How to Win Friends and Influence People in PoBiz

The Golden Rule:

Pity the poor, precious
Ordinary reader, poet--

Easy on the effluent;
Don't suck him in.

Déjà vu

My god every time
He reached for the sky

To be saved, he was plumb
Gone over the edge before

He knew what hit him.

Reaper

Hell, we all know you

Cut a mean, wide swath but
Before you get carried away

With all that useless fodder,
Don't tell anybody anything

That can be used against you
Till your dying day.

The Poet as Archaeologist

This man smiles at the coming of autumn,
The silence of cicadas makes him laugh;
even the wind-scatter of leaves pleases him.

Tired of digging in, he is digging out
from under the ruins of his measured words,
while his ancestors, having escaped him,

turn round and smile at the distance between.

(from Sentences, 1976)

D=O=G=G=E=R=E=L

bending

meaning over
backwards

mongrels vow
to screw

the purebred language
bitches

bow

a posteriori

wow.

(from The Intricate Evasions of As)