Contents
Dispel
Thought It Mattered
World On
Remains of Your Legacy
Adverse Possession
Any Random
Neither Do You
Even Heard
An Encounter
Haunts [ . . . ]
Random, or non-thematically related poems, written after my last collection, Rattus. Several are in the Jumping Off series, poems that are titled with lines or parts of lines that ended earlier poems. This page also features ten episodes of Bride to Be, an early medieval romance.
Dispel
Dispel the center from the story
Bookticipating that the character Ravense
after lunch finishes and excuses for sparse attendance
scatter and reconvene retelling
(then why not skip to the end?)
This One, who in uppishness started badly
This One, who at length seemed finally learning
Ravense, Ravense, the harpers line the street
And maidens in their mourning sing
And slow the hooves of horses ring
The cortege drawn where fainting green
Dies from the tree and all lies shadowed
Thy bier comes nigh the sentinel of thorn
Drawn, drawn to the sea cliff’s brink
A thousand of Cloravens fallen before
Their bones besmoothed to jewels on the shore
They wear, they see themselves in photos wearing
Habits for the ages, accursing, made nostalgic
for archival reference, stares the brown-toned
past bearing gravity to touch like a poisoned thing
And leave its burn pattern on the skin
A coat, his, an odd charcoal weave, white wiry hairs
That curl from the nap
A chance at irritation, leavings on thighs and forearms
little proofs
Of contact, hiding themselves on raincoaty-smelling macs
Or hers, her funeral suit, soft filmreel gloss on her Lancôme cheeks
Rain-misted pallid neck, lined, lined eyes
The character she plays skips trailing a red balloon
Presses her schoolgirl hat with a hand, backs slowly marveling
At cathedral spires
Lips parted in a smile of secret delight
She collides with him, he misses the shot of the passing motorcade
They spat, but how can he suspect, her father is King
Thought It Mattered
He has a friend in a bowl
The sort you make at the mini-mall
On your travels, in your exiles
Cautious cradled on your hotel bed
Met with, savvy one, in the aisles of commerce
Flirty one, forward one, the head portion swings
A wink, if the creature had eyelids
Saucy, why not, she dwells in the soup
Yes, her…or him…and the plastic arena
China-made cheap and portable
Gravel, a food packet taped inside
To make this assignee most comfortable
Pal of mine, while you wait in your bag for the dust to settle
A six-pack of bottled water to avoid the chlorine
I will tell you your name
Together they bubble off the minutes
In dialogue, the television substituting
As it would with any human
A laboratory where the expert
Knows he is there behind her and wants results
But cool, as DNA spotters ought to be
She speaks without taking her eye from the piece
“I’m sorry,” she says, and a long silence stretches
But music, of course, a thin ocarina
Three beats, that may be the slams of a door
“Back to the drawing board”
“Esmerelda…”
Esmerelda—as she is a gaudy girl
Her fishtail gown cinched and golden hued
But boy or girl, voluptuous and goggle-eyed
“If we could find Hello Dolly, you and I”
Would sing along
He begins to think…could he find My Fair Lady
His problems would be solved
“Esmerelda, these forensic shows are all alike”
Some mistake, and they’ll discover the cackling prisoner
Is the malefactor, after all
World On
You picked up the habit preposterous
Invited it to octopus upon you like a SciFi nemesis
You would rather walk around in this condition
Than learn what your face looks like now
Does the word preposterous seem about to cover it?
