Thinking Small

I turn my eyes from silver birds in flight,
And turn my eyes from golden parting clouds
From sudden sunburst, and emerging light,
And from the ever-worshipful white crowds.
I follow now the coiling river back
And search the snaking road to path and brush
To where in shade a single pearl shines black
And falls into a waiting blacker hush.
I’m there inside that drop of water now –
I fall with it, ride singing all the way,
Not looking up to birth and leafy bough,
Nor to the dark expanse of sodden clay.
I thrive within small confines here and drink
Long from my little bubble as we shrink.

Ghosts of Love

And when she calls, he’s ready, set to go,
And when he comes, she’s there, prepared to give
Her lips, the world, their universe – although
She gives him all, he cannot all forgive.
She stands inside the threshold of her house,
The door’s ajar, the iron gate’s unlocked;
He floats upon the wind, a flying mouse,
With dreams, full moons and kisses to concoct.
And their embraces just inside the door
Below the moon, within a midnight dream,
Give nothing other than their more and more
Until, at last, all ends with dark’s extreme.
It’s then, at dawn, that he remembers that
If he’s the mouse, then she’s the toothsome cat.

Leda Waiting

Fair Leda waits for her beaked king’s advance
Within her palace on her silky bed
Or draped in moonlight and the moon’s romance
Hard by a lake or river heaven fed –
Or dark in forest and its dappling shield
Where fairies play on branch or swaying leaf
With all the magic of their queen revealed
While her white king comes as a changeling thief –
Or as her supper in a covered dish
That, lifted, shows his tender flesh to her
That, after many kisses, to her wish,
Consumed within an orgiastic blur,
Waits nascent for her mouth to call again
To room or shoreline, wood or dish domain.

Third Avatar, One

Leda Lamour,
Pandora Waiting

This box contains the beauty of the world –
It sits upon my desk untouched in place,
With paisley galaxies or fractals swirled
Upon a dark cerulean embrace.
It is, indeed, so starry to behold
I’m spellbound as I near this little shrine
Where mouldings worked in deeply burnished gold
Frame cobalt walls where whirling rubies shine.
It was a gift from someone I once knew,
Someone I loved, the last I loved, that now
Sits handsome, hard and coldly porcelain – through
Those waiting years I wait to disavow.
So like Pandora, yes, I know I will –
Someday, this sky will break; I wait until.

The Island of the Black Swans

Before my entrance to their magic realm
A pensive lake spreads into shimmering haze,
Then, tethered, two approach; they overwhelm –
With beauty, strength, cob whiteness, they amaze.
We land upon an island in their lake –
They signal that my foot should fall right here;
And as they wait behind, alone, I make
Towards a chapel looming very near.
Inside the gloom, a cobwebbed candle waits
Upon perusal of an open book;
All this – dream candle, gloom, and book – creates

An invitation for a closer look.
I read: “We left this place on Whitsunday;
Come worship us in Oz when end of May.”

Pilgrim's Regress

Although Jack deeply yearned and bravely fought
The serpent dragon of his soul’s torment,
From all his pilgrim travels, all he brought
Were portmanteaus of disillusionment.
He’d walked barefoot the Santiago Trail,
And climbed Lourdes’ holy stairs upon his knees,

But, everywhere, though feeling every nail
Of sun and light, his sleep produced disease.
At night, Jack travelled to far fields ablaze
With singing flowers loud with every hue;
Then in these dreams, a distant wood in haze
Would lose him and obscure his starry view.
And sinking into softness, he’d awake
With Venus rising sans that common ache.

Second Avatar, Seven

Earl Pascoe,
Difficulty with Birds

The bird in flight calls me upon its wing
As it itself, for its unbounded ride;
Its beauty turns and cuts; it swells to sing,
Just when I shut my eyes and turn aside.
On raising them again, the bird has left –
All that remains is infinitely blue;
But still impressed upon my eyes, where it once cleft:
A shadow haunts, its presence breaking through.
I want to be a wolf heard by the moon,
I want to be a tiger of the dark,
I want the stars to see, recoil and swoon
Before my howl, shriek, growl, bay, bawl or bark.
But I choose to confine that that I saw
And watch the moving skies as through a straw.

