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From Socrates to Scantron The outcast Athens sage moved through the streets And haunted corners rife with ripe young men. He taunted them with questions never asked At home, the ones about the household gods. He challenged the traditions long upheld But never said what’s right or wrong or true; He only asked, not ever showing what He knew or firmly held was what one should Embrace; the depths he sought to plumb were those Within the soul, the question “What is Truth?” The rookie Ph. D. moves through the hall With lecture notes on Western thought in hand. He checks his roll then speaks in rolling tones Of which eternal questions we should ask And lists the answers on the board, the thoughts Of Plato up through Sartre. He tells the class What time has proven right and wrong and Good And Beautiful and True, what wondrous things That “Man hath wrought!” He praises ancient Greece For all its grace, the glory that was Rome. The fifteen weeks are slow for those who must Attend the class because “It is required.” But test time finds them all with pencils primed. On Final Day he asks the names, the dates, The works, the movements, trends, and schools and fools. A final item queries, “What is Truth?” On Scantron sheets the students choose an a Or b or c or d: “none of those above.” A few good years and tenure moves him up; For Socrates it was a hemlock cup.
Howling at the Morning Moon
Should you hear an echoing howl on Sunday morning just before dawn breaks, do not be alarmed: it’s no abandoned pet or rabid dog or wandering wolf.
It’s only me, an early morning runner, celebrating the self and the primal instincts within my collective unconscious.
No moon is necessary. . . just the deserted hollow of an echoing viaduct and the spontaneous joy that overflows to soothe the savage torpor within.
I hear the primal howl echoing in the morning silence, the clomp of my running shoes against asphalt, my heaving breath, the quiet surrounding morning sounds.
On the annual bird count, it took longer than they thought to stalk the stray cat.
Strong, the shaggy stray could have inflicted serious damage with its claws, wild as it was.
His fellow birders held its paws, with heavy gloves to protect their hands.
It died quickly, its mouth in an angry and surprised grimace, eyes glassy blank.
“That’s one damn cat the birds won’t have to worry about,” the cat killer said as he loosed his hands.
The birders left the corpse to rot in the woods, went back to the annual count.
They smiled when they sighted an endangered species protected against predators.
No “Clean, Well-Lighted Place” for me
No “clean, well-lighted place” for me" I’ll seek those quiet, red-dim lounges, ‘50’s and early ‘60’s style, though they exist only in my mind:
a combo—piano, bass, drum set, a soft sax or a cool clarinet, a mellow horn— Brubeck and Baker shaped, nothing amplified
the atmosphere of acoustic music, descending on brown beer bottles glowing in the half-light,
bottles placed by plainly pretty waitresses who want no more than a small tip, a smile,
maybe, in late, lonely moments, a close, slow dance without aggression.
The slow, clicking clock betrays that time will pass as slow as bitter words.
Mist and morning fog pelicans resting on the river, the sun a neon orange.
Thunder and hard rain, running shoes puddle plashing, ecstatic spring run.
Full moon grows dim, in the east a golden sun, my shadow grows large.
Smells of toil and sweat from the middle of the pack, spring’s first 5K race.
One shoe, never two, plastic, rusty bolts, summer road alluvia.
Rolling dolphins in redmorning sun make bright a dismal gulf of gray.
What makes them slide from their grassy homes beside the road to that black asphalt crunch?
I see them on my long runs to the beach on Sundays, flattened and drying in the sun,
some speckled and striped with blunt noses, some brown or red with silent, no more ominous rattles.
Can those small-brained, moving alimentary canals have some higher purpose in silently sliding onto the road?
Who crunched them on the asphalt road side? Snake haters, someone simply driven
to the beach-radiant warmth not aware he’s crushed something alive? Why are those snakes on the shoulder of the road?
Is what drove the leopard near the summit of Kilimanjaro in those crunched snake brains?
Why does my pace slow, my heart beat faster when I see a dead snake on the asphalt?
What drives me to the hot asphalt where dead snakes lie dry in the summer sun?
