The cat …
The cat…
sits on the keyboard
swishing her tail …
how can my writing
ever fail?
The cat …
sits on the keyboard
nice and warm.
How can anyone
wish her harm.
The cat …
sometimes struggles
to understand:
a mouse on the table,
a bird in the hand …
Secret Garden 1
Being the secret love poems
I write to Clare at midnight
while she is upstairs, asleep.
They make up for the things
I can no longer say because
I am uptight, or under pressure,
or working too hard. Or maybe
because we are quarreling over
something stupid. So these are
some of the seeds I wanted to plant
but never did because I was busy.
They are also the things
that I would like Clare and Becky
to remember me by if I should
suddenly pass away without being
able to say good-bye. My parents
left me nothing but bitterness.
I want my wife and child to have
a garden they can wander through
without my being there, knowing
I have cultivated these thoughts,
at night, sleepless, without them.
Mad Dog Wind
Barcelona
from
Last Year in Paradise
(1979)
It rushes through the city,
loses itself in hotel lobbies,
comes out to snatch and snuffle
at the empty hands of children.
It hustles leaves,
leaves paper-trails
of flighty pigeons
flapping, indignant,
across the square.
Delayed by doors,
it snorts at windows,
shudders
tight-closed shutters,
rages at rooftops,
chases
a ragged herd of clouds
around the sky
high above the Ramblas.
¡Olé!
The vaquilla charges the picador, bravely,
receiving her wound, then returning for more.
¡Olé!
Braveness in the stance, the head erect,
eyes open, watching the teenage torero,
suit of lights sparkling, sequined sequences,
feet dancing, cape held low, the vaquilla
on train tracks, gliding past.
¡Olé! ¡Olé!
The vaquilla charges at shadows,
plays her role in this meta-
theatre of cape and sword.
But it’s only make believe.
The vaquilla pauses at centre stage,
flanks heaving heavily, baffled, mocked.
¡Olé!
The farmer leaps the barricade, grabs her tail,
tugs her to the ground, stands on her neck,
and shears her horns.
The maiden, mocked and marked,
escapes through the gate:
the scent of the fresh blood flowing
arouses the waiting herd.
¡Olé! ¡Olé!
Cave Paintings
Altamira
(11,000 BCE)
Cold rock presses on shoulder and neck.
Sunshine dwindles until daylight is a distant star.
A great weight of earth weighs me down.
The tour guide strikes a crimson spark.
Firelight flickers, shadows dance, animals appear:
deer, elk, boar, buffalo.
Magic illusions
created from fat, charcoal, red ochre, ash …
how long have these huddled herds
grazed their way across these walls?
My spirit sweats as elders anoint
my flesh with bear grease (for strength),
with greyhound hair (for speed),
with wolf blood (for tenacity on the trail).
They brush my eyes with eagle feathers.
Now I am a hunter.
I envision the animal my arrows will pierce.
My backbone arches like a bow.
I shoot thought arrows:
my beloved dances her death dance on tip-toe.
Monkey Reviews Retirement
“No more Latin, no more French, no more sitting on the old school bench.”
Monkey chants this famous ditty as he relaxes in the whirlpool bath, a glass of white wine on the tray before him and his faithful tablet sitting beside it.
“The olde order changeth …” Monkey pauses and takes a sip of wine, “… lest one good custom should corrupt the world.”
“Welcome to heaven,”Monkey lies back in the jacuzzi and the beating waters whirl around him, sending him into a dream world.
No more committee meetings: The unter-monkeys sit in a circle, where all are equal but some are more equal than others. They pass a lyre bird feather round and round, weeping crocodile tears and lying through the tight monkey grins of their alligator teeth.
No more writing reports: The dead text he revises is composed of misquotes, harsh judgements, double-talk, and outrageous lies.
No more long-term contracts: “Will the defendant please rise. Sir: I sentence you to a term of two years’ detention at this institution, renewable for another two years. And, should you continue to to do well, and should you fail, over that four year probationary period, to fall by the wayside, or to do anything wrong, I sentence you to life imprisonment, till death do you and the institution part. Amen!!!”
No more promotion: Inmates with crowded heads and vacant faces, fools grinning at a universe of folly, paddled in piddle beside him.
No more cabin fever: Monkey has worked for forty years among foreigners and lunatics afraid of the rats who keep him company, devoured by his monkey lust to drive silver knives and forks through the watch springs of their inhuman, foreign hearts.
No more penis envy: They lounge in glass cubicles, checking each other out for size, weight, length, girth, with a roll of the eye, and a casual flicker of a forked lightning tongue.
No more water-fountain gossip: They prefer death by blow-gun, their poison dart injected through hollowed fangs or Chinese Water Torture, the slow drip after drip of poison inserted into ears and veins, a drop at a time, and slowly gathering … until their victim slows down, ceases to struggle, stands there, eyes open, unable to move, poisoned and paralyzed.
