Deep, Like Truth

Your heart shines, glittering like silverplate,
But I believe the truth, so deep and stark,
Shows through: we see you shining in the dark,
Your skin transparent as a mayfly’s fate,
The organ in such an appalling state,
As roughened and scarred as old redwood bark,
Showing what looks to be a maker’s mark
From some feckless source, never known or great.

It isn’t plate, though, is it? What I fear
Is that this tarnish anyone can see
Runs deep, like truth. Somebody once told me
That steel beneath the silver keeps it clear.
Your heart is made of silver, so I hear,
Without that core of steel you’ve claimed falsely.

On Every Day

Envelop me in camphor, like a child
Two, maybe three long generations back,
Watch how my eyes tear, sallow cheeks gone slack,
Noticing how I’m tender, holy, and mild.
I’ve been beset, bewildered and beguiled,
And maybe ended up somewhat off track,
Unmoored, unhinged, my front teeth turning black.
I’ve been reduced, rejected and reviled.

Don’t check the calendar. On every day
Some travesty occurs to slash, draw blood,
And leave our enemies deep in the mud
Without even a chance to slink away
And save themselves. It was the month of May
When I took sick, and called forth the Great Flood.

In My Golden Bower

I wasn’t in the living room last night
When somebody broke in, and spent an hour
Among my bookshelves, in my golden bower.
When I came down at dawn, I had a fright:
Five books were on the sofa, an odd sight
Comprising four books in a messy tower
And one, a study of Dwight Eisenhower,
Hidden beneath a cushion, packed in tight.

I put them all away, but not before
The pencilled notes my bold intruder left
Aroused my interest. No, it wasn’t theft,
But something much worse, because I adore
The clean, white margins that my texts once wore,
So in my golden bower I am bereft.

Raison d’être

If I were devastated by your leaving,
I wouldn’t be turning out sonnets. No,
I’d be in severe mourning, head held low,
Lost totally in my despair, and grieving
Ceaselessly, my hollowed-out heart heaving.
Instead, I’m rhyming — Oh, so pale moon, glow!
You claim I’ve put together a fine show;
But nothing heals like what I’ve been achieving.

Your thieving of their love has broken men,
But not this man; I have this poetry,
This endless challenge, love, catastrophe,
My necessary link between now, then,
And everything I hope to try again.
The future beckons, understandably.

Thanksgiving

Shall we give thanks for all the things we like?
Will we skip something, someone, some old fact,
Or factor, in our joy? We’ll interact,
Express our gratitude, prepare to strike,
Let grievances pass, as new troubles spike.
Remaining grateful, with our souls intact,
Rising above the paltry things we lacked,
We set out once more on our nature hike.

What is our nature, then? Husband, or wife,
Or lone survivor in a fallen state,
Dismissive of the hour, or never late,
We’ll be content with our ungainly life.
We thank each other for the stress and strife,
Sit down to dinner with our friends, and wait.

Specifics

I have dispensed with generalities,
And offer you specifics, as a feast;
No more great gobs of sunrise from the east,
No more delightful play of summer breeze,
We speak only of how your muscles seize —
Your inclination is to call the priest —
Friends joke about the recently deceased,
The squeezed, the tiresome ones they hope to squeeze.

You say you’re tired of all this empty talk,
But we remember learning it from you,
One more loud thing our racing tongues could do
Without as much grasp as a cuckoo clock.
Don’t think I’ve come to criticize or mock;
Ingest, digest abuse, peruse and chew.

That Was Not Love

That was not love; it was only a spell
I cast, and on myself, victim and mage,
Placing my own soul in the golden cage
And tossing both keys in the wishing well,
Enduring more hard hours than I can tell,
More sadness than a man can ever gauge.
I finally agreed to turn the page
When you complained about the noise. Do tell.

I know that I was screaming, day and night.
I’m sorry that you had to suffer, too,
But that was unavoidable. You knew,
And could have quelled my fear, or used my fright,
By holding me too close, to make things right.
Instead you laughed, so that our troubles grew.

Praise

“I can’t praise you,” exclaimed the man of copper,
Burnished by his own empty self-praise.
“It’s early days,” he cried, “It’s early days,
And praise comes truest doled out by eyedropper.”
“Stop jumping round just like a damned grasshopper,”
She told him. “That old nonsense only plays
In Scottish castles: ‘All our yesterdays,’
And so on.” He swallowed down a huge gobstopper.

