Monday, March 28, 2011

IF

If he knew he’d be dead by dark
Tolstoy supposedly said he’d keep
plowing which proves either
he really liked to plow or else
he was a bit off that day and I think
it must be the latter because
no sane man likes to plow that much
unless you mean the metaphorical
kind (haha) but Ell Tee was way too
uptight for that sort of thing and
not that imaginative but if
I were cursed with such knowledge
I’d find a hot metaphor and have a
wild time and get a revolver to
defend myself in case I’m slated
to die at the hands of a jealous
lover whose girlfriend I haven’t even
slept with and I know I’d probably
end up being shot with my own
weapon because as the Greeks figured
out a long time ago that’s how
these things usually end since
nobody escapes irony but still I say
it’s best to go down fighting or
polishing your weapon or being
metaphorical or doing anything
that counts as honest rebellion.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Eve

Everyone assumes
she’d never eaten the fruit
before she made the mistake
of sharing some with that dimwit
Adam, who of course confessed, babbled
like a frightened child
the first time God looked crosswise
at him. Actually, she’d been snatching
bites here and there for years.
Neither God nor Adam had been observant
enough to notice the extra lightness
in her step, the little smiles for no
particular reason, the way she laughed
as if their dry jokes were funny
or how she sat entranced by the wings
of the dragonfly, as if each beat were a reprise
of her heart, a count of the minutes, hours, days
until the making of a cocoon
or perhaps the breaking of one.

This poem was published by The Pinch at the University of Memphis

Friday, February 25, 2011

Here's what happens when a preacher's kid goes to college and realizes there's more to the story than what he learned in Sunday Schools (or Sabbath Schools):

Hurricane prayer

When God planned the universes,
he said I’ll make this one big
and put tiny things in it.
They’ll feel lost, and worship me.

But someone pointed out
they might just as easily resent
being made so much smaller than the universe
and thus worship it instead.

So then he put tiny little universes
in all the black holes to see
who they would worship. But since
the black holes were singularities,

nothing went as planned in any of them,
not even responses to commandments
and threats. Then God had to pin
all his hopes on the big one

where butterflies and dark matter were
in equilibrium with chaos and hurricanes.
Everything was still and quiet in the eyes
of the hurricanes, which fascinated him so.

He sent them again and again, skipping
them like stones against the continents
where they always sputtered and died.
While they lasted they reminded him

of the black holes, spinning, glittering,
so strange and calm inside. Then, too,
there was the tinny sound of little voices
praying hardest when the hurricanes struck–

they were not worshiping, exactly,
but it was the closest thing to worship
he had heard, and
it would have to do for now.

Machiavellian . . .

I wrote this poem years ago, when I was considerably poorer than I am now. These days, I have hung around on the periphery of civilization long enough to feel some sympathy for schmucks like me who have invested in The Way Things Are.

Machiavellian

The young can sometimes afford
to complain, but not to bribe the powerful.
To get money to bribe anybody important
you must first invest heavily

in the way things are.
Subversion therefore becomes unprofitable.
If things change, your investments
may not pay.

The young are not taught this
in the government schools:
Methods in Bribery is a unit of instruction
not covered by the new standardized tests.

Warrior


There are a thousand ways
to be a warrior.
I have won battles
by sitting in my chair
whole afternoons and counting to one.

On good days
I count to zero:
Zen in the art of arithmetic.

(Pub'd in Red Wheelbarrow)