That Exquisite Clearing House, The Mind of 'Murica

Where you come out 
Of a forest full 

Of burning mind- 
Blowing questions only 

To find out 
You can’t see any 

Reason to ask for more. 

Jumping to Conclusions

Virtuoso, do not be taken in— 
This seemingly boundless 
Universe we were born into 
Was made to carry us only 
Piecemeal as far as the last step we take. 
So do yourself a favor, will you? 
Think hard for all of us 
Before you chance to leap. 

Why the Squint-eyed Kid Thinks WCW Wore Corrective Lenses

Wasn’t he the one who said that 
Fuzzy No ideas but in things? 
I guess that’s what makes me 
Think there’s something 
Clearly going on round 
The left lens of my specs. 

So what do I see when 
I take them off for a closer look? 
Two stuck red bugs making 
A fucking spectacle of themselves. 
Man, what a relief! 
All this time I thought 

I was merely seeing things. 

Love It or Leave It

The capital 
Argument recognizing de facto 
Climate change still holds 
No water in the “proper” channels— 

Thus any H2O wanting to pass 
Off as bottled effluent on its way 
Towards overflowing affluence 
Has to make like a zillion trees 

And piss off. 

Pilloried

. . .the poet— 
brats in the street fling shit at him. . .

--George Seferis, “Three Secret Poems” 


As a matter 
Of course he viewed 
His art as nothing 
To be jeered at, 

Yet whoever had 
Put together that 
Display of words 
And set it down 

Without even once 
Having thought 
Twice about how 
It would be received— 

Should not that hapless 
Spectacle of self be rewarded 
With poesy of like kind left 
To fend for itself like that? 

No Small Marvel

wondering how 

silence works 

Rising to the Occasion (2)

No matter how quickly 
They were set down, 
Poems ought always to be

Read slowly— 
Too many 
People have wasted 

Too much 
Of their breath 
Already. 

Lemons Are a Dime a Dozen

Lacking a flashy brand- 
New first line to start 
Their vehicles, most 
Poets traffic in selling you 

On the merits of waiting 
For a killer last, killing 
Time in the meanwhile 
By knocking off lots, 

Lots of lackluster gimcrack,
Secondhand cars. 

Alienating the Self

Admit it— 
hard not to 

believe, harder still 
to acknowledge 

a complete stranger. 

Waking the Dead

You don’t have to 
Sleep on it—not 

As hard as it sounds— 
Silence is the only sound 

They understand. 

Inner City Clearance Sales

trigger happy neighborhoods
where cops pick up/off kids at will— 

smashed store fronts strip 
mauled bodies busted

corporate person- 
hoods clean up again. 

Nutcracker

small poem, 

try harder

again. 

Two Pro Found Statements

1. 

Give credit where 
Credit is due. 

2. 

The world owes you 
Nothing 

You can bank on 
That, too. 

Trying to Make Sense out of Nothing

What is it that makes people write poems? 
It’s nothing you can see or smell, nothing 
You can taste or touch or hear— 

Hidden in the formless recesses of nowhere, 
Whatever it is, it takes all our senses aback 
If and when we coax it out of there. 

Springboard

of stream watching

the green wet 
willows dipping in 
to shallow water deep 
enough you think you are 
seeing things down there where 
the branches you look at look 

to be springing roots! 

Wounded in the Process

no- 

thing too 
in 

significant— 

.

how 

. 

even this small 

sliver 


working it- 
self out, 

heals. 

Unrequited

Had you asked me 
Against all odds 

I’d have been the first 
To answer yes and the last 

To wager I was wrong 
Even from the start. 

Life's Understudy

Moreover 
.
You act as if 
You’re standing 
On a mountain 
.
On top of which 
The lowly mole does not 
Understand your role. 

Pure Ars Poetica

(with apologies to Kilmer and MacLeish) 


Genealogically speaking, 
A poem ought to be whatever 

A poet conceives 
A poem should be— 

But never a mongrel barking 
Its ass off up the wrong tree.

Up from the Minors

These big time poetry leagues are a bitch, 
But you’ve learned to slide and pitch well; 

Now let's see you slip in your best 
Curve and keep watching 

As the better part of you flies
Sailing out of the park straight 

Back to hell. 

Sanctum

solitary 

blue 


and 

white 


chapel 

in 

pied 

meadow 


genuflecting 

black 


bird 

making

a

bee


run

to 

ward 

it.

Dusk

The opposite of dawn, of course; 
Another less common 
Name is crepuscule but I bet 
Few English speakers know that 
Or that it also means gloam. 
.

Silent before yet another 
Sunset, I suppose it dawns 
Upon many a man 
That one’s vocabulary,
No matter how dazzling,
Can never be a match 
For the unspeakable splendor 
Of one more dying day. 

Huuklyeand Cinquor on The Poetry Conundrum Factor

What do you expect to gain 
When you ask yourself what 
It is with this game when 
You’re at a loss for words 
Save the riddle that remains. 


Moderator’s comments: ?

How Aesop Nourished My Grotesque Childhood Imagination

As I was 

An eager beaver 
Starved for mind- 
Blowing sustenance, 

Amongst a flock 
Of fabulous doings 
He was said to have 

Wolfed down the bitter 
Cold of a polar bear 
Wearing the panoply 

Of a lobster dressed to kill. 

Abandoned Cow Stalls on Farm Near Fukushima, Japan

Too contented 
To know how to react 
When things go sour, what’s left 
Of the cows remains 
In various stages 
Of rot in empty stalls— 
And the phantom farmers? 

Steeped as they were in high- 
On-the-hog atomic subsidies, 
One surmises they knew 
Better than to stick around 
Too long and high-tailed it 
Out of the premises 
While the milking was still good— 

But this remains idle speculation 
Till the day they feel the answer truly 
Seeping in deep down in their bones. 

Food for Aesthetic Homo Sapient Thought

Coming across photo 
Of beautiful decaying 
Beached albatross 

Carcass, stomach eaten 
Away by engrossing 
Blue yellow red green 

Plastic rot gutting still 
Life work of so much 
Undigested mishmash. 

These Gawkers Never Knew What Hit Them

They forgot 
Rote can be useful as hell— 
For one thing, you can tell 

Spring’s peeling rubber rounding 
The corner headed our way 
By tallying all those rubbed out 

Toads splayed and flattened like 
Pemmican on the asphalt 
Straightaway. 

Huuklyeand Cinquor on Poetic Ambivalence

Poetry had a soft spot in my heart hard 
To explain once I let it enter my brain. 


Moderator’s comments: Judging from his extended absence from this humble podium, Cinquor seems to have followed the advice put forward in another one of his memorable two-liners from the past, to wit:

Conceptual Prestidigitation

You look to have that precious gift of sleight; a present 
Better prized and appreciated when kept out of sight. 


We shall see.

Slaking One's Thirst in Gaza

No matter 

How desolate 
How forlorn 
They look 

When the heavens burst, bright 
Spurts of fiery holy water 
Flood the land as promised. 

World Poetry Day 2015: A Poem Should Be (14)

A musing quest 
For common ground, say 
This cur’s 

Sniffing round the body 
Poetic where another member 
Of the pack’s been 

Hanging out his calling card so 
All us intimates know just where we are 
To piss on the corpus, too. 

Ditch

Gathered by the wayside, 
Heads bent over, 
No need to decide— 

Full of bleeding wind-
Flowers on either side.