Later you figure things out,
you can’t blame her for fearing to lose
what you’re hoping to gain.
At the time, however, on your monk’s bed,
you believe having promise is enough.
Where you come from, that’s more than almost anyone’s got.
But there you go.
That’s how poor people think.
By reading this poem.
Or actually, no, sorry,
by reading this you’ve in fact injested
poetic cookies, which are non-material,
semi-nutritive enzymes that excrete a
phosphorous-like substance in the brain.
While benign, these cookies do produce
occasional light shows in the cranial cavity.
If you are against cookies –
if you are really sure you really
do not like cookies and will not
accept out cooky policy
(but who doesn’t like cookies?),
then you can remove them by simply
returning in time to before
you hit the jackpot.
It seemed like a fine plan,
writing Himself into His own work,
to taste and be tasted –
descending in scarlet,
sinking to flesh –
but who knew the life of man
was a brutal current turning,
slow and wide
then swifter and deeper
till the sky
became
a little white circle climbing
Poetry is my protection against terror.
It fortifies no wall but collapses the one
behind which I find myself cowering.
I’m embarrassed to find myself there.
Poetry is every word in the question,
What are you afraid of?
It leads me outside.
My love has held nothing in place –
and has itself, some of it, gone
to where love and time decompose
in a field of stars and glass.
You’re not made of sugar, she says
when it’s raining.
She can see me not melting.
Judgments crowd the heart
where chastity would dwell in privacy.
She would be magnanimous in isolation,
making no hard choice of the spirit,
but having instead her lake,
her begonia, her tea.
Her footman will dispatch
the stranger at the door,
and shade will beget
no dark fantasy.
How wonderfully wearies the Lord
the ego, filing countersuit
after countersuit
against our vanity, depleting
with blemishes and disappointment
our reserve of can-do and
will-do – Oh I’ll get this
and I’ll get her, I will and
I will – taking His time
(He’s got all the time in the world)
while we chase our crooked schemes
of self-help and maintenance.
He reminds us we’ve better things to do,
but we don’t hear because our eyes
are fixed on our face
going up in wrinkles.
I want a coffee cup with chickens,
like I used to have or gave
to a girl
to imagine
married life with me.
How good it would be.
With a long view from the window
and one or two clouds
(but no chickens,
just the idea of them).
Now, married
with children (no chickens),
in the city not the country,
I can see life with me
is a fifty-fifty
proposition –
and less than that if you want
big bucks or chickens.
(Some do.)
Or a man who’s not cranky.
(Some do.)
Still, it’s good to remember
how I hoped it would be
(and is)
so I’m going to track down that cup.
Here in this city I’m sure there’s a cup
with chickens.
We have come to need
ever-littler men
with ever-littler hammers
to fix things –
to climb through the keyhole
when your car won’t start
and shine a flashlight
on the computer inside.
Sometimes a bolt is loose
or a screw,
and he has a mini-
tool for that.
I’ve met these men.
One used to work for
Lucky Charms, a
cush job, but
as luck would have it,
he got downsized.
Utrecht Journal 