Dark Mage and ShadowLight asked me if I would repost a few of these so, lo! Three depressing poems about death, sin, and songbirds, and three comical ones about--jokes? I probably posted them in slightly different forms the first time. Oh, and my favorite is the last one--about the gerbil's midlife crisis.
Thistle or A Snakeskin Found
I found your skin this morning, Lucifer,
Papery dead, in a forest of fiddlehead fern.
You were there. You left it for me, turned
And twisted on a thistle's purple crown.
Such was the blossom you gave me once,
The one I loved until it spread
And brought in every snapping, black-capped bird
And choked off sprigs that might have grown instead,
And there was nothing ever to be said
Nor thought nor done nor writ nor planned,
But only each stalk to be held in bleeding hands,
And like a loose skinned and indifferent man,
To root each grasping bastard up
And cast it dead upon the land.
I found your skin today, old foe,
In a forest of fiddlehead fern.
And all I've ever wanted to know
Is where a child of God may turn.
First Snow
We had hardly noticed, scarcely known
The virgin frost, the seraph's breath,
The snow sparks scattered like fragmented bone,
Bleached, immaculate, falling fresh
From purity, like Satan tumbling down
To frozen Eden's broken fields and down and down to death.
Our petulance, this bitter icecap sea
That swept along our black and fertile earth,
It crept on us. It left us harsh and hard and free
As snowbirds chipping in a twig-cage berth;
Yet huddled here within our failing lee
We dare behold what we've become
And still find you and me.
First Snowbird Noticed
Canadian traveler
Tumbling before the blast,
Ask no more of me, of us,
Than to weather these, our skies,
Born on black feathers,
And the glistening hoarfrost
Fallen with your flight,
This bone-dead starry night,
True light from true light.
Prophet, ask no more
Than to lay your frozen dead
In the holy whiteness
Of our Puritan snows.
Our snow-white God well knows
The falling of a sparrow,
Time's arrow, and the loosing of death's sting;
While only frightened snowbirds sing,
Deaf to all that I may ask--
Tumbling before the blast.
Goliath
Goliath was a Philistine,
We went to a museum.
He rolled his eyes at Rubens' thighs
(Alhough you've got to to see 'em).
He didn't like the way Van Dyck
Resolved his light and shadow.
When I explained, he said, all pained:
"Oh, yadda, yadda, yadda!"
Poor Titian's flairs drew sullen stares,
Picasso fared no better.
He just said no to all Van Gogh;
Cezanne was a dead letter.
Then at the overpriced cafe
He griped, "The mocha's tart.
I don't know why you want to stay
If this is what's called art."
He girded up his loins and left,
He took his sword and sling.
Before he stuck me with the check
I noticed one last thing:
Goliath was a Philistine,
A petty bourgeoisie,
But when beyond such things I'd seen,
I saw the man was me.
The Voluptuous Sphinx
There was a voluptuous sphinx
Who made a sly riddle, the minx.
She loosened her bodice
And posed like a goddess
And asked what a gentleman thinks.
"One thinks," I began, "thou art pretty,
And thy charms not at all itty-bitty.
But be they so pert,
Keep 'em, please, in thy shirt
For I'm bound by a husband's chas-titty.
She flickered her tail in respect
And clawed a few fleas from her neck.
Then she knocked off her jive
And she ate me alive:
For my answer was wrong I expect.
Joseph Gerbil's Midlife Crisis
There once was a gerbil named Joe,
Or a hamster or rat, I don't know.
He spent his days running
With terrible cunning;
He thought he'd get somewhere--mais non.
One day Joseph jumped down from his wheel,
And he thought, "Okay now, what's the deal?
My lifelong endeavor
Has furthered me never."
And he stormed and he raged (okay, squealed).
That night Joseph escaped his terrarium,
But he fell in a neighboring aquarium.
I found the poor pup
Floating there belly up,
And I thought that I really should bury him.
And yet Joseph survived his ordeal
And returned to his plexiglass jail,
Embracing his lot
With the gerbilish thought
Of accepting life's woe with its weal.
Here ends my ridiculous verse:
I confess that I've written none worse.
Joe lived through his crisis
Having paid dreadful prices.
You've paid aught, critic, spare me your curse.