Poetry

More years ago than I care to count I flirted with poetry. I wanted to be a writer. I thought writers, like good epicureans, should sample everything. So I joined a poetry group.

I learned two things in that class. 1. I hate writing poetry. Really detest it. Hardest brain twister I’ve every sacrificed some cells to. 2. I hate poets. Even more than I hate writing poetry. Don’t get me wrong, there is poetry I love, but the poets that wrote it are all dead.

While writing these poems I was also watching a lot of Italian horror. You may seem some influence. I considered not putting these up here at all, but if you can’t mock yourself, you have no right mocking others. And I do love mocking others.

So read on if you dare. Comments are on. I can take it.

GODLIKE
Someone asked me, “why do you want to write?” at the same point in time as I was dabbling with poetry, so I tried to explain it through writing. This was the result. I should have just said “To get girls.”

MORTAL TABLET
Mortality is a common theme in the poems of naturalists, and romantics for that matter. But they alway seem to eschew facing it head on. I wrote this poem to annoy a goth poet in my group obsessed with romantic death.

ROMANTIC LOVE 
While I am a true believer in true love, spending any amount of time with a poet in love (which I unfortunately did – she wasn’t in love with me, nor I with her, we just knew each other) that doesn’t have the writing chops to match her ardor can drive you to a poem like this one.

SONNET ON THE FATE OF MR. ‘POSSUM
An homage to Odes and ‘Possums. Snarky fun.

MAN FACTORY
My father worked really hard his entire life and died a few years after retirement. I wrote this before he died because it bothered me he had to work so hard for so little. It is the only poem I didn’t write as a joke, and so it is a bit heavy handed.

Godlike

The white glow of the screen warms the gentle rain of keystrokes that erode and shape the topography of narrative and verse. Inside the computer ones and zeroes gather and run away in write and rewrite as the architect figures the angels, creating form from static. He plays with phrases, cliches and expectations like a …

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Man Factory

Asphalt conveyer belts carry rusty Chevies of primered people to the “new and improved” industrial machine on 122nd street. Uniform lines of corrugated steel paper doll men first glow, then bend, finally pour, into the machine as calloused hands flow into hammers and anvils. Legs discarded, the welder’s arc fuses hunched over spines to a …

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Mortal Tablet

Grinning, the matron looks at me through eyes closed. Spotted hands cross her naked chest, their wrinkles the only companions for her dried up breasts. Pain. Sorrow. Joy. Written in Sanscrit among the folds of this fleshy tablet. But no cypher unlocks her story, now lost. The release is signed, the orderly closes the final …

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Romantic Love

“Slip on your rubbers first, in case you splatter. Hold the shaft tightly and thrust. It’s important to do it quickly. Be careful of slippage. Penetrating for the first time is the hardest.” …from the Embalmer’s Handbook Don’t delay. She’ll rot. The look and smell like a shot doe going to seed on the forest …

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Sonnet on the fate of Mr. ‘Possum

Ah, ‘Possum. Hanging down but right side up. Is your tail a rope, your face a smiling frown? Like a man at the gallows, devoid of hope who, dangling, ponders the noose, you are granted wisdom and see life askew. Your binding tail won’t let you loose, death comes. But you always knew suspended there, …

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