I tell my students in freshman composition, “A paper is never finished; it’s just due.” I tell them too,
“A poem’s never finished; it’s just abandoned.” Some people’s lives are like rough drafts in freshman composition
or poetry just drafted: no polish, no spirit, no voice, littered with errors,
undiscovered voices unsung songs, unmetered days without rhythm,
no metaphored relationships, no tropes in their years, no rhyme in their reason,
no editing in their lives, no revision in their relationships, no polish in their passions,
… and too soon . . . the deadline.
Two shadows followed me on my early morning run: one was cast by street lights, another by the setting moon over my right shoulder
as I ran east toward where the sun was not yet. I was afraid that one or the other shadows would overtake me,
and I would return from my morning run an alternate self caught by a specter from behind.
I put the street lights and the shadows behind me as I ran along the dark morning road toward the beach.
The lights of the drawbridge across the Intracoastal Waterway cast just one shadow: the morning moon was waning.
My shoes touched the sand before sunrise, the soft splash of low-tide waves lulled me to an openness to the power around me.
Back on the road, away from the beach toward home, the shadows gone:
no rising sun yet, no setting moon, no street light shadows in the pre-dawn.
Home, I take my pulse, check my time and pace and feel I am someone new.
Old Wordsworth’s thousand blended notes of spring Run through my mind the last few days of May: My days and troubled nights quite often bring The dark and silent sadness of dismay. We lose our love of solitude too soon, And prison shades close in to make us thralls: Those shades of servitude at life’s near noon Obscure the splendor of the soul of All.
My weakened voice is strengthened and finds words; The notes long captive in my heart and soul Burst forth in bold new bright and changing chords That echo through my essence, warm my old. As years obscure our lost nativity, New birth in age reveals eternity.
The rosy glow of younger generations, The ebb and flow of strength I feel some days, Remind me of my human limitations.
The rush of youth and all its excitations Bring back that lost-day lust that soon decays The rosy glow of younger generations.
At breakfast, lunch, and dinner meditations, My mind moves back in time to former ways, Reminds me of my human limitations.
At Sunday’s confession, propitiation, My mind moves through a haze of sixty Mays, The rosy glow of younger generations.
The Sunday runs and runner high reflections, My aging knees, the pain my body pays, Remind me of my human limitations.
So life goes on with quiet transitions, While those around scarce sense my heart’s dismay; The rosy glow of younger generations Remind me of my human limitations.
In the warm February winter late in my fifty-second year, I walked into the Gulf-Coast sun, put the top down on my red convertible, on its second day, turned on the engine, and “cranked up” the oldies station on the radio stereo.
As if programmed, the disk jockey cued and played Elvis! “Burning Love!”
I was 16 again.
I swung away from the curb, accelerated, pulled my “Carpe diem” cap down snug.
In darkness, frenzied, frightened, bound in bed By bonds of sleep, my dream of Hell recurred Again: a classroom filled with dark instead Of light and peopled by pupils interred Within their sterile shells of “culture,” each A mirror, each reflecting his own dark Sarcophagus, each mind embalmed. I reach To “gladly teach,” to light ashes, to spark The kindled embers smoldering below What’s left of that which “man has made of man.” The Nightmare ends the same each night: with slow And steady speech I teach the best I can. But dreadful dreams are dreams, and bells will ring: My Nightmare’s noisily the real true thing.
Solena, our cat, who was named for the sun and the summer solstice, for that is when we brought her home from her wild mother,
sits at the sliding, glass door and looks at the beams of her namesake breaking across the patio.
In her cateyes is a sense of wonder.
I get up from my chair to slide the door open, and out she springs like a slinky. She senses the wonder of the world.
I do not.
Where has it gone these forty or so years, since I went into the front room with the broken player piano and was overwhelmed with the sense of the wonder of being alive.
As I sat in the bathroom in your old trailer this morning, I saw a half-driven screw in the toilet-tissue bracket.
Our old house was proliferated with undriven screws, unnailed nails, leaky faucets, drains that wouldn’t drain, commodes that wouldn’t flush.
The leaky roof stained the ceiling wallpaper; outside, unpainted boards and trim cracked and pealed in the sun; the lawn went unmowed, cluttered with junk.
