The Quantumverse
“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;”
– Willam Shakespeare, Sonnet 130
This storm is not a shriek-wife,
misery’s rain of love gone cold;
Spring is not thrown down the stairs
by Winter’s violation of restraining order;
The missing sunset is not a corpse,
buried beneath clouds too grey for dead;
Because here inside, under wraps,
your eyes beget a Summer’s promise;
Once again, restored, the sun.
Kafka, you underplayed your hand,
dealt your man Gregor a low,
below the beetle blow.
How much better
to have made him an Assassin Bug!
Or Robber Fly,
or Death’s Head Moth.
Sure, tough to take his humanity,
but at least he’d have his pride.
“One morning,
after a night of uneasy sleep,
Gregor Samsa woke to find
he’d been transformed
into a killer bee!
So great! His family
trembled before that quivering
abdomen of horror.
Puissant, glorious –
death from above.”
100 years is enough wallowing
in despair, Franz. Time for “closure,”
or moving on, or whatever.
At least make him a praying mantis,
all proudly greened and sticked and mandibled.
At least let him die
In his lover’s arms.
For April Poem a Day
It isn’t the War of the Worlds,
Or even Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster,
It is the War of the Words:
Cerulean vs. Mighty Blue,
Dive Bomber Eyes vs. Fury,
Beryllium Veined vs. Mr. Freeze,
Alas Poor Yorick vs. The Joker,
Nietzsche vs. Super Man,
and not least
Buzzle* vs. rooting around in the yard somewhat, scuffing your toe in the dirt.
Our hearts are drenched,
yearning for The Poet’s
brief victory.
*Buzzle is a great new word coined by Jilly!
For April Poem a Day
I am paterfamilias
which I guess makes me the Latin Pope
of the living room
where I’m growling out these prayers
Crap! I just baptized
the armchair with spilled coffee,
frightening the dog and Mother Superior
with my vulgate benediction
When they were young
I would sell absolution
to the children
for the price of candy Easter eggs
If families are a religion
then we are catholic to the OED,
sermons of the word
blessed by constantly interrupting
Long ago shouted down from infallibility,
my mitre a fool’s cap –
they just tolerate my preaching,
pontificate meter on foolscap
For April Poem a Day
This bergamot,
looking so green
but tasting so orange,
hoax-nosed you
like a street juggler,
like dizzy lemon-lime
snout dancers and
now-you-smell-them-now-you-don’t
sniffpockets
whiffing you the rind,
this fruit
the biggest
slight-of-snoot trick
of all time
For April Poem a Day
At the end of each day
when the angels are done drinking off
the sunset, Heaven’s Chardonnay,
are they tipsy with sunlight?
A little high on sky,
that rumbling now,
all ribald and bawdy
under cloud cover.
For April Poem-a-Day
I thought I could write water
out of thin air,
wring rain from this morning’s
perfect sky
into a bucket of words –
Might come in handy
if I get lost in the desert,
or need to put out a fire
or two.
Then, in my ambition,
could my verse claw clods and stones
from the earth
and dig my own grave?
Or at least shore up
the fastness of my heart?
From the other room
you remind me, my love,
that I’m not a smart man.
A smart man would put down his pen
for the nonce,
and come back to bed.
For April Poem-a-Day
