Euthyphro and the Apology

Gilly had taken a big hit of windowpane
Which was a bad idea because he was driving
But he didn’t wreck the car as far as I can remember
But I do remember thinking sequence doesn’t matter as much as people think
Especially in the middle of the proceedings
When the disco ball expanded to fill the entire colosseum

The drab little professor with his pointer and mortarboard
I was thinking he needs to get a hod to go with that hat
But he ended up saying some pretty good things
About Bismark and the banks and how earlier
The revolutions of 1848 were a turning point in history
When history failed to turn

But you can’t have a doughnut shop without grease
You can’t have an immune system without lymphocytes
Nothing is perfect in this world
That reference to the werewolf’s hair was a poetic hyperbole
Amanda said Can’t you ever talk about anything except the Gators
And Gilly chuckled and just kept driving

Gay men capable of true gaiety
The steady-eyed spinster active in her milieu
Denizens of the demimonde who could take poetry or leave it
Wives of high-cultural celebrities
Phlebotomists and augurers of the sphygmomanometer
Workers in the convenience stores the warehouses and the fast-food restaurants
Decadent aristocrats
Heroes of social justice feckless dilettantes and scions of great families
Hipsters in their implausible garb
Gray drudges with a secret passion
Outsiders of problematic mental health
Neurodiverse entertainers who dwell in the ambiguity of gender
Executives of going concerns
Magistrates generals technicians attorneys obstetricians
Teenagers boisterous or withdrawn
Prodigious children who lisp in numbers
Rude mechanics and effete aesthetes
Sighing maidens born to blush unseen
Dowdy dour professors solemnly chanting through their pointed beards

What are we after here
Statements expositions analyses accounts
Songs laments jubilations libretti dirges cries of the heart
Architectonic verbal edifices spontaneous overflows
Sonnets villanelles heroic couplets blank verse
Ballads spenserians pindarics or poems in prose
Massive narratives in ottava or terza rima
Notes queries arguments
Limericks tongue twisters jokes puns and acrostics
Metaphysical conceits
Scurrilous attacks
Obscene broadsides
Minute renderings of the smallest and most remote county
Intrepid evocations of cosmic immensity
Arimanes seated on a globe of fire
A sparrow pecking at the gravel
Sweet serenades to ripening love
Sour cocktails compounded of ennui
Salty chanties of ribald fancy
Bitter denunciations of vice and folly
The lubricious umami of vowels fricatives nasals plosives and stops
The just representation of general life
The egotistical sublime
A thing of beauty and a joy forever

The forest primeval the Spanish Steps
The sounds smells and pace of the city
The field where man follows the plow
The field where woman binds the sheaves
The shop with its gear tackle and trim of all trades
The wandering clouds the looming mountains the restless seas
The leafy branch whereon the songbird sings
The soft earth wherethrough the tender flower peeps
The slender skyward fingers of trees in winter
The great bridges towers spires blockhouses roundhouses and vehicle assembly buildings
The wagons ships aircraft freight trains cars nuclear-powered submarines and oxcarts jogging on pneumatic tires
The virtual spaces defined by distance-obliterating media of transmission and reception
The hutches stalls and kennels of our brute companions equine canine or feline
The homes for the aged in their wisdom and cognitive decline
The church the school the place of business
The field of contention and the refuge of peace
The daycare redolent of paste finger paints and infantile effluence
The equivocal resorts of rage lust and melancholy
The granular details
The abstruse speculations
The daunting search through the universal library

Human persons treat of these subjects these places
Who have occupied some place of their own
Gelatinous organisms with the gift of speech
No different from anybody else
And everybody is different
All perforce take action in the world
And some shoulder the doom of squaring the circle
That is
Of wording the truth
Valorous endeavor
But is the particular compulsion
To cry to expose to disclose to overflow
Worthy of particular attention
It is not
For we must regard the issue and not the issuance as the matter prime
The progeny and not the gestation
The poem and not the poet
The life is not the thing
Except insofar as it looses the latch
To open the gate
To set out on the excursion
In the realms of immortality

What’s fair play in poetry
I don’t mean what are the rules
Inasmuch as for some time it has been the case
That the best rules are those unspoken
Those incapable of being spoken
And poets therefore have labored at the miserable job
Of reinventing the wheel

