You Will Remember This

You will remember this. Try to forget,
Work on your lucid dreaming for a year,
Maybe a decade, discard senseless fear,
Engage with spirits, haunt yourself and fret,
Consult the stars, pretend we never met,
Nothing will change; that much at least is clear.
You’re hoping, but no light is waiting here
For you or anyone. Not now. Not yet.

As for myself, I never could recall
The past, or any of those memories
You can’t expunge. You know the names of trees;
I barely know my own name. I’m in thrall
To dancing lights, shadows, the panther’s call,
And wakefulness. Night is a time of ease.

Chaff

One day I swallowed ragweed, for a laugh,
A wheeze, a joke, my method of romance,
But lovely Letty led me such a dance
That I gave up. It was a reckless gaffe,
And she warned me my jokes were nonsense — chaff,
An empty bluff on which she looked askance.
I said, “My soul is an open expanse,”
And she replied, “I’ve dumped your photograph.”

She pointed to a thistle and a shrub
Where it had caught, and, muttering my name
Like cursing, to reiterate her claim,
She meanly threatened me with a large club.
She huffed, “Your picture does you justice, Bub.”
I asked, “Did you also throw out the frame?”

Once a Weaver

The poet’s not the world’s only deceiver:
Lies everywhere and always, nowhere, never,
In any helpless moment whatsoever.
Consider monsters like the deep believer,
A butcher who claims he was once a weaver:
“I’m looking for a finger to dissever,”
He says to us, thinking it’s oh so clever,
Flashing above his head a bloody cleaver.

So shrive him in the shrine, where he will shrivel,
Shrink, shrug into his semblance of a shroud.
Once he was shrewd, and shrill; no longer proud,
His will was shredded, so that now he’s civil,
Having given up shrapnel and drivel,
And wears a shrub in his lapel, lewd and loud.

Old Song

So Eddie brought the speed, I brought the weed,
And Schultz the Operator did the rest.
I wasn’t sure that our stuff passed the test
Until the Ranger nodded. He agreed,
And Eddie grabbed the suitcase from the Swede,
Who turned and walked away. At my request
The Ranger shook my hand. “You’re headed west?”
He asked me. “Anything else you guys need?”

Schultz chose dress shoes, bow tie, and cummerbund,
While Eddie hit the track and lost his way.
The Swede is dead now, I heard someone say,
And I said I’d grow old, grey, and rotund:
I put my money in a balanced fund
And went back to the office the next day.

Your Dream

Your dream: to keep on knowing what you know
Past death, to learn the end is not the end,
That hearts don’t change, but truth will never bend
To grapple with the dust we come from, slow
Disintegration. It’s a body blow,
But look at what you’re trying to defend:
A dream. It isn’t likely to depend
On hope that something else — above, below,

Sideways — comes to your rescue after all
The time we’ve spent on praying that we’re meeting
Divine requirements. Somebody is cheating,
Someone has claimed admittance to the ball
Where there’s no dance, no music, and no hall.
This dream of yours is simple, sad, and fleeting.

Pharmacological Announcement

Prime Minister Pothead has just declared
He absolutely needs cheese curds and chips
To make decisions that won't be impaired
By hunger; I heard it from his own lips.
He says he used to mainline LSD,
But I don’t think that’s possible, is it?
I had a cube of it once, in my tea,
And thought: my baseball cap and glove don’t fit,
So I tried heroin, mushrooms, cocaine,
And ecstasy, but none of them worked right.
I think the PM has just gone insane,
And I blame coffee, which he drinks all night.
This red pill with no name, my drug of choice,
Has robbed me of my charm, but not my voice.

False Hope

False hope is everything, some days. Some nights
I dream only the times you smiled and said,
“Nothing but happy decades are ahead,
Skies shining with a hundred thousand lights,
The best of everything.” We should by rights
Have managed it. Fled is that music, bread
Not cast upon the waters. This, instead,
Is nothing much: insults, disinterest, slights.

Of course this ending isn’t what we planned,
But false hope lends a kind of dignity,
If we insist on one sweet memory.
One favour’s all I ask now: take my hand,
Pretend it’s more than just a one-night stand
And always was, my own love. Lie to me.

Now, Now

Gently, I touch your face, inhale your smile,
Kiss you intently, now open my eyes
To greet a perfect world. I realize,
Just as you do, this is the common style:
I love like anyone. I have no guile,
No dissonant feelings, just love, outsize
And hopeful. Sometimes it’s a great surprise,
This cage that I’ve been held in for some while.

