Do not deadhead evil flowers
nor pinch their potent buds
for wrong is ne’er so strong they say
as when new growth is stressed.
’Courage in stead the neigh’bring good
with rich enfertiled soil,
with careful pruning gently wise,
with joyful, saturate tears.
Though we do not own these beds,
choose well that which ye tend.
I sit by a gentle smoldering fire
in the glow of morning Methow sun
which has finally scaled the crest
of Silver Star’s hunched shoulder—
that literary construct designed to clarify otherwise shoddy prose by sandwiching morphemes between em-dashes, commas, or pairs of actual eponymous parentheses Continue reading
I.
Leaving my air-
conditioned digs
I drove half an hour
hiked a quarter mile
Continue reading
They of course caught Bulova red-handed.
He had more hands than one, naturally,
but it was the bloody one that mattered—
the third hand, the one entitled second,
Joan Wicleff it was
from whom I learnt:
art is a verb.
Once upon a time in Memphis,
I consumed 300 films a year;
what would I ever have done
in a ghosted town like yours,
inspired by the film of that name
i.
You want me to turn out the lamp.
I linger on your face a little longer.
Perhaps you should stop reading now.
Continue and you may determine
whether this poem begins to live today
or if it be dead when read, as said.