Or to shine a sunnier light
Poets have always had to exercise care
Lest they commit some blunder
Blatantly obvious to the world
Though entirely opaque it might be
To themselves

You should rise above concern about the world

You should probably insert an image from time to time
So the current exercise is already wanting
You should attend to the sounds
And try to establish some rhythm preferably subtle
So wanting wanting and wanting

And shouldn’t there be some sort of theme
I mean shouldn’t you have something to say
And is it a problem that stating and expressing
Never quite match up
And even so mustn’t a statement or for that matter an expression
Contain some content

And what of foul play
Aren’t some topics word choices images and attitudes
Self-evidently forbidden

And if the rules are hidden
Is there such a thing as cheating
Starting off a poem with a conjunction say
Or deploying an unfocused demonstrative
And yet a decent poem might begin
And on that day

. . .

And pronouns sheesh
Some he or she or it gallivanting around
Performing actions unanchored random unimaginable
And don’t get me started on I

And what on God’s green earth makes a poem good

And adjectives so cheap
Onerous
Shy
Salty
Transparent
Uncultivated
Snippy
Malodorous

Wit wisdom sagacity discernment juice
Skill ease virtuosity flair sprezzatura
Peace justice compassion beauty truth
Fact
Nobody on earth can write a poem
And yet millions of poems have been written
Or maybe just one

So love a poem as you love your neighbor
Let it do its thing

The tears should have been golden
We could have shared a fond idea
Instead of wasting our reserves in theoretical consultation

But all of our expressions
Mere triangle-1 PETE
Spuriously interchangeable

The shapes of green soldiers
The Kevlar-coated gladiators
The ecstasies of tactic and kill-ratio

Can we not weep together
Can we not agree on that much
Or are we prevented by the iron-clad doctrines

And what lies behind the seeming-durable exterior
The soft metallic-looking plates that corrode
But never fully dissipate

Enamored of the armatures
We neglect the gelatinous organism
The permeability of a frog

Dazzled by our tower of plastic
That stretches to the highest heaven
And strikes not dumb but glutting in spoken cacophony

Thereby drowning the opportunity
For a single instance
Of the aha-recognition

One party devoted to the mechanisms of history
Another devoted to the mechanical operation of the spirit
Both confusing numerals with infinite number

We tread upon far planets because we must
We must employ the latest invention
We must sustain the lust for dominion

The genie’s out of the bottle again
Another genie another bottle
Another bout of deadly wishes

And thus a universe of unmasterable indeterminacy
Of a lonely neutrino
Amid the one life within us and abroad

No ideas but in things they say
But what is a thing
What somebody says it is I guess

This magnolia casts up offspring
From its sickly fecund roots
Which tree is the tree

Or maybe I’m wrong
And seeds sprung where they fell
And root and bole alone but never soil

I cannot justify this paltry mumble
In the plaza of great actions
And innumerable speeches

I cannot bring myself to formal exercise
Nor can I bring myself to weep alone
And thus the silly unintelligible madrigal

The tears should have been frankincense and myrrh
We could have forgone the histrionic polymers
I should have clad myself in blissful silence

heer natur lgrime
sori tumbilt

sef

weedsea sperless
woi cirtus slazoubt

ciivs alto lrgrime

Fastzu Gaiesy pue dimn

Back in the days of VHF
An unassigned channel would fill with snow
And helpless not to see patterns there
You would register a circle a spiral
A sliding past of tectonic plates
The alpha beta chi omega of an unknown script

The boattail flew to the ground from overhead
The cardinal made one hop to his left
Without leaving the branch on which he perched
A squirrel decomposes at the molecular level
The nucleotides refuse to pair
The helix doesn’t stack up

Centaurs and Lapiths contend in London
While their home crumbles on the Acropolis
Tourists at Lascaux get to see paintings of paintings
Most of silent film has evaporated or burned
A thing of beauty is a joy forever
Only because joys not things can be conserved

How do you throw a pot without clay
First trash the equipment
Then forget everything you ever thought you knew
About pots clay and throwing

A battle ensues every time
A person encounters another person
Other events take place simultaneously true
But an unavoidable concomitant of meeting is battle

This discomfiting truth results in part
From the inability of people to state the truth
Baldly nakedly without figure or embellishment
The word every for example is a metaphor

As are life truth person nakedly and metaphor
All metaphors
And metaphors do not conceal truth but on the contrary
Represent a mundane gesture toward revelation