I fear nothing, not empty arms, not loss,
Because I have no future, just the sense
That this is more than I’ve earned. Present tense
Is all that I can manage now; I cross
Each burning bridge, the past becoming dross.
Now, now, only now, is my recompense.

A Sapphire

The nights are empty and the days are stark;
There isn’t any truth to tell, or hope
To share, no penny for my thoughts, no scope
For love to tempt me, victories to mark,
And Jenny didn’t kiss me in the dark.
Try veni, vidi, vici, and I grope
Towards my many losses. Bring the rope —
No grace, no envy, neither bite nor bark.

Each worthless moment passes, made of steam:
One day I was the happiest of men,
Together with you in a lonely glen
Too vast to measure, by a lovely stream,
A sapphire. But it must have been a dream —
All gone now. Yes, my life was better then.

I Don’t Want Vengeance

I don’t want vengeance, I just want him dead.
I only want the world to be a place
Where decent people have a decent space
To live their own lives and to earn their bread,
And make sure all the starving poor are fed.
Somebody ought to look him in the face,
Insisting on the truth, his fall from grace:
I don’t want vengeance. That’s not what I said.

I’ve been a calming presence with my friends
Until this afternoon. My eyes rolled back
So far into my head, the sky turned black
And I decided I should make amends.
I tell you, vengeance won’t pay dividends
So that’s not what I want. You’ve gone off track.

A Tourist

This sea’s not bad. I have pas mal de mer,
A good-enough emotion, at my core.
I used to care a lot. Not any more:
Most of the time it hurts too much to care.
I’m just a tourist, tramping here and there,
Living on old hopes, calling from the door,
“What do you want that awful tchatchke for?”
Feelings are meaningless. Love is a snare.

I’m slipping through the world, travelling light,
Don’t need protection from the hail and rain
Because the water doesn’t leave a stain.
Nightmares? Headaches? I’ve given up the fight.
Contempt is all that lets me sleep at night,
Braced by twin crowns: disinterest and disdain.

For the New Year: The Song Antipathetic

To Hell with all thy feckless holidays!
First Valentine’s Day, then spring bringeth Easter
With chocolate bunnies and those Passion Plays
That knock thee down, flat on thy mental kiester.
After that, Bastille Day brings no cake
In spite of Marie Antoinette, our sprite,
And empty Labour Day, for heaven's sake!
All meaningless, unhappy, and so trite.
For thus we celebrate thy autumn’s harvest:
Get thee a pumpkin, let the apples dry,
And heed the song of turkeys that thou carvest,
“Gobble, gobble, sweet potato pie.”
Then Christmas! Stop, please ponder, and just stop.
I’ve had enough of all this festive slop.

All Sorts of Incendiary Stuff

This is an awful way to make a living,
Disease and trauma bound to follow you —
Not unexpected, no, but unforgiving.
Isn’t there something else that you could do?
There’s digging ditches, and there’s mining coal,
There’s dyeing bright red soldiers’ uniforms;
Do not write poetry, to save your soul,
Just keep yourself to civilization’s norms.
I knew a poet once, but now she’s dead,
The victim of too much — or not enough —
Or something just right — what was in her head
Was all sorts of incendiary stuff.
I once imagined myself wild and free;
No more. It’s probably the end of me.

Look What I Brought

I’m trying to forget about religion
While I'm shopping for a Christmas gift,
Especially for those who gave short shrift
To last year's present of a half-plucked widgeon
Stuffed with soy and meal and well-aged pigeon,
The ones who scrunched their noses as they sniffed
And made remarks about my well-known thrift.
I’m not embarrassed, not even a smidgen.

Remember, since June I’m an atheist,
And whether you love Christmastime or not
The many lovely presents that I bought,
So well-intentioned, ought not to be grist
For rumours and debate. I get the gist
Of Christmas and its hopes. Look what I brought!

Backless Dress

I wore a shimmering red backless dress
With four-inch heels and three strands of black pearls
Designed to catch the eyes of dukes and earls —
Though most of them claimed they could not care less —
And had my hair up in a contrived mess
Just like my rivals, all the college girls
With auburn highlights, top knots, and tight curls
So popular with members of the press.

My undergarments, though of silk and lace,
Looked too much like the ones suburban wives
Might choose, but to perpetuate the race
The slit up to my thighs (the Devil drives
My own libido) offers up no grace:
No man who laid his hand on me survives.