The papa bear rises in anger
and throws up the sash and his dinner
plus the tickets he’s bought for the races.
They’ve delivered him bile but no winner.
The mama bear, pining for roses,
sashays to a tout she’d once dangled
to make papa pout, she supposes,
but the tout coldly flattens her angles.
The baby bear Just Right is crying
to change papa’s luck or its diaper
but both parents are deaf or distracted
and the race track has no candy striper.
Do stories start in any sense that’s real?
I used to think so, till I met the cat.
I’d been hunting in the forest and the chill
had leached feeling from my fingers, and my hat
no longer blocked the rain. A chattering rat
had been the only mammal that I’d seen
and even though God knows that it had been
too long since I had eaten there’s a line
I would not cross, then, as to what’s cuisine.
A cat struck down the rat and said, ‘That’s mine.’
‘You spoke,’ I said astonished, and the cat
asked, ‘Was it yours? I’m sorry, here take half.’
And so began a conversation that
while less exalted than a rubaiyat
I had read once that a camel had composed
surpassed the monologue the rat had nosed
around for cheese. It ended in a wheeze
we savoured and then, sated, we both dozed.
Outside a cottage, at the forest edge,
two predators watch people turn on lights
and set an oaken table. A terrine
of something smelling good is ladled out
and, after holding hands and praying, people take
up spoons and, as they say themselves, fall to.
The wolf looks on, disgusted how they slurp.
‘Soup eaters! Aaargh! They make my stomach turn.
Too-little mouths too often quickly open.
Too-nervous forelegs: twisty toes hold fast
to spoons glopflicking drops of moisture up
and into smacking mouths. This will not do.’
‘You are raving,’ says the Raven. ‘Get a grip.
Your ravening ways seem rare in turn to them.
Your mouth transects your face and you’ve no chin,
though that is good, describing me as well.
I hate soup eaters too. No one could think
that they’re beautiful; I sicken seeing knees…’
‘… that bend the wrong way!’ Wolf ends, with a grin.
He and the Raven glance at their own legs
and thank their separate gods they are designed
not monkey-like with legs that bend to aft.
‘I can think you are my equal if I try,’
says Raven, ‘Can you ever learn to fly?’
If cynicism’s seven I am nine.
The labels used for politics seem daft
as those of literature, and even mine
are drafty as a rotten-boarded raft.
Conservative is meaningless where Fate
is actually nothing. Liberal is less.
Romantic’s passed by years its sell-by date
and Realism’s forced and must confess
that they are all, these labels, nothing now.
But Life itself is filled with Gems it means
to be adored, not analyzed on how
they might be labeled. I adore the clean
and mystic wonder of Life’s precious things
like birdsong, smiles, and ageless wedding rings.
Living ’neath my expectations
and way the hail beyond my means
I nick Luther’s ancient pickup
and haul ass for Bobby Breen’s
’cause old Bobby’s got twin daughters
that in springtime give me chills
when they sunbathe in the pasture
where Bird Creek runs from the hills.
Chills that turn to fever as the show gets underway,
Red-hots that can corpse a man too dumb to stay away.
Folks down here fear reputations,
say Breen’s killed men in rage,
say that he shot creep bird peepers
with his double-ought ten-gauge…
(I’m gonna make my move today
and to hail with my cold fear
I have to see those honey twins,
four strong legs, long, up to here.)
…say he spied those peepers panting,
hunkered down Bird Creek’s left bank;
gave them both acute lead poisoning,
weighed them down so much they sank.
Folks say the twins cried, “Daddy, shoot!”
sauntered, dressing, making fun
of the creek’s pale rosy bubbles,
twin sets in the setting sun.
Chills that turn to fever as the show gets underway,
Red-hots that can corpse a man too dumb to stay away.
I act a little cool, half wise,
when folks tell me all this stuff,
glad they’re so dumb and forgetful
that I told them most of it
to keep the other guys impressed,
so far from Breen’s domain.
Laugh to see the yokels shudder
when they chant the old refrain:
Chills that turn to fever as the show gets underway,
Red-hots that can corpse a man too dumb to stay away.
Here comes Brenda bouncing blithely;
she’s the blonder of the two.
Where the hail did Ellie Mae go?
Can’t set sail with half a crew.
I step out and wave to Brenda,
shade my eyes against the sun
then spot Ellie in the shadows
as she raises her pa’s gun.
Chills that turn to fever as the show gets underway,
Red-hots that can corpse a man too dumb to stay away.
