Category Archives: poetry

I plead the 4th

people are speaking to me,
thinly and echo-like.
I watch from above, my love.
(or across, down, sooner, later)
“do you want another pillow?”
“I don’t think he can hear you, Karen.”
“blink once for yes, twice for no.”
I have trouble working those old fleshy levers.
such meat.
they say come back, they say don’t leave.
I see contorted faces.
but, really, they shouldn’t worry.
I say don’t worry, but can’t spell it in winks.
I am the explorer, now.
Of a different plane.
We’ll meet again
don’t know where
don’t know when
but I know we’ll meet again
some sunny day.

On editing a post..

I dream of scissorhands.
In this dream, I wake.
I see shredded bedsheets.
Flying feathers.
Bulging batting from my mattress.
My wife stands by the bedside,
saucer-eyed and staring.
These new prosthetics…
She points to the front yard in black night.
Go and trim the shrubbery she says.
I go out, clanking in dangling pajamas.
I know the one she means…
It’s a twenty footer, my pride and joy.
I grew it from seed, I think.
How old am I ?
But it is unruly.
Top heavy, jutting this way and that, like a bad haircut.
I set to work with my digital glittering knives.
(Always liked the sound of scissors, close by the ear,
warm barber’s hands)
I snip and slice and nip, so nice.
What will we see, in the lights of day?
We wonders, yes we wonders.
After all, you’re keeping me in the dark.

Out of this world

My nickname’s Pygmalion

From those in the know

My interest in women

I never do show

To those I confide in

And have some affection

I am but a man

Who is seeking perfection

I pay no attention

Rejecting them all

For my birthday I got

An inflatable doll

But I’ve got a secret

That I’ll never mention

The woman I dream of

Will come from invention

I sweat and I tinker

Upstairs in the attic

Her form, it will soon be alive,

Automatic.

All silicone circuits

Endowed with a soul

Her life will have purpose

And mine will be whole

It awaits but a visit

From a Deity high

To give her emotions

And let her reply

To questions exquisite

Already have I

Composed with devotion

And love in my eyes

But, if wishes were horses

And Santa were real

My lover would speak things

I only could feel

Wish on a star

That I may and I might

See her movements so graceful

And regal, tonight

My nickname’s Pygmalion

They think I’m Australian

But they’ll never know that I’m really

The Alien.

Very nice, very nice

..we live in a basement now…
some say eww, you live in the cellar?
that’s something I did when I was a teenager.
a second class citizen.
how can you stand someone living above you?
what do you do if there’s a fire up there?
you’re gonna freeze in the winter.

well….

we have birches and maples and pines that suffice.
we have seven big windows, all covered in ice.
we have babbits and birdies and chipmunks and mice,
and the latter ones think that our pantry is nice.

a fire in the corner to warm up our toes.
a sliding glass door to a garden of rose.
a barbeque smoky, so nice to the nose,
and the sky through the branches of wintery prose.

and the one that we share it with lives up the stairs.
she booms and she clatters and does what she dares.
has two skinny cats that we think are her heirs,
and their vocal renditions? well, nothing compares.

but the aerial noises we hear from above
don’t bother us greatly, ‘cuz we’re thinking of
a family that’s knit (sometimes fits like a glove)
and the missus upstairs, she is someone we love.

Very Nice. Very nice.

In a night’s fancy

Oh, Enceladus!

Ocean moon enrobed in ice.

Eccentric orbiter of a God.

Your showering geysers

an accretion to Great Saturn’s gravelly rings.

Herschel spied you from out the blue.

Cassini caught you unawares and showed you forth.

In flights, our curious fingers find life’s beginnings

in your nineteen mile deeps.

You hold, I fancy, surprising secrets,

complacently waiting.

But never comes the day, my love.

Never comes the day.

Finders keepers ***graphic***

In this year of China’s moon,
there ends a life too soon.

On the cliff’s outcropping I stand,
not yet daring the mile-down view.
I wait for the scene seekers to disperse,
then pin this sorry note to the grappling tree.

You see,
I cannot shake them.
Like brain bees they buzz.
Dark stories they tell, without end.

All help seemed too busy with life.

Now, I will walk backwards,
fixing on the air’s horizon,
leaving no room for second thought.

I will count the paces.
Ten, twenty, thirty.
I will wait for the surge of crazy strength.
I will run, arms wheeling,
and be gone.

Good person,
I hope to make the river,
winding in the sun’s silver,
to spare you the sight’s abomination:
my pile of jellied bones,
entrails of pastel,
abalone membranes.

If the punctured eyes contrive a stare,
it is not accusatory-
only a mirror
of a hell that slowly did go by.

The bookshelf of Fantasy

The pines of Dor-Lomin
The Baron Harkonnen
Lothlorien’s swan ship of gold

The shining Silmaril
A ride on a barrel
The sandworms of Dune to behold

The hero Estraven
And Poe’s eerie raven
The treasures of Smaug were untold

When Brandin was scolded
Isolla exploded
And they stood ’til her body was cold

Saruman’s tower
And Sauron’s great power
And Bombadil, oldest of old

The Nephredil flower
The hobbits’ great hour
And the soul that poor Sméagol had sold

The Eloi and Morlocks
The wizards and warlocks
Fair Luthien, Beren the Bold

And Moria’s door
And the Priest-Kings of Gor
And the stories that Tolkien told

Feanor’s Folly
The catapults’ volley
The Fellowship’s climb in the cold

And Yoda’s finale
The Jedis’ last rally
(This story is yet to be told)