William Faulkner's got his hold on you
with Gretna Green and Ernestine
but he's really not the bard
you thought he was
because he hasn't made you cry
like Cohen does
when he's on his game
or Emily
because you knew she lived alone
in that big old house
when she should have been on her back
and getting laid.
Such passion.
Sylvia Plath married an ingrate
who became the laureate,
the toast of the town
but you know that rascal Ted
lost out in the end
and she was quite the swimsuit charmer --
and a poet to boot.
Your soft spot's for Henry Miller
and his Rosy Crucifixion,
and though your mother thinks it's literary
you know it's just a cunning way
to do the porno
without the getting caught.
But Nabokov's your idol
because he told it like it is
and every middle-aged teacher
you've ever known
has yearned to fondle your budding breasts
and painting toenails is just the appetizer
for something deeper.
Leaves of Grass is Whitman's triumph
and makes you look respectable
when you carry it around,
a discman around your waist,
Gregorian chants filling your ears
when you should have been listening
to the boy running behind you,
heart a thunder,
staining his pants and calling your name.
It's no one else's business, really,
why Martha did what she did,
or why she made the mistake
of stepping outside the bounds
where geeks with glasses
should never dare to tread.
Perhaps she got tired of sharing lunch
with the Chess Club, or wolfing down
her sandwich amidst a hurried rush
to the library lest some thought her friendless
if she stayed in the cafeteria
to eat alone.
An "L" on the forehead
may only come off with gasoline,
but why torch the whole house
and take your parents with you?
Why not leave them to find you
in a state of grace,
yielding to the punishment
that served them best?
Why not drop
a hand-made pompom
at your feet,
letting them recall the day
the homeliest girl in school
tried out for cheerleading,
so they may indeed know
at least one reason
why they saw you swinging
from the end of a ragged noose,
your diary turned to a blank page
where your first kiss should have been?
Coordinated Universal Time
It all happened in the course
of a rooftop pigeon's blink:
the homeless streaming
into lofty bank towers
decreed low-cost housing
by politicians who truly gave a damn,
bankers themselves
saying to hell with the profits
and building wells and clinics
in the horn of Africa,
Africans feeding their own
with manna that snows
from the hands
of a loving God
who really does exist,
killing in his name
ceasing with the "claaang!"
of a million bayonets
being thrown to the ground
at the same splinter of being,
and on a street in Copenhagen,
a skinhead hugs a Jew
he would have beat with a club
only seconds before,
Hell's Angels pop wheelies
as they bring canned goods
to a hospice for ex-hookers,
Columbian cartels
burn their hash & heroin,
Jerry Springer talks quantum physics
on the BBC,
while in a brambled thicket
in the woods of Minnesota,
Ted Nugent drops a shotgun
at the foot of a deer
he embraces as a son
which on second thought
needn't fall and bleed
when all is said and done.
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