Nor are figure or embellishment necessarily blameworthy
Participants potentially in a decorative decorum
But people do not typically content themselves with beauty
But demand instead such truth as they themselves possess

Ask her some suggestion
That the same as that
Can could would be knocking
Cat pulled a little stone
Every on
Left a snog for her
Repellent but handsome
Shoulders too near but nice color
Trinkets for the lawn lady
Cloud of toss
We would have some harms
Lively people in the ground
Place yourself in another room
Who talks long left
Key told us pick out a broom day
Curd
All guests in the fall the road
We’re we’re goggie gone
And the ma and the pa stitches
Left arm pre-reader
Test tube on Friday
Treble master
Last out in hilarious
Sigh called to delete you
Transitive crank
All religion grizzles
Miss the first huddle
Tickles in the brave you’re
Next up on the leap
They mouthed a school approach employment
Sticky sugar cup
Would junk up the mike to backstroke his’n
The haunt and the grease popper
Is are purse to go
To better gaslight otherwise make Mac attack
Man nan touch embargo
Unless it’s mechanical or something
Justice don’t need me
To suck where the rectangles grow
Dry rattle
These locations he
Ban-dance out of focus
Someone’s gotta laissez-faire
Stirrup
Beside the world into sheet and woad
Him the rains [or reins or reigns] betold
That’s spacebob
Ur punt mean lay tube
On the bamboo knock knock
Sob galoot
Lancelot to go home
They Strongbad filed a picnic
Towel mall the
Bloom links pard election
Tom hearly rang rum
Crash gobs of teddy resort
No lodge call raisin
Rube so many rooms away
Old old tile
Car perpetual Haitian
Best guest sol removal
Epsom consider a tool
Ab sat so
High terror
Ketch praybills stock a meme Roth
Gam blast t’ward the seeker
Durst
Comment
Sares are born tweak a text
Hum hare [or hair] the hero
Tom’s reign [or rain or rein] the telephone game
Trumbull’s a sackbut
Representing the most of one day
Art end tick the city
Test

Reports contend that the winds out of the west
Blow moderately today
But I reckon their force to be stiffer than that
More than mere breath of springtime’s being
More like the panting of an old man out of shape
If that panting could be steadier
A pressure of uninterrupted force

The clouds move as if self-propelled
In the more blue than cloud
Much more
Evenly spaced though irregular of shape and size
And the shapes transmogrify before the very vision
And the ragged edges dissipate in delicatest gradient

One them passing nearest the sun
Almost directly overhead
Displays a spectrum from corner to corner
Green lavender orange and pink
Reading from left to right of course
I must put it into words
I can’t just enjoy the comely phenomenon
The clouds were unusually satisfactory today

