Category Archives: Verse

VIII. A I L M N O P T

I am a minimal animal

a pinpoint pinto in pain

a nominal limo palamino

a limp impala on a pantaloon plain.

 

I’m a Milano lollipop lion

in a Tampa tilapia nation

I plan to plant lantana in Atlanta

I aim to maintain a plantation.

 

I tattoo a militant motto

on a lamplit Latino mailman

I paint an opal lanolin lotion

onto a manila-tan ottoman.

 

I pop a tall pom-pom piñata

atop a million-mañana platoon

A total timpani militia

on a pliant palatial moon.

 

 

IX. STEPHEN KING POLICE CALL

ROUTE 56 ICE PATCH SPUN OUT OF CONTROL OH THEN THE ANIMALS

 

X. QUINTENT

She believed in justice and reason
He in paths already taken
Together they drifted toward heaven


The brightest cherry
is plucked from the lowest branch
where we see it best.


Money – a store of value
and the story of you:
how you obtained it,
where you hoarded it,
when you let go of it,
what you exchanged it for,
whom you bequeathed it to,
why it meant so much to you,
e pluribus you.


Songbirds do not know
the sour hearts of those
to whom sweetly they sing


I never used a line on you
I never had to
I never had one.

 

 

XI. WHEN THE CIRCUS CAME TO TOWN

229 E. Washington St., New Castle, Pennsylvania, 1973
Kodak 126 Instamatic Film

 

XII. MY HAIR IS NICE

I tell myself
my hair is nice
but that doesn’t make it so

I contemplate
how to disguise
my pate with some chapeau

Mayhaps my pate
should celebrate
how my haircuts take
just a minute

And thus I should
just knock on wood –
my head, that is –
and accept it.

 

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5. THE WALK

I don’t take you seriously
is what you told me
on the mossy walkway
overlooking the waterfall
and since you didn’t look at me
when you said it
you must have meant it.

 

Come again? I said
because that is what the
mock-taken-aback say
when something shaming is
unexpectedly revealed
when what was unspoken
now has words.

 

You only mime, you then told me
as your heart reported in.
I swear I heard its beats
bounce off the damp stepstones
and shake the rotted rails
that guarded us only in mime
from the falls below.

 

The mist fell on our cheeks
as we descended the steps.
I struggled to break the disquiet
that had descended on us. But
your footsteps, their echoes –
you had worn dressy heels!
imposed a silence on us.

 

I reached for your hand –
it was there as always, always,
just as Leonard Cohen had purred.
We inched our way down,
de-escalating without words,
steeped in our own thoughts,
needing to take our own time.

 

Then my left foot got wet.
I had stepped in a pool that
the droplets of mist had formed.
As the tails of your raincoat
flapped in the breeze, you
advised me to attend to my shoe
which I was eager to do.

 

I straightened and said
thank you for your care and
thank you for being there
and I asked if you had a tissue.
Together we wiped our cheeks.
Then I kissed yours, now dry,
and on we walked.

 

6. THE PATH

Discovery
Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens, December 2023

7. THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT

Life is too short
to read bad books,
to drink yesterday’s coffee,
to not chase a rainbow or two.
You learn these in turn.

 

Life is too short
to have never tried elderberries
which you must cook before eating
to break down their toxins,
lest life prove too short.

 

Life is too short
to lose track of a friend,
then discover he died
the year before he came to mind.
This happens.

 

Life is too short
to punish yourself
for the mistakes of your youth
plus the others that followed.
So claims your therapist.

 

Life is too short
to not fight injustice!
But we world-savers get old
and the force of our passions
dies when we do.

 

Life is too short,
thought God late one night
as he played his favorite game.
So he extended his legendary hand
and nudged the Lifespan control.

 

 

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(Or, This Body Will Come to Alphabetical Or-der!)

She speaks with that half-hearted Ardor

from her perch in the whiteness of Bangor

mouthing what she thinks passes for Candor

with her eye on who might be her next Donor.

 

She reigns as our national Equivocator:

It’s the one thing that makes her a Factor.

Having failed in her bid to be Governor,

Maine elected her their main Hesitator.

 

Lacking creds as a dogged Investigator,

Susan presents herself as an impartial Juror

(disregarding the con-job by Kavanaugh)

and the Senate’s most serious Legislator

always ‘troubled’  by some gross Misbehavior.

 

She’s never been much of a Negotiator

but simply another shrewd Operator

in the dress of a centrist Protector

and the voice of the dullest of Question-ors.

 

Her true calling was probably a Realtor

instead of a mealy-mouthed Spin-doctor,

a half-truth and quarter-truth Tolerator

whose motives are reliably Ulterior.

 

Ms. Collins found her niche as a Vacillator.

So who needs to be a gender Warrior,

And who needs to be a government X-rayor,

when you can be a fence-sitting Yea-sayor

and get elected as Senator Zig-zaggor?

 

Madame Senate-Or Susan M. Collins

No relation, no, none at all

Playing both sides, A to Z, clumsily.

Maybe the only poem ever written about her

The mediocre poem she’s long deserved.

 

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