Timeworn

Sick to death—maudlin enough 

A phrase and oh too common— 

But how many suffer 

To live through it. 

Take It or Leave It

Lethe bound, I’d rather give 

The shirt off my back to bring back 

Those remnants of memory 

Than be dressed to kill 

And leave it at that.

Gone with the Wind

O most aery spirit 

Of the vaunted avant-garde mooning 

Around your emanations, amass 

Enough asses about and soon 

You’ll be at the rear swooning 

Over their moons too.

Fallen Leaves Redux

Eve? Plain as day— 

Something about her 

Nature made me want 

To swirl round her ankles 

So she could sweep me away. 

Up the Down Staircase on the Stairway to Heaven

There I was in the back of a tiny delicatessen in an aisle jammed between racks of Italian pasta when the front door opened and an old man went up to the counter where the owner greeted him with a Hiya buddy, what’ll you have? The old man asked Where’re the stairs? What stairs, buddy? Why, the ones that go upstairs, the old man answered indignantly. There’s no upstairs, Pop, there’s only this one floor, the owner shot back condescendingly, then turned his back on the old man, who though standing motionless, now looked like he was descending some great unfathomable abyss. 

NB: Edited notebook entry, Seattle 1976.