How To Begin Your Day, Vassal

Preoccupied only 

With observing how 

That nameless red- 

Breasted twittering 

 

Little bird has perched 

On a limb of the strawberry 

Tree in our good lord’s garden 

 

And is nibbling away 

At just those berries ripe and fit 

Enough to be set before a king. 

 

 

 

 

Alzheimer Twilight Vignette

This in which he 

Ends up smashing all 

 

The light bulbs left lit 

In that inner sanctum 

 

Of his he thought he had 

Remembered 

 

To switch off before 

Falling asleep.

 

Portentous Local Murders

These crows usually 

Like nothing better 

Than to fly 

From house 

Top to house 

Top but most times they 

Prefer to stay cackling 

Out of the way high up 

In the old bullet-riddled village 

Clock tower that miraculously 

Still keeps striking the right 

Time of day—whenever 

That happens, all common- 

Place hell breaks loose, 

And the birds scatter 

Helter-skelter.  That's when

I like to think the few remaining 

Villagers old enough to remember 

Flash back to those murderous 

Three days of civil strife that sent 

So many souls shrieking 

To the depths of the underworld. 

 

Just like their predecessors did 

More than half a bloody century ago, 

The birds soon return to the bell-tower, 

Where they continue to crow. 

 

 

 

The Artist Seemingly Fully In Command Of His Fate

“Life is the art of drawing 

Without an eraser.” 

--John W. Gardner 

 

 

John W. Gardner was 

Not an artist but I still wish 

To thank him for his apophthegm 

Of living artlessly with no dodges 

And no room 

 

For any erasures whatsoever, even when 

The artist in each of us finds himself— 

As did John one fateful day— clearly 

Out of his medium and face-to-face 

With the one-and-only artfully awful 

 

Great Eraser.

 

Industrial Zone Obscenity

porno 

 

graphic 

char 

 

coal 

colored 

 

smoking 

stacks 

 

penetrating 

soot 

saturated

seriously

 

virgin 

once 

 

now 

serially 

violated 

 

sky