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Dance Review
Pure invention may be justified by brute ability
But even if there really is a climate
Here the choreographer will never ultimately climb it.
The wisdom of the trapeze is stupidity
As the courage of the pilot is the air.
Despite the bullying computer scientist
There is a long and short of it
But the dancers don’t necessarily have to care.
If the distinction between free sex
And free love is correct
They can go on cracking gum
And writing rubber checks.
As an enthusiast I'm always early
Which gives time a whole new look.
It takes an effort to break free of the book
But when one does one feels less squirrely.
The blind religious with their statuary
Will tell you that a host
Is the better part of a ghost.
All I hope for in a visitation
Is that the 12:06 will come within the hour.
Certainly a year or two of travel
Should help one ravel or unravel
Something. At least he or she didn’t cower
When the time came to deliver.
Even if certain of his or her effects
Were invented purely for effect,
Being interesting is more than most deliver.
The flat page covered with coffee stains
Was like old wallpaper in a shabby room.
What saved it from excessive gloom
Was the view of the exotic from the train.
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Revenge Motif
Sergeant Studious was born beautiful,
The way fish shine in the sun
Of their own accord. Even when his son
The chauffeur is disgruntled
His prick still whispers to his thighs,
Like an evil adviser to an old philosopher
In Rome, that the baroness’s offer
Still stands: a drink at the Waldorf,
Her dark glasses at a drunk angle on her nose,
Her admiring lashes as she guides
His hands up the insides of her thighs.
Still there are dark days when
The garden grows nothing but thorns,
The warp can’t be told from the weft.
Is there really any direction left?
The halls are filled with professional mentors
Who nurse a bored and quiet desperation
For the key of C, an underlying three.
In the wee hours he gets up to pee
And the mouth in his stubbly face
Proclaims unbidden, I think it’s not
Easy. Mirrors hang from the trees.
The wind brings him the latest joke for free.
In the distance hungry hounds cry
Down the latest gray fox or marmoset
And the glass of single-malt whiskey sits
Alone in his head, a reward for winning the bet.
Resemblances to persons living or dead
Is a trade secret that cannot be kept.
In fond dreams he remembers when
He hopped in the moonlight from bed to bed
Like the unquiet ghost of a flea.
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Implicated Too
I don’t understand the connection though
I know what it is. As if written in letters
Six feet high or miniscule to quote unquote
Ad nauseam. How does one emulate one’s betters,
Fettered or unfettered, bouncing around like
Particles in his leaden skull but leaky ears take
The monkey and run. As though stealing fire
Or the family china, what a load of clay.
Better to remember those same lines and keep
Them to oneself. I’m tired of the drainage ditch,
Its infected mosquitoes and dead crows. Weeping,
Grunting, the gestures that can be approving or disapproving
Left behind with things and people like
The Unification Church. Do they read out of
The same book the baby the bottle the wife “the thing”
The old man? The second person has its place, love
The point, as usual, has given in or taken out of us
The worst and best of us. The time is out of joint.
I set out to tolerate what I can’t upset. The point
Is sometimes circumnavigated, sometimes crushed
Like a dry loaf. What I’m getting at is whether
It matters. There is no “getting into” advertising.
If anything one would prefer to get out. A tether
Not worth tying. I’m about as far out
As I can get without falling out. Madison and Sixth.
Rather it’s the first. But I’ll take the fifth.
The person from pork rinds told us again of his complaint.
Enough to make a grown man faint.
Comfortable party on a bench, I met
A crooked man beside a crooked gate. Yet required
To continue putting one foot in front of the other
As though the lead soprano really mattered to the choir.
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