Fast Day 12 August 25, 2007 {Going Extinct}

It's a hard rain and a bloody heck lot of poems gonna fall!



One thing about fasting, it makes one grouchy. With me, nobody catches on to the difference.





Going Extinct

It means not having to get up in the morning and go to work;
you may wear a sweat suit all day
(and not even sweat)
and people treat you a lot nicer than
they ever did when you were quick
and in their face
and competing for limited resources

People offer you a seat on the subway or on the bus.
Everyone says “Yes, sir.” and “No, thank you, Ma’am.”
and “Fine day, sir.”
and they don’t give you dirty looks when
you mistakenly think them manure
or even worse
a carnivore’s meal, yum!

People sit around in bars and say what a great guy you were.
while you willow-whisp like Patrick Swayze,
looking for your Whoopi
and she not there…
and you go and cry in yer beer
so amber colored
and see your phone number in the john later!

Nobody returns your phone calls anymore. No one cares.
Ever the passenger pigeons of your desire
go unanswered.
The Yangtze dolphin and the Dodo sit and drool
ignored in the corridor all day
and you gaze forever
at Hasim’s Curry Palace across Lawrence Street.

Fast Day 11 August 17, 2007 {My Cell Number Is...}

The day after the Feast Day of San Rocco, or Saint Roche as he is known in France.
It is, I believe, also the day after the Feast Day of the father of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint Joachim.
On looking at Catholic sites on-line, I do not see St. Joachim listed. Perhaps they have demoted him.
Or, perhaps they have found a scandal. Scandalum magnum! I can just see St. Elizabeth throwing a amphora at his bald pate!

St. Joachim, ora pro nobis, stultis et loquacibus.

Anyway, here's the drill:
(1) no eats
(2) 1 poem
until the infamy called the Unpleasantness in Mesopotamia is ended.

I estimate that to be 200 poems and minus 500,000 calories away...at a minimum.


My Cell Number Is...

If I had a cell phone, I would try to learn
to talk on it and walk across a busy street;
I would jump into my antique car
and turn it on and dial a recording
-if I had no friends-
and talkkk at allll the rrright spots
while driving over the potssssholes
that are in my mondo condo.

If I had a cell phone, I would hold it close
and have eargasm with it
and flip that codpiece up that
covers the lcd screen where I text
and push it in my head
and close my eyes in bliss like the
monorail riders in Fahrenheit 451
who ride in hot, hot solitud-i-nie!!

Sometimes I think that God
is out to get me, for when I leave
my driveway, a big, black SUV looms up
and there's a lady driving, talking
on a cell phone, and
she don't see me!
If my cell phone were to ring,
it'd be her, death angel!

People walk with Borg implants
or so I thought,
in their heads...and then they speak
so I answer "Oh, I'm fine. How're ya'll?"
But they ignore me and I puzzle...
but they're on their phones.
And what I thought cyborg
was a cochlear hands-free.

So since I could not stop long enough
fer Tech, it kindly stopped fer me.
It ran me over with its love
and the black lady's SUV.

Fast Day 10 August 11, 2007 {The Geometry of Desire}

Until there is peace in Iraq...
I think I shall be writing rather a long time.

Please keep in mind that I do not have a surplus of poetry in a vault somewhere, so I have to do these poems on the fly each week. Hence their rather unfinished and junior high school character.



The Geometry of Desire

if I took weeds
and planted them in rows
interspersed by borders
of a lowly shrub
and placed large ribbons
of a prairie grass to blow
in secants of gold
you would say
oh, what a beautiful garden!

if I took men
and women homeless
and gave them food
and shelt’ring walls
three meals a day
and a key to
a mahogany library
you would say
oh, what wisdom there is!

if I took the drawings
of children from war zones
and littered them with
the mothers’ tears
and matted them in frames
of the understanding,
and hung them in
a gallery of knowing silence,
you would say
god, what have we done!

Fast Day 9 August 4, 2007 {Homeless in the Market of War}

Fast one day a week until this War - an outrage to God and mankind- ends justly.


Homeless in the Market of War

This is an age when no man goes about in finery.// This is the age of our debasement.
When our hearts are noble, even the rags of the poor//shine like silken finery upon our backs.
Five years ago the powerful usurped their own //worst dreams and became ignoble beasts of prey.
Richard Cheney, William Krostol, Richard Perle and // Douglas Feithe, Michael Ignatieff and Strauss
sneered at us in our drab clothes and straggling band//saying how will you endure? there are so few of you!
And we answered, Lo, indeed you are fools! // for the number of noble men is truly small!
Not like your band of discord and war, motley garbed// in opinions outrageous and ravening.
The noble have a fortress mighty whose //strength gives increase to our small band of heroes.
It is a disgrace to lie. They ignobly spread lies like seeds.// Would we not rather die than live their fabrications?
We mill about in the midst of the market, looking//at the wares. To which seller of souls shall we entrust our lives?