Under Fever-Diphtheria

Called into use chloral and opiates
to enforce sleep, you are now prepared
for the suggestion of bromides to quinine
so that the druggist rejoice at the luckless
much like the condition of the schoolyard
at term-time, there was a high pulse
and a few days later death closed the scene
after the usual typhoid tenderness of broken
rest, the vital power had got so low yet
when there was a clean tongue a cure
affected by a stomach that was still
ejecting curds and whiskey, I have
no reason to doubt the treatment was well
up to the latest science of therapeutics
that is to say the brain becomes disabled
from withdrawing its supplies from
tissues by some unknowable process
of cell destruction or paralysis however
that success of a method of practice
is gauged by the mortality diminished
and well before the skeleton condition
is reached, it will be because death
was inevitable and never because I
have failed through failure to bombard
the symptoms I so often found in the army.

Ode to the Chain Gang

The guys on 92
wear orange and walk
priest-like with shovels
from the monastary of dare-
devils and no-goods, better-
off deads in a mist
of spit and smoke.
They leave our city
and side of the road
spotless and save
the town fathers
a dime or two
in revenue.

Some are handsome
and some are not -
young girls wiggle-walk
around them and their
your momma don't want
to know smiles and sniggers
while those same mommas
gun their Hondas
on their way home
from the D-E-S
past all those
lonesome daddies.

Witness The Magnetron

Presumably, she's brave
in other words, sleeps
without taking a thing.
All night long people are
buying something, tree
trimmers to water softeners,
a constant flow of mostly
things to control nature
and yet she resists
the forecast, the soaps,
the whole array of colors.

It is said, she is very
award-winning-
or the neclace in this case
is lovely like bread
is removed from toast
with a finger, a long ago
time of coddled eggs
and children, eye tests
and radar-ranges,
a history of spot-checks
and medical try-outs.

In some ways I saw them die
by using old photographs,
dancing with their shoes off
in the church rectory,
their feet generating static
as eyes, hands, tastebuds
carry on intently, trying
to reverse a thousand decisions.

Witness the yacht club
for body sculpting, witness
the update to drop
me a line, witness to the reunion -
the we'll pray for you,
the sheer number of workshops -

the plump babbles
of our thalidomides

her generous buffet
aisles upon aisles
of bone meal and condensed
soups, open the bread and a vision
of the wives and children
asleep on her lap plop out,
until applause like rain
stops coming.

Witness the ample sufferance
of jay walking to the endless
summer of the midwest,
ahh, the endless well-being
of seeking the right size.
What shall we do to wake
up from fourteen years old?
Better yet, do we dare?
The shoplifters amaze only me,
as the victims return
to the scenes of the crime
and want only more of the same.



And this just in...the Pope is found to be a Creationist afterall!

"VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI formally created 24 new cardinals on Saturday amid cheers in St. Peter's Basilica, bringing a mostly Italian group into the elite club that will eventually elect his successor."

Witness The Magnetron

Presumably, she's brave
in other words, sleeps
without taking a thing.
All night long people are
buying something, tree
trimmers to water softeners,
a constant flow of mostly
things to control nature
and yet she resists
the forecast, the soaps,
the whole array of colors.

It is said, she is very
award-winning-
or the neclace in this case
is lovely like bread
is removed from toast
with a finger, a long ago
time of coddled eggs
and children, eye tests
and radar-ranges,
a history of spot-checks
and medical try-outs.

In some ways I saw them die
by using old photographs,
dancing with their shoes off
in the church rectory,
their feet generating static
as eyes, hands, tastebuds
carry on intently, trying
to reverse a thousand decisions.

Witness the yacht club
for body sculpting, witness
the update to drop
me a line, witness to the reunion -
the we'll pray for you,
the sheer number of workshops -

the plump babbles
of our thalidomides

her generous buffet
aisles upon aisles
of bone meal and condensed
soups, open the bread and a vision
of the wives and children
asleep on her lap plop out,
until applause like rain
stops coming.

Witness the ample sufferance
of jay walking to the endless
summer of the midwest,
ahh, the endless well-being
of seeking the right size.
What shall we do to wake
up from fourteen years old?
Better yet, do we dare?
The shoplifters amaze only me,
as the victims return
to the scenes of the crime
and want only more of the same.



And this just in...the Pope is found to be a Creationist afterall!

"VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI formally created 24 new cardinals on Saturday amid cheers in St. Peter's Basilica, bringing a mostly Italian group into the elite club that will eventually elect his successor."














OWL

When the owl slipped
away from the world,
he was in my arms
and wrapped in my prayer
rug, the one I keep in the back
seat of the '95 Nissan,
the murder weapon in
the driveway and it was
still warm. As he died
his head fell forward
like a newborn babe -
so few people ever see
an owl let alone hold
one, dead or alive,
so few ever hold both.

It hurt. It really hurt
to have killed such a thing:
half cat with hollow
bones and fake ears,
a witch with two hats.
For such a terrifying beast
they aren't made of much
and weigh no more than
a pair of boots or a rake.
There are no accidents though.
His body lay on the extra bed
until the morning. He refused
to answer as I returned
more than once to ask:

Which sign are you?
What can I do?
Are you sure?

OWL

When the owl slipped
away from the world,
he was in my arms
and wrapped in my prayer
rug, the one I keep in the back
seat of the '95 Nissan,
the murder weapon in
the driveway and it was
still warm. As he died
his head fell forward
like a newborn babe -
so few people ever see
an owl let alone hold
one, dead or alive,
so few ever hold both.

It hurt. It really hurt
to have killed such a thing:
half cat with hollow
bones and fake ears,
a witch with two hats.
For such a terrifying beast
they aren't made of much
and weigh no more than
a pair of boots or a rake.
There are no accidents though.
His body lay on the extra bed
until the morning. He refused
to answer as I returned
more than once to ask:

Which sign are you?
What can I do?
Are you sure?

Those are the colors we want
but what part of this world
is blue? The color of wet streets
and windows, the color of last
chances and long distance?
Who tells who how to see
the color of breaking, the shade
of pause and dusk then
knows how tired it is
to feel each one separately
as stabbings would, the only
melodies of time where
quick modern cries
take place between pills
and she breaths sorrow
over it and again, sorrow,
her biggest tear keeps
falling from only one eye.

Testimonial: yes, the stories
here are all a vibrant red,
a laundress' curse
but they tell audacious lies
on the coast, one by one
they swerve and spill
to end up the still gray
color of washing water,
there where the streetlights
trick darkness into morn:
come here again, open up.
This is what to do:
ink, sun, turn over.

The Bling and Shiny

Not sure why promises are made,
they are the good waiting
for details and staff sargeants,
with the new senator,
his flirty waltz with heresy
is a complex plastic
of exquisite pitchiness,
the organic stripes of fire
price and he is also
an employee in every museum,
chairman of vote market
as spic as it is span,
terrible in the flashy
way vocabularies are robbed
to stock the franchise
of new poetry for better
wars, a clutch of yin-yang
buzz words for bang.