Did I forget to mention Wayne Shorter
Did I forget to mention Bacchus and Ariadne
Did I forget to mention that dream in which the bridge keeps rising and never crests
Did I forget to mention The Ode to a Nightingale
Did I forget to mention Bessie Smith singing St. Louis Blues
Did I forget to mention Louis Armstrong’s accompaniment to Bessie Smith on St. Louis Blues
Did I forget to mention the harmonium player on St. Louis Blues whose identity remains I believe uncertain
Did I forget to mention On What Matters
Did I forget to mention Django Reinhardt playing St. Louis Blues with his brother
Did I forget to mention Jimi Hendrix
Did I forget to mention a child’s utterance ah swimming pool I swim
Did I forget to mention a child’s utterance upon seeing a picture of an ostrich a goose
Did I forget to mention a child’s response to being wished a happy birthday happy birthday to you too
Did I forget to mention the Buford Highway Farmers Market
Did I forget to mention the births of my children and grandchildren and the range and intensity of feelings that have attended their growth
Did I forget to mention Huy Fong chili garlic sauce
Did I forget to mention the printer’s apron Tom gave me
Did I forget to mention P90s
Did I forget to mention Herbie Hancock
Did I forget to mention Chick Corea
Did I forget to mention The Rolling Stones in Norfolk in 1972
Did I forget to mention Stevie Wonder in Norfolk in 1972
Did I forget to mention The Grateful Dead in Miami in 1970
Did I forget to mention the one life within us and abroad
Did I forget to mention Fleetwood Mac in Miami in 1969
Did I forget to mention Led Zeppelin in Jacksonville in 1969
Did I forget to mention heedless intimacy in 1972
Did I forget to mention Weather Report
Did I forget to mention the Mahavishnu Orchestra
Did I forget to mention The Harry Smith Anthology
Did I forget to mention Big Mama Thornton
Did I forget to mention The Beatles
Did I forget to mention the Lion’s Club barbecue at Homewood Park
Did I forget to mention my mother’s allowing me to add the milk to the cornbread mix
Did I forget to mention Smokey Robinson
Did I forget to mention James Brown
Did I forget to mention Ray Brown
Did I forget to mention Kinderszenen
Did I forget to mention The Apology of Hephaestus
Did I forget to mention Ma Rainey
Did I forget to mention Mississippi John Hurt
Did I forget to mention Dock Boggs
Did I forget to mention Nevermind
Did I forget to mention Dick Justice
Did I forget to mention Hank Williams
Did I forget to mention Kid A
Did I forget to mention Johnny Cash
Did I forget to mention Scotty Moore
Did I forget to mention Euthyphro and the Apology
Did I forget to mention Aphex Twin
Did I forget to mention the cartoons of Tex Avery Bob Clampett Friz Freleng and Chuck Jones
Did I forget to mention Ron Carter
Did I forget to mention Miles Davis and each musician who ever played with Miles Davis and every note Miles Davis ever played not that I’ve heard every note but all the ones I’ve heard were unspeakably beautiful
Did I forget to mention Bob Dylan
Did I forget to mention Mike Bloomfield
Did I forget to mention Aretha Franklin
Did I forget to mention Ahmet Ertegun
Did I forget to mention Mad magazine
Did I forget to mention Quincy Jones
Did I forget to mention The Chemical Brothers
Did I forget to mention Martin Scorcese
Did I forget to mention 2001: A Space Odyssey A Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon
Did I forget to mention Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Did I forget to mention The Godfather and Apocalypse Now
Did I forget to mention the crust of Athens Pizza
Did I forget to mention Silas Marner
Did I forget to mention David Copperfield
Did I forget to mention Monty Python’s Flying Circus
Did I forget to mention Dashiell Hammett
Did I forget to mention the eagle’s nest in a whitened tree beside I-95
Did I forget to mention the Smiley novels of John Le Carré
Did I forget to mention the kimono my beloved wore on 27th Street
Did I forget to mention the Bernie Gunther novels of Phillip Kerr
Did I forget to mention all the novels and stories of Thomas Mann
Did I forget to mention Cannon’s Jug Stompers
Did I forget to mention about a third of the sonnets and plays of Shakespeare
Did I forget to mention Sonny’s Blues
Did I forget to mention my heroic parents
Did I forget to mention the beauty of the human form
Did I forget to mention about a quarter of The Canterbury Tales
Did I forget to mention about a tenth of the poetic output of William Wordsworth
Did I forget to mention The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Frost at Midnight and the Dejection Ode
Did I forget to mention about a third of the poetic output of WB Yeats
Did I forget to mention about a sixth of the poetic output of Wallace Stevens
Did I forget to mention Ulysses
Did I forget to mention Anna Karenina
Did I forget to mention The Crying of Lot 49
Did I forget to mention Midnight’s Children
Did I forget to mention Song of Solomon
Did I forget to mention tiny dried flowers that Janice place in the vase of a vanilla bottle
Did I forget to mention Slaughterhouse 5
Did I forget to mention Ann Carson
Did I forget to mention about nine-tenths of the poetic output of Emily Dickinson
Did I forget to mention Jean Cocteau
Did I forget to mention Blind Arthur Blake
Did I forget to mention Marcel Duchamp
Did I forget to mention The Firebird Petrushka and The Rite of Spring
Did I forget to mention Édouard Manet
Did I forget to mention Andy Warhol
Did I forget to mention Brian Jones on guitar harmonica recorder vibraslap or mellotron
Did I forget to mention Robert Johnson
Did I forget to mention the invariably lovely poetic output of Walt Whitman
Did I forget to mention Born Cross-Eyed
Did I forget to mention that dream in which the flying cyclist one of five ignited and the charred bones fell rattling to the ground
Did I forget to mention DK & The Hoop Snakes
Did I forget to mention George Martin
Did I forget to mention Mood Indigo and East St Louis Toodle-Oo
Did I forget to mention a Guinness or a gin snowcone with a fat joint or the Vermont Maid and a 7-Up the day after before I got sober
Did I forget to mention Oscar Peterson
Did I forget to mention Martha Reeves and the Vandellas
