Why are
some people
afraid
of me
a skinny
boy who
used to
dance around
the room
in his
stocking feet
early on
Saturday mornings
while his
grandmother
in her
terrycloth robe
a cigarette
between her
lips &
her steel
gray hair
sticking out
in all
directions
sat at
an upright
piano
playing ragtime?
Filed under poems & short jabs
Three people
showed up
at my
door last
night with
a tuba
a French
horn &
a tambourine.
They wanted
to come
in &
play music.
I shut
the door
& turned
off the
porch light.
Filed under poems & short jabs
The imposed
structure
of music.
The missed
cue &
the waving
baton.
Confusion
pawned off
as freedom.
All the
votes that
never get
counted all
the things
that never
get voted on.
Quiz shows
talent scouts
& rehearsals.
The invention
of history.
Premature suicides
& the
notes they leave.
The forensic
lab & the
litmus test.
The false gods.
The
alphabetical
order.
Fame &
fortune.
The roll
call &
the thinning
ranks.
The chamber
pot &
the chambermaid
who empties it.
The misty-eyed
robot,
human at last.
The urge
to explain
yourself when
you’ve got
no explanations.
Aspiration & hope.
Those sleepless
nights when
truth rubs
up against you,
coarse & uncaring.
Nothing’s right
but the children,
& they
vanish like smoke.
Filed under poems & short jabs
A snippet
of truth
punctures the
skin of
the buff
body of
cold facts
like a
white bone
from within,
driving you
straight back
to square one.
But the
fractured bone
of truth
once it
ruptures the
smooth skin of
cold facts
makes it
clear there
is no
square one,
no starting
point
of innocence.
Your life
is a
bone yard
of fabrication
& fear.
Along comes
the doctor
of glib
explanations &
& sets
the bone,
& even
before the
cast is
off you
think you’ve
got the
world by
the tail again.
Filed under poems & short jabs
“Niccolo Machiavelli” by William Mortensen. From Monsters & Madonnas, Camera Craft Publishing Co., San Francisco, 1935, and The Model (same publisher, p.155). George Dunham, model.
Machiavelli
was the
first &
last
political
truth speaker.
Filed under poems & short jabs
Be cautious
around intelligent
people with
no talent.
Filed under poems & short jabs
