Pathetic Fallacy at Ground Zero

Aspiring leaves spiraling 

Soon to be fallen, 
Look out if you will 

On a sky without bottom. 

Huuklyeand Cinquor on Satiated Corpuses

[…the poet’s] entire body promises to satisfy our every whim and fancy

while we wait for his creative juices to start flowing once that first course arrives.*

You say

This fare is a bookworm’s

Unforgettable delight

Easily digested, my friend—

If so, why then

At the end the taste

Of gritty grubs ruminating

On tips of tumescent tongues?

*Blurb by one Randall Cann Standall on back cover of the Complete Poetical Works of X.S. Wasserbildj-Vandersluis, publisher unspecified.

Moderator’s comments: I don’t know about you guys but I’ve just about had my fill of Cinquor’s tasteless and tiresome efforts. The next time he sends me something like this, I’m going to return it to him with the following instructions (in block letters) on the envelope:  DROP DEAD, WRITE LATER.

 

Evenfall (2)

new moon 

a thin slice, old 
orange-red 

wrinkled sky cut 
deeper than skin 

deep. 

Metamorphosis, Hombre, As in Cicada

Si, still under

Neath

Only a shell

Of it

Self, nada.





(right click on image to open new window)

A Sentence As Curious As My Ten-Month-Old Granddaughter's Look

I have no way of knowing 
But it seems every time 

 
You look to touch my face,
Your little body’s trying 

 
Hard to flesh out what 
I hope you remember well after 

 
This bag of bones has gone its way. 

Crestfallen

no matter how sapped

still the solitary 
pine holds

its breath hoping 
for a fair wind

to take that breath away. 

KO'd

Big shot lightweight, that dark empty

Corner you thought you’d never 
Box yourself into, now riddled 

With cobwebs spangled 
With shooting

Stars. 

Tormented Soul

Some days you get up wanting 
So much to give all the love you have 
To the first person you meet 
Who tells you have a good day; 
Most other times you just wish 
Every last one of them would go away. 

Myopic Gem Merchant on Brink of Bankruptcy

Oh, mensch! How you thought
You weighed everything laid out
Before you with a mean grocer’s eye—

No more! 

Now stranded you see nothing
Precious here, not even priceless lapis
Lazuli blue lapping fabled pebbled shore. 

Alone, Listening to What the Waves Have to Say

Sitting here in this inlet 
Secluded, not believing what 

You hear, you could almost 
Forget what brought you here. 

Saloon Sharp Shooters, Raymond, Washington, circa 1950

Now that one last dude has shot 
His wad of nickels into the belly of the beast 
And cleared out just before closing time, in comes 
That upstairs Greek immigrant tenement urchin who starts 
Biting the dust under the row of abandoned pinball machines. 

He knows if he hangs in there and keeps 
A sharp eye out for any strays, the understanding 
Irish lady of the saloon will once again look 
The other way and let him pocket 
One more buffalo head or two, surely 

A good day’s killing for the likes 
Of the both of them. 

Who Else Out There Thought Facebook Was Only Going to Be a Passing Phase?

Friends, say you posted 

The full moon is like a poem 
That moves you— 

Could you wait around a month for it 
To become marble so you could feel 

Moved enough to like it again? 

Bodies of Summer

Onto the parched flanks of the sprawling 
Olive grove opposite, the midday sun throws 
An inkling of what passes for shade 
Under each canopy of blasted limbs. 

(Though under the cover of the veranda, 
You still dare not move for the heat.) 

Slowly stretching their legs, 
The crazed thrumming incessant 
Cicadas will soon burst full-blown 
Through the skin of your teeth. 

Evenfall

blue 

mist rising 
from blue 

mountain 
hollows 

darkening 
blue- 

black 
swallows 

sky 

Spreading Paronomasia Being a Conceit

Paranoia strikes deep— 

For what it’s worth, 
Think hard when you find

The world splayed out 
At your feat. 

