Urban Mysteries

The streets at night are never dead;

They may be empty, but the beat

Of echoing footsteps, and the heat

From long-left tires means instead

They twitch and burn in infrared.

The day is always incomplete;

Only the lamps can make the street

Become itself, when it can shed

The humdrum ordinariness

Of the commuters. What is left

Behind, and what emerges then

Is a beatific, beauteous mess.

I hate the daybreak for its theft

Until the dusk brings it again.

Spies

I have I will admit some doubts

About the whole affair. I know

I don't know all the ins and outs

Of how this sort of thing should go

And so I might be eating crow

After all is said and done

But when I think about it: no,

I think ends as it's begun.

I cannot be the only one

For whom this story stinks to hell

And when the race is finally run

I think that you'll all know as well:

The truth is but a little seed

That may be ground when there is need.

Ruby

I do not have the words for how I feel

Sick is insufficient. So is bad.

The more complex terms no longer seem real;

So much for all the learning that I've had.

Feeling you tremble as you try to stand

Destroys my appetite and drains my spirit;

The way you flinch when I stretch out my hand

Not because you do not want, or fear, it

But since you cannot even see it coming

Breaks me. I do not know what to do.

I try to feed you; you're not even gumming

The teaspoonful that I laid out for you.

With every step your blood drips on the floor

What will I do when you have lost this war?

Wash

I am beyond imperfect. This I know

With all the certainty of wind and rain

That lash in warning on the windowpane

And promise spreading: I am weak. I show

My weakness with each slip. I try to grow

And force myself to stretch against the grain

Hoping intensely that the frequent strain

Will make me better. If is, it's slow.

And so I watch myself be what I am

Wishing I were not. I see each failing

Magnified in memory. I try to rise

Above my flaws. I overflow the dam

And watch those failures wash over the railing

With sad, exhausted, and determined eyes.

Cohabitation

I find my pleasure in the smallest things:

The way you cuddle into blankets often;

How every time your silenced cellphone rings

You panic; how your eyes begin to soften

The moment that our daughter reaches out;

The way you smile, both when you are posed

(A false facade infused with your self-doubt)

And when you mean it (wide and unenclosed);

The different ways you walk, depending on

Whether you feel happy or are stressed;

How you will pout when all the coffee's gone

Then brighten when I hand you all the rest.

These moments are my treasure, and I hoard 'em

Even when you think I might die of boredom.

Second Wave

It shouldn't be that fucking hard

To wear your goddamn masks. We all

Should be upon our fucking guard

For any way that we can stall

The spread of Covid. If you are

Incapable of doing that

Your sympathy must be subpar:

You wear your shoes, your pants, your hat

Outside; when it is raining you

Do not just sit there and get wet

So if there's something you can do

To stop the virus, why forget?

Or if it's not forgetfulness

But purpose--then you're just worthless.

Assurance

I worry there will be a coup

I worry one's already here;

I do not know what we will do

When they deny what is so clear.

The course that we will have to steer

Is one we never wished to sail

It shoals with prejudice and fear

Which we must pass untouched, or fail.

I worry it will not avail;

That what we do will not succeed

I want to rant, and weep, and rail

To pass from poem into screed.

But calm alone will help us now

And so I must be calm somehow.

Voter Fraud

Did anybody really think Bill Barr

Would have enough integrity to stop

His boss's madness? And yet here we are.

He doesn't have the honesty to drop

The trumped up charges of election fraud

Or even to ignore them; no, he joins

As if his Caesar were a very god

Whose face was rendered onto Roman coins.

Of course, if there were true misplay at work

We should investigate it; but be sure

The implications of that, he will shirk,

As if one vote could be declared impure

While all the others on the ballot stand:

A legalistic coup is now at hand.

Swatter

Consider, if you will, the humble fly

Whose every effort is in seeming vain

Born to a world of never-ceasing pain

Born but to live a little time and die.

Consider asking, as it buzzes by,

What reason, or what hope of earthly gain,

It has for putting forth the slightest strain

And if still does so, consider why.

Life must exist to act; it cannot stay.

It cannot stand unmoved, though everything

Should shout out nothing that is done will matter.

The fly that lives a single day in May

Will still fly on, its hopes upon the wing,

Despite the knowledge it will merely spatter.

Nobility of Labor

The union always made us strong

So strong that we forgot it did;

We started thinking (thinking wrong)

It held us down. But, like a lid

Placed on a pot of water, heated,

Which makes the water boil faster

So will a union, once it's seated,

Save its members from disaster.

As individuals we suffer

Underneath the corporations;

A union is a vital buffer

Against their greater depredations

So vote the union for protection:

Watch who advocates rejection.

Ban-on

 In politics, there is one rule:

Don’t let them flood the zone with shit.

They’ll try to play you like a fool

To force responses as they flit

Between their claims, and benefit

From how you cannot stop them all.

Don’t let them play the hypocrite

And throw up arguments to stall

Pretending with unending gall

To care about each twist and turn;

They are not serious; they trawl

And hope, by that, to make you burn.

But if you keep your focus true

Someday they’ll have to answer you.

Castles In The Air

Let me be extremely clear:

The people have a right to vote.

Some may not vote at all, I fear,

And some will fill it out by rote,

Yet everyone must have the right

Although it lies unexercised

To join their patriotic might

With all of ours. When it's despised,

When tyrants and their subject courts

Obstruct the franchise we all own,

They take the government's supports

And crumble out that heavy stone

Leaving it standing on the air

Without a vote, there's no right there.

On Structure and Restriction

Writing a sonnet is (fundamentally, at least for me) about creation within structure. It is about allowing the constraints and requirements of the form to shape but not dictate the work that you are doing and the expression of your ideas. It is about finding the parts of an idea that can be constructed into the sonnet form. In a sense then, any poem can be or could be recast as a sonnet if the ideas and emotions contained within it can be reforged.

This is the reason that I hold so firmly to my belief in certain restrictions on the sonnet. I believe that sonnets should have 14 lines. I believe that sonnets must rhyme. I believe that sonnets must have meter. It is of course possible to think that some of these restrictions can be relaxed or that some of them could be tightened. The name of this blog of course suggests iambic pentameter or at the very least some 10 syllable line in a 14 line poem to make 140 syllables. And yet many of the sonnets on this blog use iambic tetrameter and I have not renamed the blog to 112syllables. similarly there are poems on this blog that use extremely unusual rhyme schemes, though I believe there are no unrhymed sonnets on the blog. 

