The Penthouse
I have a flea.
He lives in the mat
By my feet.
I wonder
If he curses God
And hopes to die
Like me,
Or maybe Life is rosy
And complete
By sucking the blood
Of my feet.
Regurgitates Shakespeare
For fun, this fiend;
Fires his belly i’ the sun.
Live and let live, says the flea. [2009]
Sodom & Gomorrah
The jukebox sways the smoke-filled gloom
Against the traffic’s siren song,
Combustion fumes and filmy streaks
Of sin subsume blue mellow tunes.
Concrete Babels scrape the turgid sky
And mad dogs roam the plaguing streets,
Pipes disgorge their hothouse fumy breaths,
Serfs churn the city’s paving soil.
Chopped all the trees, paved paradise,
Par course, put up a parking lot,
Prefab boxes tumbledown dust,
This midden moulders mutant to the grave.
Tramps discern sculptures formed from scrap,
Boulders mounting high blocks the lee
Where fish are bade to drink stewy froth,
No murmuring starlings set the evening scene.
Fat planners ooze a private feast,
Connive to consume last year’s truth,
Scowl and pinch, politically decide
To trash the trust troved by public pence.
But annals crumble ’i the dust,
Rubble stacks so well this cannot be
From some celestial force this way was planned,
’Tis man’s deluded liberty.
Rocks and dust may in time beget
Shoots of flowers or some fresh tree,
This Earth won’t miss us when we’re gone,
A forgetful hiccup of history. [1981]