Fast Day 76 November 14 2008 {Danta Anansazi Files a Grievance}

Dante Anansazi Files A Grievance



We awoke, and I grunted
up in th'arthritic pain,
while he stretched
one leg, then two,
soon the third and fourth,
like twins, followed by the comely five
then six. Seven held back until leg eight
wandered hung over
along a silkiness redolent of
a sensuality long departed from
old Dante Anansazi,
spider of the winter,
esconced in the terra cotta
planter in the humid room
of baths, dreaming of Caracalla
and Diocletian.
Time's flies, he said, a cuisine swear,
time's flies...where are they?
I would break my fast,
he leered at the frightened mites
and swaggered towards
the fainting chiggers.
"We are having pancakes,", I said.
He growled and muttered
ancient arachno-swears,
as if a spider hex still lived
to vex the two-legged breed.
Grasping the paper, he fumbled with
a feigned uncoordination of the eight
with his cup of java,
spilling it profuse,
a caffeine shower which
I had to clean up.
He does it apurpose
when he is out of moods.
I'm gonna file a grievance, he said.
A big, long grievance,
and I'm gonna ask for back pay and benefits.
"tha's nice," I said, eating my
buckwheat stack sweet of
Quebec's maple harvest...
He looked at me disgust:
a big, burning laser eye of disgust.
Like I care, I thinks alone.
I sez, "What's buzzin', cuzzin?
Which bee is in yer abdomenal
bonnet...spinnet, I mean,
today?
He growls like a wolf,
ya see? tough guy spider...
I wuz supposed to destroy tha Whirled!
Youse guys went and did it!
Deprive me of my work!
He raved on...
But, you know, he is just
like the rest of us...
I mean, he gets lost in a
story forest, or adrift
on the Symbol Sea - a body
of brine just east of
the Los Angeles - and he is
just a little arach,
and wants to be the big cheese
of the spiderhood!
I only put up with tha little
beggar 'cause he holds the
candle fer me when
I write my poems...
my "lasciate ogni..."
that are my stock in trade
forte,
art,
adhab thaqaafee
runs thru my dome
"learned Lit. 101"
He's only a winter spider,
cold and white,
bloodless and far from his terra
cotta nest of miniature
greenery in the tropical
humidity of
my faux marble bath!

Fast Day 75 November 7 2008 {Shooting Film in Baghdad}

Shooting film in Baghdad...

cruising down the Tigris,
pretending to be an exile
in the Babylon of today.
Obama won the election - cool,

Nausicaa, sweet girl.
and Socrates the pimp...
So's I go to drink a cup

in the bar of foreign soldiers

and chat it up
with the blackness of a girl called
nuit noire,
pretty Layla Sawda'
and see a blond
sunrise on my Felluca on the Tigris:
o, delight of my eyes!
dancing obeisant in the court of the sun!
a skillful Lyre who deceives
with enchanting music
like a symbol of bewilderment!
**So, sweet Lesbia, no Tigris flow is this,
but the antique Nile odalisque that
flows beneath us to

our very urgent bidding.
And I am the turgid and fullness Wind
that swoops down in an arc
to kiss the full bosom
of your billowing sail!

Fast Day 74 October 31 2008 {When I Was Episcopalian}

When I was Episcopalian,
and she was young and fair,
I was a very young vicar
who oft fell down the stair.


The elders of the kirk
came to counsel me,
for I was Presbyterian,
as drunk as I could be.

And when I turned to RC,
they had an intervention,
and came to our sitting room,
a reverend convention.

I drank until the liquor
dried up all my tears,
and when I turned to sobriety
they'd stolen all the years.