The point for me is that there needs to be a certain level of restriction; and for me the quantity of lines, the consistency of meter, with (historically) the one exception of the final couplet, and the use of a consistent rhyme scheme where every line has a rhyme somewhere in the poem are those restrictions. I cannot and do not object to others viewing this differently, but I think it is relevant to considering the creative process of writing a sonnet to factor in the restrictions that should be placed on it. I find that this also permits certain types of analysis based on the choice of rhyme scheme and meter and their interaction with the 14 line structure. 

There are also of course sonnet traditions. Thus a poem that is or is adjacent to a Petrarchan sonnet has different restrictions and should be analyzed differently than one that approaches the Shakespearean sonnet tradition or the Spenserian or that creates its own rhyme structure entirely. The turn, for instance, is a common element in sonnets but it's placement, effect, and connection to the rest of the poem are elements that can be moved around depending on the tradition or the invention of the author. but operating within the general restriction of the sonnet or the more specific restriction of a son of tradition (for me) brings meaning both to the creation and the analysis of the sonnet.

Credo En Unum

I do believe in many simple things:

The joy my dog expresses in her leaps

The sight of butterflies stretching their wings

Or humpback whales emerging from the deeps.

I also trust in more complex examples:

The hard won pleasure of a book well written

A purchase made after a million samples

The self-restraint of not squooshing a kitten.

In all of these I have belief and trust

That they can represent a world renewed;

A world revived, as I insist it must

From where it stands unhappy and subdued.

If these things should not be, then I would grieve

But as they are, I revel and believe.

Notorious

I knew that she would pass and still I prayed

She would by miracle outlive us all;

A monument to justice, standing tall,

Despite her stature: unbowed, unafraid.

By her oppression's mighty hand was stayed

And at her going, I fear it will fall;

While other justices were playing ball

She understood the stakes of what they played.

The gap she leaves behind we cannot fill

(Though we may fear it will be filled ere long);

In years to come we'll wish she were here still

To judge the right, dissenting from the wrong.

She's earned her rest, so we must now fulfill

The legacy she left, and keep it strong.

Weather Gauge

The sun refuses to reveal its face

Pulling the angry clouds across the sky

To shield it with their covering embrace

Until the day itself begins to die.

The moon, adopting its more senior's ways,

Seizes the clouds and makes them hide it too;

Continuing the day's oppressive haze

Until the morning rises with the dew.

And as that water floats up towards the sun

The clouds release their tears in sympathy

Lashing the ground with rain which, once begun,

Offers no end to its eternity.

So day and night are unifiedly wet

Because the sun in shyness took a pet.

On Writing Bad Poetry (And Publishing It)

So the poems on this blog (I speak here only of my own poems, not the poems of others I sometimes, perhaps rarely, analyze for their triumphs and imperfections) are at their best the first draft of poetry. I write them as they come to me, indeed almost always at a single sitting. I rarely revise, at least after the lines have come to me; on occasion a rhyme or a meter will prove more difficult than I thought, or a thought itself harder to squeeze into form, and so I will rubbish a line or an ending or even a quatrain, but it is rare. If there is a spectrum from Ben Jonson's praise/dispraise of Shakespeare that he never blotted a line but "would that he had blotted out a thousand," I, while no Shakespeare by even anyone's most fevered dreamed imagining, am rather towards his end than Jonson's own. I write what comes and publish it, and not never but infrequently look back.

This is a longwinded way of saying what longtime readers and even shorttime readers have no doubt noticed: I write a lot of bad poems here.

And I think that's a good thing.

Admittedly, I do believe based on my acquaintance and reading that most if not all poets and indeed writers are better at and more comfortable with revision than I am. If so, in their cases, there may be virtue inherent in holding on to poems and tinkering, improving, and developing them. In my case, though, editing prose is something I can do; editing poetry (well) is a gift so far beyond my sphere.

As such, I am fundamentally faced with the question not of publishing a good poem or a bad, but of whether to publish or abandon work; whether to write or simply not; whether to put out into the world a poem that may be (or indeed, is) bad or no poem at all. And there are those, I do not doubt, to whom the latter answer is obviously preferable, especially given the frequency of late with which I have produced no poetry of either stripe. Why not simply expand that gap one further day? Why put poetry out that is not good?

My simplest answer to this assertion is that the good poetry relies on the bad. If I did not write the bad poems I would not write the good. I would not write any. And I much prefer a world in which I do write poems to one where I do not. And thus I write bad poems.

I have more to say on this topic, relating to how the bad poems produce the good, and why I publish it anyway in more detail, but for now I shall leave it there. Bad poetry is necessary as a means to good poetry; and publishing it is simply an acknowledgement of that.

Copeland

I do not now nor ever shall pretend

To know the mind of God past revelation;

The limits of my present inculcation

Lie well before the knowledge might transcend

My merely mortal being. They descend

From (I may say) a proper education

Stewed in the heat of ratiocination

But have no inspiration to extend

Past mere analysis. I cannot claim

Divine insight beyond the eye of man

Or prophecy pursued past point of sense

I cannot read the vowels in the Name

(Nor do I much believe that any can)

But as I am, I am, with no pretence.

Historical Fiction

How beautiful it is to be

The Earth's eternal greatest nation

The apex of democracy

The pinnacle of exaltation

How grand to be the highest peak

Of all men can or ever will

Beyond all peers, ideal, unique

A shining city on a hill

How wise of to know we are

And ever after shall remain

Freedom's perfect avatar

Beyond this merely mortal plane.

So who would dare this betray

Acknowledging our feet of clay?

Developmental Stages

The child smacks her lips and blueberries

The latter of which spiral on the floor

Because she is so young her movement carries

So much excitement. She's demanding more

And I obey, because this time is fleeting:

Soon she will learn the ever present no

And will apply it to the foods she's eating

Even the ones that now are good to go.

With her delight I too am suckered in

And as she yells and flaps her arms I shout

Together we produce a frightful din

And during dinner fling ourselves about.

It pleases her to share her time with me

And I will seize the opportunity.

Distanced

We don't get out much anymore

Not even into our backyard

Instead we're always on our guard

Except we don't know what's in store.