Would we coin cockamamity, cell by cell
Brain-slaughteration, poppycocking shamity
Well, the boastful Knower of All Things
was your friend
Your wizard of scorn and science
Your mentor of axes the world is thought to turn on
As it does
We have one life to live, but we are entertained
The above your fortune, a cute saying
Inspiration, as an influencer’s craft page
Etched (you can learn to do this too) on a pretty
polished rock, a waxy chunk of pink granite
meteored from the planet’s heart
Eonic history concerns you not
And when the subject cracks the cookie
There again
Hera laughs the first syllable, and her face turns grim
Beware
Your worst fears will come to pass
The perfect stance of peeping round the corner
Foreseeing the next bright explosion
Blocking others from the exit, ahead of the possibility of wrong
It has done nothing but buy up all your time
You thought neglect and wishfulness would
Harvest for you deaths and breakdowns
With no blame in your trembling vocal cords
You would sorrow a bit, over opportunities squandered
Remains of Your Legacy
Your problem is a simple one
A constant inside fret, the kind that’s played upon
But a good person is…chin up, Winsome, you
Maybe a compliant person
In event of blackballing, a quiet person
Name calling, but never accomplice exposing
Can you divide a pie in quarters
Eat the custard save the crust for later
Be your online twin, a sales agent to flog for you…zed
Memories no longer New In Box
Need taking up a little at the cuff
Initiatives restamped Not Good Enough
Looking closely at your ticket stub you find
You’d booked your cruise to Diamond Head
But the fine print spells it “damned”
You’d thought a daily glut on the deep-fried
Would drop you at the zenith of the day
Your newsfeed headlines “NASDAQ’s Wild Ride”
It nags at you, and the nag is lack of chemical
Comfort there will be a younger, handsomer mask
Of a man’s face on the backside of a pig
Suspicions fiber optics compose your wig
And every hair antenna to an agent’s phone
He sits and plays Bejeweled while another of your cryptos
Is slotted into the tomb
It’s his embarrassment that matters, he the little fellow
Who suffers most
For that sake you would let it all be snuffed and stricken
All life from the cringing earth
Adverse Possession
Dear cerebral cortex
Hors de combat. When we received the news
We were saddened and shocked
There is not much in the literature
One or two articles after long search
Found describing therapies
Not met with any great success
If it won’t offend, or make you feel superstitious
(For that’s the question, isn’t it? Can you identify
what you feel, once becoming witless?)
And if our concern brings you no comfort
We are so sorry to have disturbed you
On your deathbed
Boggled…let us state your condition softly
Other brains are in the room
Some on social media call the plain naming
Insensitive to the sufferer
They prefer that one says stymied, or at sixes and sevens
We fear these euphemisms give false hopes
We want to know what is your own idea
As to disposal of your properties
You may have a debt of unpaid rent
You may wish to make arrangements
For the boarding of your hippocampus
You may feel fatalistic
Not properly thanked
Decide the lymphocytes have never done their part
You may say let them go to hell
They’ve taken their share of healthy cells
Temporal lobes woof and tweet…settle your accounts
Reasoning mind, what testament will you leave behind
Some embezzler stuffing cash in pockets
Documents in shredders
Tosses your juicy parts in the dumpster
Any Random
Bats that came with the house
Obvious, it seems to you, their mouselike
Bodies dig and ratchet, gain rabid access
Ogle sonically the misfit window frame
Nighttime when in helpless longitude you dream
Fang at you under the hairline leaving an itch
Beads of foam string from your mouth and water terrifies
So will it be, the first you suspect of it
Killing yourself over grips relaxed and setbacks
Amnestyville horror after forty years of error
Isn’t it the same little camera lens, and isn’t it time you
Shake the cobwebs and the pinkeye and admit the spying
Urge forgetfulness of God, whose over-the-shoulder glance at you
Says heart attack
Too bad, or more in keeping with the drone of you, who cares?
Oh ho! Who does, who does, why aren’t these words
Bye-byes, if not your bio, why aren’t you gone…?
Yeah…
Hey there! Say there! Adios!
Still you want solutions mooted and shot down by you
The bats, let’s have them recur, without immunity
Smog, was it not seventies smog, that kept their tiny lungs pure?
