Gustav's Song

“Strand after strand
of her unruly hair
descends to the floor, where they drift
into corners and clot around doors.

I tell her, I warn her,
‘You don’t keep the house.
Tidying’s my job, but fair is fair:
Think of me when you’re cutting or combing

Your hair.’ And she will
for a time, but slovenly ways
trump a kind heart; so year after year,
to immaculate floors,

Fall brown hairs, then gray hairs,
then glimmering white–these pepper-salt
mouse nests on shelves and on stairs.”
It was all long ago. Now my room is scrubbed bare.
____________________

(Note: This poem is supposed to be centered all the way down, the lines breathing around a central spine. But I haven't been able to figure out how to do anything with poem formats other than the straight align left. If anyone who reads this knows, could you let me know...either email me directly if you have my address, or ask my publisher–Dan Wells at Biblioasis–to forward the message? Once in a while, I might like to take a pinstep away from the Good Left Rock.)

Ing

Some say He’s dead; a few say She’s sleeping;
Most need to reach for a Tissue when weeping;
Countless still count on a Sword to start reaping;
All must provide for an instinct’s safe-keeping.

Summer Suicides

How many kids have you seen, little ones,
who didn’t like to swim? Expats from the womb,
unless held back by fear or mother's arms,
they gambol again in grace-giving fluid,
spin fast bubbling somersaults.
On chairs apart, safe from splashing’s range,
the amnio-amnesiac rest their spotted limbs,
watch heavy-liddedly, with fond thin smiles.
The middle is a slippery, stuff-strewn zone
of psychic halflings: beached uncertainly,
sun-struck, cold, lithe-torpid and fat-spry,
they take quick lurching plunges to cool off,
chase a better body, bob up goggle-eyed,
then kick once and glide down to weed-columned halls.

Arnie's Punch (a shred of drama)

The tendency of psychiatric medications to cause sexual dysfunction seems, at best, a sick joke.

(A Big-Pharm boardroom, lattes. Arnie, celebrated celibate Chem-wiz, speaking)

“You have, er, very sad persons. Chronically low, lonely...people. We pick them up a bit, but fix it so they can’t get it on. Affect without effect. Heh heh. These, er, clients must catch the nearest bus to self-loathing. Recriminations...endless. Next stop is a higher dosage. They'll never get off the juice.”

(2 weeks later. Impromptu song at the company picnic, crooned falsetto by a kick line of naked and aroused revellers, high on Arnie's punch)

“If they can't get it on, get it on, get it on,
They'll never get off, get off, get off the...JUICE!”

Sociolectric

God-wire arcs
In the brain.
Smother the sparks?
Fan into flame?
Or rejig the load
- up to what code?

The Old Woman Crossing The Street

Is too slow and stiff
to hop clear
when the cars now honking
decide just to gun it

and too poor
not to stoop
and try to collect
every last coin she dropped