Though you were a mechanic, our junker cars ran rough and wanted work, while that of your best boozing friend
ran smooth, almost like new, because next to a tub of iced beer, you tinkered over it every Sunday
before you two went somewhere else to do your boozing. Everything and anyone seemed more important than us; things and the family fell apart.
Now you are gone.
The undriven screw, the leaky faucet, the junk-cluttered yard, the chaos all around my inheritance.
I pull the lawnmower from the outbuilding, gas it up, and “scalp” the yard, just as Chemlawn told me to do.
It’s a hard mow: the engine chokes on the newgreen and deadbrown grass; the wheels sink into the carpet turf; the deck sticks on tufts sticking up above the ground; the grass catcher fills every five minutes; the winter blown trash shreds into confetti; the muscles I haven’t used since last November’s mow strain and pull and ache some.
With the tugs and stops and stalls and constant clipping, emptying, I smile, enjoy the smell of grass and spring.
I know if it’s spring “scalping time,” the vernal equinox comes soon,
. . . and I am alive.
Some moan in life’s stern tests it’s best resigning To random chance, the undirected fall; I think in times of trial I’m self defining.
Some people thrive in self-indulgent whining To live their lives within a prison wall, And moan in life’s stern tests it’s best resigning.
My life’s not chance, with free will I’m outlining The self I want to be, so with each fall, I think in times of trial I’m self defining.
Some move through life in thoughtless self-confining, And see what lies beyond a void-less pall Then moan in life’s stern tests it’s best resigning.
Each test becomes a quiet quest refining The course I’ll take to not be held in thrall; I think in times of trial I’m self defining.
Our lives evolve in times of stress, aligning Our souls within to face the Force of All. Some moan in life’s stern tests it’s best resigning; I think in times of trial I’m self-defining.
Road Lies Straight Before me: A ribbon of Three miles that Rise into the horizon, Perpendicular from the flat Concrete clump beneath my feet, Each time a new journey of discovery.
So (li tu de) ul
August 6—The Feast of the Transfiguration
On the mountain, Elijah, Moses, Jesus Jesus, transfigured.
Above the city, Enola Gay, Tibbets, the crew, the bomb Hiroshima, transfigured.
He sat on a couch in the Boom-Boom Room and systematically lay wooden swizzle sticks
from Black Jack and Coke on the table. His goal was 10.
He thought two rows of four swizzle sticks crossed diagonally by a fifth showed symmetry,
affirmed his manhood. He didn’t know he had a problem. He knew the barmaids
in a half-dozen clubs by first names. and they knew him,
because they liked him. He didn’t much like himself, reliving his father’s life
a life he vowed not to relive, a wasted life of boasts and failure.
Next time he would go for 15.
He joined me just around the corner of my house as I was out for a six-mile on a Sunday morning about seven:
A black dog with a brown muzzle and brown socks and white salty-looking stripes on his shoulders, a red cloth collar around his neck with the end dangling down about four inches.
He was a friendly dog, not aggressive; he never barked, just padded through the puddles left by the early morning rain.
I thought he would follow along for a while then tire and give up. I spoke to him gruffly, and he would slow and drop behind about 10 yards, but I still heard the click of his paws on the pavement, and soon he was again by my side.
At two and a half miles, I picked up a stick tossed it in front of him, hoping to discourage him from following where I was headed: there might be some treacherous traffic.
He stayed with me, even when I passed the yards with barking, aggressive dogs. Up onto the first set of river levees, toward the three-mile mark still the pad of paws.
Off the levee and by the police I thought about stopping and asking someone to take custody of the stray, but I didn’t.
Across the most dangerous intersection, up onto another river levee past the football stadium, back up onto the levee toward the five-mile.
Still he was there alongside, slightly ahead slightly behind, distracted only momentarily by a cat in the distance dashing into the bushes.
Five miles and off the levee just short of six he followed me through the steep levee and the slick morning grass." Six miles. Home.
I left him where I found him, a solitary running companion.
The Flash of Order tc "The Flash of Order "
The mind and force of order spoke but once Through light: primordial chaos trembled at The sound, and all things formless rushed to form And flashed against the silent black’s abyss. That force to form has never ceased, but since Evolved through one-celled slime to fish to ape To man in whom the image of the sound Fresh flashed to order from disorder shape. So hairy hands became a mind that touched A stone; and from the dark of caves he came, To order chaos into form; the light Primeval from within demanded it. And close behind this thinking man there stood A man of more than instinct, skill, and brawn A man of insight closer still to light Than all the builders, warriors, kings, and gods: The poet saw and sang what no man else Could see and say: the light flashed in his mind.