“You’re such a pig,” she told him. He demurred,
Saying the woman wasn’t beddable,
Plug-ugly, and her pies inedible,
And she responded with a filthy word,
Remarking she had never baked. “I heard,”
She said, “Your praise was never credible.”

I Won’t Explain

I could explain it, but I won’t explain.
Only a few men comprehend, distraught
By ignorance, their cool, searching minds caught
Needing to share what’s in their sharper brain.
A woman asked me once, “Have you gone sane?”
“Oh, I think not, my darling, I think not.
I think you’ve been reading Sir Walter Scott —
Rob Roy! Guy Mannering! Rob Roy again!”

Don’t listen to a woman’s maundering,
Her sad refrain a monument to smoke.
It’s a mere fool’s delight, a pig in a poke,
A female explanation; a loose string,
A vacuous performance, a bee sting
(Death being imminent), an empty joke.

Stop Thinking

Stop thinking now! Dismay disrupts my thoughts,
And I disparage those who practise it.
The man beside me has a coughing fit,
And tells me that his stomach is in knots,
But I don’t care, and, staring at his spots,
I wonder if it’s some fly that alit
And made a home there, a fine place to sit
For one long evening. I should have some shots.

Or drink some shots. I should imbibe much less,
But some days, when I just can’t stop the thinking,
Perhaps that my unwieldy brain is shrinking,
The choice narrows to this: Must I confess,
Or should I run away? It’s not a mess;
I will be happy. Maybe stop my drinking.

Raccoons in the Universe

Relaxing, I put on my fuzzy slippers
To explore the universe. There’s a comet,
Its swerving path about to make me vomit.
Now, looking at the Big and Little Dippers,
I think: raccoons in one of those wood chippers,
Shaking the world — then my Dad will bomb it,
Claiming, “Because it’s missing a grommet
It’ll cause untold damage. Go grab the strippers!”

Then, warning me about those waning moons
That interrupt the paths of falling stars,
Attaching field glasses to my handlebars,
He talks more trash about those fool raccoons
Until my mother yells at him, and swoons.
She freed the fireflies I had caught in jars.

A Current Ballad

Once I’d invented three new kinds of wire
I twined them all around my kitchen table
To learn which ones would serve like 8-gauge cable
But take up less space, like a miniature lyre
That plays the same notes. Then I could retire,
Unless retirement turns out just a fable.
So anyhow, the damn flow wasn’t stable,
And the workman wasn’t worthy of his hire.

I gave that up, remembering the hour:
The calculations simply were not valid,
And I was meant to be fixing a salad,
So I pulled out the fuse, turned off the power,
And emptied out the fridge, still feeling sour,
Until I thought: well, I could write a ballad.

Summer’s End, 1968

Off Pembina Highway, in a motel room,
My mother cries, but won’t explain her reasons.
Is Winnipeg an unexpected tomb,
Located at the back end of warm seasons,
Or is it something else, in her own body?
She’s forty-two, and this is no vacation:
It’s a motel, cheap, dank, a little shoddy,
And maybe that’s the only explanation.
We’ve come here because last spring she wept
When Dr. King was shot, and she insisted,
And our arrival is a promise kept.
Indeed, who could have argued, or resisted?
She’ll make the most of this, as decades pass,
And she will demonstrate iron and class.

All over You

What’s the incentive for a man to lie —
About his hair colour, his height and weight,
His eyes — when you can see him? No debate
Is likely to persuade you that he’s shy
When he’s all over you. His skin is dry
Like snakeskin. Claiming he’s in a bad state,
His fingers slip under your skirt, and skate
Toward you, skittering along your thigh.

Your mother told you men want just one thing —
They’ll lie about that all day long, of course,
Protesting too much till they’re good and hoarse
And in the dark about their own lying.
So if he promises that he can sing,
Make him. Take no excuses. And use force.

Better off

Remember this, but never write it down;
It’s too important as a memory
To be mistaken for a tragedy
Or mere historical event. You frown,
Explaining you were heading into town
When everything blew up. I think the key
Is what you’re feeling now, not what you see,
Not certainty — a verb and not a noun.

That’s why I said, Don’t set it down in writing:
Things change — impermanence rules us
From its high throne, while we’re riding the bus,
Pretending that the future, so inviting,
Is what we’ve been creating. Kill the lighting —
We’re better off in darkness. Please don’t fuss.