Elementary Subterfuge, My Dear

Out of sight, out of mind? 
Possibly, maybe even perhaps 

But just in case you forgot 
If you chance to look back, 

What you see is what you’ve got, 
No getting round that. 

Collateral Damage

This child will not stoop to listen 
To droning cold-blooded explanations 
As to why war exists and why 
There must be winners and losers— 

All this child wants is to hear 
The smallest heart beat. 

Epitaph

It’s time I got this off my chest— 
The more I put down on paper, 
The less my soft heart felt
Like a marble headrest. 

I, As in "Nothinglikeness"

I once wrote 
A poem ending 
With a word I made up— 

Nothinglikeness. 

I wanted it to be 
About light and how light 
Would be if light were like 

A void 

And I found myself leaping 
Out of the clear blue 
Clear through it. 

Earthbound and Inert

Look—up in the sky! 
The lunatic moon’s salivating, 

Spewing quicksilver- 
Lined trails of spit 

For all us snails 
To drool over before 

We get too phlegmy 
To take off likewise

Lickety-split. 

Athena's Owl and the Learned Swallows

Wide-eyed on edge 
Of red-tiled roof, 
The studious looking owl 
May not make out much 
In the late morning light, 
But one thing seems clear: 
These nesting early birds strafing it 
Till it vanishes have done their homework well, 
And can now return to that brooding business 
They so instinctively and abruptly left behind— 
It’s as if they knew 
Wisdom rests not in taking in 
What rears its head before us, 
But what to make of what 
Nests in the empty space 
Once that knowledge takes wing 
And flies away. 

(p)articles of absorption

rifle

                    (white-

washed

                    stone

wall)

cracks

                   (blood

red

wind-

                   flowers

                   seep

through)

Leave-taking

I read somewhere 
That ashes are the last 

Trees to welcome leaves, 
The first to let them go— 

In the meantime so brief, 
So breathtaking an interlude 

It bears repeating: The last 
To welcome them, the first 

To let them go.



 

Bankrupt

You wager the world would be no poorer 
Had it no poetry, though five will get you ten 

You’ll never get rich staking your life on it. 

Natural Selection

Seed, what on earth’s got into you? 

There you go rooting and taking off 
In the most ridiculous 

Of surroundings—say jammed 
Between some blooming sheer- 

Rock face or surfacing through 
A sea of noxious black 

Asphalt—never where 
I so lovingly sow you,

Like this nursery bed here. 
You know what? 

I think I’ll stop being so 
Goddamn caring— 

From now on, it’s every man 
For himself, like it or not. 

Shovel Leaning against a Graveyard Wall

After the cleansing downpour, 
I like to think the muddied pool 
Left in the scoop of the shovel 
Reflects on a clear blue sky, 
There in the sweet by-and-by— 

Where a spade is always a spade, 
No matter how 
Many times it’s been buried 
By upright citizens 
Covering up one more lie. 

Wounded in the Process

Nothing too insignificant— 
How even 

This minute sliver 
Working it- 

Self out, means 
To heal. 

Good Reads

The raucous bumblebee 
Makes such a rambunctious entrance, 

Buzzes round the cloistered 
Book-lined study, lights on 
A few select tomes, falls 
Silent before each one before 
Making its exit 

A high-keyed little masterpiece 
Of buzzing eloquence. 

Poetry Reading

Forget all that 
Huffing and puffing, 
Blowhard— 

When mind’s full 
Of nothing, volumes 
Of hot air 

Do not promise 
To bring the house down, 
So pretty please

Beware. 

In the Manner of Cavafy

Approaching the end of the multiplying
Line of somber burnt-out candles lengthening 
Behind him, he recalls their first light before 
Turning ahead to the diminishing 
Row of lively little lit ones waiting, 
All the while quivering himself 
And tries—how hard it must be 
To keep looking firmly ahead—to snuff out 
That still-flickering thought, the one
That will certainly engulf him 
Should he wilt and turn back. 