We're always unprepared; therefore

We compensate by trying hard

To find out what we can discard

From life and not destroy its core.

Can we not see our family? Friends?

Not walk around our neighborhood?

Drive nowhere and remain inside?

The isolation of it tends

To make us mad; and so it should.

Yet still we feel we have to hide.

Declarations

Imagine if we acted our ideals:

If what we said we thought were followed through.

Now, when we speak, we say what most appeals

Without consideration of what's true

Within our hearts. We do not have to do

The hard but worthy deeds we wish to claim;

And so we say whatever we want to

Taking advantage of the good we name

Trusting that others, too, will do the same

Thus understanding that we all are playing

A hypocritical but common game

Where no one stands behind what they are saying.

But if the words we spoke remade the facts

Perhaps we'd value words as much as acts.

Eulogy

Barack Obama is an angry man

Fina-fucking-lly. I cannot wait

To see what he becomes now he's irate.

A calm Obama always had a plan

And I'll admit I always was a fan

But now that he's unleashed his anger: great!

His righteous anger now should not abate

Until he's resurrected Yes We Can

And made us recognize it does not mean

That what we want will magically appear

Or that he will take charge and make it so

But that when, like John Lewis as a teen,

We make good trouble and refuse to fear

We overcome even the fascists' No.

Q2

The economy has suffered a contraction

Which, though announced, was hardly a surprise.

It's rooted in our government's inaction

Also expected, but not nearly wise. 

The graphs of it look forged, or like an error,

A misbegotten failure of our state

I look at them with existential terror

And wonder when we're going to be made great.

I know that blaming the administration

Is oversimplifying at its best

But since it is unique to our poor nation

Some blame at least is theirs. They failed the test.

And worst of all, we cannot help but notice

We have no hope until the change of POTUS.

Tweetstorm

The Constitution gives us a solution

For Presidents who violate their oaths;

It's sitting right there in the Constitution

Within a clause our current leader loathes.

He swore before us to preserve, protect,

And to defend the Constitution--then.

But now he's worried that we won't elect

Him and his false administrative team again.

So he proposes (as we knew he would)

That our elections should now be delayed;

Of course, he didn't think delay was good

A month ago, before support decayed.

This is the final straw. This overreach

Is but another reason to impeach.

Iowa Summer

The sunlight dapples through my windowpane

To where the dog, anticipating, lies

Sprawled out upon a cushion twice her size

Tongue lolling. I hear a distant train

And, closer, neighbor children, whose campaign

To lure my dog outside meets its demise

With sunny weather, but who advertise

Their presence anyway. I can't complain.

The summer is an idyll in the year

When everyone is happy to be out

And laziness is just normality.

So, like my dog, I'm happy to be here

Listening to children play and shout

While lounging in my immobility.

Rot

I cannot feel the whole of my left leg

And I may never feel it all again.

It didn't crack at once--not like an egg--

But slowly slipped away. The time was when

I had two working legs, and then it wasn't.

I cannot draw the line between them cleanly.

Sometimes the body works; sometimes it doesn't

And though I feel the latter all too keenly

Time won't go back. The slow deterioration

Is how I know I'm mortal. We all are.

This time on Earth is merely a vacation;

The time we aren't is always greater far.

We cram so much into that life, but still

Death and decay both win. They always will.

Alteration Finds

Should I approve

If all these changes

Or by remove

To distant ranges

Signal my

Objection to

The sudden cry

Of something new?

I might well flee

The altered state

But that I see

That if I wait

The change will grow

To status quo.

Thunderstorm Gothic

On days like this the night is never far

Although we wish it were. When night arrives

It is unleavened by a single star;

The moon has disappeared. The little knives

Of street lamps cut across the gloom, but break

Against the darkness. Sounds are magnified.

Even the animals appear to make

The sound decision, now, to run and hide.

No one opens any door. The rain

Somehow falls silently, or soft enough

To let the others through. The silent strain

Becomes unbearable. The air feels tough.

On days and nights like this I too stay in

Best not to let it touch me on the skin.

Whether

When people spend too long together

They often seem to rub apart

As when the prickle of the weather 

Implies a thunderstorm will start:

The very thunder of dissension

Is fortold by lightning eyes;

The tears that fall out of suspension

Heralded by windy sighs.

The heated blasts of angry words

Are followed by the hail of fists;

In each case cautious cattle herds

Predict the change by being missed.

And as the summer squall blows past

So too these arguments don't last.

A La

I've never had a gift for imitation

For writing like I think that others thought;

I'm simply not that good at observation

At working out the way a word was wrought.

Instead of teasing out the tangled knot

Of what I've read, I simply cut right through;

I analyze the way it was begot

But to read well is not a route to do.

I do not claim my writing is all new

As if I were untouched by prior knowledge;

But I must write my lines without a cue

Not even that which I now teach in college.

Thus though I must profess myself well-read

The words I write come from the heart instead.

Escape Artist

There have been days (there will be days) I plan

To run away and hide from everyone;

To make a new life under a new sun

And take a new name just because I can.

There was a time once when I almost ran:

When what was doing and what had been done

Became impossible; what I had begun

Had turned out nothing like when I began.

But since I stayed, and managed through the mess,

Since I found you, and joined your life with mine,

The plans I make are larger than before.

Now when I plan, I will not run unless

Your thoughts are folded into my design

And where I flee has room for one name more.

Philosophy

Love is a comfort, deep within the soul,

A promise that whatever trouble comes

The partnership of love will make it whole

Even if the world is torn to crumbs.

It is a sense, held trusting in the heart,

That one thing stands despite the maelstrom's rage:

That anything that might be torn apart

Can be repaired if love is let to age.

Love is the relaxation of the mind,

The peace that lies behind the everyday

That whispers, when the world has been unkind

There is a place beyond the world to stay.

Love does not doubt or trust: it needs them not,

But sits beyond the seat of conscious thought.

America

America is much misunderstood.

America is only an ideal.

America (like most things) is not real.

America is not a force for good.

America's a bombed-out neighborhood.

America's its own Achilles heel.

America has many wounds to heal;

America does little that it should.

America, my home, my native land;

America, of opportunity;

America, the settlers' demand:

America, from sea to shining sea.

America, so hard to understand;

America, harder, somehow, to be.

Humidity

The crushing air is warm and soft

And lures me down to sleep outside.