No more gala occasions: … gripping cup handles between finger and thumb, enormously pleased to be the center of attention, however clumsily they walk, in their hired-for-the-occasion, ill-fitting, black and white penguin suits.
No more macaronic Latin: Caesar adsum jam forte, Brutus aderat; Caesar sic in omnibus, Brutus sic in at!
No more thought police: The Thought Police try to make him change his mind. Others, in blind obedience to a thwarted, intolerant authority, first bully him, then beat him, then bite him till he’s dead.
No more Wittgenstein: Or is it just the act of perception, as Wittgenstein would have us believe, and nothing more, the money always spinning on its metal edge, never falling, the coin on its axis, a new day with its potential, sunshine or shadow, thrown dice still skittering, a new world imperceptibly poised in its own making?
No more Camus: “Il faut imaginer l’esclave heureux.”
No more Shakespearean tragedy: Down in the kitchen, the cooking staff are preparing the next nutrition break. As the cauldron boils and bubbles, three old monkey witches dance around the pot and polish that bright red poisoned apple.
No more annual reports: Monkey is not übermenschen, nor is he untermenschen, either. He thinks of himself as honorable mention, not a whole chapter in the book, but rather an interesting footnote to one of those less important pages that abound in local histories.
No more kowtowing to a vacant authority: “Yadda, yadda, yadda … three bags full … and a fig for the frigging king beneath my frigging cloak.”
No more drugs: The bartender measures poison and monkey slips it skillfully into his veins.
No more avoiding direct questions: When asked where he grew up Monkey will now say “I don’t think I have.” When asked what he did for a living, Monkey will now say“I no longer know.”
There’s nothing more to say. The jacuzzi whirs on and on and Monkey continues his voyage serenaded by the buzzing of the bees as he walks past the cigarette trees on his way to the soda water fountain.
Monkey Presses Delete
Monkey loves walking behind the gorillas.
He loves to see fear in faces, tears in eyes
as the gorillas smash and grab and break down doors.
The gorillas break and enter: and when they do,
monkey simply points and gorillas do their thing:
it’s that simple …
Monkey has a code word he took from his computer course.
“Delete!” he says with delight
and the gorillas delete whatever he points to.
He loves deleting parents in front of children,
though deleting children in front of their parents
can be just as exciting.
He also loves burning other people’s books
and deleting their web pages.
The delete button excites monkey:
maneuvering the mouse tightens his scrotum
and he feels a kick like a baby’s at the bottom of his belly
as he carefully selects his victim and “Delete!”
The gorillas go into action:
ten, twenty, thirty, fifty, seventy years of existence
deleted with a gesture
and the click of an index finger pointed like a gun.
Monkey Teaches Sunday School on Mondays
(With apologies to Pavlov and his dogs)
Younger monkeys e-mail elder monkey
and expect an answer within two minutes.
Elder monkey drools and writes right back.
He is turned on by the bells and
whistles of his computer.
“Woof! Woof!”
His handlers hand him a biscuit.
Elder monkey has grown to appreciate
tension and abuse:
the systematic beatings,
the shit and foul words hurled at his head.
The working conditions are overcrowded.
Elder monkey is overworked.
Yet he has managed to survive,
to stay alive and fight
what he once believed was the good fight.
Now he no longer knows:
nor does he drool anymore
when bells and whistles sound
and his handlers bait him with
an occasional, half-price biscuit.
In Absentia 3
Questions
I hear her voice, delicate, distant.
I run to the sound, jump on the table
in my usual spot by her play thing,
but she isn’t there. He’s there, damn it,
talking away. I can see him, smell him,
I hate him, his other sex perfumes,
but there he is and when he stops talking,
I can hear her voice. I move to his play
thing. A shadow, I can’t make it out,
then her voice again, my whiskers stiffen,
I lean forward and sniff, but no smell,
she has no smell, and scentless, I cannot
sense her, I bristle and she calls me, calls
me by my favorite names, and mews, I mew,
but I can’t smell her, and there’s no sense
of touch … is this the hell all pussy cats
will suffer … shadows on a screen, a haunting
voice, memories shifting and dancing,
no touch, no hugs, no sense of smell …
and nothing solid … just shadows and absence?
Monkey Temple
The monkeys appear, as if by magic.
They tumble out of windows and doorways.
They clamber through the holes in the temple’s ruined roof.
They are quiet at first.
They inspect their surroundings.
They ogle the crowd gathering for the afternoon show.
They watch the watchers watching them.
They pulsate, for no reason at all, they pulsate, then ululate,
They jump up and down and swing from the temple’s roof.
They pontificate, gesticulate, and regurgitate.
They sit and sift for fleas. They defecate and urinate.
They masticate cautiously. They castigate and fornicate.
They ruminate. They masturbate. They rush to the top of the temple
and on the uplifted faces of the crowd they ejaculate.
rogermoorepoet 