Jerome and the Flower Maidens

The fairy girls behind a daisy’s leaf
Stare, jostle, stumble, wave, jump, call, and point
Toward me as I look for my relief
Upon a silver tree and mushroom’s joint.
“Why do you call?” I ask, and one responds,
“We know the little guy who lives within
That mushroom there. He’s gone to gather fronds
For some dread spell. Oh, fear, boy, his chagrin.”
But I continue to anoint with gold
The absent fairy man’s proud little home
In spite of every scary thing I’m told
About this magic guy they call Jerome.
It ends, I shake, and just as he appears,
His mushroom home collapses into tears.

Second Avatar, Six

Earl Pascoe,

Birds of Paradise

Our garden, for perfection, needs just one
Lost shade before it blossoms fully glad –
But can this hue, by our now orphaned sun,
Return to light and life be wholly clad?
The purple of the mountains in pink haze,
The swaying mauves and yellows of the plain,
The green reach, blue of sky, and sundown’s blaze
Run fugitive before their right domain.
This absent tone is felt in music too –
A missing smell is left untouched, the taste
Of fragrant berries, thyme and what we knew
Before this orphaned time has been replaced
By insufficiencies and irksome loss,
When everything that shines is ghost and gloss.

Second Avatar, Five

Earl Pascoe,

On Waking, God

On waking, God beheld what he had wrought,
But all had changed so much throughout his sleep,
And he could not accept it; so he thought
That all should be destroyed with one dead sweep.
I’ll start afresh, he thought, and waved his hand –
With all destroyed, he waved his hand again,
And blissful stars congealed, again the land
Arose from stormy seas – man’s new domain.
And then God slept again, man holding sway,
In God’s good image, lording over all;
They knew to pray, but also knew to play
About a cosmos in their mindless thrall.
On waking, God beheld what he had wrought,
And he could not accept it; so he thought.

Second Avatar, Four

Earl Pascoe,

Carnival

We circle round the garden ground, perplexed
About ourselves and where this garden lies,
About what went before, what will come next –
We touch the ground, but scry beneath glass skies.
If every day’s our last, we must enjoy
This ground, these skies, and wander where we will,
Not seeing when tomorrow will destroy
This ground, these skies – and every dawn must thrill.
But let’s imagine we have an infinity
Of dawns to rise on us and dusks to set
And in our blindness we command divinity
And owe no other god, nor time, no debt.
We’ll sleep the long millennia away,
And dream our lives and wake for but a day.

Second Avatar, Three

Earl Pascoe,
Tennis Everyone

Come Federer, Nadal, and Murray too,
Del Potro, Djokovic, and all there best –
Our altar waits expectantly for you,
As one of you is martyred, and one blessed.
We feast each time you walk upon our court –
When all the planet watches, and fate chooses,
It’s ritual and liturgy in sport,
As we attain the win, and one loses.
So, cannibals, enjoy the broken meat –
Our priest demands our awe be unsurpassed;
And briefly honour him and quickly eat,
For sacrifices multiply there fast.
Here we all know we live in time’s fifth set –
The match that ends, we dread, with ball in net.

Second Avatar, Two

Earl Pascoe,
Entering Shiva Nataraja

We listen for the beating of his drum –
We listen very closely for that sound
We know is there within our worldly hum
In every place: beneath, above, around.
For any place is every place, the centre –
Around, above, beneath, within, it’s there
In every place and any place, to enter
The omphalos, the Tandava; it’s here:
Don’t fear the circling fires of his place –
Don’t fear the warlike cobra, for his coils
Are there for you, are there for that embrace
That leads you near his treasure, for his spoils
Lie just beyond the serpent’s venomed bite
Where peace, nirvana, leads you out of sight.

Second Avatar, One

Earl Pascoe,
Of Love and Pink Chrysanthemums

Chrysanthemums weigh on the bower’s bend
And frame two birds long claimed by love and sky;
That sky is sun and white as they ascend
Towards its last in answer to a sigh.
Chrysanthemums droop low within the night
And through them two small birds are heard by two
Who wander near to steal a kiss in flight
Before the crested glow of dawn cracks through.
Chrysanthemums fall still while day and dark
And sun and moon, in rise and fall to rise,
Too quickly work their long persistent arc
As lovers linger on their long goodbyes.
Chrysanthemums weigh on some hearts today,
And droop and fall while birds and lovers play.

