Verses Selected: An SEO-Optimized Title

1
❦ VERSES SELECTED ❦
From Forty-Seven Books
Of Over 4,000 Compositions
by
MICHAEL CURTIS
mostly chosen
from those published in journals
during the past quarter century
❦ contents ❦
Page 4 Fish Story
1993
Ballads
Page 13 Serenade
1993
Lyrics
Page 15 Odds & Ends
1993
Miscellany
Page 17 Prig E. Map’s Book of Pepigrams:
In Five Books; 1993 & 2006
Epigrams and Aphorisms
Page 22 The Life of Trees: In Six Books
1995
Free Verse and Formal Verse
Page 27 Pinhead: In Three Books
1995
Lyrics and Riddles

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Page 29 Wit
1995
Parodies, Satires, Lampoons
Page 33 Modern Art
1996
Epigrams
Page 35 Fire Burns
1996
A Pornographic Miscellany
Page 37 Black-Eyed Susan: Verses for
Children; 1997
Lyrics, Ballads, Epigrams
Page 39 Amouretti: In Three Books
1997
Lyrics, Ballads, Epigrams
Page 41 Weaving Purple Flowers
1998
Lyrics
Page 43 Silhouette: In Two Books
1998
Free Verse and Prose Poems
Page 46 Like a Fish
1999
A Sonnet Sequence
Page 49 Flower Gathering
2001
Epigrams
Page 51 Land of Sunlight and Stars:
Afrikaans Verse in English
Translation; 2002
Lyrics, Ballads, Sonnets
Page 54 Little Songs
2007
Sonnets
Page 55 Colloquies: A Review of Civilization
In Seven Books
Conversational Sonnets
Page 55 Secrets
2011
Page 57 Commentary
2012
Page 59 Confession
2012
Page 61 Dispute
2013
Page 64 Invective
2013
Page 66 Celebration
2014
Page 67 Axis
2016
Page 68 The Priapeia of Professor Priapos:
An English Verse Translation of the
Latin; 2014
Conversational Tetrameter Sonnets
Page 70 The Aestheticon: A Tetraology of
Verse Libretti
I Pandora Beyond Hope
II Galatea: The Statue Comes
to Life
III Amaron the Silly Muse
IV Nyx
2014
Page 79 The Progressive: A Tetralogy of Ten-
Minute Verse Plays
I Lótophagoi
II Tiresia
III Orphia
IV Priapi
2015

3
Preface
Why write? To inform and delight, to give pleasure, to speak the thoughts teaming in the mind, to
make comment on the views of those who came before, to extend the great conversation into a
vast future by the alchemy of words leaden on the tongue, fossilized on the page, yet visceral and
alive in minds age after age after age: Words live when bodies die, words have life which extend
man to man until our end, an ending which shall someday come, an ending which might silence
the mind of the universe absolutely and forever, who can say? Here an introduction to verses
composed for the easy amusement of crafting little gems of Art.
Poetry has many defenders, Sidney, Dryden, Shelly, Coleridge, Wordsworth and old what’s-his-
name, each with an opinion beautifully composed and simply mistaken. I would not propose the
purposes of Art, she has no need of my apology, she speaks for herself through every person who
fashions forms which create ideas that live in the minds of men. Poetry, alike picture-making and
statuary, is a species of metamorphosis, a process through which things existing of themselves
become the object of an idea. A god, the God might fashion man from mud, yet man fashions art
from ideas by stone, by sound, by the nonexistent existent of words: We men sometimes forget
that we float through eternity on a spot in infinity and that there is more to wonder than can be
comprehended by that collection of atoms who we call Adam. If we are to know we shall know
through the soul.
Strings of words are by nature polemic; for this Shelly is to be excused: Poets do not make
morality, poets make poems. A crafter of poems might be a villain, a saint, a fool, or all three in
common because poets are things alike ourselves, yet sprinkled with uncommon enthusiasms.
Then too, a poet cannot craft ideas greater than he can comprehend, nor fuller than the thing of
which he is. If I were to advise a young person ambitious in verse I might suggest the study of
things, the comprehension of thoughts, the improvement of the soul, and then I might insist upon
a particular study of forms, if that poet intends to inform, to seduce, and to persuade. We learn to
make art by a study of Art: For all its pretense, art is merely artifice.
The selection before you was chosen from verses circulated in journals: It is my custom to each
year submit some few verses for consideration and I am flattered, am grateful, that many journals
have favored my submissions. Here below are some of the favored verses and a few others that will
help make the purpose of each collection comprehensible. Since first making my avowal, some
quarter century ago, I have made no serious attempt at publication, holding back my best that I
might midas longer, and yet words want ears so I shall soon publish beyond this assembly. For
those who asked, for those who by occasion hear, Verses Selected.
Michael John Francis Curtis
24 March 2016, Anno Domini

4
Fish Story
1993
32 verses; 96 pages
Tragic comedy is here, so too absurd imaginings. The sweetest sentiments of a genteel mind are
here soured by the imposition of a universal indifference. Sometimes the genteel mind behaves
like a child dissatisfied that the world of his mind is unmatched by the world of his eye. Enter the
mind–if you will–but enter in full armor eager for blood and slaughter. No pretense here, no
refined manner; no, all enemies of the child’s truth are here ruthlessly butchered.
1997 (edited)
Fish Story Expansive Poetry & Music
How many times the moon has shone
In slits of silver light
On waves that lap at lonely boats
Before the final fight…
The mist may know, but will not tell,
And this for mortals is just as well.
Where steady oars, like marching feet Introduction
To unknown destinies
Beat their measured rhythm to
A future none can see,
The Captain grizzled from the wars
Will try his luck yet one time more.
With gruesome instruments of death,
Sticks, sharp hooks, and sinkers,
Scourges of the seaweed fields in
Victory and surrender,
This angler with new-fangled bait
Hurries to an unknown fate.
Our man, as tough as leathered hide,
Strong as two whales tethered;
Abraham, cold as a snake,
Old as Styx the river,
Squints his one good steely-eye
On dim first light, his hole to find.

5
“There it-tis. Aye! this is it. By The Hole
Jesus I'll git 'em.
Taday's the day fer which I've prayed.”
Wyoou! with lust he whistles.
Why such fools we mortals be:
O, never whistle at the sea.
With hands scarred, of sinew strong,
He grasps the iron weight,
With labor throws on thick cord long,
A splash the water breaks,
Sinks the iron anchor down, down
Black, down cold the eerie echo sounds.
"Shhh," says he, "Yu'll scear the fish."
Licks he then his finger,
Lifts it high into the breeze,
Hisses through his broken teeth,
"If in the east the fish bite least,
But in the west the fish bite best."
As the sun through thick clouds seep The Bait
He opens with a creek
The rusty box with rusty hooks
Dented, bent, and broken;
Pushes the dusty bobbers aside,
Pulls up a bright lure, shining.
No more colors had David's cloak
Than this new-fangled plastic,
No more charms the Devil holds
Than did this toy of magic:
It was a fish, it was a lure,
It was a spear of lightening.
What evil instruments of war
Do human hands devise,
What pain, what torture, and what horror
Are made by human minds:
Cloved-foot Lucifer himself
Could not have made them half so well.
"Heur you are my little pretty.
Now pretty, come let's play.

6
Pretty girls have pretty teeth
That cut a pretty way.
Come pretty girl and take a chance
Upon a line with fish to dance."
The cast is quite the genteel art The Cast
For mortal man to master;
Slow, slowly back the rod must go—
Quick now, forward, faster!
Let loose the thumb, let loose the thumb!
Now through the air with a plop, it's done.
Wait—reel, and pull; wait—reel, and pull, Setting the Hook
Wiggle through the water;
What is this, a weed, a fish—wait—
Set the hook, it's got her.
Keep the tip up! Now keep it taut.
Line when it needs as you were taught.
"O Damn, it's just a little one. The Battle
Little fish, who needs 'em.
But-ja haf-ta git 'em off yer hook
If you'd catch the big-un."
Then as the poplar in the storm
Whose helpless form is bent clear o'er,
The rod's thin tip the reel strikes,
Then up she pops and over,
Snaps she back, then down again, then
Up she pops and on her
A fearsome beast all gills and teeth,
And dark, and mean, and black, and sleek.
And while she pops the wires sing
Like the shrill Siren's shriek,
And as she sings the beast flies free, the
Pretty thing in his teeth
Where blood in streams on foggy air
Hang like a thousand red-eyes there.
And like a dark enchanted dream
Sent from Hell to Heaven,
The fish-beast more than six feet long—
An inch'd make him seven—

7
Glares into ol' Abram's eye
As if to say, "Yer gunna die."
Then with a splash dissolves the dream,
The fight yet far from over;
The beast into the weeds would sink
As many times before:
Not this time though, the line's too strong;
The hook too sharp; the tactic, wrong.
Alike some ancient mariner Reeling In
With his sharp harpoon,
Our Abram with his will of steel
The beast pulls to its doom.
So slowly from the horrid deeps,
Slowly through green, tangled weeds,
Slowly rises the angry beast
By his sharp and bloody teeth
While she the many colored thing
Holds him on a dancing string:
Both beast and man who know desire
For pretty things will fight with fire.
"I've got-cha now" says Abraham,
"It took me fifty years.
Fifty years." says Abraham;
His sweat pours down like tears
Into a dark, indifferent lake
Where salty drops dissolve away.
The colored lure made first its show The Reckoning
Upon the smiling teeth,
Then blood upon his black back showed
While the water teemed.
"Ah little more 'n yu'll be mine,
So devil tell me why ya smile.
Ya know yu'll make for me a meal
In a little while.
Ya know I'll slit ya end ta end.
Why devil do ya smile?"
With Jesus once in Galilee
Ten-thousand fish came easy,

8
But if our God a man displease
By an act of evil,
God'll turn his back on him and
Send him to the Devil,
And the Devil he ain't just in Hell,
He's in the deep dark lake as well.
Then like that ancient great white whale
The devil struck the boat;
Abraham could'a saved his-self
But he would not let go,
So down he and the fish did sink
A-wrapped in lines of squeezing snakes.
While at her home upon the shore Conclusion
Gazing out her window,
As on many a morning before
Though now a lonesome widow,
For Abe a cup of coffee pours
Which in time grows cold, then colder.
Those oars which broke upon the lake
Like the solemn beat
Of many, many marching feet
Of prisoners in defeat,
Will echo on this peaceful shore
For one old angler never more.
Booked for Battle: Or, the Village Mom; Expansive Poetry & Music
Concerning the Character of Hilary Clinton
The First Mother lives in a pillared white house
At the foot of a hill with her girl and her spouse,
And her army of do-gooder nannies who care
For the children, the poor, and those in despair.
Little is she in her form but her wig
To hold her ideas is two sizes too big,
Light, powdered, and blond in tresses it falls
And falls from it numerous memos as well.
She dresses with eye to style and with care,
Each pantsuit to fit like a costume a player;

