Your Name Here: Poems Read Free Page B

quadruple, even.
    Everything wants to be let out of its box come April or May
    and we have to test-drive the final result before it’s been gummed
    into the album dark farces regulate. Someone, then, must be constantly
    on duty, as well as a relief contingent, for this starry mass
    to continue revolving.
    Like an apple on the ground
    it looks at you. The neighborhood police were kind,
    arrested a miscreant, though he was never brought to trial,
    which is normal for this type of event.
    Meanwhile spring edges inexorably into summer,
    where, paradoxically, there is more activity but less to show for it.
    The merry-go-rounds begin turning in the carnivals of August.
    Best to leave prison till winter, once the honor system has broken down.
    A stalemate could pollute new beginnings.
    November tells it best, in a whisper almost,
    so that there is surprisingly little letdown,
    only this new background, a finer needle to thread.

FROGS AND GOSPELS
    How does one interpret, on this late branch, the unexpected?
    —James Tate, “The Horseshoe”
    A chance balloon drew these settlers nigh.
    It was the year of green honey that sprouts
    between the toes of the seated god. “None
    can explain it further.” No explanations,
    not from me.
    I sat in the bakery, rumpled, unshaved,
    pondering a theorem. What you said the hotel was.
    Someone else’s towel approached me in the laundry.
    “Ouch was what I said.” This has been more than I know of,
    brimming with indifference, some American in Europe.
    He let me off at the corner of some strange country.
    The signs were in English. No one cared if
    you knew the rubbish was filth.
    He carried me from the room in which people were sitting.
    They always think they know better, even as they confess
    their ignorance blindly, to the first stranger they know.
    I see, it’s a market garden, or was
    some seasons ago. In this dark stubble I abide.
    A messenger came with tidings. I’m sorry,
    I’ve had enough tidings.
    Giddy with surprise, he crawled upward
    toward where I was toasting myself.
    A male muse I suppose. I’ve listened to that
    before, too. All I want is to be let out
    to travel on the gravel. You still don’t
    get it, this is a seat. All right, I want my seat,
    I said.
    That’s no easy manner. The blond moon came untied,
    drifted through blue-black wisps
    of a woodpile somewhere. Must I follow her too?
    Must I follow her too?
    Whatever it says you must do.
    You had calm days in store, now they have come undone.
    Worries stretch before you into the distance.
    Perhaps distance is what you had,
    once, and must now drink. Only forty years ago
    early skyscrapers arched their backs, waiting to be fed.
    And still the feeling comes on.

WEEKEND
    Swan filets and straw wine,
    an emphatic look to the driveway
    whose golf clubs are scattered feelingly.
    You can undress and sit down
    on the corduroy doormat blowing
    and when the Weird Sisters come calling
    pretend to be talking to yourself.
    Trouble is they don’t come calling,
    suffering as they do from terminal agoraphobia.
    A frog juts from a pinecone.
    My goodness was that you back there?
    You sure know
    how to give a feller a good scare.
    I’d thought it was just bats
    dripping tar on the heads of the guests and the footmen.
    You see so little live action in this town
    and then everybody wants to cooperate
    or celebrate, sort of. I can do that too.
    Always. Have a good time.
    Something might come out in group therapy:
    your velvet soul as I just realized it.
    Please come back. I liked you so much.
    Thistles, dandelions, what do we care?

GET ME REWRITE
    The
    ghoulish
    resonance
    of
    a
    cello
    resonates in a neighbor’s cabana.
    What do I know of this?
    I
    am
    sitting
    on a pile of dirt in a neighbor’s back yard.
    Was there something else to do?
    Long ago we crept for candy
    through the neighbor’s gutter
    but found only candy wrappers
    of an unknown species: “Sycamores,”
    “Chocolate Spit,” “Slate-Gray Fluids,”
    “Anamorphic