(1994)
Republished by permission from "Lyric," Vol. 74, No. 3
#DescriptiveHumorousQuatrain
When it comes to a war or driving… I do both to some stirring ovation… In fights I’m a scuffler and my c… So I’m ready for all provocations… For it’s very well known that test…
Bank Caesar An angry man, conceived and birthed in cars, weaned on dumpsters, reared in shattered rooms
The score now even after Jordan’s… up yours, you punk, confess before… she’d deceived you, Lance, her pre… see the Bible, frayunds, Isaiah f… four-car wreck on Hempstead, now t…
What discount art inspired this ta… Eleven months a year you’re quite… Too dark and gaunt, we thought, to… By breaking out in garments so biz… But just when nature tries to be a…
Give Me No Perfect Things Give me no perfect things: a snowflake - kalaidoscopic, machine-cut, different but all alike,
Above the stores medieval grimness… stones coffin-sized in high gray w… exuding dampness of tombs, lichene… towering inward, threatening Gothi… across the twisting cart-wide lane…
His Hobby Our Mr. Hughes, retired, was exce… At working wood, and every Yule h… A creche —cut plywood forms to rep… The cast, especially Jesus, whom…
Verse now slain by latest dogma, down the cobbled street come mourn… trundling Verse’s coffin forward, charging all to note the corpus, garroted for disregarding
. . . And after they had torn and… The earth, and passed the tons of… Through frightening fires, until i… and then unloaded it upon the shor… Of Black Detroit, where it was fi…
One morning Leda, sitting on the… Saw Zeus appear transmogrified to… She heard too late the honks and w… And so with godly force he conquer… (Some skeptics say she could have…
Give Me More Light Give me more light I’m getting desperate here, you kn… show me what you’ve got is Ann Landers still around?
The Computer Cometh A shiny joint is rasped across the… And swiftly followed by a bulging… And other iridescent joints that h… Themselves across with creaks and…
The Star See that star that now appears To glisten in the sky? It took perhaps a million years For it to reach your eye.
Boundaries Tracing writhing streams, circling alpine wastes, tickling out a finger nudged between two behemoths,
I will not wear shorts, wing-tip s… I will continue to be grateful tha… I will not listen to any salesman… I will quit telling people how I… I will not say, “I don’t know wha…