The ancient cities rose to fall and all That’s left behind is what their poets saw, For they amid the dark’s attack preserved What light remained through all those eras lost. So Homer told the tale of Troy and all The death and ruin Helen’s beauty wrought. Upon the scroll within the piles of stones, The poet’s light remained, at times his mind The only vestige bright amid despair, Despair, in fading hope that all was lost: His mind the microcosmic cosmos charged With light, a light unconquered by the dark.
By forest torches, woodpile embers’ ebb, By candle, gaslight glow the poet’s sight Was there to see and tell and write; by light Of incandescent bulbs, fluorescent tubes, Atomic light and laser light that leaps From blinding beams, the primal light was there Within the mind of him who watched and saw And wrote and fought the fight against the dark.
From old Aegean shores to Dover Beach To Paris in the “cruelest month” of spring, Now somewhere someone stands, inherits light Unquenched; The spinning spiral never ends.
The cycle moves unbroken while the dark Fights on against the light. The world returns To chaos, chaos then, and chaos now And chaos that’s to be, not formlessness, But sterile order science, logic bring. When science seeks to conquer light, become The light of light itself, the poet cries, “It’s not without: the light lies here within.” The poet sees what once was there that spoke But once; that voice that ordered chaos then Unconquered lies within his flashing mind.
The chaos all around that’s mortal dark Is flashed to meaning by the poet’s spark.
Something Is There Within Us All
A plastic water bottle whizzed by me as I headed north toward the Intracoastal Waterway bridge
on a cold December morning, a bottle that missed my bicycle helmet by inches. I was headed home on a 16-mile training ride.
Ironically, the swing bridge opened to allow a barge to pass. I pulled up to the bumper of the heavy-duty pickup
the bottle whizzed from, within eight feet of the back glass. Three heads and shoulders silhouetted above UT longhorn and Kappa Sigma stickers.
I had no pencil or paper, but I pretended I did and feigned writing down the license plate number, memorizing it instead.
The heads above the stickers didn’t move as my heart pounded in anger for the bottle, fear that the three would pile out of the truck and pound me.
Fifteen minutes passed behind the truck, the swing bridge closed, we moved across the bridge. I stopped at the control shack.
With shaking hands, I dialed the police, reported the bottle, recited the license plate number I memorized.
Four miles from home, I envisioned headlines, “Cyclist struck by hit-and-run driver then beaten.”
My heart beat faster with each white vehicle on the horizon.
Late afternoon, a knock at the door, a young man with an apology, behind him an enraged father.
“Why?” I asked. “I don’t know,” he answered. “You could have caused a serious wreck and injury.” “I’m sorry; I didn’t think.”
I accepted the apology; he walked away, his shoulders slumped, seemingly penitent.
what moved the boy to throw the bottle, what moved the Ancient Mariner to shoot the crossbow, is deep within us all.
The bright October morning sun brings back The halcyon days, the 1950s, then My high school spring, down went the canvas top Each Friday when my youthful sky was clear And new. “Those were the days,” I briefly think. (But what’s the answer for my age of age?)
But that’s not right: “Those were not the days.” They’re not These days. Who says these days are not to be Our salad days? The sixty plus are years That hold as much as we can touch and live If only we will live. My hair grows gray, But not my mind. Age sixty does not mean Our ends; there are no “ashes” of a youth That choke the embers of my life, a fire “Consumed with that which it was nourished by.” (But what’s the answer for my age of age?)
Perhaps the rosebuds withered lie decayed; “Time’s winged chariot” hurries near, too near, With new, inexorably certain speed. I will not let that fine and private place Before me lie, a vast, eternal dark And desert place. Too much lies here and now. (So what’s the answer to this age of age?)
It’s carpe diem! Yes! No trousers rolled; I’ll take the proffered peach, the Dare; renounce A coffee-spoon-like life, attend the songs Of mermaids on the beach and dance through age.