9
A masque for the mistress who's fit for the part
Of the Mother of God of the Bleeding Heart.
Great is her range as she roars o'er the land,
A mouse to the children, a lion to men,
Who speaks—should I say—not truthful, but well,
Like the noise of a scratch from a cat on a wall.
So now that you have our great Lady's description
We get to the gist of the cause of the fiction:
A book of some pages, letters, and numbers
Like those of its kind, but vastly, well, dumber.
Now mice’s and spiders in attics will battle
The old with the new in continual prattle,
But never ere this was sense taken for wit—
For wit, never was sentence so silent of it.
And this is the cause why the mice and the spiders
Stand gaping and bug-eyed, abashed in their silence,
For never in all of these three-thousand years
Has a book gained admittance by wedding a peer.
But here stood the Mother, her Book in her hand,
Her ruler on table, a rap, tap, tap, tap,
Her bee on her shoulder, poised as to sting
Those who would question the size of her wig.
Spoke she then thus to the mice and the spiders—
As Aesop and drones were now banished outsiders—
"I am the queen of all I survey.
So shut up, shut up, and hear what I say:
It takes not a parent a village to raise,
It takes a whole child to bring the New Age,
And all shall be better as I have arranged,
So shut up, shut up, shut up and pay."
Well, you think she'd have known by the size of her wig
That scholars, and spiders, and mice ever did
And ever shall do as their masters have done,
Beg poorness and wish her the best in her fortune.

10
‘Twas then that the spider, he of sharp eye,
A flaw in the stripe of the would-be bee spied.
But it wasn't a bee, no it wasn't at all,
‘Twas a fly traced in stripes, its butt but an awl.
And then there arose such a ruckus and fuss
That it threatened to rattle the stones of the house.
Oh yes, I'd forgotten to tell you this fact:
The battle broke out in the First Mother's attic.
Now the awl in the fly, poke though it did,
Could not stop the one of eight legs who ate him,
And the mice to the wig of the mother they ran,
Which she threw to the floor with a howl for her man.
Thank God we my child are safely outside,
Away from the attic of webs and of flies,
For thus I may close with a wish of good-night,
That all of your morrows bring sweetness and light.
Charm for the Tune Expansive Poetry & Music
Naked, alone, confused she wanders
Through the moon-less night;
Her flesh is torn by brambles
While demons tear her mind;
There are eerie shadows in the sky,
And there is terror in her eyes.
There is a dream distorted by
Death, and blood, and horror
Where she in passion trembles
For the kisses of her lover,
For the drum beat of his rhythm,
For the song of life within him.
But now her bowels are empty, scraped
Raw, and dry, and barren,
And the dream, the hope, the wishes
Abruptly have an ending.
For a girl must make her choices
Before she hears the voices

11
Of little spirits crying in
The nether realms of air,
Up there where eerie shadows linger
And bat eyes blankly stare,
Where bat wings flitter after insects,
Like demons licking after sins.
After she has made her choices,
Rid herself of flesh, that
Little spirit rises disem-
Bodied through the blackness.
A shadow in the moonless night.
Lifeless, formless on wings it ri-
Ses crying voiceless in the sky
Above the tiny fish
Like body, blind and breathless, cold,
Dead, and dry. With hope this
Flesh might yet have been a woman,
But murdered it sinks to earth again.
Exhausted, on the sharp-blade grasses
An embryo she lies
Dripping blood from many wounds,
As though her flesh would cry
Into the mother of her womb,
The body of her daughter’s tomb,
The cradle that so gently kept her,
Held her, loved her, fed her.
Now she weeps into her Mother
Earth the pain of murder;
The knowledge that she a child
Unmothered by the earth would die.
Earth, if she too were human,
Should abort this daughter,
Tear her from the yawning womb
As the daughter tore hers.
And in the dream she can suppose
That here a child enwombed grows

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From spirit to a living flesh,
Safe, secure, and warm,
As does the field golden grown to
Richness in harvest corn;
Grown to feed the peopled earth
By the wonder of her birth. Then
Dreamless she to the void descends…
Not black, but emptiness,
Terrible nothing where nothing
Beginning can end—less
Than nothing—oblivion.
Near her in the darkness, lost, husband
Of the nothingness, party to
The sin; his child un-
Wanted, unasked, unsought; no cause
Has he beneath the sun,
For none has he to give a name,
No purpose, no reason, no claim
Upon the barren earth—his seeds
Never to come to birth,
His seeds aborted, scraped out
To dry upon the dirt.
O nevermore a fruitful land
When earth aborts the seeds of men.
Waking from her fevered dream
A vision wonderful
She sees: A million spirits ri-
Sing, silver glowing all
Into the vastness of the night
Until but one is lost to sight
And lingers for a moment yet
Above the person of
The womb, as though a spirit could
Be held by the bonds of love.
But spirit fleshless must dissolve
When woman bleeds. And that is all.

13
Serenade
1993
88 verses; 96 pages
Serenade is composed of various romantic and philosophical speculations divided into three
musical sections: “Melodies”, “Harmonies”, and “Medley”.
2006 (edited)
A Single Blade of Grass St. Elmo’s Anthology
A single blade of grass can make
A thousand miles green;
A twig a mighty stone can break,
This I myself have seen.
What more the seed that holds the life
Which cannot be denied,
The will of God who sparks the light
That all things hold inside.
Can steel in time the pattern break,
Can we unchain the soul,
Can feeble minds their walls forsake,
Will atoms let us go?
These cities raised on high by hand
By seeds will crumble down,
And everything of man will fall
When nature claims her own.
Broken Sonnet Live Poet’s Society
Aimlessly wanders the little red spider
Over the dancing fields of war;
A drunken Philip at the comas,
His fast falling feet covered in gore;
Who like nature in thoughtless meander
Scatters the order of my designs,
The lines which trace the course of my mind
Breaks the structure and upsets the pattern:

14
My vanity caught on little feet
Is cast into eternity.
Long Slow Steps “Tally Koren Presents Love
Poetry”, read in London
With long, slow steps
Alone through the world I wander;
My heart he kept,
‘Twill never come back to me, never;
With long, slow steps
Alone through the world I wander;
My heart he kept,
So I seek for him ever, and forever.

15
Odds & Ends
1993 – Present
Verses which do not neatly fit into other collections. Composed in various forms and meters.
2010 (edited)
Valentine Society of Classical Poets
The name of Spring is ever fresh and fair;
Her sound is ever gentle, ever true;
The Spring is like the songbird of the air
Who sweetly choruses the good, the new.
And we, my dear, have often seen the Spring
Arrive with promise, blossom, fade and go
To who knows where. The bird turns on her wing
As if to wave to Spring to end the show.
And we have lived to pass another year,
To watch in course the Spring and sun decline,
Which makes the coming year to me, my dear,
The more loved, the more precious Valentine.
The snows melt, the flowers open, the songs
Again begin for us a little-long.
To Rest in You Society of Classical Poets
A fawn is frightened in her bed,
A sparrow chills in winter’s night;
In life we suffer, in life we dread:
Your love is full, your touch is light,
We trust in you to do the right.
Each life will turn throughout its course
From bad to worse, then good again,
Each hopes the good the stronger force:
We each will suffer through the pain
In faith our trust is not in vain.
In all the world of want and need
I give myself to trust in you;
I cannot know, therefore I plead,
“Please give me what is best and true”
I trust, and I shall rest in you.

16
Thesis Strong Verse
He had a beard, a balding head,
A cane to help him walk;
His students wrote down all he said
Within their gilded books.
Through blisters on his lips and tongue
He spat out little pearls,
Strung them on a chord of song,
And hung them on a girl.
A pretty creature slim and tall
Whose face was made for show;
Her wit alas was thick and dull
As rock that will not grow.
She liked to sit upon his lap
In wonder at his words
That flowed like wine from his old lips
Directly into hers
Until he spent within her flesh
The measure of his worth;
In dying thoughts on empty breath
Lost in golden curls.
So when the sages came to ask
What wisdom she had gained,
She shyly hugged her aching breasts
Through halting breath to say,
"He liked to talk and liked to sing
In riddles and with wit,
But there were just so many things
I could make no sense of it.
Yet once when I had bit his ear,
So much that it had bled,
He glared on me quite serious
And said, ‘Just sex and death’."

17
Prig E. Map’s Book of Pepigrams
1993 & 2006
The collection is divided into neat little sections, each section having a theme: Bombas, Epigrams,
Epitaphs, Aphorisms, and Verses. The first 545 epigrams were written over three and a half
mornings; the bombas and epitaphs were mostly composed during a sitting; the 482 aphorisms
were occasionally composed over the following thirteen years; the verses were composed in
conclusion. The choices here were selected randomly from a chapbook version of Pepigrams.
2006 (edited)
Epigraph
Señor Prig E. Map’s book of pepigrams
Explains Man’s ways to God in these epigrams.
Preface
Senors and signoritas,
You will find me sweeter
If you will read my stanzas
In rhyme and in meter.
De dum, de dum, de dum, de,
Differs from dum de de,
And differs from dum de; be
Careful how you read me.
You may read me quietly,
Or you may read aloud;
Sometimes I whisper silently,
Sometimes I bellow proud,
Sometimes I tell the truth in lies,
Sometimes I lie in truth:
I always make my gringo rhymes
By poetry in you.
Bombas
1.
I wish that I could be the shoes

18
Who dress your little feet
So that from time to time I might
See what your pretty feet see.
2.
When you go to Chichen
To see sergeant Pool
Do not be surprised when
He shows you his Choc-Mool.
Epigrams
When a thing is ill begun Thoughts for All Seasons
Or done for ill intent & Poet’s Market
You can bet a lie will come
To cover what just went.
Remember Dionysius Amphora;
When his play was crowned? American Philological Assn.
He drank his fill in Syracuse
Then in his joy he drowned.
30.
A sandal walking man reasoned
Atoms in the void: Soon,
Footprints on Aegean sands
Left dust-prints on the moon.
40.
The paradox of haste:
Leaving early
You arrive late.
47.
Modern liberal colleges teach
Students to be wise in their own conceit.
65.
Rewrite
Prefix like.