I cannot keep my head aloft;

My limbs lie low; I cannot hide

The way my eyelids droop. My skin

Feels tight, my hair all prickles,

The bugs that flit about begin

To chew on me--their eating tickles.

I hear the fireworks far out 

And wish that they were thunderous

The air is wet, the land a drought

So rainfall would be wonderous

But if I sleep and it should rain

I still believe I would complain.

Relativism

I'd rather I did not exocitize

The cultures I admire; if I could,

I'd see the world through many different eyes,

Take in the bad of it beside the good,

And know (and weigh) it all within my soul

Not by the standards of my own small part,

But as a complex, living, vital whole

Each piece of which has something to impart

But all of which lives, not to service me,

Not for the value I may see in it,

But for itself and its society.

I like to think I've worked on this a bit.

It is a process, though, and not an end,

A process I must constantly amend.

Thin Blue Line

Remember, the police should only be

A public service, for a public need

Not a disruption to society:

If we are cut, they should be first to bleed

Not cause the wound themselves. They often claim

To be the finest of us, but deny

The duty that accompanies that name:

A higher standard. Cops should never lie

And yet see them do so, every day.

They shouldn't violate what they enforce,

But ought to follow it in every way

More than the rest of us. A police force

Should be, but isn't, something to admire

Not thugs dressed up in fancy blue attire.

After Moses

If I were God (thank God I am not God)

I'm not sure how I'd feel about the power:

Having frantic mortals always cower

As they address you would be very odd.

So too would be the times that some poor sod

Rants on and on at you, hour by hour

About some minor thing, like a cold shower,

While you try to restrain your crushing rod

For power brings with it (or ought to bring)

Responsibilities that counterweigh

What might, at first, appear a pure indulgence:

Perhaps that's why God, being everything,

Does not appear to us in any way

That might reveal their terrible effulgence.

Learned

I have not visited in every land,

Nor walked all of the streets I'd love to walk;

I cannot speak the tongues I'd need to talk

To everyone I meet, on every hand,

Nor do I know the histories untaught

In universities--the margin's lives

As lived by children, workers, slaves, and wives.

I ought to be, and often am, distraught

When I recall these gaps. I wish I could

Know everything there ever was to know

And understand it truly, fully, wholely;

But I'm also unsure it would be good

To try: for down that path, if I should go,

Lies thinking I alone know all things, solely.

Transport of Delight

There have been times when I have felt

The endless moonlight call to me

As if the moon itself would melt

And merge into a distant sea.

I have seen stars that seemed to show

A path that leads where none can tread

And in their effervescent glow

The cobbles glistened overhead.

On certain nights, in certain streets,

The clouds that caught each neon sign

Have promised hidden, pure retreats

Lie just behind their distant shine.

But since moon, stars, and clouds all lie

I much prefer an empty sky.

Iowa Gothic

If someone disappears into the corn

You cannot follow. Run. Don't wait for it

To follow you. What comes out isn't born

But grown. Its clothes will never truly fit.

It has too many ears. But don't look now;

Now you should be running. It can't run

Faster than a combine. But don't try

To harvest it until you see the sun

Under the moonlight you, not it, will die.

The worst will come if you approach a cow:

Don't touch. Whatever you may do, don't touch.

I don't care how much you may want the milk.

It can make you want things far too much

And when you touch, you crumble like corn silk.

Half Year Retrospective

This has been a year of change and stress

As every year, we must admit, will be;

But most years seem, at least, to have much less

Tumult across the months. We cannot see

The future, but we have to live in hope

That something will disrupt the madness soon.

If nothing does, we may no longer cope

With all the change that swirls like a typhoon

Around us. Everything is now unsure

And what seemed certain when the year began

No longer can be trusted. There's no cure

For this disruption; we cannot now plan

Another year. And yet we have to try.

But as we plan, we know we also lie.

SPS

Delaying for a year is cowardice

At best. At worst it is a weak deception

To cover up an ingrained prejudice

For fear (again) of its present reception.

If you believe that we need cops in schools

And that that policy ought to resume

Next year, then why this year of different rules?

But if you recognize that the classroom

Should be a sacred, safe, protected space

Where every student has a chance to grow

Regardless of their class, their grade, their race,

Then I would hope by now that you would know

A cop's a hammer looking for a nail:

A schoolroom shouldn't pave the way to jail.

Trial

I try to throw my words against the wall

And see what sticks. It's usually not much,

But then again, that they can stick at all

Is still a miracle. If I can touch

Not even souls, but simply minds, with this

It would be more than I would call enough.

Communication brings a kind of bliss

That can be called on when the going's tough

And thus, if I, when throwing words out, can

Make any difference to anyone

It's more than worth the doing. I began

By throwing words, but by the time I'm done

I hope to catch a few as well, and hear

What others say, and what they too hold dear.

Brut

Holy fuck it's not that hard

(Or shouldn't be) to not be dicks;

And do not give me that canard

So redolent of dirty tricks

That says "I have to be this cruel

Because I fear that they will be"--

You are yourself, and your misrule

Is your responsibility.

If you are human, then act so

And trust that others will as well;

If you do not, then we will know

They aren't the ones you ought to quell.

Your actions speak about your soul

Your fears should not be in control.

Voices

Let it be as it will be

Let it come as it will come

I'm not prepared; but that's on me

My silence shouldn't strike you dumb.

If I don't know how I should speak

But you are ready to declare

I will hear your voiced critique

And save my own as I prepare.

I will listen, truly hear,

Not waiting just to have my say;

I hold your conversation dear

And would not wish your words away.

Let us each speak truth to power

In our own peculiar hour.

Gifts

Lord, you gave us justice

But gave us mercy too

Because somehow you trust us

To know which one to do.

Lord you gave us Torah

Our high and final law

Which Sodom and Gomorrah

Lacked, as you well saw;

But when you gave it to us

You gave us also power:

The strength which you endue us

Is to assess the hour

And to interpret gray

Anew for every day.

The Deep

Imagine an oasis in the sea

Depth beyond depth emerging from below

Surrounded not by sunny greenery

But chemotrophic coral that can grow

Without the aid of light. Imagine swimming

In hard pressed water heated by the vents

Which is by seeming miracle still brimming

With endless fish, who feed within the rents.

