(1994)
Republished by permission from "Lyric," Vol. 74, No. 3
Give Me That Old-Time Religion As one New Yorker said, the guy w… You in New York, your wallet as h… At least has goals, unlike the oth… Who kill and maim and have no aim…
A poem should be allowed to say something; good ones often have. It isn’t by necessity a fakir’s cabalistic drone
One day when Richard’s brother, R… Had heard enough of “such a terrib… He chucked his poise and turned wi… the gleeful mourners gathered on t… And said, “Your tears, my friends…
One morning Leda, sitting on the… Saw Zeus appear transmogrified to… She heard too late the honks and w… And so with godly force he conquer… (Some skeptics say she could have…
I hate Shaw with his absurd postu… who want to get in his pants to ca… I hate Henry James for writing se… it takes a cryptologist to figure… I hate Hemingway for his drunken…
I am 88. I need much equipment: I need my walker so I can shuffle about, a lift chair to stuff me in the wa…
Elephants, Lawrence wrote,* let love bloom slowly “in their vast shy hearts.” But Lawrence dreamed. The beasts, it’s true, were once
A Disney creature has soulful eye… Inhales the posies, gnaws no flesh… Knows sin from virtue in a flash And sobs a quart when Mother dies… A Disney creature lacks an anus,
The Old Floridian Non-Conformist The young prize individuality And choose to feature navels and t… But that, I think, becomes confor… When choices made are what a milli…
A Dumb Waiter in a Heavenly res… (Lou’s Cafe: Fontvielle, France) Our voices hushed, we slip into the narrow, gloomy room, a taper on the back-wall bar
Ask Not Whom the Toll Bails A Grecian corpse’s mouth containe… Placed there by kin who thought he… To pay the toll required to cross… (A job that Charon got through po…
Poesy’s Progress My rhymes are gone, at least quite… my lines are stop– ped just anywhere. The meter is, no doubt, unconscion…
The Jacaranda in Spring (Near Rhyme) What discount art inspired this ta… Eleven months a year you’re quite… Too dark and gaunt, we thought, to…
The Seven Virtues Six centuries ago a pope devised A list of sins he thought should b… But now we see the list must be re… For calling virtues sins will neve…
“Saint Chris’s statue on my dash Will surely keep me safe,” he said… But then one day he struck a pole And hit the dashboard with his hea… Oh, woe! Six-inch Saint Christop…