19
Epitaphs
Contract
You who read these epitaphs
May have them for your own—
Send a dollar and a half
Then no debt is owed.
But should you use and not pay up
You'll be a sorry ghost,
For in death you'll have bad luck,
Your rotting carcass host
Nightmares, worms, and violent screams,
Stagnant air, polluted streams,
Rotting wood and algae green,
Acid in your putrid spleen:
A score of unclean demons
Will mock you in a dance obscene,
But if you pay the debt you owe
And honor this contract,
Use my good verse upon your stone
And leave to life a laugh.
67.
My naked bones beneath are found
Quiet here below the ground:
Won't you with me please lie down,
I promise not to make a sound.
68.
Here I lie a husband true,
Who loved one woman only, you.
69.
Never shall I drink the Milky Way,
Nor with the nymphs and lusty satyrs play,
Never drive the car that lights the day,
Nor on my chest Apollo's crest display,
Never with Heaven's Angels float away
For I was but a man made out of clay.

20
72.
The bird was given wings
On air that he might fly,
A voice with which to sing,
And life that he might die.
His heart was made to beat
To cause his blood to flow,
His flight is short but sweet
And makes a pretty show.
Aphorisms
77.
Teeth bite proud tongues.
78.
The road to virtue is
A pain in the ass.
79.
Vices hide in the heart
But escape through the tongue.
81.
Even heroes do not conquer dirt.
91.
Tragedy is the right virtue in the wrong place,
Comedy is everywhere.
92.
There is right and there is wrong
And there is what men want.
96.
Never lead with your ass.
206.
The universe knows itself by the mind of man.
214.
Oedipus is complex,
More so in Sophocles than in Freud.

21
Verses
235.
Through the dewy evening mist
Remnants of the day's light kiss
The cheeks and chins, eyes and lips
Of a young alluring miss
Whose beauty like the light dissolves
Until she is not seen at all.
245.
From the moment of first breath
I sang my name upon the air,
And when the last note sounds my death
I’ll sigh and then I’ll disappear.
The world is sadness, loss, despair
From our birth until our death:
We sing and then we disappear,
The song dissolves and no one hears.
– so says Prig E. Map
Envoi
If flowers could thank the sun
And ground that gave them life
I could thank the spirit
In the air that made me write:
Yet, flowers only give
Their petals back to earth,
And I can only give the air
The breath of my words.

22
The Life of Trees
1995
95 verses; 112 pages; decorated
The Life of Trees is not easily excused…in brief: Each book is complete in itself, with “Rhymes”
serving as a sharp-humored introduction to philosophical precepts; “Trees” concerns man’s life;
“Machine” concerns man’s place in society; “Scream” concerns the animal nature of man; “Spring”
concerns man’s genius; “Bones” concerns the animated universe, specifically, the earth.
2003 (edited)
Rhymes of Our Time
In rhyming, timing is everything.
Rhymes in wrong places make awkward spaces.
A rhyme in rhyming knows more than prose.
Rhymes are the rings you hear in the mind’s ear.
Nature’s rhymes are free: As you shall see,
My rhyme’s beginnings are paid in endings.
The Life of Trees
I,i.
When man lives, he sings,
He sings of himself,
Of the universe within;
He sings of the planets,
Stars beyond reach, beyond time, beyond comprehension;
He sings of the atom,
Of the infinitely small,
Of the energy that binds him to the stars beyond time;
He sings of leaves,
Of morning dew,
Of sweet kisses,
Of moonlight,
Of labor,

23
Of love,
Of his children;
Of all he knows, he sings:
Man sings of himself.
Man knows that all things are his parents;
Man knows that all things are his children;
Man knows that he, his parents and his children will pass:
Man knows, so he sings.
ii.
Man's song is a tear.
He weeps while he smiles;
The water is sweet but the salt burns his tongue,
So he screams as he weeps as he smiles as he sings.
Man weeps for he knows he must kill,
He must eat the brother he loves,
He knows his brother must eat and kill him,
And his brother must kill the one who he loves.
All men must fight and kill to eat,
So man bears his teeth and growls when he sings.
The sound of this song is terrible to hear
And stings the ear of man.
Energy does not hear,
The universe does not hear,
Nature does not hear,
But man hears
And knows the sound is terrible.
iii.
Man laughs for he knows he must love.
To live he must love the flesh like his,
So he laughs in pleasure and throws away sorrow
While he dies as he lives, so he laughs as he loves.
The song of this laughter, like the song of the spheres,
Is a soothing harmony to the balance of the ear.
Man laughs for he knows he's the small to the whole,
As the whole is the song of the life of his soul.
While man becomes some other thing
He sings to the life that his death will bring.
He sings for he knows that his child will grow
By the love that he gave as he laughed in his soul!

24
Mitchell’s Poem Candelabrum
I've seen the seeds twirl around
In dances on the air;
I've seen them light upon the ground
Happy to be there;
I've seen the dizzy seasons turn
Till spring again comes round;
I've seen them rise to life at last
In glory all around;
And too I've seen some of the seeds
Smile before their day,
Eager for the golden sun
Who burns their life away.
Scream of the Beast
IV.
I like the taste of thoughts and flesh,
I like them live, I like them dead,
I like them cooked upon a fire,
Sometimes I burn them with desire.
I like to suck the juice from bones,
I like to tear and hear them groan,
I like a lick before I bite
To see the screaming eyes in fright.
I think I like the young ones best,
I like to eat them tasty fresh,
I like to suck upon their breasts
And sink my teeth into their flesh.
I like to tear their hearts
That I can see where motion starts,
I like to see it pumping, yet
I like the hot color red.
Too I like to see their sex,
I like to see them bounce in bed,
I like it when they cannot hide

25
The secrets they would keep inside.
I like it when they purr and moan,
Ah, I like them when they groan,
I like to see a weeping eye,
I like to hear crying smile.
And when I eat I like to roar,
To hear my victims plead in horror,
And when with claws I hold them down
I laugh to hear them scream out loud.
But most I'd like to eat your head,
To tear the skin, pull back the flesh
And sink my tongue in where you live
To take the pleasure you can give.
VII.
O give me the strife of a stormy day,
Give me a wind that is blowing,
Give me a sea with angry waves,
Lust in a tempest o'er flowing.
O give me a foe with fists of iron,
Give me the race that is longest,
Give me a lie that I might oppose,
Muscle to challenge the strongest.
O give me a trumpet of mortal alarm,
A song of flame and of passion,
Give me an ear God's voice to discern,
A drum to measure my motion.
O give me the rapids of blood in my veins,
Bowels well made for the breeding,
Fire to lick at the stem of my brain,
And teeth for tearing and eating.
O give me one hour that I may exist,
A minute to taste of pleasure,
Give me this most delicious of gifts
In the moment of living, forever.

26
Libation
The northern seas are cold as ice,
The desert sand is hot and dry,
The jungle air is thick with flies:
The fruit of life is dripping ripe.
Your tongue was made to taste the meat,
Your bowels to ache, your lungs to breathe,
Your muscles tear from earth her wheat,
For this your flesh was given strength:
So take the pleasure while you may
From the hungry teeth of day
Whose lusty sun will burn away
Your thread of time, your speck of space.
This fruit of life is dripping ripe
Like grapes too long upon the vine,
So taste its meat, and drink its wine,
And take your pleasure while alive.

27
Pinhead
1995
108 verses; 112 pages; illustrated
Pinhead distills three books into one: “Sitting on a Pinhead”, “Weaving Purple Flowers”, and
“Rhyme of the Sphinx”. Verses from Weaving are found on page 40.
2006 (edited)
Once was a Girl Live Poets’ Society
There once was a girl perfect on earth
Who never did anything odd,
Too she was perfect even in death
And knew what perfection is owed.
"If I agree to pass through the gate,
What Sir will you do for me?"
Saint Peter stood with his mouth agape,
His fist tightly clutching the keys.
Red he grew, then redder until
The hairs of his beard were singed,
He wished her well, then sent her to Hell
Where she perfectly lives in sin.
Arabesque Poetica Victorian
When once I dropped in deep despair—
Prosaic in my gloom—
A thought appeared to dance on air
Dressed in a simple tune.
Her smile was light, her motion smooth,
Delight was in her face.
Though I was dull and passing rude
She bowed with easy grace
And fluttered down upon the page
With giggles as she flew,

28
My hand she took in sweet embrace,
In minuet we drew,
In waltz, mambo, and dance de deux,
In carefree arabesque:
She kissed my hand, I swear to you,
These are the lines she left.
Tapping Poetica Victorian
When I nestle down to play
Beneath the broad oak leaves
I tap my hooves to pace the day
And strum my strings to bees.
The grasshoppers will sing along
Under the summer’s sun,
The morning breeze will join our song
Urging the reeds to hum
And we will smile the whole day long
Beneath the broad oak leaves
Until the sun in kindness yawns
Leaving us to dream.

29
Wit
1995
The man of Wit is a theatrical invention, a character of imagination who recites before a pretended
audience. Who is this man of wit? A man alike me, in extremes.
2002 (edited)
Song to Saint Cecilia Jones Expansive Poetry & Music
One by one come beat the drum
Till millions, on millions, on millions come!
Boom! Boom! BOOM! We'll shake the room
And beat the drum till the walls fall in
And the ceiling comes down
And none of the pieces can be found!
So, Boom! Boom! BOOM! Come beat the drum!
We'll break the floors with angry feet,
Clap our hands, holler and scream,
Wiggle our tongues, let out a yell:
Ah-lay-lu, Ah-lay-lu, Ah-lay-lu-YA!
Across the mountains and over the plains
From sea to sea on Cecilia's Day!
So Sing to Saint Cecilia Jones,
Shinny your muscles and rustle your bones,
Chirp with the crickets, peep with the birds,
Hop on one foot with the buffalo herds,
Bounce on your butt, roll with the worms,
Kiss 'yer neighbor, exchange her germs!
Now everyone, both young and old
Shake, rattle and roll with Cecilia Jones!
Game Day Expansive Poetry & Music
Today we play a football game,
Praise the yellow and blue.
Today we're merry, light and gay,
We'll kick their butts, Haroo!