May Day! May Day! (Going through the Motions)

Though they may tell you otherwise, 
It’s not enough going through 
Each day as if it were your last— 

One of these days, 
You’ll have to live it. 

Artifice

Much spoken of lately by poets 
Hearing cliché-ridden voices, the muse waits 

For no man’s inspiration 
To come into view. 

As all this must come but to naught, 
Ennui seems equally ineluctable— 

The muse is a deaf-mute, savoring 
Nothing save what appears to strike her 

Like a bolt from the blue.

Chew on This, Poet

Soon you will be begging for scraps 
Of paper to stave off your hunger— 

Better you had been born a dog. 

Blooming Motley Crew

See how magenta swabs wide 
Swaths across windswept mustard 
Cliff face bursting with pied 
Splashes of anemones spilling over 
Whitecaps of agitated blue— 

Steady as the craft goes, lads, 
Make your master proud of you. 

Meltdown

While the priest drones on and on, 
The beadle plucks still-lit candles 
From the crowded candelabrum, 
Snuffs them out one-by-one 
And drops them dutifully 
Into the recycling bin. 

It has been duly ordained 
None shall be free 
To melt completely when 
Money’s to be made 
From eternal resurrection, 
And the devil still aflame within. 

Sadly, Life is a Carnival, Sad Sack

To be the life of the party, revelers 
Try to make the best of it, masking 

Their ugliness in everything 
They do—it’s true 

Of course, any mask can do the trick, 
But if I were you—and just for laughs— 

I’d try the one that looks like you.

Listening to Lorine

No puerile wishy-washy 

Wishing, hoping 
To find 

Singular words 
Like hers 

To sound out a life by. 

Huuklyeand Cinquor on A. Figwitt Cye-Cophant's Introspection: Examining a Postmodern Mythopoetic (in Blank Verse)*

*The Laistrygonian Press, Homer Loomis, Idaho, 2012.


Let us marvel at how 
A. Figwitt Cye-Cophant created 

An incredible myth by doing nothing 
But gazing at his navel: 

No people, 
No tradition, 
No story, 
No history, 
No world view, 
No explanation, 
No wonder 

His lackeys are lapping it up— 
It’s unbelievable, lacking all imagination.
 

Moderator’s comments: It would have helped immensely if Cinquor had quoted some lines from Mr. Cye-Cophant’s book of poems to give us an idea of just how he was able to create a myth without incorporating any of the ingredients that make up one; as it is, Huuk’s throwaway middle stanza does nothing but summarize what’s missing and we are left to fill in the empty spaces of Figwitt’s waste land with the detritus left behind in the wake of his “earth-shaking” effort. Nor does the reference to Mr. Cye-Cophant’s omphaloskepsis assist us in delving further into the recesses of what Cinquor describes as the poet’s non-imagination. Huuk knows better than to leave us dangling like this—the least he could have done was throw us an umbilical cord. Unfortunately, it remains but a shallow effort leading us to re-examine the criteria for permitting him to use this platform as a sounding line. 

NB: Huuk’s reference to Cye-Cophant’s lack of a “world view” reminds me of what George Seferis once said in an interview in The Paris Review #50: ” . . .I have no idea about philosophical positions and world views. You know, whenever world views begin interfering with writing—I don’t know. I prefer world views in the sort of dry, repulsive, and (I don’t know how to put it) prosaic way. I don’t like people who try to express world views in writing poetry. I remember once I had a reading in Thessalonike, and a philosopher stood up and asked: ‘But what, after all, Mr. Seferis, is your world view?’ And I said: ‘My dear friend, I’m sorry to say that I have no world view. I have to make this public confession to you that I am writing without having any world view. I don’t know, perhaps you find that scandalous, sir, but may I ask you to tell me what Homer’s world view is?’ And I didn’t get an answer.” 

NBB: Also in that issue, right after the Seferis interview, there is a long excerpt from Jim Carroll’s manuscript-in-progress of his book The Basketball Diaries and I don’t have to tell you who the poetry editor of The Paris Review was back then, do I?