Did I forget to mention Art Tatum
Did I forget to mention Joe Pass
Did I forget to mention Ella Fitzgerald
Did I forget to mention Calvin and Hobbes
Did I forget to mention R Crumb
Did I forget to mention Smarties
Did I forget to mention Lester Young
Did I forget to mention Marian who companions me not without pleasure apparently
Did I forget to mention Billie Holliday
Did I forget to mention Lida May Tucker
Did I forget to mention Graham Nash
Did I forget to mention The Doors
Did I forget to mention Charley Patton
Did I forget to mention the Letter from a Birmingham Jail
Did I forget to mention The Kinks
Did I forget to mention Mayfield ice cream
Did I forget to mention The Animals
Did I forget to mention the noble achievements of those who suffer defects in their private lives
Did I forget to mention California Dreamin’ and Monday Monday
Did I forget to mention 96 Tears
Did I forget to mention Psychotic Reaction
Did I forget to mention Time Won’t Let me
Did I forget to mention Venus
Did I forget to mention Be My Baby
Did I forget to mention Don’t Worry Baby
Did I forget to mention Crimson and Clover
Did I forget to mention the memo from Richard Ellmann requesting to borrow my copy of The Divine Marquis
Did I forget to mention Spirit in the Sky
Did I forget to mention Mechanical World
Did I forget to mention Marvin Gaye
Did I forget to mention Pegasus
Did I forget to mention The Pixies
Did I forget to mention the Rolling Stones records produced by Jimmy Miller
Did I forget to mention Jack Casady and Jorma Kaukonen
Did I forget to mention Lou Reed
Did I forget to mention David Bowie
Did I forget to mention O
Did I forget to mention Mick Ronson
Did I forget to mention Jeff Beck
Did I forget to mention Disraeli Gears
Did I forget to mention Koko
Did I forget to mention The Miami Pop Festival
Did I forget to mention the time I watched Monterey Pop while tripping and wearing a dress
Did I forget to mention the Blind Owl
Did I forget to mention Howlin’ Wolf
Did I forget to mention Franz Schubert
Did I forget to mention the 3rd the 5th the 6th the 7th and the 9th
Did I forget to mention Tannhäuser Tristan und Isolde and The Ring
Did I forget to mention The Marriage of Figaro the Magic Flute and the Requiem
Did I forget to mention Claude Debussy
Did I forget to mention A German Requiem
Did I forget to mention The Three Penny Opera
Did I forget to mention The Mikado
Did I forget to mention La Bohème
Did I forget to mention Camille Pissarro
Did I forget to mention Muddy Waters
Did I forget to mention Jason Thibodeau
Did I forget to mention Augie Meyers
Did I forget to mention Sergei Prokofiev
Did I forget to mention Booker T and the MG’s
Did I forget to mention Wilson Pickett
Did I forget to mention Tom Jones
Did I forget to mention Tom Jones
Did I forget to mention Steve Stewart
Did I forget to mention my hot-rodded Twin Reverb that burned up in a van fire along with the Japanese Stratocaster now lovingly displayed on my bedroom wall
Did I forget to mention A Love Supreme
Did I forget to mention The Fighting Temeraire, tugged to her last berth to be broken up, 1838
Did I forget to mention Elvin Jones
Did I forget to mention Songs of Innocence and Experience and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Did I forget to mention birds
Did I forget to mention bugs
Did I forget to mention The Fall
Did I forget to mention crustaceans
Did I forget to mention molluscs
Did I forget to mention Max Roach
Did I forget to mention mountains
Did I forget to mention peanut butter sandwiches with raspberry preserves
Did I forget to mention Manhattan cheese cake
Did I forget to mention Jasper Johns
Did I forget to mention a soft soft steamed reuben with real Russian dressing
Did I forget to mention oceans
Did I forget to mention lakes
Did I forget to mention the St. Johns River and the estuary at its mouth
Did I forget to mention Fernandina Beach
Did I forget to mention Vilano Beach
Did I forget to mention Jenson Beach
Did I forget to mention the wild violets through which my father strolled while singing Violet and lapsing into a whistle after a brief groan when he forgot the lyrics
Did I forget to mention the greasepaint mustache WC Fields wore while juggling cigar boxes
Did I forget to mention trees
Did I forget to mention flowers
Did I forget to mention fungi
Did I forget to mention bacteria
Did I forget to mention the chili d’arbol sauce at Willy’s
Did I forget to mention John Ashbery
Did I forget to mention mammals domesticated and wild
Did I forget to mention Mrs. Farah’s hummus
Did I forget to mention the artistry of sunsets and sunrises
Did I forget to mention Son House
Did I forget to mention skies cloudy or fair
Did I forget to mention stars and planets
Did I forget to mention rocks stones pebbles and sand
Did I forget to mention intricate tracery of mycelia
Did I forget to mention artificial objects that imitate nature
Did I forget to mention natural objects that imitate artifice
Did I forget to mention the meteor falling alongside I-75
Did I forget to mention The Importance of Being Earnest
Did I forget to mention Dmitri Shostakovich
Did I forget to mention Jellyroll Morton
Did I forget to mention My Cat Jeoffry
Did I forget to mention the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath
Did I forget to mention PCOET
Did I forget to mention James Tate
Did I forget to mention the equivocal bliss of effrent
Did I forget to mention Etta James
Did I forget to mention Ray Charles and the Raelettes
Did I forget to mention The Ode on a Grecian Urn
Did I forget to mention Thelonius Monk
Did I forget to mention how Matt secretly attached 20 clothespins to the shirt I was wearing
Did I forget to mention This Land Is Your Land which Karen and I used to play as an improvised piano duet while our parents were trying to listen to Walter Cronkite
Did I forget to mention the musicians on Cheap Thrills as which Hugh told me falsely but generously that I was as good a guitar player
Did I forget to mention Mighty 690 The Big Ape and Station 60 WPDQ between which Hugh and I used to switch in search of Satisfaction
Did I forget to mention Mr Smyth
Did I forget to mention coffee
Did I forget to mention the holy communion of family and friends