Sunday

Do you understand if you’re beautiful
To me, then you within me grows? – This, you,
Know when my mind cedes to some comely pull
An overpowering poignancy yields true.
What more to say of what this is to me:
A wounding lance, laced thorns upon my heart
That yields sharp light, true light to this degree
That all you were is live in every part?
So I transform you into truest bliss:
Remaking me, you smile and laugh, then go,
To sew upon my mind a seedling kiss
That even as you go this stays, you grow.
So leave if you must for this stays behind
Within this flower spread within my mind.

In Waiting

While waiting for your ghost to reappear,
I hold your promises insanely high,
And mope within your scriptured snare –
The overwhelming question remains, why:
Why did you go? And why will you return?
Why should I wait for you? Why not let go?
Your echoed words remain my fixed concern –
Why do I still recite them? Till I know:
You god, king, hero on your flying horse,
Armed with your sword or wand or thunderbolt,
Appear in sky to me with light in course,
And claim the heart of this your patient dolt.
This quatrain’s words do make my body tremble –
Cut up, I die for you to reassemble.

A Moment, Please

Within their temple’s grounds, they work and play:
One drums on sheepskin while one seams a shroud;
One dances stately while one sorts array;
While most are pregnant, two are very proud.
He takes his place upon the altar’s cap –
Then while one lifts a knife and it comes down,
And one holds up the shroud, prepares to wrap,
Their second man’s arrayed with his old crown.
Outside the temple from which they are banned,
The other men lament their absence from
The stately ceremonies of their land,
But hear the far-off sounding of the drum.
They wait to see their king just now made known,
And wait his year of glory on his throne.

First Avatar, Four

Elaine Bench,
Bad Timing

She laughed when I told her that I loved her:
It started late at night, and we were nude
Inside a sleeping bag; we’d heard a stir
Outside – a bear perhaps, in search of food.
It pressed against a side – we rolled into
The middle of the tent, where, she on top,
We caught each other’s eyes and slowly grew
Aroused by fright – such that we couldn’t stop.
We woke at dawn to see our camp a mess
Of scattered, overturned and spilt stuff;
We viewed it all without the least distress,
And she said, “Girl, I’d say we liked it rough.”
It’s then I told her of my lofty love;
At that she laughed and fluttered like a dove.

Split Screen

The party breaks upon the quiet night
Two happy couples gladly folding arms
And laughing drunkly with a child's delight
In their sweet energies and youthful charms.
She knows she’s pretty, and he knows that too
Now as his muscles flex into the dark;
He knows he’s handsome, and she knows that’s true
Now as her breasts press upward in an arc.
And from behind a curtain, two forms move
To witness this display of disregard
Of which with mumbled words they disapprove,
Especially when one vomits in their yard.
One wants to grab a broom, go on attack;
The other is a voyeur and holds back.

A Master's Hand

In dancing or converging galaxies
Or nebulae’s kaleidoscopic forms –
In light and dust and gas in ecstasies,
The universe is caught within its storms.
It all seems still upon a painter’s board,
Although its palette far surpasses all –
With chiaroscuro and impasto shored
Upon a light no painter can enthral.
A life within that luminosity
Is plainly felt and in an instant known;
It’s there alight, for those with eyes to see –
A master’s hand at work overtly shown.
It’s now the thinker gives a knowing nod,
Sagaciously ascribing good to God.

Something New

Was it upon his touch that she so turned
Into that hard and breaking angry thing?
Did he make that? Make her? And is he spurned
Because he said some words that blindly sting?
And she transformed before his startled eyes –
A thing he loved – someone he loved – and now
A viper, tiger, brooding beast that flies
Upon his heart and through his bone and brow.
Yes, fool, you did – you made the thing that haunts
Your active nights and lazy, sleepful days;
I am a voice – only a voice – that vaunts
Above all else, and taunts your thoughtless ways.
Can we make peace? Can ever there be peace?
Yes, sure, my fool, death brings that glad release.

Neoromantics

Two walk to their old bench within the park
To take the pleasure of its Sunday view
And hear the children playing with the lark
Ascending high within a fan of blue.
These sounds delight them and awake their hearts,
Reopens them to life anew again,
And ecstasies, piped in such varied parts,
Pull, rip, exalt, replenish and sustain.
The people strolling by this private dawn
Do not reflect upon their presence there;
They’ve been to church; they look, and then they yawn –
As they move on, their minds don’t linger here.
But if they think, they think the two are quaint,
And not romantics fully sans restraint.