30
So fly the colors, sing the tune,
And shout “Hurray!” for the school!
Hurray, Hurray, Hurrah, Haroo!
Come boys let's drink a beer.
Hurray, Hurray, Hurrah, Haroo!
Now women come to cheer:
Heil! Hail! diversity,
Universal equality!
For here we have a first and ten
And only seven players;
Four are women, three are men
Because this makes it fair.
The other team's a sorry lot,
It's just the white ones that they've got!
Hurrah, Haroo, Hurray, Haree!
We had to paint 'em black;
To paint 'em black so they could be
Stronger, bigger, fast!
But then we made a yellow one,
Why? Ha-he we did it just for fun!
As you can see we have two clocks
And too two sets of lines;
The short for them, the long for us—
We're better 'cause we're kind—
Yet, we will beat them anyway
Because it is our turn today.
Haroo, Haroo, Hurrah, Hurray!
We took the runner's legs;
We lame the best for justice' sake
So they can't run away.
The other guys there in a line,
You see their legs together tied?
We've done this so they cannot catch
The limping quarterback;
Without his crutch he was the best
And so we broke his foot!
We also took the pants from him
So he'll fell shame if he should win!

31
Hurrah, Haroo, Haree, Hurray!
We put her in her place;
She was pretty, we smashed her face,
Her teeth we rearranged.
The cheerers now are ugly all:
Susan, Howard, Ali, Paul!
“I pledge allegiance to the flag,
I weep for pride and joy
That everyone can be the same,
That girls can be like boys.”
We sing in well rehearse'd praise
On this happy football day!
Ha-ha, Ha-ha, Hurrah, Haroo!
You see the bloody tongues?
That's what we do to those who boo,
So come now let's have fun.
There's the whistle, now it begins:
Heil! Hail! It must not end!
Buffaloed Expansive Poetry & Music
Braves at table nibble on
Salty crackers and capons
While the much beloved squaws
Exercise their powdered jaws
By cracking open lobster claws.
See the orgiastic faces
Praise the chef with well-turned phrases,
See the tribe of plump Caucasians
Bite with liberal appetites
Into a loathing of all things white.
“Buffalo, when eating grasses
Blow less gas
From their asses
Than the steer
Whose foreign rear
Blows ozone through the stratosphere.”

32
Each hoary head nods in rhythm
To the fluffies they are given.
“Woeth me, and woeth me”
Woeth each so woeithly,
“Natives live in nature clean
While we, while we,
O don’t you see!
Are both the cause and the disease.”
See the heaps of cups and saucers
Heaped with sauces, breads, and butters,
Meats and bones, and skins and sinews:
“Oh, O it’s true! we waste the menu
Of the planet. Damn it!”
Here the God of the Machine
Might relieve the tortured scene,
But no, he’ll hide the buffalo
That die in rotting piles below
The cliffs where tens of thousands fell
Driven by the Indian yells
To buffalo hell.

33
Modern Art:
A Critique in Rhyme
1996
The verses of Modern Art are intended to be employed alike a rusty-nailed-fencepost in the hands
of a bully by which you may beat pretentious modernists about the head, repeatedly. The author
leaves out no cheap trick of meter or of rhyme to drive home his point. He employs adolescent
sing-song, doggerel, slanting rhyme; in short, every mischief making device that he can borrow or
invent is used in a manner that would shame lesser poets; yes, he stoops to conquer. In fact,
conquest is his aim; his tactic, wit; his weapons, mudslinging, ridicule, name calling, and other
dirty tricks of antique pedigree.
Such verbal slaughter is not for the faint of ear, the author warns. If the song of a stout Picasso
disemboweled is not to your liking, leave off the reading. If, on the other hand, you are cheered to
hear of your enemies bobbing heads pitted upon pikes, read on. We are here at war; ideas are at
issue; death is the price; civilization, the prize. Gird up thy loins fellow warrior and read on.
This book is arranged chronologically by death date to destroy the notion of cultural evolution.
2001 (edited)
Epigraph
Modern Art; you don't understand it?
I do, and I can't stand it.
Constantin Brancusi 1876 – 1957 Mobius
Few things are more snoozy than birds by Brancusi
except for his other whatsies and whosies,
the mish-mash of this and that stone and bright bronze
and other rough stuff that he would pile upon
the plates of the critics and the connoisseurs
who ate with delight this stuff from the sewers,
and fed us the masses his smelly caprices
then bid we enjoy the great masterpieces,
because they were polished for hours and hours,
because they are now worth millions of dollars
and also because the critics are oozy,
but certainly not because they are choosy,

34
these musey-museums are all very fond
and were by sedition easily conned—
now as for myself, I'd rather we'd lose all the
whatsies and whosies and birds by Brancusi.
Walter Gropius 1883 – 1960 Mobius
What do you know about Gropius?
Gropius invented the Bauhaus:
uncomfortable chairs,
square without flair.
They function, but why all the fuss
o'er this graceless Gropius stuff?
They are cold and faceless
hard, empty spaces
that annoy us in houses like Bah's house.
This sprawl of his malls are to copious
and much to officious,
to much prolifious,
much, much to presupositious
and Gropious.
Avant-Garde March Expansive Poetry & Music
Ride on Hegel, ride on Marx,
ride on, ride on Alfred Barr,
ride the magic zeitgeist train
in this the avant-garde parade.
As the globe spins round and round
the avant-garde must not slow down,
we march till time and space collapse
then quickly, quickly we march backwards.

35
Fire Burns
1996
Burns is a book of erotic and pornographic verse, illustrated. If published, Burns may prove to be
corruptive despite the many warnings and parables. Not appropriate for the weak of mind, the
weak of heart, the weak of soul.
2006 (edited)
Fire Burns
Fire burns the human mind
And fire burns the flesh,
Fire burns the wanton eye
When it sees sex.
You who open up these leaves
See ladies lost to lust,
See passion from the flesh released,
Pain and some fun.
And you will read of politics,
Of policies well met,
Of lies, of life, of many loves,
And a little death:
You will read the butterfly
Flitting light and gay,
Of how she blossomed into life
And flew away.
My Little Prigs
I write to you, my little prigs,
Of pussies, tits, clits, and pricks;
Too, I write to you of asses
Who find themselves in awkward places.
I write the bitches, tricks, and johns,
Of wives who strap thick dickies on;

36
I write of husbands tied in bows,
Who, wearing lipstick, dickies blow.
I write the sacred marriage bed
Where mistresses and wives are led
To spread their fleshy legs to fuck
Their stud’s or their husband’s cocks.
I write of licking, I write of sucking,
But mostly, I write of fucking.
I write to you, and ever shall,
Of sex, and hope to fuck you all.
The Eye of Death
I looked into the eye of death,
Into the eye of pain,
Into the eye where horror lives
Within the realm of sin.
The entrance to this Hell on earth
Is glassy, small, and black,
And those who gaze into this world
Come seldom safely back.
For here the center cannot hold;
For here there is no floor;
Here for walls there is a void;
For questions, open doors.
Yet everywhere is foul restraint,
Leather, whips, and steel
Where she who plays will bear the stain
Of flesh who lived to feel
In scars that trace the razors track,
In wounds that drain the breast,
In lips cracked by the scorching kiss,
In rotting rose's breath.
As whiskey burns the mortal flesh,
Desire burns the soul:
Come on and taste it if you will,
Though evil seldom lets you go.

37
Black-Eyed Susan: Verses for Children
1997
83 verses; 64 pages
The verses of Black-Eyed Susan were written to delight, to educate, and to entertain my children, my
nieces and nephews. If published, these verses will likely serve other parents as they served me.
You will find the verses of Black-Eyed Susan to be well crafted and well tempered.
2002 (edited)
Some Verses Rook Publishing
Some verses are silly,
some verses are wise,
some verses lend answers,
some verses ask why;
Some come when you’re quiet,
some come when you scream,
some come when you’re working,
some when you dream.
Zip-Zips Fly
The sparkles on water,
like jewels in the sky
fling light at the flitting
zip-zips as they fly.
The ca-roak of the frog
fat-flat on his pad
tells smiling the zip-
zip meal that he had.
Pas de Deux Cricket
The pleasure of verse
is the song of the words
that move with the soul,
like a dancer who knows

38
the step of the meter,
the music of rhyme,
who holds you in spinning
to kiss on the chime.
Broccoli Pockets
Broccoli, mockily, glockily, shockily,
luckily we’re reading and not eating broccoli.

39
Amouretti
1997
Sweet is thought of love and sweet its first tasting, yet any sweet left long on the tongue sours by
continual chewing. If not for the appetite for savory pleasure the mouth would soon grow
impatient of necessary labors: Bitter-sweet are the labors of love by which we are bound. Compiled
into three chapters, “Sweet”, “Sour”, and “Savory”, including the tail of “Like a Fish”, found on
page 45.
2006 (edited)
Solstice PSV
When you with winter lose your looks
And I drop all my leaves,
When summer’s warmth has turned to chill
And spring to memory
I will my dearest love you still,
Well though my buds may freeze,
When you with winter lose your looks
And I drop all my leaves.
The Golden Fish The Lyric
The golden fish
In his crystal dish
Has but one wish
And it is this:
In dream's abyss
Where exists
His golden miss
Her flesh to kiss—
A moment’s bliss
And then to dis-
Appear.
She Turns
She turns her belly to the sun

40
Then twists to show her diamonds,
Stretches long and then she yawns,
Her teeth shine, she unhooks her jaw
To swallow feet, fur and all
Regally beneath the sun.

41
Weaving Purple Flowers
1998
The form is usually tripartite, the stanzic pattern is most often realization, rationalization, and
admission. Occasionally I had a historical person in mind, though now I mostly forget the
person’s identity. The speaker plays the protagonist, the god plays the antagonist, I was third
actor. Here I intended graceful poetics, lovely posy, and simple stories.
2006 (edited)
Yes, the People Cheered Expansive Poetry & Music
Yes, the people cheered, like they cheered
The week before.
They cheered ill-tuned, it hurt my ears,
And I was bored.
Why no, I was not warmed by it,
It had no grace.
Besides, I could have played them shit,
They have no taste.
The cheers they cheered were not for me;
'Twas the thing to do.
They cheered because it was a speech,
And they are fools.
Who Spoke
Was that the God who spoke in me,
And was it He who took my hand
And led me to where I could see
A beauty fair, a vision grand
Where marble pure gleamed in the sun,
Where gold aflame burned 'pon the dome,
Where I in crystal form, His son,
Was like a god within His home,
And did He not with firm command
Bid me taste of the divine,

42
And further, did He not demand
That I partake of the sublime:
Was I a silver sword a-flame,
Was I a cup of liquid gold,
Was I the fossil that became
The name engraved upon the stone
And was I then returned to make
His City true upon the earth;
Was I then sent to awake
A better world and give it birth
And am I now a mortal man,
And do I honor His command
When I translate the vision grand
And build His City ‘pon this land.
The Double Ax Brodie Prize, PSV
We broke the painted oil jar
With the double ax:
The golden ax caused a crack
In the ox’s ass.
Minos, when he caught us,
Sent us with the fleet,
Tied us to the anchor
And wed us to the sea.
Our skulls are jewel encrusted,
Coral are our teeth,
We smile to see the horses
Through our sockets leap.