Neither Do You
Take no recovery for granted ignorant of
specifics a disinterested organ in your gut
Adipose in makeup, loyal as oil in support of fatly rights
hunkers deep in hospitality, coat for a winter of nuclear strength
Fact-checks the assertion of classes among colonial biospheres
Asseverates that independently the lardish parts are well-endowed
Contrast the sort of fancy-ass who thinks too much, and works too hard
How likely is it you delude yourself overconfident
that impulse can be thought, hating to imagine…
But it’s the leptin telling you shut up
No, say again, trap open, mental quibbles keeping mute
Liver has its agenda, and bones call the revolution
And no one shares intelligence with the brain
Hating then, to imagine all your parts connected only by a sheathing
Of flabby skin
It threatens to turn out after all, that pheromonal signals pass
Y’ello, winks the M & M and the Oreo, the Ruffles sack
Tertiary-stage salt and grease, but it’s the hormones’ gig
Brace for this…any slice of tissue can be cultured in a lab
Realistically, losses ask for cutting, so it’s the DNA’s tag
At which point the awkward coalition seems a cry for help
But if the TV sharks would make a virtual mirror
An Anthropocene age might end in self-admiring
Fitting clothes may feel a little tight
Youthful cheeks, and yet a putrid scent
Even Heard
Nothing recently radio silence almost a fig leaf of the past
Your old friend with his bags of heirloom seeds
Took them to the farmer’s market, Sharpied a sign saying FREE
Bought tickets on the very plane they grounded
for yawing side-to-side, nose up, nose down
Stricken passengers allowed to board with hidden knives
Blood-messages on their forearms write, THY WILL BE DONE
To wake at the sound of a handvac
charged extra for spending the night
Used to example a displaceable person
Straphangers kept on their tiptoes tightening
in naked air the forensic thread willing
with maloccult rapine so red
All witness sweeping a barren corner
Will yield more cavingly than blind Iocasta
With no wish to broach recording
Animation lurches frame by stop-emotion frame
Surplus figures buzz-beamed into posability
mouth set phrases with the parts that move
All the brows and jawlines botoxed smooth
At the pinnacle, okay with Dr. Feelgood’s promise
He lied about the other thing, he lies about this
Hawks around in feathers of a vulture
As mower blades spit flesh that hangs on fences
An Encounter
Memory teaches us data contours the planet
We thought we had minds of our own and there
In fiber and grit, in fountaining microbeads
Unwanted papers sticking to our hands
Things that mix themselves among the needed
Photoprint generic family members with the better smiles
Of thinner people
Alba collect themselves on hooks by doors and
Days traced by routes trail the cloud of parts of us
Racking miles of presences untallied, skin and hair
And halls that lead to stairs
Dollars when we give them up turn crime on its ear
Make borrowers live on the canny dodge and bleat of pathos
Poverty live on barter and squatting at your house
Cash money given up for mental constructs
I think, and if I think of shopping, therefore
I lose no time, make dictatorial minor covetings
Or well-divided from the minute past
Am not the loser…cause, no more to do with that
Remind me, speaker, is there a word for the reason
Banks won’t lend me or another of my identities
The credit I have coming
I am anyone buying cashmere and the latest heel
Crafted to be shelved and sardonically revered
Forgotten treks in forgotten weathers yester-jingling-years
Oh, I’m forgetting another thing, speaker
Can you tell me a story of courage and odyssey
All of them, any
Those I don’t know, I find
And foretell the fate of marquee names
Plug in predictive probabilities of Things
Tell me comfort then, impersonal implacable
Floods and famines buildings falling
Figures burning
None now living know
Haunts
Start at the threshold
alive to American anonymity the subject steps
reeling inches of play onto a leash
Wretched elder of small dogs with matted fur, combing of
will argue for the owner no more sympathy than neglect
Rage like Lear if he were less the white patriarch
Sodden and sneered at by fools even for creeping to the errand
asked today, tomorrow to recompense none of faults and failures
Another thinks of highways and side lanes in paradimensional towns
The old imposed on present days, to you sighs in color-enhanced decay
Beauty, there is beauty, false and wishful beauty, in
Decline
Fleeing twenty times in dreams with hands doing practiced things
Bound to, is anyone bound to others, or are we all free
Foot it down the street to the car, pack groceries
Changes of clothes, and speed, speed
If it’s dying around you, diplomas and wedding drag
Memories of framing Human Shape before Yawning Valley
Memories of laughing
Give unease, pleasedly they curl a finger
And bid you, “Sit here”
and can’t restore the theater cocoon
Puppets who dispensed advice or pounced
Cracked-headed, all more high-tech Ozes
And the short clip of the funnel cloud
Now be ruled by the curtain not the man
The slipping dogs of war have you at a 30% chance
Of LOLing, “So this happened”
Fortune’s Refugees
Away Like Dust
To Terms
Spread Your Arms
If Only Others
Note of Glass
Aground
Ask Yourself Expert
Male and Female
That You Love [ . . . ]
Fortune’s Refugees
Whether this is the saga
[This Is the Saga, the announcer announces,
when the solo flute ends and the violins swell]
of three generations, in quest of freedom, unless
pioneers, then the Civil War factors
or the title asks for a sensitive treatment, of WWII…writer?