The rusty, pocked bumper of the dirty navy blue Chevrolet was emblazoned with bumper stickers:
“I love a quickie!” “If I don’t get laid soon, Someone is gonna get hurt!”
I see a dark silhouette through the back window, a big head, indeterminate age,
a big head bobbling like one of those little springnecked dogs to whatever music
she is listening to, jerking as she yanks a comb through her wind-blown hair.
Above that speckled-pocked bumper, just off center above the trunk lock, “I love to party!”
Other bumper self-definitions: “I love what I do! You can too.”
“If you want a woman who won’t bitch, rob a grave.”
“If you don’t like my driving, call 1-800-eat-shit.”
Briefly side-by-side I see her unattractive face
She who loves a quickie, . . . needs to get laid . . . loves to party . . . loves what she does . . . thinks bitching defines women . . . cares little about what you think of her driving.
The image I see in the mirror at the break between classes is a shaggy-haired, aging man.
I like the image in the glass: it’s cool, casual, beatnik-like in my youth.
Three weeks ago my barber, one of the old-fashioned ones who shaves around my ears
and the back of my neck, trims my eyebrows, mustache, the hairs in my nose and ears,
made me a clean-cut, modern, neat professor, collegiate, distinguished.
I compare the mental images, today. . . three weeks ago. Undecided about the image I like better.
I am interrupted in my self adulation when the faculty rest room door swings open and
retrieve my class rolls, textbook, notes, and stride out with a spring in my step resolving to somehow look cool forever.
On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, One jogging watch, And a log to write all my miles in.
On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, Two pairs of running shoes, one jogging watch, And a log to write all my miles in.
On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, Three pairs of running shorts, two pairs of running shoes, One jogging watch, And a log to write all my miles in.
On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, Four racing singlets, three pairs of running shorts, Two pairs of running shoes, One jogging watch, And a log to write all my miles in.
On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, Five jockey straps, four racing singlets, Three pairs of running shorts, two pairs of running shoes, One jogging watch, And a log to write all my miles in.
On the sixth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, Six pairs of running socks, five jockey straps, Four racing singlets, three pairs of running shorts, Two pairs of running shoes, One jogging watch, And a log to write all my miles in.
On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, Seven wrist and headband sets, six pairs of running socks, Five jockey straps, four racing singlets, Three pairs of running shorts, two pairs of running shoes, One jogging watch, And a log to write all my miles in.
On the eighth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, Eight bright bandanas, seven wrist and headband sets, Six pairs of running socks, five jockey straps, Four racing singlets, three pairs of running shorts, Two pairs of running shoes, One jogging watch, And a log to write all my miles in.
On the ninth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, Nine books on running, eight bright bandanas, Seven wrist and headband sets, six pairs of running socks, Five jockey straps, four racing singlets, Three pairs of running shorts, two pairs of running shoes, One jogging watch, And a log to write all my miles in.
On the tenth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, Ten bottles of sports drinks, nine books on running, Eight bright bandanas, seven wrist and headband sets, Six pairs of running socks, five jockey straps, Four racing singlets, three pairs of running shorts, Two pairs of running shoes, One jogging watch, And a log to write all my miles in.
On the eleventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, Eleven Power Bars, ten bottles of sports drinks, Nine books on running, eight bright bandanas, Seven wrist and headband sets, six pairs of running socks, Five jockey straps, four racing singlets, Three pairs of running shorts, two pairs of running shoes, One jogging watch, And a log to write all my miles in.
On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, Twelve race registration forms, eleven Power Bars, Ten bottles of sports drinks, nine books on running, Eight bright bandanas, seven wrist and headband sets, Six pairs of running socks, five jockey straps, Four racing singlets, three pairs of running shorts, Two pairs of running shoes, One jogging watch, And a log to write all my miles in.
Or a Visit from the Benevolent Phantom Runner (with appropriate apologies to Clement Clarke Moore)
‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the street, Not a runner was stirring, no, not one could you meet; My clothes were all set by the bed late that night, I planned for a five-mile at first morning light.
The neighbors were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of Christmas danced in their heads; Jane rolled deep in her blanket, and I in my nook, Had just settled down with a Stephen King book.