43
Silhouette
1998
44 verses with 69 essays and aphorisms; 80 pages; contains diagrams
Silhouette is composed of formal and free verses, prose poems and aphorisms concerning the nature
of being and the nature of beauty, and Silhouette is divided into two books , “The Pattern of Life”
and “On Beauty: A Symmetry of Form”.
2004 (edited)
This Dirt
This dirt, spinning with slow grand gestures through the universe,
Presses to its flesh a treasure of ornaments stitched in
Pattern like that some great queen in her majesty might exhibit
To an awed and fawning court. Around we dance, clinging to
Her flesh, unaware that some great lord looks upon her with
Lust and power enough to lay her out naked and spent in
The flame of his desire.
Apologue
Following one hundred years of war
The contending parties fatigued by dubious exertions,
Crippled by many wounds, many deprivations,
Came to the cold stone hall of the great king
Laying their many miseries before his bedizened feet.
He gazing with a god's eye over the ragged multitude
Stroks the thick locks of his long beard before speaking
Thus: Many were the days I from this tower of long sight
Searched for some champion who might grow among you,
And none came; none these hundred years has shown himself
Beautiful among the creatures of earth.
Now before me you come, even unto my very thrown
And cast your baseness at my bedizened feet.
Why wail, why weep, why roll on your bellies beast-like creatures.
See, your awful stains the pearl of my floors.
Dirty, unclean, confused in your beggary,
Open-palmed you before this majesty offer need for strength.
Be gone! Clean your backsides, cleanse your minds,
Love into greatness, or in baseness die.

44
And the multitude, like low worms after a cleansing storm,
In slickness and slime slithered out the hall.
Behind them on eight tiny legs, a little spider of a man
Tinkled across the floor, careful to avoid the spreading slime
Until he too quit the kings tower and the long, dark shadow.
Emerging upon the world, he with movements light traced his silk web
Like those patterns of majesty emblazoned in the great hall.
Silver it shown in the dawn’s early light:
Mysterious are the ways of line and sight.
Appellation:
From this, hence, we may conclude
That pity will not man's baseness end;
Peace may come in fact, though not from god
When all creatures are likewise rude;
And that the foe of baseness is man's best friend.
Of Quiet Places
The fox, lover of quiet places, lover of blood on snow,
Glides along the pattern of rabbit prints frantic on the cold
Forest floor, dark in shadows, sparkling in the mirrors of light.
A moment only divides the pure pattered prints from the chaos
Of crossed shapes, broken symmetry, and yet, red shows well on white;
Red excites, catches the eye. Brown fur blows about,
But most has become the fox, and what was chaos
Melts into the pattern of beauty and is lost.
History of Art
Those histories of art in vogue, the social, the political, the moral, can little tell the meaning of the
stories of the forms, and even less reveal the meaning in the body of the object that is born. There
is no evolution in the art of man, though story follows story since the written times began.
One cannot claim to draw a line from Polyclitus to Picasso and then maintain that the later from
the former grew colossal. Absurd, 'tis absurd that one proclaim this treatise upon a theory where
some collective mind develops as if it were so many fruit flies. Absurd, and yet this silly treatise is
the pedestal upon which the nervous tribe of art-historians sit.
Secure on their precious pedestals, they—with false craft constructed to support their false
bottoms—whisper secret lies to one another, blind to hair-sprouting warts, decaying flesh, the

45
rickety brittle bones of their fellows. Blind, they cannot as artists know Beauty: "No Beauty" they
scribble, smell their bile, and scribbling, smile.
Know them, precious in their circles, careful, O so careful: Each phrase annotated; each reference
foot-noted; each thought pedigreed; each premise, false. Know them, the accountants of Beauty;
stacking, sorting, slotting, weighing to conclusions. The weight, O the weight: Wait! no flights of
fancy; wait, no inspiration; wait, no glory in triumph; wait! O the weight, the globs of words, the
lugubrious causes of the fall of man. Man falling, falling forward, ever forward long oh so long
along some Hegalian plan into nothing, into the Spirit of some future age where the body of art,
'Beauty' is unbodied lugubrious words, and a picture on a page.

46
Like a Fish:
An Unlikely Love Story
1999
Dramatis Personae
N = Narrator Speaks
B = Bird Speaks
F = Fish Speaks
A dramatic sonnet sequence for three actors
Scene
Andalusia : The fountain pool
of an enchanted garden
beneath the mid-summer’s moon.
N
Can one imagine in all the wide world
Things more different from boys than are girls?
Can one imagine a more queerer dish
Than the unhappy mating of bird and fish?
Can there be found in this world anywhere
The happy wedding of Water and Air?
Can the gulf wide 'tween the fish and the bird
If brooked be anything less than absurd?
And yet I have heard, from one wise old teacher,
The story of how the Sea married Air
In two of nature's most unlikely creatures,
A bird who was handsome and fish who was fair;
Of how they discovered the source of their pleasure,
How in the other they found their treasure.

47
B
The winged bird will not a fish to bed.
Where in all the universe, the sea, the air,
Exists an ocean where birds can fly,
Or heaven where bird and sea's fish wed?
O when will I love Thee—well not today;
Even if Lethian rivers flow clear,
Even if Venus, Hephaestus should lay.
So, O my Io, pray go away.
And yet, I may love you when dogs grow chins;
When the desert cold snake should warm tears shed,
Or when the queer earth reverses her spin:
That day when alchemy turns gold to lead
Then you shall have me to wedding bed,
But not, sweet fish, till then.
…
F
All is well when bee draws to the clover,
Then the earth blossoms as on the first morn;
All mist dissolves and colors explode
In life's pageant, glorious to behold.
All is well when the sea marries air,
When the mist in a cloud to the sky is borne;
For an instant we two our rapture hold
Then fall in joy as rain all over.
O my joy, my love, my child of the sky,
When I to you pure white am led
To sacrament on Love's alter high
Where we'll our clothes, our flesh, our prisons shed,
Where our souls on the wings of passion fly…
Then bird you may rise to the depths of my
Watery bed! But not till we're wed.

48
N
...So with bird with fish, with man with wife,
Two opposites bound all of their lives;
To have and to hold in sickness and health,
To have and to hold if poor or in wealth.
The child of the Sea and the child of the Air
Though always apart are always together.
Though one can swim and one can fly,
Yet they are equal in God's eye.
And so we have learned by what we have heard
That if quarrel we must, 'tis best with laughter.
And yes it's absurd and yet we are sure
The fish and the bird will live happy forever.
So now let us part with a wish that their pleasure
Will last all the years of their wedded adventure.

49
Flower Gathering
2001
70 verses; 32 pages
Lyrics in various meters inspired by the Greek Anthology and other compositions of antiquity.
2006 (edited)
Hand, Blue Unicorn
I told you not to touch the golden hair of Karen—
pretty though it is.
Like silken webs of spiders
spun to capture butterflies,
once you touch it you are caught, hand,
and
when you are caught
so am I.
I hate Trinacria
the sensuous curve of your lips;
I hate
the sway of your luscious hips;
I hate
the deceit of your spark’ling eyes;
I hate
when your painted kisses lie;
I hate
the ways you deceive me:
I despise
every bone in your body,
except mine.
Youth,
sweet gift of the gods,
like wind into a torrent blowing
gathering strength,
or like a breeze
gently shimmering
the golden sun

50
upon leaves.
Be sweetened
by what the gods have given
then smile into golden sun
glowing silent
into golden dust
till breath is gone.

51
Land of Sunlight and Stars:
Afrikaans Verse in English Translation
2002
31 verses; 114 pages; illustrated; published in limited edition
Afrikaans verse originals, English verse translations, and English prose translations of 31 poems
lavishly illustrated with paintings by an Afrikaans artist. All but three poems are translated by MC.
Land contains extensive notes and brief biographies. The preface is by F. W. deKlerk; Dr.
Sammuel Golden wrote the introductions; Gerhard Golden translated the prose and dictated the
metrical lines.
2002 (edited)
The Burst Frog Pivot
Die Gebarste Padda; Arnoldus Pannevis
This morning a frog peered out from his trench
At an ox just bigger than big by an inch;
Though hardly the size of an egg of a chicken,
His envy outsized the size of his thinkin’.
Said frog to his friend in a froggy urr-ept,
“Look! It’s hardly puffed up. It’s puffing inept.”
So he puffed and he puffed and he puffed and he puffed,
And he asked his friend, “Am I puffed up enough?”
His friend said, “Un-uh!” so he puffed with a flourish;
Frog questioned again; his friend said, “You’re foolish.”
So he puffed and he puffed and he puffed till it hurt,
Then the silly frog puffed once too much, and he burst.
These days there are just so, so many people
Who puff-up to be more equal than equal;
They don’t care what they do so long as they win:
But they’re finished, you see, before they begin.
Winter Night Pivot
Winternag; Eugene N. Marais
The breeze of the bare-night
is chill,
the gleam of the twilight
is still,

52
the grace of our Father extends
o’er the star-shine and shades of the land.
On the ridge far away,
in the blazes array,
like beckoning hands
the seed-grasses sway.
With sad rhythms laden,
the east-wind blows on
like the song of a maiden
whose lover has gone!
Each blade in its fold
a dew’s glimmer holds
till quickly it pales
to frost in the cold!
Arachne and Minerva The Neovictorian Cochlea
Arachne en Minerva; C.M. van den Heever
Glistening between prickly-pear leaves the web
of fine sparkling strings floats shimmering against the light,
and over the heavy rising of the spring even to the tree’s top
hangs by a string the tiny spider’s feather weight.
When long ago the gods shone with wing’ed feet everywhere over the earth,
did she, Arachne, first among weavers, provoke, surpass,
and humiliate Minerva; whereafter, fallen pride
sought shelter in the lowly earth and towering grass.
Yet, a divine waking dream grows ever on in her,
even though her light was spinstered like her power,
and, like the fool who pretends divinity in the approach of glowing day,
our outcast forever spins an unfinished web hour after frantic hour.
The Farmer Pivot
Die Boer; S.J. Pretorius
Behind his plow and his ox
through the hot long day he walks.
Above in heaven’s stream and swell
the pipit flies to a whistle.