And now, since we are human, please imagine

A trawler casting out a deep sea net

To fill our endless stew, chowder, or tagine

With any fish or sea life it can get

Breaking the coral, spreading it across

The cracked and spewing vent. Imagine loss.

Spoil The Bunch

A cop might be a perfect man

An ideal human being, too

The highest zenith of God's plan

For what we ought to be; a true

Apotheosis of our kind;

The best and brightest of us all;

The gentlest person you could find

In virtue, great, in vices small;

He might be all we all should be

In every way that we aspire;

Adonis' constabulary

The pinnacle of all desire

Yet all these virtues still would cease

From socialization as police.

Prophecy

I glimpse the future in a wrack of pain

As if the headache opened up my mind;

Before me lies an endless, empty plain

Birdless and grassless, on which I can find

No spot to draw attention but the whole;

A fire burns somewhere beyond my sight,

Its smoke a shimmer. Up above, a hole

Parts in the whispy clouds to show the night

Illuminated by a bloody moon

Which passes then behind a cloud again

And all is dark. Somewhere a loon

Cackles against the sky. There are no men.

No women either. As I strive to look

Pain surges and it closes like a book.

Eternal Reward

I don't think there's a heaven or a hell

But I do wonder sometimes, if perhaps,

When all of this is over, when our knell

Is rung, and earth itself begins to lapse,

Whatever God there is has not prepared

Some kind of negative, which, when developed,

Shows us the world we made, in which is bared

The pain and hurt in which we are enveloped:

The ways we treated others would apply,

As we were told they someday should, to us.

Do unto others as you'd be done by;

What you would hate, don't treat another thus.

So we were warned; if there is life past death

Perhaps it's just our own acts given breath.

Shambles

Wandering deep in the wood last night

I stumbled across what at first I thought

With the folly of hope, was a tree.

It was, from the first, an impossible sight:

Its wrinkled high limbs like the moldy rot

On blue cheese, enlarged and in 3D.

It swayed in the wind--no, all on its own--

As it lurched through the forest on foot

And I didn't stay long to observe it.

From what I remember, it was alone

But I fear that its spores may take root

In the wood by my house, where now I sit

On a bright afternoon, still afraid:

There aren't any trees, but I'm in the shade.

Fearful

Fear drives these protests

Not protesters' fear,

Cops'. Deadly arrests,

Rubber bullets, tear

Gas: these are fear's signs,

Fear of letting go,

Fear that redefines

Everything they know.

Power becomes right

Service becomes weakness.

Protest is a fight

Unless all is meekness.

Fear brings with it rage;

They won't disengage.

Beliefs

Two things I hold, and both are true:

The law itself can be unjust

And doing what it says to do

Should not be done on simple trust

Lest we should see the world combust

As it is now; and those who died

Deserved the law, which would entrust

Their fate not to the cops who lied

After committing homicide

But to the courts--which have, of course,

A history that has denied

Justice itself, and favored force.

The law's unjust: then add this flaw

The law won't even follow law.

Dear White People

The only ones from whom I ask for peace

(Not ask for peace--demand) are those who cause

Its absence. That is us. This will not cease

Until we change, and recognize: the laws

We hold to, and the order that we know

Bring violence. We cause hurt every day

And act surprised when those that we lay low

Refuse to stay there. They are not OK.

They do not owe it to us to pretend

They do not owe it to us to be quiet

They do not owe it to us, now, to end

What we sustain. The system made the riot.

The system's ours. The riot too. So we 

To make the peace must change society.

Face Heel Turn

I once thought I could make a revolution

If only in the little sphere I own;

But I, alas, had not the constitution

To turn the world around. Now I am grown

Sadder than I was, and wiser too

(Although it may be only cynicism)

And must believe whatever I may do

Will be beat down by constant criticism.

That should not matter, but I find it does

And in that finding disappoint myself.

The person that I once hoped that I was

Would not put dreams away high on the shelf

But wear them everyday. I should return

To doing so, but fear what I would learn.

Rioters

I have nothing to offer you but tears

Except my voice, and that is also torn.

A pain that roots in near and distant years,

That hurt you well before we all were born

Cannot be answered in an instant. Yet

If we believe the world cannot be mended

We will not work to mend it. I can't let

This go by me unmourned. It is not ended

By my mourning. It will not go quietly.

It will not go in peace, though peace will lie

Where it has left. In our society

We are too quick to let too many die

And then condemn those who would stop the death

As though order and property drew breath.

Short

Some days seem short

Until you try

To make report

Of what and why

You did that day

And then find out

You cannot say

It all without

And endless list

Of facts and such

Even the gist

Is still too much. 

Today was not

That kind. It's shot.

Sonnet Analysis: Ezra Pound

It has been a while since I did one of these, hasn't it? Today I take a look at "A Virginal" by Ezra Pound (text from The Making of a Sonnet: A Norton Anthology, ed. Edward Hirsch and Eavan Boland).

No, no! Go from me. I have left her lately.

I will not spoil my sheath with lesser brightness,

For my surrounding air hath a new lightness;

Slight are her arms, yet they have bound me straitly

And left me cloaked as with a gauze of aether;

As with sweet leaves; as with a subtle clearness.

Oh, I have picked up magic in her nearness

To sheathe me half in half the things that sheathe her.

No, no! Go from me. I have still the flavour,

Soft as spring wind that's come from birchen bowers.

Green as the shoots, aye April in the branches,

As winter's wound with her sleight hand she staunches,

Hath of the trees a likeness of the savour:

As white their bark, so white this lady's hours.

Triumphs:

I want to focus here on three particular elements of this poem that drew me to it when I decided to analyze it. All three are technical in nature (as befits a blog about writing sonnets). One is Pound's choice of rhymes: not so much the rhyme scheme although that is interesting in and of itself--I'll talk more about it in the Imperfections section because I'm not sure it works--as the complicated nature of the actual rhyme-words themselves. They tend towards feminine endings (lately, brightness, sheathe her, branches). This, along with the archaic style of the poem (archaic even for the time it was written--see Pound's other much more famous poems) creates a sense of the poem being almost overstuffed or overfull, whether of thought or emotion or what-have-you. 