For David Melnick has died
The angel pcoet of apparitional words
O weedsea
O sordea

Did I forget to mention
Forget to mention woodpeckers
Who crank up their chatters like a Willys Jeep
Exuberant to drum the roof rain gutters
For bird does not live by wood alone

And you just have to wrack your brain
What the hell is a votive lassitude
I know what lassitude is
And I know that votive is an adjective
Related to devote

That’s the thing about poetry
The words can be more or less normal
But they’re going to bump up against each other
Peculiarly
And suddenly cvmwoflux and a hail of pmisti effrent

And you click the link and again and again
Credentials not recognized
And you don’t wrack your brain at all
You just accept your impotence
At least John Ashbery gave us something to work with

Billowing billowing the rise of light
After days of darkness

Quit talking about triggers
Don’t ask why I’m depressed I just am

And grateful however brief
For momentary relief

Out here in the suburbs with my daughters my grandchildren my wife
My sons who come to visit often
Wealth beyond the imagining of a Keats or Chatterton
Poets broken by poverty appreciated only posthumously
Out here with the internet and cable television and streaming services
Trying to raise a lawn from the recalcitrant clay
Because neighbors and culture and self-appointed authority demand a lawn
Trimmed clipped tamed mowed and manicured
While all the time the mocking clay shows its ruddy face
I should import a ton of soil from prairie Illinois

But the azaleas go nuts all on their own
Immemorially planted by a real estate developer’s contractors
While a towering pine sprung all on its own before the front porch
Before my eyes a pine grew towering
And down the street the spreading oak majestic in its symmetry
Sliced open for the power lines but thereby revealing its own powerful limbs

And the birds go nuts the bobolinks robins cardinals mockingbirds phoebes
And the many birds whose songs and colors I cannot identify
That one delicious song five chirps and a trill
The soaring buzzards and the soaring raptors
And the languorous crows skilled and cunning
And the bluejays the call of a crow cranked up an octave
Birds that feed on death like all in the kingdom of the animals
And two versions of the barred owl’s cry at night
Six or eight regular notes or the wild arpeggios of the mating frenzy
A phoebe attacked me once when I was hanging laundry on the line
It too thought me eccentric for hanging laundry on a sunny Sunday