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Each night after toil and sweat,
past the laboring day and fret,
he breaks the crumb of bread he needs
and to his God for mercy pleads.
Tomorrow when color is gray
he walks through the door into day
and feels the bliss of certainty
of all things in eternity.
Just so each day is well used
in simple beauty and truth,
till starlight when he rests fulfilled
at peace with God and God’s will.
Table Bay Pivot
Tafelbaai; P.J. Philander
Dull light and lightning’s flash clash by night’s air
through peacefulness from quay to quay,
and over my dory’s thin mooring rope I come aware
of a whirlpoolette that spins and spins till its spun away.
A bell-buoy warns the bobbing vessels,
yet like the water, it thrusts and sinks.
Darkly below in the morphous sponge and deep-sea coral
there lies a wreck on which the lazy lobster’s legs ta-tink.
Darkness raises Table Bay aloft…
a lone tombstone hugs tight the coast
where wrecks in still waters, clove-hitched on aft,
are unmanteled to eternal rest.
A crane pulleys up his load and swings
over deep, still waters; in shadow and light
lonely he turns the machine which brings
between boat and quay a turn to stretch the bridge aright.

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Little Songs
2007
72 verses
The occasional sonnet composed in conversational form.
Straight Lines
“Now, cut in a straight line.” the teacher said.
“We do not want a crooked mat.
We do not want rough edges. That
Will not do. We want a line perfected.
So, even if your picture is crooked,
Make your framing straight. Who cares what
You put inside the frame. Good mats
Are what we want here.” Or, so teacher said.
Therefore, I made frames with straight lines
And found, in time, my inside lines
Grew straight. By straight mats, my designs
Were better framed, my ideas more refined.
Over time care in lines became innate.
I learned in framing to cut my lines straight.

55
COLLOQUIES:
A Review of Civilization in Seven Books
Secrets
2011
Book VII : Considered within the poet’s philosophy, “A Universal Theory of Value” which can be
understood through two axioms: “All things are becoming what they will be.” and “The universe
knows itself through the mind of man.”
Cricket Song Blue Unicorn
Quiet it is tonight. The cricket speaks;
I hear but do not understand.
I think the cricket is a man
Of sorts. Like me, the little cricket seeks
A fellow mortal soul. His cricket squeaks
Remind me of a fairyland
I never knew. My life began
Like his, after my ticket soul peeked
From infinity to cell my body:
All I can know I always knew;
The pattern of myself I grew;
All things are becoming what they will be.
Silence, now, reminds me that I myself,
Coming to death, will become something else.
Hunting Blue Unicorn
Hear the quiet of the snow-heavy wood.
Words cannot express what is not known;
Sound: the beating of the blood; alone
And cold; the breath, slow. The arrow stood
Like time arrested in its flight; stood
Out, quivering in the flesh, the zone
Of death, right on the mark. She disowned
Her wood, bolted to the marsh; she understood
That I was following the blood trail.
I saw her leap; splitting the reeds,
And she disappeared. The coyote
Passed silently beside me through the veil
Of snow. With the first sweet stirring of spring,
The children found the carcass of the thing.

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Gentle Movements
The old tree looks to the falling of leaves
With anticipated relief.
The seasons are long, life is brief,
And snow settles gently upon the trees.
With a quiet hand God of Nature weaves
A subtle pattern in the leaf
Of Birth, of Joy, of Death, of Grief,
Of Anticipation and we perceive
In these gentle movements a harmony
Of design, divine symphonies
Perfectly conceived to please
The well-tuned mind. We, like leaves of the tree,
Rise from seeds along branches to blossom
Into being, beautifully to succumb.

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Commentary
2012
72 verses
Book II: The commentary opens with monologues spoken by gods and heroes who find themselves
subject to the instances of anecdote. The central chapter contains the everyday experience of
festival celebration, the true meaning of which is seldom comprehended by the speaker(s). The
final chapter continues antiquity’s conversation.
Gossamer Net Pennsylvania Review
He with his limping foot, the bastard son,
Fit for caves, and soot, and labor:
Half-wit, a dull stuttering bore,
The butt of jokes, shit, beloved of no one.
How dare he, bastard! How dare anyone
So demean the God of War.
No one conquers the conqueror.
No one shows my dick sticking out, for fun.
Wife to him, Ha! The twit. She worships me.
He would fumble over her breasts;
She swoons to have them touch my chest.
I deserve her. She by right belongs to me.
Love and War, asses in a bind, laughed at.
“Think you’re clever with your gossamer net?”
Seasoned Pennsylvania Review
Little leaves quivered in the cool spring breezes;
Each naive leaf was dancing
In the pleasure of being.
Ah…I remember old Silenus’s sneezes
At pollen dripping from overfilled bee’s kneeses
Onto his nose; fauns kicking
Up their heels and gig’ling
At the silly sight; we laughed, too. Time freezes
The old memory. Loving you was easy
Then. Your big, bright eyes sparkled
Like Morning’s dew drops; your full
Lips flushed like the spring rose. Ah…life was breezy
Then, but the dry leaves shiver on the old tree.
I wish us there or you here. Come, dance with me.

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Matches The New Formalist
The Pope in Rome can draft a prayer;
John Russell Pope can draw a dome;
The poet Pope can pen a pun;
I hope to style a smart affair
For Liza of the flaming hair.
That girl whose quick ideas run
Quite naked through a hippodrome
Engraved in pictures fine and rare.
O, I have seen her skipping through
Egyptian temples—clever minx,
I’ve seen her smile back at the sphinx
And wink. Ah…the sphinx winked too.
Who wouldn’t craft a cunning ayre
To please the girl of flaming hair?

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Confession
2012
72 verses
Book III: A confession of faith that opens with the admission of inadequacy, that reveals a peculiar
understanding of the sacraments, that follows with observations on sanctity (just short of a
hagiography), that devolves to mundane concerns, and that concludes with genre pictures.
Saint Theresa of the Child Jesus Society of Classical Poets
The little sparrow gives away her song
Without the slightest notion of its cost.
She chirps in sweetness all the morning long
And dies a little with each note that’s lost.
You cannot see her hidden in the leaves;
She is so tiny folded in the shade,
And yet her voice is larger than the tree
And soars as though it never was afraid.
Even the sweetest songs are sometimes sad,
As though a thorn were pricking through the heart,
But even in her death the bird is glad,
Ready to meet her God when she departs.
For, from the kindest moment of her birth
She spent her heaven doing good on earth.
Roman Catholic, October 3; Patron of Missionaries, Florists, and Gardeners
Courage Society of Classical Poets
I saw a tiny spider spin a web
Within my humble hut between two beams.
He tried to throw a thread across, it ebbed
Away. He did not have the will, it seemed.
And then the tiny spider tried again,
Again he failed to reach the other side.
Five times the spider threw his thread, and then,
On the sixth try he conquered the divide.
With each attempt to win we gather strength.
We brace the will with failure and defeat.
We forge desire to win, we win at length.
We stretch our arms to win at war; we meet

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Today a mighty army on the field:
The tiny spider taught me, “Never yield.”
Roibert a Briuis; Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland (1274 – 1329)
Novice Society of Classical Poets
Young knucklehead: Today you’ll bruise your thumb
To harden you to pains to come;
The sun will burn; the heat will cause you sweat;
Dust will choke before the sun is set.
When you are good for more than sweeping floors,
In five or six years—maybe more—
Then you may carve in stone your first design,
Perhaps broad lace-work, or a vine.
Should then the master see that you are good
At carving in both stone and wood,
He may allow a job and you your tools:
So, stand sharp, don’t seem the fool.
The master comes. Look how he moves with ease,
A measured grace and force in harmony.

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Dispute
2013
72 verses
Book IV: A correction of cultural misunderstanding which begins with a retracing of steps alike a
Theseian thread to sources, which then moves to Herodotean researches intended to preserve a
memory of past persons and events, and which concludes with demonstrations of flawed
historicism.
Instruction Society of Classical Poets
sequence published as
The tales of Ovid are a theme that suits “Sculptor to His Apprentice”
The Prince, but will not do for your repute.
Avoid lust. Clients of the better kind
Desire the tales that beautify the mind.
You may display the human flesh with taste
Discreetly in the hands and face. Be chaste:
Show in your theme what suits the moral best;
Put in the good and true, leave out the rest.
And yet, even the clergy like their jewels
To glister Heaven and to glimmer Hell,
And every congregation comes to see
Angels above when they are on their knees.
Put in the awe invention can devise
For art should be a feast for human eyes.
Envision
Allow the man to know the ecstasy,
Let him participate in what he sees,
Incise the swollen tongue to make him feel
The taste of agony: Make it real.
Press in the broken skin, paint on the white
Of eyes the drops that glisten and excite
The senses of the man; draw out the knife
With a flourish to lend the martyr life.
Overflow the canvas, make the picture breathe
With color and with light, show all things seeth-
Ing, swelling, feeling force of the divine
Presence of our God. Make your painting shine
And shimmer, draw him upward heavenly
To let him be the picture: Make him see.

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Imitation
Seek in your art the grandeur of the Greek,
The noble calm, the sweet simplicity.
Question Nature, conceive Her, look beyond
Into Platonic Forms, hold them, respond
With measured lines determined logically,
Like angels sing, purely and exactly.
Balance the essences, leave out the rest,
Choose for your model summits of the best.
Restrain your brushes and confine your hues
To form an object of abiding truth—
That skill of art which is most rarely won
Is found in things lavishly underdone.
Think to know and know then what to feel.
The greatest art is art which is ideal.
Genesis
All men and nations move, as move they will
Compelled by storms some purpose to fulfill;
Never knowing where they go, nor why;
They live, they do some things and then they die.
The artist stands apart, he stands alone:
Seas swirl, leaves blow, he keeps his place like stone,
Some great stone standing buffeted by waves,
He and his thoughts heroic hold their place.
He looks into the tempest’s wild rage
Calm and sure, the Caesar of his age
He marshals men unborn to do his will,
Time breaks, reforms, his purpose to fulfill.
Like Nature to its functions, God in awe,
The feeling of the artist is the law.
Realigned
The essence of the line restricts, contracts,
It is by nature a defining act.
The line contains an image in the past,
It draws us back, it binds, it holds us fast.
The vastness of the brain will set you free,
Just close your eyes and let the painting be;
Be free of concepts, free of old régimes;
Let go your will, allow the brush to dream.

