Deuced Pas de Deux

entrée

He:

‘I am alive today, and dancing in the wind
that cools the grass the sun is burning brown
The dunes demur, and gliding gulls rescind …’

She:

‘His splayed legs, in shorts, displayed from calves to toes
are dead ringers for plucked turkey tom cadavers
as far, too far, as epidermis goes.’

 

adagio

stage direction

She makes a wish and writes it on a paper
and seals it inside a bottle with a kiss.

they dance, both singing:

‘We laze upon the littoral and think
we are thinking. Thoughts as thoughtless as the waves
advance and crest and surge onto the sand
in which despite their fecundity nothing grows …’

her variation:

‘A plucked turkey carcass, bled and oven bound
shows better skin tone than the hide that’s found …’

his variation:

‘The deadpan surly words mask how we flirt …’

 

coda

The stake-fried chicken sizzles and goes out
for waffles.

[Shurly chicken-fried steak? Ed.]

Teatime at Guinness Outpost

My spelling checker flips to Rorschach mode.
‘Cremates’ was its suggestion for ‘cream teas’
when I typed ‘creamteas’. The ill this flip must bode
is the basis for my trembling as I ease
a first Guinness from the sideboard, let it chill
down to the temperature of the room
I pretend is British but comes from the bill
for heating that I swept with a new broom
into the fireplace where I store the wood.
I could not pay. When I told that to the gas
man, he said, ‘I did not think you would’.
Read and tremble at what comes to pass
when poets stoop to identicals to rhyme
and chat with spelling checkers till drinks time.

The Codger Conga

Not yet ready (Surely ‘able’ — Ed.) to write anything worth keeping for the OWNERS series, but settling on Ottava Rima as the form. And that encourages stray thoughts (Surely ‘ravings’ — Ed.) like this:

THE CODGER CONGA

He is developing new dance steps without music:
the creep, the slouch, the shuffle, and the waddle.
‘Old age!’ he crows. ‘When I get there I’ll choose it
in preference to rejuvenation twaddle.’
With running gone, and short-range hikes elusive
he chooses totem poles as his role model.
He sits and dozes through the hours that bridge
the gaps between his sidles to the fridge.

Not in His Name

The stupid Christians exile Jesu Cristo
because he’s strange-named, refugee, and Jewish
or was when he preached love, God’s rule, and peace though
they won’t admit to that. They go all shrewish
at the idea he’d want bigotry to cease. No
chance they’d follow him. His eyes weren’t blueish.

Wise Christians, there are many, hide in shame
at the evils that the dumb do ‘in His name’.

Winter Walkies

The wind less dark than coal tar still sufficed
by jiggery-pokery to keep us in the dark.

It scrambled clouds and ringed the moon with ice,
eclipsed it with the world. No solar spark

traversed Earth’s molten core to light the ring
of atmospheric ice around the moon.

The walk home in the dark was twice as frightening
as we had dreaded all the afternoon.

You walked ahead and waved to keep your torch
alight and upright so we’d not get lost.

I saw the large dog pad down from the porch.
Your light blew out precisely when you crossed

your arms to shield your throat as I had dreamed
you would, and since you could not then, I screamed.

Inn Fashions

The old man doffs his nightingale and whinnies.
Aware from stares that his garb is wrong, he waits
near the entrance, while his hostess sets him straight.
‘You’re adorned in bird, as we all are on Wednesdays

but it’s Tuesday! Tuesdays tout le monde wears cow
in pieces on our heads and hands and feet.
And we don’t speak horse on Tuesdays, we all tweet,’
she trills, thrilled seeing he remembers now.