This effect is heightened in the first and ninth lines (the start and the start of what would be a traditional volta) by the two strong caesuras in the line, which is related to the second element I want to emphasize: those two mirrored lines. I cait two caesuras (after the second no and the me) but it could even be three: no, no! has a strong spondaic rhythm that almost asks for a pause between the words. The effect of the pauses, I think, is again to make the line and thus the poem feel longer and more full than it actually is. The effect of the repetition, both within the line (no, no) and across the two lines is both to pull all parts of the poem together (across the volta) and to mark the strong sense of rejection that this poem gives off. This is not a traditional love poem, because the persona addressed does not seem to be the object of the romantic love in the poem--it is left extremely open exactly who is addressed, but it is emphatically not the her or this lady of the key lines here. 

The third technical element I want to draw attention to is the use of similar sounds and especially consonance across the poem, including variant forms of the same words: "sheath" in line 2 becoming "sheathe" in line 8, "no, no" in lines 1 and 9, "half in half" in line 8, the repeated "white" in the final line, but also more generally all the s-sounds, all the b-sounds, all the h-sounds (and also all the long a-sounds). This, in my opinion, makes the poem glide: it sounds like a coherent whole because the sounds of it are so consistent. This is powerful when combined with the overfullness and ambiguity noted above: somehow this sonnet feels like a single, unified idea despite at the same time feeling like it contains too much and reveals too little. It's a strong effect.

Imperfections:

I don't have a lot of imperfections to point out here: some things that might feel like weaknesses in a slightly different poem are here folded into the emotional impacts noted above, especially in terms of ambiguity. I might object in other cases to the ending of the sonnet, which I don't find especially compelling--but the very ambiguity of the value of "white" in the final lines works, I think, because of the rest of the poem's effects (or perhaps I've just read too many romance novels about rakes recently and "white" is not intended ambiguously--but I think, in this poem, I prefer it so). 

The major imperfection I want to draw attention to is, as with the triumphs, technical. As noted above, I'm not entirely sure I find this rhyme scheme works for me. It's a little hard to categorize: "brightness" and "lightness" should rhyme with "nearness" and "clearness" but they don't quite because of where the emphases fall in the feminine endings; similarly "savour" and "hours" look at first like they are trying to rhyme but don't. On the flip side, "aether" and "sheathe her" don't rhyme in my pronunciation of English, and yet they do here. This can, viewed one way, contribute to the ambiguity of the poem, but for me it feels more awkward than effective. I'm also just generally not a huge fan of Italianate sonnets (which this definitely is--a hard end-stopped turn at line 9, and a complex rhyme scheme [EFGGEF] in the volta) that don't embrace the power of the AB rhymes in the octave fully. Nor am I that fond of the volta's rhyme scheme itself, since the visual connection of the -our[s] rhymes, for me, flattens it out into almost a series of rhymed couplets. From my angle, then, while the word-work of the poem is strong (see Triumphs), the structural work makes poor use of it. Still, it is fascinating, from my perspective, to read a traditionally-shaped sonnet from Pound, a poet so known for eschewing traditional forms.

Shame

The knee upon the neck

Should be a metaphor

At worst, deployed to check

Excessive force. Race war

Should be a term we use

Only to make a case

About how whites refuse

To face how we treat race.

We shouldn't have to see

White officers kill blacks

As normal as can be

And then cover their tracks.

Yet every day we do;

Black Lives Matter too.

Lingering Threats

There is no reason for this mild malaise

Except the obvious. We are all stuck

Inside, and will remain within for days

Emerging when we must but thunderstruck

By the new world we will emerge into.

That new world is the old world minus us:

The clear canals, the woods refilled anew,

The climate still fucked up. For all the fuss

About how much we claim to not be doing

We can't deny our impact has remained:

The screwup we have made is still unscrewing

And all around lies a world still pained.

Perhaps that is the reason we're off-kilter:

The world still needs an antihuman filter.

Ideal Dog

If I were to let my dog

Do everything she wanted to

She'd lay in place, a furry log

Until the mailman was in view;

She'd run around with fur afire

And bark and make an awful mess

Then suddenly begin to tire

And flop herself in homelessness.

She'd jog on down the road, then stop

And sniff the center of the street;

She'd chase a squirrel--and then she'd drop

Everything to come and greet

My wife and I. So if she spent

Her days like this, what's different?

American Exceptionalism

There was a time when I believed

My nation could still operate;

When I would have become aggrieved

If any said it wasn't great;

When I considered it our due

To be exceptional; when I

Thought we were better-run than you

And that I knew the reasons why.

I was a child then; but now

I find my understanding grows:

I don't believe I should kowtow

To one who still believes he knows

Our country is somehow well-led:

We have a hundred thousand dead.

Shelter In Place

The church is an essential space

For all the folks who worship there;

It is the place they learn to care

For everyone of every race.

It is the perfect sort of place

To learn that God is everywhere:

That every inch of earth must share

In holy sempiternal grace.

If you cannot conceive a church

(A synagogue, a mosque, a shrine)

Without the people gathered in

It's you, not they, who thus besmirch

The name of holy, or divine:

To threaten lives is always sin.

Content

Deep in the darkness, down where no one dwells

Except the animals, who shouldn't count,

I found a mystery. Now, that shit sells:

They love when secrecy is paramount,

When no one knows what they will know but you.

Take careful notes. Pretend to be opaque.

Don't let them see what they're about to do

And they will thank you. For your own sweet sake

Act like it matters, even when it doesn't;

Then they will think you're made of solid gold,

That every word you said was true (it wasn't)

And that your stories aren't threadbare and old.

Or you can just yell loudly. That can work

But sometimes they will notice you're a jerk.

Ordinary Spies

I watch her when she doesn't think I do;

Not through the windows, or by secret means,

Like hidden cameras or a pinhole view,

But by observing when her head's in screens:

When phone, TV, and laptop take away

Awareness. I look up when she looks down

So I can see her when she is at play,

Her thumbs akimbo and a little frown

Creasing her forehead. I watch to see

The million ways that she is still the same

As when we courted. She won't notice me

Because she is absorbed within a game

But sometimes she'll look up, and catch my glance

And that is what I know of true romance.

Clutter

Nobody thinks

Of anything good

Not that I could

With these time sinks;

Everyone drinks

(Not that they should)

I think I would

Except that beer stinks.

Quarantine seems

A half-world haze

With no law left.

Now all is dreams

In empty days

Meaning bereft.

Tale

Tell me a story of the older days

When people cared about society.

