Literary Manners

Thwarted is a word our poet could use

Such as he was thwarted by laundered

Underwear she left hanging from various

Light fixtures or maybe his libido was

Thwarted in the exalted realm of the boudoir

Or perhaps his desire is a knife sunk half

Deep into his thwarted dreams yet our poet 

Will be content and grow his beard long

Enough to be shaved long enough to thwart

A lover’s pale cheek and a lover might

Express herself in a sharp gesture of disgust

Because she hates plants despises them

Since spending a toilsome season among
Confrontational flowers that love thwarted

A Song that It May Rain

It is a shining thing! this place in the world

Where we are possible where we

Luckily sometimes find us when we miss us

Nor do we spare our wrath upon our deluded shoes

We who run amok waving our arms

We who jump madly up and down

First come low clouds then comes thunder

We are the lightning flash charmed by us

It is written in the dim sky with even dimmer letters

We scale these words we climb them one by one

We who embody so many things

We amazed by other things unfolding one by one

Be fair! if we weren’t here

What would the birds and trees be

What would the season be without us?

We translate eternity into days into skies

We translate eternity into lightning flashes

We translate eternity into words for others

We follow a path mapped by the heart

It always leads us here long before we are born

It always leads us here where we make love bleed

This place where we meet is a thirty-first of December

This place is where things always end one after another

Softened in the glimmer of a candle

Beyond this vision beyond the silence that listens

There are moments when we admit our love

Breathes only when the lightning flashes

Song for Lovers Thirsty in Their Drained Beds

Blood—my dear—red blood is quite

Exiguous here in this desert of stones

Where zouaves wander in their ragged

Homeless battalions flanked by a troop

Of cats toting tattered flags and ensigns

Look! here’s the sky that drowned itself

For no good reason O this is all so very

Incomprehensible so indecipherable

Just take another step let's keep walking

One day we will find the root and vine

The most beautiful jungle of madness

We will find footprints there yes it is true

They will sweat blood but we won't beg

For they will have so little to give

Your Veins Use Up All the Red in the World

How strange and wild you look!  please

Give me an apple why don’t you give

Me Karen Carpenter all hopped up

On Sonic Youth baby baby baby O baby

I really do wish you’d leave twenty dollars

Between all my pages but don't leave

My tongue tied to your velvet fate

O velveteen stop breaking my book spines

Stop dancing the cluttered music's done

If you discard me I’ll part night’s dark hairs

With my voice O ain’t it funny how strange

And wild things can look sometimes

The sun leaves us wide-eyed and alone

Our tongues behung with sweet fetid songs

Frank O’Hara Sits in a Vicksburg Bar

Ignoring the fresh vodka tonic at his elbow

But peering intently at his right hand

The thumb and forefinger of which

Pinch a hair plucked from the left

Nostril of that glorious nose

O why did you come to this phlegmatic town?

I have come to feel the sweet

Fetid dust of its breath on my lips!  

I have come to wander drunkenly here!

Why did I come? I have come to rule!