Caveat Emptor, Or The Law of Diminishing Returns

Dear poet toiling, trying 

To win your daily bread--do you

See Wit rearing its precious head 

Investing you with promises, i.e. 

Striking it rich with witticisms

Longing to be read? 

 

By the powers invested in me 

By Tom, Dick and Harry, Ltd., hereby

Do I decree this writ to be read: 

To all promising poets, 

Before you declare bankruptcy, 

Strike it dead.

Noted: William Michaelian's most recent post mentioning a musty-smelling little book of verse he picked up from an equally musty-smelling little used book store sent me scurrying to my stacks of equally musty-smelling books to dig out one of my forgotten favorites: The Stuffed Owl: An Anthology of Bad Verse, edited by D.B.Wyndham Lewis (no relation to the BLAST Lewis) and Charles Lee--a sheer delight, let me tell you, as well as an edifying experience--seeing what happens to poets whenever they get the urge to fly high in the sky on the ass-end of an inflated Pegusus. Highly recommended if you can find it--last published in 1963.

Light of My Life

--for Eleni

I know

White will be the color
Of my true love's hair,

For the light of a thousand-and-one
Suns shall put it there.

Vigilance

Vigilance is in sighting
The lance

Being thrust into air,
Watching it, following

Its arc

Ever watchful of gravity
Inscribing your signature

Indelibly there.


(from The Intricate Evasions of As)

Bestiality in the Badlands, Circa 1958

(Scripps)

Round Rushmore,
Stark weather,

While way back west
In Tinseltown,

Another heart
Crushed

Bunny's bleeding, but
Claude

Hopper's hitch--

Cock's not wholly
Above

Suspicion.

Compost Heap

Mine's over there,
Tucked a-

Way out of sight
Down in the corner,

You have to get real close
To see these worms

Never sleep.

Clarity, or Knife in the Water

Though we do not see the mind
Carving, the knife in question

Appears clearly inscribed
In the water's reflection.