I Dreamed Last Night I Went Again to Manderley
Why Geriatrics Are Not Sacrificed
Watching the Stopwatch Stopping
The Ultimate National Monument
NO SECOND EDEN
A Member of the Mystik Krewe
For reasons having partially
To do with Carnival as it
Runs out of steam just off of St.
Charles Avenue in March of nineteen
forty-six, an Ole Miss end
Has Celestine the Oyster Girl’s
Assistant’s former girlfriend’s breast
Entirely out, and to the mild
Approval of the bar, is, with
A ballpoint pen, inscribing there.
I’m seventeen; I’m underage.
It is the first time I have seen
A ballpoint pen. And now that boob
(The football player) hands to each
And all, as though it were his cast
To autograph, the fragrant globe,
The white geography. I have at hand
The offered whole. What shall I write?
Another writer, not yet I,
Takes hold, and for a moment knows.
The pen is cold; a hot skin tight.
The flesh is there. What shall I write?
The Metrist at the Operetta
By tuning somewhat low the second violins
And somewhat high the first, the two-faced Viennese
Attain the sound of sugar, just as, hurrying
The second beat, they CPR three-quarter time.
Exactitude is not a way to animate,
And, although honesty may be a policy,
It’s not a beat to dance to. Face it: in the arts
It is the tricks that are the trade. The firm head snap
That holds at bay a ballet dancer’s vertigo;
Perspective (false perspective being no more false
Than any); make-up and impersonation; trope.
A metronome confirms clockmakers’ art, not this.
Stylization and Its Failures
The vulture, at the least, has not the look
Of flying money, or a Seal of State
Become a Frisbee. Eagles on a coin
Or on a flag, or on a Roman standard,
Look more real than in real life, so strong
Has been convention. Formula and frame
Do not apply at roadkill, which is why
No march from any empire has been called
Under the Double Buzzard. One death’s-head
Is quite enough. Upon a currency
It would suggest the god who is not mocked
Is Moloch, and on specie make it clear
All gold is in a sense fool’s gold. Not, there,
A logo to encourage free exchange;
Reminder, rather, that we barter life
In kind, to have corruption as return.
Ambitious Scout whose merit badges mass,
Would you continue if you knew the end
Is Court of Honor for a scavenger?
Bald Eagle, Vulture of the Naked Neck,
Are both of you one bird? One carrier
To whose one message there is one reply?
It was mere chance that a Samaritan
Should happen by; mere chance that he was good.
The body by the roadside nonetheless
Would have received attention, in due time.
WTC
Against the best advice,
We put up Babel twice:
Twin towers of such forms
As might be student dorms
For