“We’ens hear you’ve bad mouthed Daddy,”
comes to me in stereo,
“The wrong you’ve done that righteous man
means now you will have to go.”
Brenda hurls a chunk of mine quartz
that I dodge but she just grins.
Ellie Mae sights down both barrels,
fires a round into my shins.
Chills that turn to fever as the show gets underway,
Red-hots that can corpse a man too dumb to stay away.
They drag me down the creek’s left bank.
I see buckshot on the rocks,
shreds of still-new stone-washed fabric
from red Wigwam hunting socks.
Both twins laugh me down like witches,
that’s the last sound my brain gleans
as Breen’s double-ought chops cotton
in my Calvin Klein blue jeans.
Saint Patrick, the only man to see green snakes
in Ireland where no serpent ever slid,
would screech ‘Hiss off’ at christenings and wakes
until the Pope sent envoys to forbid
the use of Irish whiskey where he preached.
He got religious orders and a miter on his hat
and drove away the snakes that would have reached
green Eire. He gave his whiskey to the cat.
When Irish eyes are smiling, the English say it’s drink
but tonight it’s ‘Up the Irish’ and it’s ‘Irish rule OK’
and I am not the only one who sees The Serpent wink.
It will be another year until Saint Patrick’s day
so dance while dram and Guinness pint are drawn
and mind your step. Don’t squelch that leprechaun.
I think that I will never see
the point of tarting up a tree
too small to bless me with some shade
or fruit to press for lemonade.
A tree so minuscule to need
protection when the dachshund peed.
A tree if by a marmot climbed
would break and let him get enslimed
in mud dug up among its roots
by truffle-hunting bandicoots.
A tree attributed to chaps
who’ll stew a spaniel if it naps.
A bonsai tree whose fairy size
is meant some say to maximize
the egos of our human race
that loses little losing face.
A tree as large as broccoli stumps;
a sort of mushroom with the mumps.
A tree whose lumber would if pressed
fail to provide one decent chest.
Enfin a tree too small for me
to eulogize. A flimflam tree.
A rap poem (or was that a ‘wrap’?) with a painting made especially for the poem by Madja Westermann.
Lily Leigh Drone
Queen Leigh, quiet frotting on her throne,
was popping uppers in her Drone
to hot his heigh-hos into heat
and blitz some light years in his meat.
‘Buzz, Drone,’ she whispered, ‘hit the roof
and stay there till you bring back proof
that your smoke’s hot, your pelt is sleek
and you be more than lung in geek.’
Old Drone rolled over, shot his wings
beyond his black and bright orange rings.
Eyes aglitter like shattering glass
he battered air, slapped her back. ‘Lass,
you watch yourself with that their dope
or hanging you won’t need no rope.
I’m out of here. Your slam yo poetry
will shaft us both. You’ve hit my ‘no’ key.’
‘No, baby, no. Oh god don’t go!
You know I can’t take no Big No.’
Queen Leigh fretted just like she meant it.
But Drone was gone. She’d really bent it.
He buggered off, that big Drone bee,
and flew off past the Dogwood tree
and past that too, to Lilly’s hive.
Lit at her door, and dug her jive.
Drone breached her door, got stuck right in.
His uppers pooped, he dropped his chin.
He dropped his guard. Her guards dropped him
and gimped him bad as Tiny Tim.
They slapped him down, they pinned his wings
and rumbled in his under things.
He screamed at first. They made him coo
then scream again inside the loo.
Dragged from said loo to sad lean-too
beneath the hive, where he came to,
old Drone woke to see blistering tracks
etching down his legs — thick heat — hot wax!
Waxed from his toes to all six hips
Drone cursed and swore off future trips.
He flexed his sting and found it had gone
fishing for a wring for wince too strong.
‘Lily did me,’ he mumbled slack
mandibled, word sense coming back.
‘I’ll get her soon,’ he sissed alone,
nursing grief like an OJ clone.
Back on the hill Leigh missed her thrill.
To stall her chill she posed as shill
for her cousin Jeff’s blue tea dance —
where hornet wasps blocked her entrance.
Leigh found that fine. She did not mind
their histamine. It made her grind
her single eyes to compound pies
of cobalt skies in pasture size.
All rave juiced up Leigh flew her nest,
sought Lily’s lair, heard Drone’s request
to kill or save him, either one would do.
She chose the latter, pranged Lily too.
Drone dragged his butt back home with Leigh
and cried, then bragged, then said he’d stay.
Leigh looked him over. She dug his shtick.
‘Drone baby,’ she said, ‘your legs are slick!’
Earth Tourist 