When out on the street there rose such a hustle, I sprang from my chair to see what was the rustle. Away to the window I ran and amazed I blinked my eyes twice as through the window I gazed.
The moon short after solstice cast an eerie white light, With a luminous luster that made the street bright; Then what to my wondering eyes should appear, But a pack of strange spirits dressed in blue running gear.
They were led by a lean specter and now were so near, I stood and stared, fast frozen with fear. More rapid than rabbits his comrades they came, And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name.
Now, Jogger! Now, Runner! now Split-times and Racer, On, 5K! On, 10K! on, Marathon Pacer! To the front of the pack! To the finish line all! Now sprint for it, sprint for it, sprint for it all!
As the dry leaves of winter before the wind fly When they meet the gulf breeze when winter is nigh, So swift up the street the runners were drifting With bags full of gifts, the fog round them shifting.
And then, in an instant, they broke from the pack And passed through the walls of the houses in back. As I turned in my place and looked toward the wall, The lead Phantom Runner materialized tall.
Dressed in just running shorts, his legs were bare white, And his body was luminous and eerie and bright; A bag full of running gifts he had flung on his back; My eyes grew misty as he opened his pack.
His eyes glowed bright blue, but his face was still merry, His nose, bright red from the cold, was like a strawberry. His calves were tight knots; his biceps were blue steel, His quadriceps like iron! His presence surreal!
He paused not one moment, stacked the energy bars high, Unloaded the sports drinks as I watched with a sigh; He had thin flat abs and a slim face That was wrapped in a mist that glowed through the place.
He was lanky and lean, an emaciated figure; I smiled when our eyes met, my fear growing bigger; He winked one blue eye and then nodded his head, To give me a sign I had nothing to dread.
He said nothing at all, but went straight to his task, And left all the running gifts for which I had asked. And giving a sign I’d been a good runner this year, He dropped a few extra to give me good cheer.
He sprang to the street and gave his pack a short call, And back they all came through wall after wall. I heard them all chant as they ran out of sight, “HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD-NIGHT!”
I see you, struggling to explain yourself, to understand your sense of inadequacy.
I think that today you are that gift of a “suffering soul,” to whom, in my morning devotions and prayers,
I vowed to be “the cup of strength.” Months, years, decades, ages, reflecting in my solitude and loneness,
I may realize that I was made, shaped, tutored, for this one moment,
this face-to-face Eucharist at which I placed the wafer of love in your open hand, the chalice of compassion to your hesitant lips.
For this small act of kindness and care, your meaningless life became bearable, your confusion, comprehensible,
your insecurity, serenity, your despair, hope. On this day I am being what
I prayed to have been; you become that which you are; you are becoming what you are destined to be.
Some say it’s the moon; I say its dumb dust.
It’s finer than pollen; no respirator can filter it out.
No one sees it fall, but I know when it’s softly drifted down.
Sometimes it comes in with warm fronts and changes in barometric pressure.
It settles on everything and everyone
and no quarantine can keep it from spreading.
It was a senseless, roughhouse, childhood game: some kid would kick the football straight up or twenty yards beyond the circling crowd of
twenty plus kids; we all ran for the ball, which one kid claimed and, chased by the others, evading tackles, sometimes just seconds, sometimes minutes,
was finally tackled and ganged until a stack of bodies held him down. Then the tackled kid kicked it up,
and the game again began until the recess or lunch bell rang. There was no goal to run to or cross;
no score kept, just the game and the cry, "Kick it up and get killed!" after every gang tackle.
That childhood game comes back to me now that I am older. In life we run after that ball,
run it around the playground until we are tackled and mobbed. Then we kick the ball, the idea, the thought,
the emotion, the words, for others to run to and grasp and run with until they too are tackled and mobbed.
"Kick it up and get killed!"
The bruised and bruisers in that childhood game went back to quiet desks with grass burns, stains and itching, dirty, smelly skins, a broken arm on the playground one day.
Kids don't play that game anymore: they are much more organized; fields have boundaries, games rigid rules, players fancy equipment, bright uniforms fancy footwear, games are "supervised."