Allow me to pretend that there could be

A grassy lea on which the cattle graze

Without fracking beneath; a subtle haze

Floating in the air pollution-free;

A civic discourse individually

Considered--not the constant blaze

Of flame-war. All of this, alas,

I do not think I ever really knew

Despite the promises our teachers swore.

Perhaps there was a time it came to pass

Or maybe they in turn once missed it too

Nostalgia passing on forevermore.

AO2.0

Consider, if you will, the fanfic writer

Trapped in a maze of others' words and phrases;

Trying to express somehow a tighter

More carefully constructed set of mazes;

Honing a blade already sharp as sky

Until reality itself is bitten;

Filling in unanswered how and why

In ways the copyholders hadn't written.

Compare them to those writers who wrote first:

Whose fond creations are their subject matter;

The fanfic writer claims they are the worst

But I believe those boundaries must shatter:

What is a fiction, but a fanfic hurled

Against the horror of the real world?

Libertarian

If liberty means anything, it means

Responsibility. If it did not

We would be nothing more than libertines

Slowly strangled by our own garrotte.

True freedom lies in true society

In placing others' needs above your own;

We band together best when we are free

And tyrannize the worst when all alone.

With freedom comes no power to do ill

Or if there is, it is a strength unused;

It is not mere extension of the will:

To solipsize is to be self-abused.

Such liberty well-planted ever grows:

The freedom of my fist ends ere your nose.

Simple Fixes

We cannot let these deaths obscure

The other deaths we also could

Avoid. We do not have a cure

For COVID, but I think it would

Be nice, for once, to see a fall

In those kinds of mortality

That we could fix, since after all

So much comes from stupidity.

So much death lies in human hands:

We could do better. Let us drive

Safely on the road; let's eat

More carefully; let the demands

Of coal and gas no longer thrive;

And don't shoot black men in the street.

Hamlet in Quarantine

I thought I could be bounded in a shell

And count myself a king. But I was wrong;

A nut in theory is a notebound song

That needs the touch of instruments to tell

What is in key, and what is tuned unwell.

The worries I have hoarded all along

Return when I'm alone in horrid throng

And make my home a self-sustaining hell.

To rule here, as in hell, is mockery:

I cannot step a foot beyond myself

And every thought repeats what I have thought.

For mere sensation I destroy the crockery

And push my tumblers off of every shelf

Until I drink from mugs my uncle bought.

Normalcy

My daughter doesn't know it's quarantine;

She's never known a world that wasn't so.

We are the only faces she has seen

And for a while we're all she'll ever know.

She knows the sun from windows, mostly, though

By our good fortune, we possess a yard

And so we go outside. But she will grow

Fearful of others--even (this is hard)

Her own grandparents. Everything is marred

By COVID. She ought to be with people, but

The people are the threat from which we guard.

She's learning things--but I can't be sure what

And every day I worry she'll be sure

That this is normal, even with a cure.

Liberate

I would rather be sick of staying home

Than sick of anything else. I do not get

Why people will insist that they must roam

Despite the danger, and I am upset

That they ignore the way that they impact

Everyone around them. Liberty

Is not just being free to always act

Exactly as we wish. Society

Exists. We live in it. So act like it.

Don't make this about only you: we all

Share risks, and that means when you choose to flit

From place to place, the danger doesn't fall

On you alone. It's selfish to pretend

It's somehow safe for this to untimely end.

Collateral

The virus on its own would be enough

To kill some thousands, maybe millions more;

We like to think society is tough

But it was worse than we believed before,

So famines, poverty, and lack of care

Will do more damage than the virus will.

The virus is still spreading everywhere

And yet already we cannot refill

Our meager stock of just in time supplies.

Our hospitals engorge, we hoard, we act

Like all of this was somehow a surprise:

The details were, but we knew for a fact

Something like this could happen. When it did

We didn't plan, but closed our eyes and hid.

Empty

I thought that I had things to do.

I really did. So I made time.

But when the time came, then I knew

That it was nothing. And now I'm

Standing here completely bored.

I could find things to do, I think.

The world I'm in must still afford

Activities. And yet I sink

Into the couch and do not stir

For hours, playing on my phone.

In honesty I don't prefer

To do this even when alone

And yet I do. I am inert

Because I failed to self-divert.

Pandemic Life

I'm always worried now. And you are too.

I see it in the hunching of your back,

The way your fingers, with nothing to do,

Insist on moving; how you sometimes crack

The knuckles on one hand; the little itch

That shows up underneath your nose. I see

Because I feel it too. My muscles twitch

With endless unnecessary energy.

I cannot seem to turn my mind off or

To silence all my stressors. I can't sleep

And when I don't it makes me worry more.

So stress on stress builds up leap after leap.

I wish I could take all of it. But no; 

If I did that, your stress would just regrow.

Why We Remove The Wine

The Pesach wonder isn't that we fled

The land of slavery, or that as we sprinted,

Our knapsacks full of almost risen bread,

We actually escaped, or that God imprinted

Our people with a duty at Sinai.

It isn't manna falling from the sky.

It's that, after nine plagues that struck us all

Blood in the river, frogs on everyone,

Boils and locusts, lice and hail, the fall

Of sudden darkness cutting off the sun,

The dying cattle, flies in hordes unknown,

We huddled in our houses as death flew

Past blood-soaked lintels, and we heard the groan

That said we'd been passed over as he slew.

Friendly Advice Based on a Reading of the Gospels

Don't rush Easter. It's a Sunday thing;
And even then, it's rushed a little bit.
The prophecies to which he's said to fit
Claimed the third day; for three you have to wring
Every last bit of Saturday, and swing
A little Friday and a little Sunday. Sit
Today in silence, knowing that he will commit
The harrowing of hell. Tomorrow you can sing
Hallelujah, praise God; but today
Live in the moment, with him in the grave
The rock not yet pulled back. The women cry,
The men wander directionless and say
"What was the point of this?" Don't try to waive
The stretch of time when Jesus meant to die.

All The Devils Are Here

I do not yet feel welcomed into hell;

But that makes sense. It's not that kind of place.

They don't intend to treat or feed me well

So welcome parties are a waste of space.

For some, I might suppose, it would be right

To feast them on their sin-induced descent:

The introverts, who would be put to flight,

Are those for whom the welcome mat is meant.