The little white cat with black spots
Timid but a little braver now that its larger rival has gone
It still retreats when I make an overture
They say a coyote mauled a chihuahua
Who nevertheless survived the ordeal

You have to drive a car to get into the city
You could take a bus but the schedule is erratic since the lockdown
Or you could drive to the train station
The suburbs assume an automotively equipped populace
And we have driven a car to many great cities Philadelphia Chicago Jacksonville Orlando Charlotte
To visit family and friends in their respective suburbs
I want to be of the people and not of the populace
But demographics are destiny
We do not create ourselves
Except beloved reader in these dear pages

Sea oats pierce the salmon clouds
Sky touches the land
Sunrise at Fernandina

The tiny rocket lifts off with a quick fizzing hiss
And parachutes peacefully to earth
In a move favorable for entropy
Propellent’s release of energy irreversible

But what is entropy
Something like a gorgon I think
You never see it
But if it sees you you die

Gravitation they say is a dimple in spacetime
An artifact a momentary subtraction from mother earth
Perception an illusion more or less
This poem another Mad poiuyt

I burst into a room and yell
What is this crap
And the multitude in unison exclaim
It’s crap sir

I made an error several days ago
The human population seven billion
What do I think this is 2011
Well one seven-billionth is not a large number
And one eight-billionth somewhat less

And yet this little life seems so immense
The drapes the window the magnolia
Its leaves shivering with raindrops
How could I have wasted so many days and hours
Condemning the little permeable self

It seemed so impressive at the time
So thoroughly suffused with significance
That imitation of indigenous behavior
The profiles of the demoiselles
The enigmatic gesture
Its innate meaning lost
Spontaneous according to plan
The attempt despite itself
To avoid expulsion from light
By seeking crepuscular refuge

But we took up residence in the landfill
And made continents our kitchen midden
We decorate with detritus
The former umbrella its spokes all bent
The dresser of deal lacking the three glass knobs
The rinds of melon and pork belly
The Mosrite down from six strings to two
The timid peroration
In iambickish pentametroid

How many James Bond movies have there been
Batman John Wick Ethan Hunt
Thor the god immortal
Successes nobody can fail to expect

I saw a hawk carry away a chipmunk
They say nine attempts out of ten are doomed to fail
I saw another chipmunk carry leaves into a burrow
Preparing I guess for the spring arrivals

My mother would be 99 in June
If she hadn’t succumbed
To years-long decomposition of body and brain
She shouldn’t have had to suffer like that

But sometimes you can allow yourself to wonder
How will Oedipus accept the truth
Maybe it will be different this go-round
Will Tom Jones settle down with his Sophie

Bacteria exchange genetic material

Some work of noble note
No none
Why should the world note
The work of one among seven billion

Fame resides where the ghost ones go
It rises and falls upon the currents
Of a pear-shaped globe
Trickling the edges of a four-cornered circle

Tracing the frantic oscillation
Of an algorithm
Shooting in waves
From a senile tyrant’s workshop

Warm wet days lurch from lull to crisis
Cumulonimbus blitzkrieg
And mornings absorbed in drainage
And the settling of timbers

As it fled the robin made a cry
That I had never heard it make before
The barred owl called in broad daylight
Cars raced loudly on never-yet trodden streets

Licentious gnats
Gathered in their nebulous swarms
Barely conscious alive and dead before sunrise
Their inert eggs overwintering in the sand

This sickly Spring
This April fossilized in song and tale
Flowers that look like pictures of flowers
Spiky waves of generality

Remnants of flowers
Gelatinous corpses
Curtains for secret ovules
Trees and shrubs festooned with roadkill

Who’s to say and who knows know
Who understands intelligence
If the work were noble
You wouldn’t care about note

And thus the busy sulker introverts
The ghostly paradigm
Enacts the immemorial script
Devours the indigestible vague procedures

Not bile more like phlegm
This apathetic phantom cramp
Resinous vaporous accretion
Cooked in a dun tar spleen

These fragments serve no structural function
But only establish the interstices
Wherefrom waxy roots
Draw insufficient sustenance

So keep yourself to yourself
Do not expose your hollowness
Discretion is the better part
Or keep babbling in the rain

I feared the blast of the atom bomb
But I never held my classmates’ hands
Making our way to a nearby church
Our parents waiting to collect
Those of us who survived the shooting