63
Yet master, line can hold a thing in place;
What harm will happen to an unlined face?
If we erase, what horrors might we reap?
Monsters will roam the earth when reason sleeps.
If we by breaking lines break with the past,
Which law of art allows an art to last?
Monument Pennsylvania Review
(spring 2016)
Those pissy professors? Those little dick-
Less wonders? Prissy boys! I was riding
Waves at ten years old: Smart and strong and quick
When they were dressing girly dolls, diddling
Themselves. Yes, of course. I have read as you
Have read the priggish slights and fawning lies.
So what? We both were there. We know what’s true
And what is not—the little snots. And I
Have seen what they will never see. And I
Have been where they will never be. Go! Cry
Your tiny tears and blow your nose. Go! Whine
In words that rot and fade away. See? My
Deeds shall live until the world is old;
My name will live as long as names are told.
Christopher Columbus (circa, October 31, 1451 – May 20, 1506)
Sympathy Pennsylvania Review
(spring 2016)
What of my belly, Sir? When you are fat
You help the poor along the way to riches.
If you were broke the urchins would not eat,
Bakers not make cakes, nor stitchers stitches.
I praise your belly, Sir: I give it thanks.
I rate the leather chair in which you sit.
I much admire the workings of your mouth,
The trading of the goods that you put in it.
Sir: Let us say your needs were few and slim,
So slim, in fact, you gave your wealth away
To grant a hungry soul a loaf of bread.
He’d eat, he’d shit, he’d agitate for pay.
I praise your belly not to start a fight.
The nation needs a healthy appetite.
Adam Smith (June 5, 1723 – July 17, 1790)

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Invective
2013
72 verses
Book VI: A diatribe against European Progressivism’s infection of American Enlightenment. Not
so vicious as Petrarch, nor so eloquent as Cicero, yet sharply stinging. The first section contains 21
satires on priggish contemporary nincompoops; the second section contains 21 portraits of the
Obama Administration incompetents; the third section is a frank discussion of race; the final
section needed to be spoken.
Eric “Fast & Furious” Holder Pennsylvania Review
No, no you feeble fool,
We use the story as a tool
To show the evil use of guns
To murder babies. Then we’ve won.
So what? Some Mexicans are dead
From U.S. bullets in their heads.
The story’s what we did it for—
I hope they shoot a couple more.
The anchorettes don’t care for truth
So use the press, confuse the youth.
Manipulate what people hear
To use the issue to make fear,
Maneuver Wikipedia,
Control the people through the media.
Kerry, Duke of Snob Pennsylvania Review
Please pass the sausages, Barak,
I wish the vim to make the snot
To thrill my much distinguished nose
So I can blow on those below.
Barak, my man, please pass the pepper
That I may spice my fancy pecker.
The spice shall make my pecker grow
To fuck the base-born churls below.
My dear Barak, pass the potatoes,
I choose to grow my swanky toes:
I’d rather that my toes were big
To stomp on low, uncultured pigs.

65
My good Barak, please pass your job,
Alike a pal from snob to snob.
Arne Dun-Can Make the Children Dumb Pennsylvania Review
Chicago schoos were number one
In dropout rates, and drugs and guns.
Chicago schoos came out the lastes
In all the academic classes.
Then as I learned so well to fail
My teaching practices were hailed,
So now my practices are used
In all the nation’s public schoos.
“But why” you ask, “make children dumb?
Why teach the interjection, ‘Um’?
Why teach the proper use of penises?”
To make sluty, student geniuses.
For, to instruct in gender union
Results in larger Teacher Unions.

66
Celebration
2014
72 verses
Book V: The celebration of a people formed by a virtuous constitution; a commemoration of the
heroes and heroic acts of the American Republic, a continuation of life-giving folk myths; and
reminiscences on the waning days of this republic of virtue.
A History by Prince Titi
From The History of the Cherokee
Composed by an author of quality.
…The Old Oglethorpe and his worthy poor
Were granted a charter by farmer George
To dig of the dirt, to pound on the forge,
To spin with the silk for Proprietors.
“Well then here they brought us, so here are we
Guests in the town of Chief Tomochichi,
Known as ‘Savannah the Hot & Sticky’
Where each by his labor renews poverty.
Oh yes this is me, a deserving poor,
Denied a slave, and denied my liquor,
And serving my king, the Good Farmer George,
And helping to heaven Proprietors.”

67
Axis
2016
72 verses
Book I: An alignment of beginnings, across all continents, inclusive of each tradition: The Gods,
the men, the events, the mythologies are considered.
Axis
So tell me, if you would, what you expect
To find within my citadel of verse:
Do you expect a thousand armored facts
Crowding the pickets tight with points and words,
Each point, each blade, each line, each rhyme exact
Or would you have my minions stand at guard
To peer the slits to seek the enemy
To search out slinking words who peer the dark
While you in shadow taste the lazy wine
And watch the suns swim through the universe
While I seduce you with caressing lines?
How is it you would have me speak the verse
Which echoes in the cavern skull of men
An axis to begin, mayhem to end?
Oleander
How can a summer’s blossom know her nature
When she herself is innocent and pure?
Shall I foretell the chaos that surrounds her
To ruin then your pleasure? O Leander,
You’ll hold her gently sweet and white as death
And love her with the most sublime caress
As if alive, long pausing, out of breath
As you have been from swimming cold and wet.
My love, you see, I wander through the story,
I cannot hold my simple point to mind;
I must not seek nor find, I must not see
Nor should I speak that last imperfect rhyme
When stepping here and there and now and then
An Ate treading on the heads of men.

68
The Priapeia of Professor Priapos:
An English Verse Translation of the Latin
2014
62 verses
S ME have guessed that I was gathered
from around Priapos’ feet
of verses scrawled, lines graffitied
and from inscriptions neat.
Others suppose I was composed
by Maeceans’ clever fellows
when toasting P. in meter’d verse
for bookish wit to show.
Many perceive the evidence
of a fancy pedigree
from Martial, Ovid, Juv, Catullus
and Virgil in composing me.
Most recently my pages swell
tailing on Sir Richard Burton,
as here by Curtis I’m augmented
and shortened, I’m certain.
Yet, to the point, it matters not
what’ere the learned source is
so long as you do practice well
the lesson of my courses.
32. Pennsylvania Review
If you, who banquet at my altar,
Who taste of each my pleasant fruits,
Who share my meat and share my figs
And wash them down with tinctured juice
And leave without the gracious thanks
Of a clever, sporting verse
I pray to Alastor and Fate
To hear and then to grant my curse:

69
May your wife and lusty mistress
Enjoy your dozen rival’s cocks
And may each cock be bountiful,
Delicious and as hard as rock
And may you always sleep alone
While hungry mice gnaw at your bone.
‘Tis not enough, O friends, that I
Am fixed here where earth gapes open,
Heat in the Dog Days, summer’s drought,
Rain beating against my bosom
Day-in, day-out, and the hail-storm
That freezes stiff my hoary beard,
No! I must endure bleeding labor,
Tiresome, heavy toil, the watch-bird’s
Sleepless screeching, and add to this
Unskilled rustic hands that chopped me
From an old log, then I am called
“Guardian of the Gourds”, the deity
Lowest…and she looks with disgust
On me, leaves with him to feed her lust.
So then: A Trojan cock sweetened
A Spartan cunt, for this we made a song,
For this we made a war—you know,
Golden apples, Aphrodite’s tits, long,
Long ago—Achilles cock tighter
Than a lyre string, and he too sniffing
After Trojan cunt; this Ulysses
On a tear, Calypso, Circe’s charming
Pussy and all that; Penelope,
Now there’s a piece, a clever girl and skilled
With tricky fingers—if she’d had me
No Ithacan suitor need have been killed,
She’d-ah sung, Ulysses heard, stayed away,
Ahh…but at that time, I guess, I’d not been made.

70
THE AESTHETICON
A Tetraology of Verse Libretti
2014
Goddesses deserve respect, especially those who generate life and beauty, yet the goddess is subject
to the wants, needs, desires, and chances which lend all existence interest: So much the better for
drama where we find particular interest in the lives, loves, and misadventures of the great. These
libretti test ancient and modernistic literary theories of time, place and circumstance finding that
theories serve the theorist rather more than the artist; the artist, being as he is inspired by the
Muse, follows her divine direction rather than the circumstantial dictums of men. The Aestheticon
is, as you have guessed from the title, Menippean in each particular: God love us all.
Pandora Beyond Hope
29:48
Galatea: the Statue Comes to Life
42:01
Amaron the Silly Muse
42:20
Nyx
19:19
2:13:28 (reading time)
From Pandora
Prelude to Act II, Scene I
Pandora: Hello, pretty little bird.
Are you a thing machined like me,
Are you a sweet hypocrisy
Who sings a Delphic rhyme of words?
Are you a crafted science, too,
Fashioned by design in art?
Were you composed to break a heart
With a lie that tells the truth?
Then both we two are pretty dreams,
Like portraits in a finer world
Where goddesses are silly girls,
Where men are made of sugar-cream,
Where the watcher is the fool,
Where the prince of folly rules.

