Thursday, October 22, 2009

posey

Freedom

Does Terror wear yellow or red?
Perhaps a burnt umber?
The color of dead wedding guests
becoming one with
an uninvited drone’s
debris.

God
moves the joystick with deliberate
finger -- just a flick --
and His extension returns home in
time for dinner.
_______________________

Tea Bag

It could be Intelligent Design
or a game show koan
encased in sheets of plastic wrap;
wound too tight with piss and moan
like driving Sarah Palin home.

________________________



Of Rust: Ev Maddox

It struck me today,
while trying to explain to
a student how he should
go to hell, that all
my languages are rusty.

My French for graduates,
my old Latin minor, my
Berlitz German -- oh
my Esperanto’s hopeless.

All my Englishes, too,
Old, Middle, Modern,
Pidgin, Basic. In Paris
I asked for a room
dans douche. I can’t get

clichés straight: Does
water flow under the dam
or over the bridge?

How will I ever manage to ask you to come
back to me in a sentence with so many
to’s in it?

My fans must be confused
(me too) because “If gold rust,
what will iron do?” (Chaucer).

Somebody said the best
words, in any order,
were Alone in bed. E.g.
In bed alone. In alone
Bed. Bed alone. But
I think the best words
are In bed with you, and
the best order is
In you with bed. Rust

has its uses: They make
old beds out of it,
like ours you painted
white. I remember too
one winter dawn (this was
before we met), some
friends and I, loaded, drove
the wrong way up a hill

in the fog, and stopped
to hear a small mystery:
birds, creaking like hinges,
saying, it seemed to me,
just what they meant.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing with us your creations, and I'm looking forward to more. I particularly liked:

    God
    moves the joystick with deliberate
    finger -- just a flick --
    and His extension returns home in
    time for dinner.

    More of us should think about what the Nintendo-like drone program is doing, albeit unintentionally, to innocents. And how that will create more terrorists who have an overwhelming desire to blow up Americans.

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  2. Duane,

    I've been fighting a terrible tooth infection (it hit me Tuesday night). Yesterday afternoon brought the first hint of relief -- via massive doses of Zandoz and Limbaugh-esque pharmaceuticals. I'm behind but I see you've been busy doing good work.

    Poetry, to me, is idea compression through language.

    Because I've been 'out of it' these past three days, I plan to see what exciting things I've missed. Somehow, I imagine it's pretty much the same-o-same-o.

    juan

    ReplyDelete