Moonlighter

Following the money 
Moonlit snail leaves 

Winding silver tracks 
Trail behind it.

What The Eye Fails To Take In, The Heart Will

—for Ans and Peter, inveterate birders par excellence 


Not the green limb trembling 
In the still air but the departed 

Beating of wings 
The branch was home to 

No longer there. 

Haiku: Good Investment

What is a word worth 
Spending your morning watching 
Bees gather pollen. 

In God We Trust

Trust me— 

When you said you would 
Try harder the next time, 

Nobody believed you, not 
Even your best friend, 

Your lying self 
To the bitter end. 

Epitaph For A Spaced-Out Astronomer

Love, don’t you be like me 
When the stars got in my eyes, 

I looked for the nearest 
Black hole. 

Ambivalence

Suffering’s well hidden, 
Festering in Everyman’s heart, 

And everyone wants it 
Ripped out 

Without hurting the heart. 

Shall We Or Shall We Not?

Uproot the poem which dares 
Rear its head out of season 

Lest that bizarre beauty develop 
A mind of its own 

And bewitch us. 

How Poets End Up Getting The Reader's Goat

Remember leading that nag 
To water to no avail? Well, 
Your exasperating poetic

Manner reminds me of a nanny
Goat that gives us a milk can 
Full to the brim, then 

Straightaway kicks it 
Over before we can fully 
Take all that wholesomeness in. 

Haiku: Artisan's Well-Wrought Urn Embellishing Mantelpiece

Ashes to ashes. . . . . 


No bones about it— 
Dedicated to an art 
Finely worked to death. 

Quasi-Cartesian Contemplation

Where I can 
Stand, I choose 

To do so, other- 
Wise, I sit. 

No Trespassing--This Means You!

This abandoned derelict has nothing left to say 
Of what went on inside it, years of pent-up anger 
Keep it shut away. 

A Poem Should Be (17)

Finely spun as a spider’s 
Web poised deceptively 
In the morning sun, 

And you an ephemeral 
Struggling captive soon 
To be undone. 

Rub A Dub Tub

More than likely,
The perfect poem is never 
Going to be there when
You need it, even if
 
You’ve just cut your veins 
And are waiting patiently 
For divine inspiration to save you 
From a fate worse than death. 

Stuck-Up On The Way To The Top Of The World

Spellbound to be so high 
You may rightly be but 
Don’t you dare condescend 

To look down on all 
Those flying dizzily past you 
Going the opposite way. 

Facing Down A False Dawn: Song To Make America Great Again

Against the dark dumbing 
Deadening blues now 

Nesting in us, a future 
Brood of sonorous gold- 

Finches soon breaking full- 
Blown out of their pale 

White shells into the glorious, 
Quivering light. 

Huuklyeand Cinquor On How To Commit Poetic Suicide And Live To Tell About It

The next time you sit down to write 
Something mind-blowing right 

Off the top of your head, 
Take what’s left 

Of your brains with you. 



Moderator’s comments: What a relief! Our resident gadfly had been out of sight and out of mind so long that I was ready to abandon all hope of ever hearing from him again, so you can understand how elated I was when I received another one of his delicious little gems. With this one in particular, without his resorting to overblown poetic hyperbole, we can see how Huuk has hit the proverbial nail on the head once more and demonstrated how futile it is to have your artistic cake and eat it too—unless the poet in question has enough smarts left over to return to his senses before he suffers irreversible damage to his powerful albeit very misguided “inspirational” ego by overshooting it.