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Come then, pretty little bird
And let us hymn in pretty lines
The truth of life that is a lie:
Let us spiccato the absurd.
From Galatea
Act I, Scene I
Pyg: No, thank you, not
Today.
Doris: Some other day, then?
Pyg: No, never.
Doris: How rude. I was just saying—oh, you thought…
Why, no, I meant a meal, to salt your teeth—
Chorus: Where phallic foam sponges the sea (hetaerae to the men)
Doris: Oysters are mined quite easily;
Chorus: Where Cyprus King bowed to Sargon
Doris: Girls are had for quite the bargain;
Chorus: Where Delta’s hunger conceives the law
Doris: You may enjoy your oyster raw,
Eudoxia: Or if you like your oyster dressed
With pearls draped over her breast
Chorus: You may with Aphrodite’s token
Kallisto: Break a hymen not yet broken.
Eudoxia: Here you will find the Goddess pleased
Chorus: To see we girls upon our knees
Kallisto: Straining tongued to serve the phallus
Chorus: As our ancient calling calls us.
Doris: Initiates and seasoned whores
Chorus: Allow our caves to be explored:
Eudoxia: When sacred, warm-wet lips are spread
Chorus: We invite aspiring heads
Eudoxia: To worship at the Goddess source,
Chorus: And leave an offering,
Doris: of course.
Chorus: But there is one, too proud, too prim (hetaerae to one another)
Doris: To bathe in the sacred quim:
Chorus: Pygmalion, too good, too proper
Doris: To soil himself in serving Her;
Chorus: Pygmalion, that man of ice

72
Eudoxia: Denies Kypris Her sacrifice;
Chorus: Pygmalion would live alone
Doris: Queerly loving his lonesome bone;
Chorus: Pygmalion rejects the wife,
Eudoxia: Denies the city sacred life.
Kallisto: Which one?
Eudoxia: The handsome one who holds the pose.
Kallisto: O, him: Yes, I have danced my eye for him,
Glimmered, glittered and smiled and winked him forth.
Eudoxia: And not a notice in return?
Kallisto: No, nothing:
I’ve shined and shimmered, swayed and bent, opened too
But did he look, not him, he stared me through
As though I were a mist, a clouded dream.
Doris: Impiety.
Kallisto: An insult to the Goddess.
Eudoxia: Neither scent, nor paint, nor glistering glass,
Nor ass, nor breast, nor pretty painted lip
Will call that man to serve the need of love.
Let him be.
Song from Act III, Scene II
Stasinus: Whiter Galatea
than are the snow-white petals
slimmer than the adder
more flowery than are meadows
fresher than the tender kid
more splendid than is crystal
smother than are shells
polished in the tides
Truer Galatea
than the matrons of the moon
humbler than are peacocks
less astringent than perfume
gentler than are cougars
less quarrelsome than are hens
finer than are women
who breathe and age and die

73
From Amaron
Act VI, Scene I
[Light illuminates the table scene.]
Azriel: Where there is honey there are bees. (Assembly chortles.)
Alex: And there are stings, Azriel. Sharp stings.
Marg: And flowers of many shapes and many colors.
Mercut: For each bee, a flower!
Theo: For each flower many bees.
Roxane: Many bees of black and of gold.
Julia: And many stings of many shapes and colors.
Mercut: Yes there are, that there are.
Song Yu: Bring me honey.
Julia: Bring me a bee.
Menkhep: Azriel, have you honey?
Azriel: We have the sweetest honey at this table.
Mercut: And stinging bees.
Song Yu: I am a bee
Mercut: of gold of and of black—
Menkhep: I’m not a wasp,
Alex: I’m not an ant—
Mercut: I have a shimmering
Pausanius: silvery wing
Song Yu: that sings,
Azriel: that sings,
Mercut: that sings when I fly
Theo: with pollen,
Marg: with honey,
Julia: with candy
Mercut: I fly:
Pausanius: I am of gold
Mercut: and silver and black,
Azriel: I shimmer,
Alex: I glimmer,
Song Yu: I sing,
Marg: “I am sweet,
Theo: so eat,
Roxane: so eat
Julia: my honey so sweet;
Mercut: I am a bee
Menkhep: of gold and of black,
Pausanius: of silvery wings

74
Song Yu: that sing when I fly
M. Chorus: with honey,
F. Chorus: with honey,
Assembly: with honey so sweet.”
Theodora: Your bees are in good flower, Azriel.
Azriel: Your honey is on good bees, Theodora.
Pausanius: Treasures of the table.
Mercut: Wine and sweets.
Theo: And hearty meats.
Pausanius: But then, Azriel, as we were saying…
Azriel: Before interruption without seam in continuity…
Pausanius: About Beauty…
Alex: That old broad…
Azriel: Have you heard the one about the eye of the
Beholder that pops out in a bar fight…
Pausanius: Seriously.
Here we are, a company assembled,
Enjoying the work of a thousand hands
That we shall never see nor ever know.
Our every need, every want satisfied
Beyond expectation, beyond deserving.
These tastes, these sounds, these beauties each and all
Moved by the nature of the unseen hand,
Like birds choreographed upon the wind
Flocking, swelling, stretching long along the air
Through space in time generation after
Generation—from time out of mind
Bringing us treasures of all shapes, all kinds.
This frail poetry, this Ashkelon vile,
A silica mined, fumed, furnaced and formed,
Packaged, shipped and sold, filled with precious tears
Wept for some unknown lover, kept for years
Through centuries to share its poetry,
Its beauty with this merry company.
Mercut: Merry? ‘Til that full draft of Lethe’s wine.
Julia: What, Pausanius, did you mean by birds?
Mercut: Words, dear, words, just so many pretty words
Drifting and tippling upon the air.
Thodora: I liked the trope of poetry in tears.
Azriel: Now, that vile, from the Sea of Galilee…
Alex: Perhaps tears wept of Mary for our Lord.
Menkhep: Right period, alas, wrong idiom.

75
Song from Act VI, Scene I
Alex: Just so, Azriel,
And yet a little sweetness on the plate
Needs be enjoyed before the hour is late.
Theo: Better sweetness late than sweetness never.
Julia: Better salt on sweet chocolate caramels.
Mercut: Better to savor the tear on the cheek
Than the tear in the jar.
Marg: The vile, again?
Song Yu: The beauty contained within the sea of time:
Jewel like, coral like, ever new, ever changing,
Ever fashioned to new forms. Sweet and sad.
Who says of these, our long departed,
“They grow remote as time goes by.”
I long for her, my golden hearted
Lady, ‘til the day I die.
I love her though I cannot see her;
I sing, although she cannot hear;
My dear, I shall cry forever
For you live in every tear.
I long for you, my golden hearted
Lady, ‘til the day I die.
My dear, I shall cry forever
For you live in every tear.
From the Interlude II
Marcutio: The busy ferries set the stage
When the author turns the page,
And I—fulfilling his request—
Will tickle those in female dress.
Dante had his Beatrice,
Petrarch had his Laura,
Martial had his Lesbia,
While I have four or
Five, or six, seven, eight, nine, ten…
[Continues silently counting, pointing…]

76
…Or maybe more
True loves to woo in verse:
With more to love I’ve less the time
To dilly-dally crafting rhymes.
If I were the wind (Play acting while he sings.)
On the shores of the sea
With a breath I would lift up your dress;
If I were the wind,
On the shores of the sea
You would thank me for kissing your breast.
If I were a ray
Of the sun in the sky
I would fly to the rose of your lips;
If I were a ray
Of the sun in the sky
You would sigh when I fired your hips.
If I were the bee
With the yellow-black wings
I would sing a sweet song in your ear;
If I were the bee
With the yellow-black wings
You would moan to the sting of my spear.
If you were alive
Like a star in the night
A-twinkle alone in the blue,
My comet would fly
With a wink to your side
To twinkle forever with you,
To twinkle forever with you.
From Nyx Wm. Inge Theatre Festival
(the satyr play) (reading invitation)
Aphro: Is it quitting time?
Erebus: No, sit.
Aphro: I didn’t want to quit…I’m, I didn’t…
Nyx: The adult in the room says, “When.”

77
Hypnos: Sir: I wouldn’t be disquieting,
Yet, outside it sounds like rioting.
Erebus: No, my Hypnos, that is merely
Cognitive statue dissonance.
Hypnos: No, Sir, I really hear it clearly.
Erebus: Really, my troubles reach the distance
Of your simplistic brain.
Here, I change the pose. (E. changes pose)
Hypnos: Hear! The trouble remains.
Erebus: Then let me decompose: Like this! (E. decomposes himself)
Better?
Hypnos: Better. (H. exasperated, but looks around)
Erebus: A statue’s work is never done.
Who knew?
Cabinet: Sir… (C. becomes aware)
Erebus: I am the artist of myself,
No one to show the way.
All things exist within my mind
And by the things I say.
To you I seem
The better dream.
Up here upon my pedestal
None are as great as me.
I am the pose that poses well
As all can plainly see.
To you I seem
The better dream.
And yet, if you will think upon
The me upon the base,
I’ll name you on electrons
And send you into space. (E. stops singing, makes a pose)
Nyx: Erebus.
Erebus: A moment, I am holding the pose. (E. holds new pose)
Nyx: Moment’s up, Erebus.
Erebus: What? Watch. I stand without wiggling. (E. stands perfectly still)
Nyx: Erebus, you are undefensible.
Erebus: Indefensible, dear: Indefensible.
Nyx: That too, Erebus.
Erebus: See, this pose. Now I’m defensible. (E. takes defensive pose)

78
For the Playbill
You there, judging of my verses,
Know this:
I shall call down barren curses
Upon your bliss
If in a priggish righteousness
You piss
Upon my stump, dog that you are.
Know this:
Every dog enjoys his humping,
The bliss,
The swelling into God, the watering,
The kiss
Of the Goddess; be brave. I say,
“Virtutis fortuna comes”.

79
THE PROGRESSIVE
A Tetralogy of Ten-Minute Verse Plays
2015
Lótophagoi, or The Lotus Eaters
Synopsis: Two college boys on a binge are interrupted by the busy world and those mechanics
necessary to romantic relationships.
Tiresia
Synopsis: We meet Tiresias after he has killed the mating snake; after he has lived seven years
a woman: Tiresias is now Tiresia, in the presence of Hera before whom she is questioned. Tiresia
is allowed by Hera to choose the flesh in which she would live; Zeus enters, debate ensues; Tiresia
chooses to be female, which choice is by Zeus disallowed. Enter Mstress Nice, government
functionary who defends Tiresia’s choice, debates with Zeus, calls in her drag-queen-goon to
enforce government’s order and then…and then…Hera and Zeus reconcile, leaving we foolish
humans to our fate.
Orphia
Synopsis: Well-heeled party girls out-on-the-town pick-up a pretty artist, a poet and singer who
has realized a success in the exhibition of his government subsidized “Life Piece”. The after-party
at the collector’s home is not what one expects.
Priapi
Synopsis: Weekend of the Women & Gender Studies “Sex Festival”: Inspecting locations
and checking details, the troop of students enters the “Grove of Priapos” where a carpenter has
sincerely carved a crude Phallus. The troop is disquieted by the Phallus and by the unschooled
carpenter. In sophomoric fashion a debate ensues, fevers rise and there are consequences.
39:07 (reading time)
illustrations by william girard

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