To be stichic or strophic? That is the Question: Whether 'tis nobler in the line To risk the feverish chance of libertine Enjambment or stop lines symphonic ally: Stichic lines have such neat integrity: End-stopped lines sound so sweet and so enshrine, And even echo great Marlowe's "mighty line." My stichic verse will conclude perfectly At line's end. Whoops! Miltonic enjambment Just slipped in here. Must poets yield to flesh Or be content to follow soul's ascent And with full force and flow let boldly crash A tidal wave of lines? (Such metric mania Breeds, I fear, Spenserian schizophrenia.)
Pausing in My Reading of a Dull Textbook
Whose work this is I think I know; His thoughts are much above me though. He will not mind my pausing here To stop and think of falling snow.
My restless eyes have done a trick To read such wasted words so quick Put down that art is lost and dull On dismal pages bright and slick.
I give my beer a solemn pull To make my mind return to mull Over pages flat and meek, A realm of nothing less than dull.
This book is endless, dry, and deep, With thinking nothing near unique: And sighs to go before I sleep, And sighs to go before I sleep.
It may be true that only the lead dog has a different perspective.
But for the middle-of-the-pack, slower runners who appreciate shapely hips and legs,
it’s a good perspective, lustless appreciation of fitness and beauty.
Between the computer and the printed page, strange things happen.
Cyberspace transforms what I crunch out and e-mail in the transfer.
Editors see things that can be said better with fewer words, cruelly cutting words,
altering meaning and purpose to suit the layout space.
With the push of a delete key, the purplish of passages, best metaphors, savaged, forever lost.
Editors hack away the soul of writing, bury bloody hatchets in writers’ hearts.
What was it like to be chosen first, not to stand sad that someone would eventually have to pick me.
“Come on. We’ll take you,” The captain of the team said when he no other choice,
a twisted smile on his lips that said, “Our bad luck again.”
He remembers the words he said long ago, “Cats are worthless; I try to run over every one I see.”
He shot strays for fun and target practice, felt a rush when he tossed a sack of cats into the river from a high bridge.
Senile, half-blind, deaf, he sits with his only friend, feels the vibration of the purr on his lap.
So, I have lost another old friend: Mimosa, yesterday a pinkblossom-laden, lacygreen lady, today lies piled against the chain link fence, dead and drying out.
Her branches were beetle-girtled and dying; her heavy limbs, poised precariously above the powerline into the house; three limbs had fallen against the line this spring.
How many times on lawnday have I sat beneath the lacyshade of her arms with my first cool Coors’ light, looked at the sky, the leaves above, the newly mown lawn, our house of 25 years.
I should have sat just once more beneath Mimosa before I dispassionately dismembered her with the chain saw.
The springtime always brightens up my life; When windy March moves in to green the world, I then forget the pains of youthful strife.
The March gusts sweep and marshall, like a fife, The sleeping seeds that soon to flowers twirl; The springtime always brightens up my life.
The dawnlight gleams and, like a knife, It carves the hoary haze and fog to pearl; I then forget the pains of youthful strife.
The twilight sun yields to his ancient wife; The full moon waxes and the waters swirl, And springtime always brightens up my life.
The south wind blows; the mists and dews so rife And winter's leaves rise up and dance and whirl; I then forget the pains of youthful strife.
Each ritual March I feel a love of life: The world and all its beauties fresh unfurl; When springtime comes to brighten up my life, I then forget the pains of youthful strife.
I've never seen a Madonna video, and I have seen just two of her movies-- A League of Their Own, Evita.
I have one of her audio tapes, the one with "Vogue" on it.
She's not really beautiful-- just scandalous, not that sensuous, just brazen and daring and shameless.
But she's a runner; I know because I saw her jogging in Memorial Park in Houston with two big bodyguards before a concert.
The runner in her appeals to me Because I am a runner, a freelance writer,
what an interview it would be: Madonna and me, her bodyguards, and a microcassette recorder,
the pad of jogging shoes, our breathless conversation about important things
the sun, the heat, our sweat, our times, life, . . . who I am, who she is, stripped down to the essentials
jogging shorts, sweat bands, singlets.
The ultimate interview. . ., maybe a platonic turn-on for us both.
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