Canadiana

The colour of her money isn’t green,
For she’s Canadian and stands to send
A message to the world that England’s queen
Is also hers, and will be to the end.
O Canada, she sings without a thought:
She waves the red and white of her realm’s flag
And cheers the toughest hockey ever fought,
Then stands to sing her anthem and to brag.
The problem with her country is the French:
They speak a different language, and they vote
For separatism all the time, to wrench
The sea from guarded sea, then sit and gloat.
If she could only make those Frenchies stand,
Then she could truly brag we’re free and grand.

Little Bo Peep Sees a Therapist

The dizziness of daily thinking swim
Within a withering pool of oh-why-me,
For Bo Peep thinks that it was vaguely grim
That she misplaced her flock of two or three.
This happens most at night when she’s awake
To all the pain of never counting sheep,
For then she calculates what was at stake
And deep concerns deplete her shallow sleep.
She’s told to suck it in and out when called
By thoughts like these along the Bo Peep path,
For, yes, her little life’s completely stalled
And she should light some candles, fill a bath.
So, yes, she breathes and treats her pain in kind,
And finds her sheep were lost within her mind

A Work in Progress

So know below the show of time and place
A googleplex of cupids fly and dance
And they give form and import to the space
Within a universe held in their trance.
They foam within the steel-grey seas off Spain,
And grow in trees that tower in Brazil;
In Canada they snow, in Java rain,
In China glow upon a distant hill.
This physics was developed (as we know)
Before our physicists imagined their
Mad quantum particles that come and go
With wacky randomness – all unaware.
If equally a cupid thinks as little,
It’s out of joy and joy’s joyful transmittal.

The Banks and I

The banks are evil, everybody knows –
They serve the Masons and Illuminati
Who in a New World Order will depose
The good and just in favour of the haughty.
The banks like debt; it makes us all their slaves –
What once were billions number now in trillions;
So while we spend and spend and no one saves,
They lounge on silk divans in gold pavilions.
I say this all with deep ressentiment –
I want it all: the silk, the gold, three cars;
And though my income’s just petit-bourgeois,
I crave the trademark trappings of the stars.
So with a credit card I make down payment
Upon a life tricked out with awesome raiment.

His Cat Mephistopheles

He thinks he’s sold his soul to his grey cat
(He’s Faust, and his pet’s Mephistopheles);
So in the dead of night, rat-a-tat-tat,
He hears its demon sound and dares not sneeze.
He counts instead, “So now I’m ten years in –
And I got twenty when that puss appeared;”
Next he awakes – a licking of his chin
At sunup lifts what he at midnight feared.
Then as he goes about his outside work
Charged with increasing dread as evening nears,
His waiting cat’s asleep, but its wide smirk
And constant pricking of attentive ears
Anticipate its master’s glad return
When they will play away the day’s concern.

The Persistence of a Dream

They fancy a Caribbean vacation;
It’s January after all, and they
Subsist within a colder northern nation
And crave that sand and sun a flight away.
And so they put their credit down and buy
Two tickets to a land of peach ice cream;
It’s in a week, and they can’t wait – they fly
Each night into their equatorial dream.
He dreams of Dedalus caught in old Crete
With waxen wings made for his freedom flight,
And she of young Snow White entrapped in sleep
Who knows a kiss and its daybreak delight.
And though they have to deal with snow delays,
Lost luggage and some rain, they catch some rays.

Dance Conversation in Three Steps

Step One

As we turn and turn, look out, not in,
For if our gaze is in we will collect,
Like gravity, slight sin on petty sin,
While everything else withers with neglect.
But if our gaze is out, our little world
Expands awareness to the outside reaches
Of our universe where, galaxies unfurled,
We’ll learn all that their furthest stars can teach us.
So therefore we should look to other people
For only then can we complete our love,
And, worry not, that always present steeple
That centres us will ever stand above
Just like it did on that our wedding day
When we avowed to love and to obey.

Step Two

No steeple stood above our wedding vows
Since we were married down at city hall;
And though I grant that poetry allows
Some play with truth, we can’t abandon all:
You set the cosmos as our outward gaze
As now we turn and turn on this small floor,
But it's all flat, and after many days,
We’ll circle back and enter at that door.
So I say, no, let’s look within and turn,
And find our true infinity right here;
But, love, I know – I understand you yearn
For galaxies that dance about out there.
So, okay, go and ask her for a dance,
But go without a single backward glance.

