Victorian mirror, rimmed with gilt---
Capacious dresser, sturdy-built;
And a country kitchen chair that creaks.
A truck driver’s woman stays home and she raises the children,
She talks about daddy, and how he’s at work far away,
And sometimes she wonders how some women marry the lawyers,
And bankers, and college professors who come home each day.
Tutor
Twilit Orgy
Two Flowers
The Timeless and the Timely are so close and yet so far,
The former scans beyond the Earth and sees the farthest star.
Unfollowed Advice
Unheard Plea
Unprecious Metal
Unrecovered
(for Alpha and Laura Castro)
Used Up
Vacant Verse
Vain Hope
Vaingloria
Vanished
(for Alpha, Dick, Laura, Tony and Carmella Castro)
Vengeance
Veterans’ Encampment
Spectral infantry,
Phantom cavalry
Move inexorably.
Veterans’ Hospital
Victory
Victory (2)
Village Daybook
Crops grow,
Years flow,
Birds go
And come each year, anew.
Map their
Flight where
The air
Evolves from grey to blue.
List all
Birds’ call
Each squall
And whistle heard by you.
Write brief:
Each leaf
Each sheaf
Of pages, chart what’s true.
08-17-78
*
Villon Revisited
(After Francois Villon, b. 1431)
I.
II.
Vincent Millay
(1892-1950)
Candle in a breeze
Of eternities,
Edna flickered faint,
Charring like some martyred saint
Scarlet at the stake,
Embered… for art’s sake.
1983
*
Virgil Finlay
(1914-1970)
Vision
Vision Voyage
Vow
Voyage
Warrior
Time is a trickle of tears that seep
Through the veil,
Wet with moisture of years that weep
Sob, and wail.
Cities crowd
Fields unplowed
Once so proud.
Wasted seeds:
Nothing feeds
Now but weeds.
Wasted Warning
Weapon
(Upon Finding a Rose in a Book of Emily Dickenson)
Weather Report
Weather Song
Wee Melody
Wee Music
Wee Watchers
Wee Wishes
Wee Wraith
Wet Yule
Everyone said we were crazy, our love wouldn’t last out the year,
But we’ve been together a dozen—we fooled them awhile , didn’t we dear?
Our first years were ragged and tough ones, harder by far than the rest,
We had our love and a big stack of bills, but I think those first years were best.
How do you measure your losses, when the love in your life disappears?
Is it in heartaches—or houses—or automobiles?
….When the tears outnumber the years,
When the tears outnumber the years.
How do you measure your losses, when the love in your life disappears?
Is it in in-laws—or court laws—or who keeps the dog?
…When the tears outnumber the years,
When the tears outnumber the years.
06-28-84
*
Whispered
Tell your secrets to the cat,
He’s so quiet that
No one else can learn or guess
What the cat will not confess.
12-25-78
*
White Witch
Who Cares
Wife
Wilde
(1854-1900)
William Blake
(1757-1827)
Wind Bound
Wing-Song Macabre
Winner
Winner (2)
Winter Renewed
Winter Reprieve
Winter Wail
Wishful Writing
Witch-Time
Wolf-Meal
“Good morning, dear, how are you? The breakfast tastes so good,
I’ll call you from my lunch break, the way I said I would.
And I’ve got one word for you that’s in my vocabulary,
And that word’s “forever” and it’s in your dictionary!”
Wood-Witch
Writer’s Block
(for Michael Eng)
Wyoming Winter
Then the cowboy, he rides toward the line-shack and stays there,
While Wyoming winter-winds wail,
Soon the store-keeper’s daughter arrives with provisions,
And a posse that’s close on her trail.
Yawn
Year End
Yellow Rider
Now the villager’s are waking from the dreams inside their heads,
They’re locking doors and windows, and they’re hiding in their beds;
It’s a yellow rainy morning with a mist across the sun…
You can hear the hoof beats coming, terrifying everyone.
And the Rider’s coming closer still you stay inside your room,
You’re looking at his saddle, and his giant hat and plume,
But you cannot see his face because it’s hidden by the brim,
Still you recognize his saddle so you know it must be him.
And the people are appearing at their windows and their doors,
The merchants all are opening their markets and their stores,
And the villages will make believe he never came at all…
But away out on the high road you can hear his mournful call…
You
You Music
(for Anne)
Those lullabies became a funeral dirge when your Mama passed away.
Then you studied love, and rock’n’roll, on the radio in your Daddy’s Chevrolet.
And that wedding organ music, it took Sue from you that sad June day.
You bought your first guitar so you could protest a war you didn’t have to fight.
But your best friend from Eleventh Grade, they played those military taps for him just right.
You got the news, and you got drunk, and sang his favorite songs all night.
You laughed at Country Music till some woman laughed at you, and left you broke and blue.
For the next two years, those old Hank Williams songs, they all came true.
Then some television gospel singer with a toll-free number saved the soul in you.
Your children love those nursery rhymes that Daddy takes the time to sing.
You hit that dance floor with your wife—she stands beside you in spite of every crazy thing.
And when that preacher reads those final words your friends will make their voices ring!
Now the twisting road is narrow, when the years come crowding in,
And you look inside your glass, and see the man you might have been.
She’s got two children—she’s got a husband—and you, you’ve got the railroad track,
You’ve taken her for granted, but she always took you back
Until she found somebody new…somebody true.
05-04-86
*
Zombie Bards