Christian Soldiers' War Room

Bit by bit, 
Year after year, 
The hot air leaking 
From the air- 
Tight crypt kept reaching 
Our ears garbled—

True to life 
Year after year, 
Mouth to mouth, 
We had to swallow 
The gibberish quickly
Or slowly die laughing. 

Beehive of Conflicting Emotions

My head buzzing 
Over the latest crazed 
Talk of imminent war, I try 
To forget by spending 
A good part of the morning 
Under the shelter 
Of our Judas tree, 
Taking in the inebriated 
Bees as they bomb cluster 
After cluster of deep pink 
Flowers —I know 
It makes no sense 
Whatsoever but I hope 
The bees don’t start 
Making a beeline 
For the wine cellar. 

Evensong: A Time for Reaping

violet- 

blue- 


black 

mountains 


cradle 

up- 


side 

down 


bloody 

orange 


waxing 

sickle, 


verily my cup 

runneth over— 


tea, anyone? 

"Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is"

How many times 
Have you heard this 

Priceless one and gone 
Out of your way 

To sell your wares cheap, 
Craftsman? 

Hocus-Pocus Habeas Corpus

You owed it to yourself 
But nothing yet of note 
To warrant a poem today— 

Like Bulldog Drummond hot 
On the trail, time to back- 
Track to where you lost 

The right to have writ 
Something whose smell won’t 
Soon go away. 

1960s West Coast Underground Haiku Poets Society

Real people writing 
Real poetry, you know that’s 

Like man, surreal. 

Haiku Health Daily

Kong the Master say 
Me like haiku better than 
Damn flu any day. 

Dandy Exit

That drab 

Coat hanging on 
The clotheshorse 

Has been hanging there 
A long time; one would think 

It’s high time someone 
Put it out 

To pasture, along
With the blasted 

Kitchen sink. 

To A Once Budding Romantic Poet Now Out On A Limb

Do not be crestfallen, 
Bard, a mere leaf trembling 
In a mean autumn wind— 
Brief as your flowering was, 
Surely you bloomed long 
Enough to sense it wasn’t 
Meant to be forever spring.

Pox Magazine Poetry Submission Guidelines

We do not need and thus 
Do not seek work suitable 
For public consumption— 

The last time we checked, 
Poetry was not listed 
As a communicable disease. 

With Back to the Wall

For all its breathtaking beauty, 
Our country has many flaws, 
Some of them deadly— 

The more we speak of them, 
The better we’ll face 
The stark muzzle 

Of deadening reality. 

Laughter Is The Best Medicine

Gagged inside 
A dumb gentle beast 
Lies another like 
Beast inside 
Another like one, 
And so on, myriads 

Not wanting
To break out 
Of the barrier 
Of muteness
That's muzzled them;
Therein lies 

The key to the puzzle 
As to why these silent,
Docile creatures need
Nothing but guffawing
Clownish despots
To entertain them. 

Bus Stop: Spring Is Icumen In

Oh, devilish joy frenetic! 

There where one hum- 
Drum bus comes 
And pulls out one 
After the other, now 

Alighting on a wire above 
An oblivious queue, two birdies 
Making mad whoopee looking 
Like a goddamn double-decker one!

Anamnesis

Coming up for air— 
Lungs foundering 

On the bottom, fishing 
For whatever’s still 

Down there. 

American-Style Hide-And-Seek

Ready or not, once 
The countdown starts, 
We’ll have plenty 
To say after “it” finishes, 

When we find we've nowhere
To hide any longer,
And a home base
Crawling with finks.

For Better or Worse

The poem 
You just put down 
Has a life of its own, 
Forgiving no one for words 
Put into its mouth by one 
Who should know better, 
Save that someone be a suicide 
Speaking strange tongues. 

Lost Cause (#45)

In this proverbial 
Race against time, how 
Lucky we are indeed to be 

Always on the verge of being 
Continually great, if only 
We weren’t always so 

Habitually late. 

Take That, You Dirty Rat! (A Tragic Farce in Five Acts)

1. 

The saucy mouse said tit, 
The sassy rat said tat; 
Seductive in the kitchen, 
Lady de la Roquefort, sitting pat. 

2. 

The gnawing was ferocious, 
Le dame delicious, too; 
Enamored with their gnawing, 
They gnawed till they were bleu.

(A classic case of biting off 
More than you can chew.)

No sign of consternation, no inkling of chagrin, 
No reining in of hubris—O overweening sin! 

(By Zeus! Such uninvited cheeky din 
Was doomed to do our duo in.) 

3. 

His catnap abruptly truncated by the ruckus, 
Our couch potato Tom exclaimed 
Sounds like hocus-pocus woke us!

With drat and drat and double-drat, 
That’s quite enough of this and that, 
He went gumshoeing to the kitchen. 

 4. 

Zounds! 

Brazen raiding scoundrels out-of-bounds 
Ravishing our Lady Roquefort! 

To arms! To arms! 

5. 

And with that, dear denizens of the land 
Of cheesy fictions, his Tommy gun 
Reverberated—ratta-tat-tat! 

Cut the knaves down 
To modest wedges, 
Just like that.

Renewable Energy

The refugee from who-knows-where who spent all night freezing 
On a park bench while you were feeding your fireplace 
With presto logs does not want to hear what you’ve been doing 
To save the planet; he wants to see you walk over a bed of hot coals
Holding your head on a silver platter and not get burnt. 

Loss Is

what remains 
when you find nothing 

but grieving 
remains 

Divination of Evil

“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want
and deserve to get it good and hard.”—H.L. Mencken


I bet you ten will get you twenty 
Men wiser than I have said 
The pursuit of liberty starts 
As innocently 
As a child wanting 
What it cannot have, 

And ends with it 
Having what 
It doesn’t need; 
Indeed, most 
Of the time, it feels 
It just doesn’t 

Know what it wants 
Or needs, then gets it 
Good and hard 
In the gut when 
Least expected, 
Its entrails found lacking, 

While knowing bloody butchers 
Lick their chops in the end. 

Just Us and the Chickens

Not living as long as we do, 
Chickens do not have the time 
Nor our bird-brained inclination 
To piddle over whether or not 
There’s some kind of god working 
Wonders way up there above the weather; 
You can see an example of this 
When their gullets are parched 
And the nearest watering 
Hole’s dry as all get-out, 
Soon as they hear the rumbling 
Of nimbuses rolling their way, 
Straightaway they tilt 
Their dusty, wide-open beaks 
Upwards, look God square 
In the face and before you 
Know it—by thunder— 
Start gurgling 

Grace. 

One of These Days: A Parable of the Field Mouse

Little man, 
Just when you think 
You’ve made it through 

One more great, 
Simply fantastic flying 
Red white and blue day, 

A crepuscular screeching 
Flash of a hoot owl turning 
Your pinky moon face pale— 

How do you like that?
No more being 
Carried away. 

Waiting For My Wife To Return From Foraging, I Find Myself Musing On Unfailing Kismet

I’m sitting in the car 
And something tells me 

Before I can finish 
The poem I started 

In my mind when she left 
Twenty minutes ago, she’ll 

Appear with a full basket 
Of wild greens—see, 

I told you so. 

Lie of the Land

riot 
of wind leaves pine 
needles pile tossed up

rotting under 
brambles under 
which lies all matter 

of whatnot composing what- 
ever the blustering 
mind never sings truth 

fully mindful of nothing 
but trumped-up blistering 
naught. 

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.