Step Three

That last bit carries some uncertainty –
You offer me permission but you don’t?
And by your look, some greater clarity
Won’t be forthcoming, so I think I won’t.
And, yes, of course, you’re right the small is just
As infinite as the extremely large;
And therefore you and I, as one in trust,
Will search the inner spaces in our charge.
So, please, my dear, stop looking at that man –
You seem to think he’s made of chocolate cake;
Don’t blush, I swear, I know if pressed you can
Renounce your cake if I surrender steak.
We’ll turn and turn, and as they play our song,
We'll dance our way through this attractive throng.

Workplace Maenads

They gather in our near and nearer places,
Their eyes astir with their workplace commands,
And cut their weapons from their routine paces
But spit in tongues that offence understands.
They dance a secret dance that can’t be named
Between a roundelay and common jig;
So round and round they go, their movements framed
To end upon a squeal like skewered pig.
I’ve watched these women dead upon their rite
And seen their wounded eyes transferred on him
Who with his blood relieves some ancient slight,
And found it all amusingly quite grim.
But when they turned their bloody eyes on me,
My god, I fled with all virility.

Microcosm

Like spirits bent from hell, the nations come
(Invisible, but thought, felt, smelt and heard)
Into our inner world like sharks to chum
That thrash about and lash when they are stirred.
They hide inside the ganglia of our gut
And wait a weakened heart and weaker mind
For their best chance to bite about and cut,
And gorge on all the tissue their teeth find.
They kill the hand that feeds them – so they die
When they have gobbled up all they can eat;
So for these raucous nations, we must try
The sharpest strategies for their defeat:
When mind awakes from trembling majesty,
Liege heart and silenced nations must agree

Lottery Numbers

The numbers roll out one by dreaming one –
From alpine birth, cascade to waterfall,
They tumble in the mountainside’s full sun
As if in joyous answer of my call.
One, two, three, five, eight, thirteen... thirty-four –
From foothill drop to yawning prairie sweep,
They coil a thousand miles towards the shore
As if in dreamy answer of my sleep.
These numbers slowly slide into the past –
From river's mouth to ocean’s boundless span,
They lose themselves within its magic cast
As if in sacrifice for this glad man.
You fall to earth and find yourselves back home,
And give yourselves so dreams may freely roam.

Mountainscape

The burnished clouds roll up the mountains' flanks
Like nimble dragons grouped and set to graze
Upon their twisted, high and stony banks,
While riding on their backs the sunset plays.
The night time comes (the dragons have gone home)
And in the purple sky a million lights
Now perforate its vast and sparkling dome
And bring the universe to these dark heights.
It’s very cold, we huddle closer now,
The climber’s hut behind us offers sleep,
When, suddenly, near on a mountain’s brow,
Two shooting stars conclude their cosmic sweep.
Now through the dark, we sense each other’s smile,
And put off sleep for still a little while.

The Salmon

The salmon reaches back towards his birth –
The salmon reaches back towards his death –
A place contracted on this yawning earth
To give and take the salmon’s worldly breath.
We see him jumping bravely over falls
And watch him bracing hard against the flow
And know him in response of sober calls
To life and death and what his instincts know.
He does all this while I sit by his pool
And wait for him heartbreakingly aware
He started on his cycle with the rule
That he in time would need to reappear.
But I would like to grant him some more years
Before he too too earnestly appears.

My Angel of the West

This western road that takes me to your door –
This long and lively road that leads to where
Your house alights and where you wait before
Your entrance in your constant, patient prayer.
So pray for me, my heart, so I may rest
Beside your burning hearth with purpose slowed;
And pray for me, my angel of the west,
So I might gain excitement on this road.
And so she answered me with many gifts
That I enjoy upon my daily rite,
And each anoints with purpose and uplifts
My burning heart with lights upon the night.
Your rest will come eventually to me –
But wait for me, my love, please, patiently.

Everything He Touches Turns to Coal

Dyspeptic and jaundiced, the man is ill
(Both physically and morally perturbed) –
Made sick by wasting of a robust will
With yes and yes and yes and yes uncurbed,
“Yes, I do want that, and so I will take it,
And, yes, I will do whatever it takes;
Yes, I will buy, steal, lie for, fake it,
And, yes, I will count it, while my heart aches.”
So, yes, he counts, recounts late into night,
And, yes, he peeks around, inspects the dark,
And, yes, he locks it deeply out of sight,
And, yes, he leaves, but adds this last remark,
“You stay in there, my sweet, for now you’re mine;
You will stay put, yes, in our private shrine.”

