Lend Me Your Ears

Come round all 

You hard-of-hearing 
Stalwart comrades: Praised be 
The cicadas’ crazed 

Ear-thrumming drumming 
Anthem that in fits and starts 
Cranks into high gear 

Its deranged, fair weather song, 
For it shall stutter to a halt
Before we know it— 

That incessant, insistent rallying 
Cry that pierced our humdrum existence
All those long summers past 

Coming, going, gone. 

Huuklyeand Cinquor on Why Poets Should Always Carry Notepads

Yes, yes—I know you think 
You’re a poet but 
. 
Have you never thought 
You’re a poet only 
. 
When writing and not 
Ballyhooing in a cage before 
. 
The likes of John Q. Public 
Like a monkey in a zoo? 
. 
If not, please note such 
Knowledge helps you 
. 
Keep your mind composed, 
Off the subject and not 
. 
Going bananas if you do. 


Moderator’s comments: Hey, Huuk--no use going apeshit when all around you 'monkey see, monkey do'—write a lyric that’ll send ‘em back to the zoo.

Huuklyeand Cinquor on Conceptual Poetry*

To get to the bottom 
And fully 

Appreciate it, 
You have to 

Wade through its shallows 
Holding your nose 

And sucking in 
As many 

Fishy metaphors 
As you can 

Swallow. 

Moderator’s comment: Call me Ishmael, mate, but if you can’t see that this is a bull’s eye gaff from that grand old man of piercing wit and sure-fire aplomb aimed at those blubbering pompous purveyors of purloined poetry, you don’t know a “gaff” from a “gaffe” and it’s time to put a patch over your “good” eye, too. 

*for more edification on your way to becoming this murky body of poetry’s complete (sic) angler, go to 

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/brief-guide-conceptual-poetry

Sleeping on It

Above the little house 
Under the giant oak, 

A rasping wintry over- 
Night rattle of leaves 

Letting go, blanketing your body, 
Your wrinkled eyebrows 

Telling 

Something there is 
In your limbs 

Your bones should know. 





 

Fate of a Nondescript Pornographic Poet

he knew all
too well 

his femmes fatales 
would find him soft 

and graphically 
bro 

ken at the end 
of one pulpy pen 

ultimate 
anticlimactic 

line after another, 
and where nothing

he laid down 

before them in vain 
glorious color 

could stop them 
from coming 

sheathed in plain 
black-and-white 

fictions again and again.