For those of us who loved our company

Their absence rocks us, as it is intended;

We enter hell despairing lonelily,

Thus mirroring the way all life is ended.

Sisyphus fought forever with a stone

But some of us just fight a death alone.

An Open Letter to My Senator, Chuck Grassley, On The Event of The Pandemic

I hope you realize what you have done

But I don’t think you do. You write me still

As if I trusted you. But anyone

Who paid any attention to you will

Be well aware you earned my lack of trust.

I wrote you—often—with the futile hope

My word would make you (surely something must)

Recognize the sliding slippery slope

Of your hypocrisy. You used to seem

Honest and principled, if still wrong-headed;

But I have found that honesty a dream

The principles only in use when wedded

To power politics. You had your chance

But voted for these deaths well in advance.

Early Child Education

The baby is the hardest part;

I can do nothing any day

But she (and know, this breaks my heart)

As much as I adore to play

Had simply too much energy

And mopes too much when it is spent.

I never meant myself to be

Although I did mean to parent

A stay at home, forever there

Kind of father; she and I

Do better in a burst of care

Than in the grind. But I will try:

It's not my wife's job either. So

In quarantine, that's how things go.

Pandemic

These are the hardest weeks
Until the next come through;
We hope the crisis peaks
But it ascends anew.
Each time we think the worst
Has finally arrived
We find it was the first
Of something longer-lived.
Our very struggle seems
A useless intervention
Like running hard in dreams:
Despite our best intention
Whatever we achieve
The crisis will not leave.

A Form of Social Distance

COVID is an existential threat

To other people. Now I do not mean

I couldn't die. But it will not upset

My way of life as well as my routine

Unless I do, or someone near to me.

I have a house that I can pay for; food

Stored up; some savings; job security.

So all the terror somehow is imbued

With surreal colors, like a late Monet.

I do not go outside. I eat. I sleep.

Existence wanders on from day to day

Despite the quarantine. I rarely weep.

This quarantine may threaten many lives

But warm and sheltered, privilege still thrives.

Social Distancing

Back when the West was won, we huddled close

In sod huts bent against the endless breeze.

Our families were enough; they could engross

All our attention, and they could appease

Our every need. The older taught the young,

The parents handed down what they had learned,

And everything was good enough among

The growing family as the seasons turned.

In those days farms were few and far between.

A neighbor was a good ways down the road--

So, often spoke of, and yet seldom seen--

And strangers never troubled each abode.

But if we won the West, wasn't the point

To not live thus? The time is out of joint.

Caution

Imagine this without the Internet,

Sans telephones, sans everything we use

To stay connected, stave off boredom, set

A limit to the impact of the news

(As well as hear the news itself, of course).

Imagine doing this alone. And then

Remember medicine. Conceive the force

With which plagues hit, and glorify again

The depth of what we've faced. Do not pretend

The world was isolated in the past:

Ships sailed, roads ran from end to end

Of continents. They died. But we can last

If we embrace what we have learned and made

(Though even so we ought to be afraid).

Quarantine

Overreaction now would be ideal;

We would like nothing more than to be told,

Some days or months from now, that many feel

We didn't need to do this. If the old,

The ill, and the infirm are to survive

We need to be aggressive. We may look

Like fools, but know: if they are still alive

It's worth it, even if you think we took

Precautions that weren't needed. We can't know

Until the end what ought to have been done;

All that we can do is try to slow

Progression. And you can't please everyone.

The chance of saving lives must matter more

Than anything, and that's what this is for.

Consideration

The patience you have shown with me

Exceeds the bounds of expectation.

To do so so consistently

Would draw me to infatuation

Were we not, by good luck or sense,

Already bound by deeper ties;

I love you not as consequence

But as a bedrock truth that lies

Down at the core of my foundation.

And so your patience is, I find,

A blessing past remuneration.

In this, as all things, I'm resigned

To be a debtor since, you know,

You own all I could ever owe.

February

The longest month I'll ever see

(Though shorter than its neighbors are)

Has finally time enough to be:

To stretch itself into the far

Corners of an extra day;

To shake the snow from off its feet

And dance the doldrums all away

While ice and cold go in retreat.

Strange that the longest should be so

Atypical, and yet it seems

Appropriate for it to go

Buckwild. February dreams

Like others do, and so it tries

Other weathers on for size.

Inflection

People will say it's overblown;

That really nothing new or worse went on.

They'll say it's something we've already known

For years. Nothing has changed. Nothing is gone.

They'll tell you to stop acting like today

Began a chapter, or else saw one end;

That they could see it coming far away

So it's just confirmation of a trend.

They'll swear it's nothing new under the sun

Or if it is, you shouldn't really care;

That everything today could have been done

The day, the year, before. And that's all fair.

But when they do say it's been true before

Tell them that we won't take it anymore.

Little Room

I felt inspired; then I went to write. 

And suddenly the thought of composition

Is terrifying. Should I keep it light,

Or would that lightness trigger your derision

As if the topic that I wrote about

Deserved no better? Should I try instead

To prove significance beyond a doubt

By writing heavier than would be read?

Are darker poems better? Lighter? None?

Would even this be read by anyone?

At last I sat and told myself: ignore

These meta questions. Write your thoughts. Go on.

And so I write. I love you more and more

Even though this sonnet space is gone.

Social Contract Theory

Politics should be the art of deals

But for that to work, there has to be

Agreement on the base humanity

Of everyone involved. If one side feels

Only they have rights, that likely seals

The fate of all negotiations. We

Can compromise to build society

But not when compromising subtly steals

A part of us away. To deal we must

Acknowledge that all parties play a part:

A compromise is made of cut-and-thrust

But no one's thrust should cut another's heart.

All politics must be, then, built on trust

Without which we can never even start.

Karenina

It's easier to write about a love that seems

Impossible or difficult or somehow barred;

That occupies the distant orbit of one's dreams;

Whose realization is unlikely, or just hard.

A troubled love's complaint, although of course not new,

Is for that very reason often easier

To share with others who, perhaps, have suffered too.

Its treatment may be lighter, open, breezier,

Or wrought beyond belief into a twist of woe

But either way, the audience is primed to feel

Beside you, filtered through what they already know:

Which means that they'll believe that thwarted love is real.

But speak of love achieved, and Tolstoy's words reverse:

A happy love's unique, and so the poem's worse.