Entropy

Now the entire world suspends its breath,
Awaits in wide and deep expectancy –
We watch the lands, skies, seas for signs of death,
Or maybe life returned to fitful glee.
The moment now is quite precise:
All’s tipped and trembling on a fulcrum’s end –
To be decided on a throw of dice
That no sagacious prophet can portend?
No, for the universe responds to which
Holds greater weight, death or the drive for life –
And choices in the turning of a switch
Eventually will fix on what is rife.
We wait and watch, but we decide ahead:
A sleeping late or getting out of bed.

Love Lazarus

Your face upon my face is sun and sky
And since the sky is blue I have some hope
And since the sun is warm I get so high
That all the universe is within scope.
The clouds upon my mind now quickly part –
The clouds upon my mind now disappear,
And with a warmth and rising in my heart,
I watch you as you slowly come so near.
I love you. For you are. My happiness,
Which ever rises, warm and clear, uncalled
In piercings of my heart. I feel so blessed
By every move and sound of you, enthralled
By every word you say to me, with pain
So sweet I die and rise in you again.

Circle One before Reading:

(a) Campari and Beer;
(b) Hope from Despair;
(c) Dissolving Ethnicities within a North American Frame;
(d) None of the Above;
(e) All of the Above.

An Arab and a Jew are in a bar:
One’s drinking Campari, the other beer;
“That sure is pink,” one says. “I think you are
A douchebag fudgepacker and dumbass queer.”
“Oh, yeah,” the other says, “You know you come
From dipshit generations of buttmass;
A loser, fucktard piece of cosmic scum,
Your type’s not fit to kiss my nasty ass.”
“So let’s agree to disagree, because
We’re here, I think, to just enjoy our drinks,
And though we can for hours point to flaws,
Such manners make us both a couple dinks.”
“Yes, alchemy’s the way to go with this –
To frenemies – and ain’t this mixed drink bliss?”

As Dawn to Dusk

After eight dismal years of dismal rule,
A worldwide tyrant with a simpering smile
Who most on earth know as a righteous fool
Steps from misrule, but leaves behind his bile
And its results, a spiteful legacy,
Descending from his sadness and his sham,
Of wastelands made for all with eyes to see
And coming generations to goddamn.
As dawn to dusk, another steps, a guide,
And in the world awakening hearts now stream
With tears and hopes and love, and passions ride
Upon a morning held within a dream.
And neither of these people needs a name;
The moment stands within an older frame.

Unexplained Phenomena, One

The tiny house just there above the square
Is loved at once by all who go to see it,
But on its lawn a for sale sign’s still there
And those inside just wait in hope to flee it.
The high view of the bay’s the best in town;
Its lawns embrace its frame in emerald green;
Its floors are stained a lovely nutty brown:
It’s got to be the cutest house you’ve seen.
What’s wrong with this small gem that can’t be sold?
It’s not defamed by some quite grizzly crime,
And no tectonic faults hide in its hold –
Its plumbing, heating, wiring are sublime.
It’s priced just right and no one can deny it;
Sweet, perfect, yes, yet no one wants to buy it.

Where Hecatombs Suffice

Obedient armies, winged on war, despair
Before their shared great dread who sits within
Each stolen heart upon a leaden chair
And orders all to fight their very kin.
A great hurrah flies up on either side,
As weapons drum and smash a song of wars;
Upon a surge of blood and fear they ride
In group to group whose flesh their flesh adores.
They do not fight for mothers, fathers, pride,
Not for their nations, brothers, sisters, need,
Not for their sobbing lovers have they died,
And not for any thought or any creed.
All flesh is offered up in sacrifice
To that within where hecatombs suffice.

Proletariat Bidet

“I think that I am quite the bon vivant,
Have savoir faire, éclat, élan, finesse,
And, yes, indeed, I’m always au courant,
And, though I’m poor, I have the right noblesse.
Oblige: it’s de rigeur, no laissez-faire,
And since sang froid’s combined with joie de vivre,
It’s fait accompli I’m the lumière -
Now that’s my coup de grâce, and so I leave.”
And so this Anglophone and Francophile
Departs for pretty Paris one more time
And they’ll all greet him with a Gallic smile
And laugh behind his back and think him slime.
That’s why in Paris I don’t use bidets;
I know about the Gaul’s perverted ways.

L'esprit d'escalier

She laughed, then scoffed, “Uhm, yeah, sweet shortbus guy,
It’s me who’s got the cards – right now – correct?
So now when someone calls we’re not so shy
To get the phone – so, spaz, show some respect.”
She’d obviously been saving all this stuff
And sorting it together in a file –
A megaton of words and quite enough
To leave me flabbergasted for awhile.
So my reply was no reply just then –
I blushed and watched her leave in all her might,
But thought, when I had time to count to ten,
“We took the bus together, retard, right?”
The Germans call such comebacks Treppenwitz,

Which is, I think, a rather tankless blitz.

First Avatar, Three

Elaine Bench,
The Importance of Blue Brocade

Some women love their men in uniform
(I’ve heard, you’ve heard, for so the saying goes);
The tightness of the fit and postures storm
Their high defensive walls as worm to rose.
So little boys are made the sternest men
With brassy buttons and with brave awards,
Insignia of rank, crest, badge, and when
They form in lines and show their sparkly swords.
But I like something softer than this wool:
A gauzy shift of silk, a supple curve,
A loose décolleté: these emblems pull
My eyes and thoughts and order me to serve.
No battle lines are formed: One’s on parade,
While the other stretches on some blue brocade.

The Incredible Shrinking Couple

The rhythms of our lives we synchronise
To waking and to sleeping happy hours
That leave us blithely living in reprise
With concentration of our coupled powers.
You smile and I return your little bliss,
My eyes diverted by our bedside mirror;
While looking there, I answer with a kiss
That’s meant to cram our hearts a little nearer.
But then it cracks (I’m cracked, and so are you),
And then we see each other as we are,
For there you are, and here I lie stuffed too:
We’re marked and naked to the mirror’s scar.
But if we squeeze into unbroken spaces,
We’ll start all over with still smaller faces.

Isn’t It Bromantic

He slaps my back and I slap his: we’re bros
Who talk and talk so seriously for hours
And then a look is passed: I know he knows,
And giggles overwhelm like April showers.
But when these showers pass, we’re in a field
Alive with every rainbow hue and bloom –
We’re drunk, of course – but then these pictures yield
To smoky battlefields where bombs kaboom.
My bromance with this guy is getting hot –
We’re heroes in the combat of the strong,
When shrapnel hits the ever tender spot
Within his heart where both our hearts belong.
This scene’s the best in any real bromance:
He’s dying in my arms – it’s our best chance.

Osculatological Pedagogy

A sampling of the nectar of your lips
Is all I need for this examination;
So bend and let me take a couple sips,
And, afterwards, I’ll test another station.
To London I will go and test what’s there,
New York and Rome, Madrid and Saint Tropez –
In all the world, before returning here,
I’ll study kisses and move on my way.
What’s that, you ask – why kiss so well and run?
You beg for me to wait for just awhile,
Because your gentle training’s just begun
And you prefer my rare distinctive style?
So, Paris, kiss, Shanghai, kiss, kiss goodbye –
Subject insists I base my studies nigh.

First Avatar, Two

Elaine Bench,
Response to Sappho, Two

I’m here awakened, though I have not slept,
As if from exile – subterranean haunts
Have been the empty places where I’ve crept
Until, now called, to answer all your wants?
You blamed our love on love itself, and now
Buy love itself to bring back love to you?
You offer beauty and delight, and vow
To let yourself be plundered through and through?
Well, woman, know it’s not that simply done:
I’ve had a life. I was dismissed. I’m not
That same sad girl. Not I. Not now. I’ve won
Some self-respect – I’ll not be crudely bought.
But if you promise this time love will be
Forever, love, then I might soon agree.

First Avatar, One

Elaine Bench,
Response to Sappho, One

“I must go now, Irene, my love, I go
With much regret; but I’ll return in spring
When first the early crocus breaks the snow
And long before the laggard bluebells ring.”
“Your words are full of flowers in reply,
And so I doubt them, sweet Elaine; I’ll wait
For you, and love, not past this next July –
On August 1st I’ll find another mate.”
“Irene, my dove, love knows no almanacs;
You’re too much by the book – these patent terms
Take violet from the rose, and arrant facts
Entwine your petalled brow with little worms.”
“Elaine, if you’re the violet I’m the rose;
And worms and roses – you know how that goes.”