This is the Saga of Three Generations
Mother Fortune arrives, she adopts the name
Yes, call them the Fortunes, the novel begins
to have concept. “What good is your church, your God?”
shouts the son
The concertina that belonged to his grandfather
packed at the bottom of a trunk, transported
through shipwreck and combat, hoarded unhockable
through sixteen-hour shifts, punching of shoe leather
and the Blizzard of ’88
the sad death in childbirth and the tenement fire
“Don’t I owe it to Hezekiah? No! I’ll never be a musician.
I’m going to be an actor, Ma!
Don’t you understand? This is not your world! It’s mine!”
The Jazz Age rises and a daughter wants to marry an outsider
I forbid you
“Well, fine,” she tells her father. “I won’t. We’ll raise our child
our own way. You don’t want me under your roof? I’ll go—
I’m going now.”
“No, wait!”
Hard times and crimes, an empire grows trafficking sin
Twenty years and war is won, now a plague stalks the young, yet
When she raises her eyes, factory girl, prostitute
volunteer nurse at last, reformed and refined
“Papa, do you know me? It’s your Anne-Marie.”
He burbles. Forgive me.
The end. You have been listening to
FORTUNE’S REFUGEES
Away Like Dust
Several announcements that the hour was at hand
were backburnered, the dare administered had been
not to face down a seasonal inflatable
but to let the season pass with a period
as advertisements give ample warning
to contemplate on a sofa safety
or safely…doing something…
It seems unnecessary
Saving your own life in any given moment will always
seem unnecessary
And the task of the turkey checklists into suburban sprawl
think of organic, slimmer birds spared antibiotics
Think of cruelty, think of local employment
Think of new ways to boil in oil, or corrode tissue in salt
Think of what the rich do the cutting-edge and the pure do
Think of oysters soaking sewage
mutinous system failures on floating
party buses, stuffed with puking drunks
harsh bosses contracted by contractors
desperate crews untutored tidy errors
overboard a severed foot or smashed skull
the touch, the essence, in your holiday swill
Think then of pearl onions and celery
Croutons in a bag
Game hens…are game hens like foie gras, precious and evil
your own to adorn your satisfied plate
your own skeleton of a living thing picked clean
there was the bird to save, the fragile tree-skirt
the blinking LEDs skitter towards you like a beggar
you’d supposed the calendar was bedrock and not a net
repaired each year by fishers with patient needlework
To Terms
If it was forgiveness come for
Or, if a jar of minutes had been stationed
where a centerpiece might go
And every staged remark of the conversation
got its candy heart with a slogan
bitcher, loser, lame-o, snob, martyr, gloater
nuisance to others, at sum, unloved
tossed in
then the house would have its ballroom floor mosaic
if it was forgiveness, if it was
like some debt of paper notes that could be paid
if skins were shed by a blistering episode
that left no trace and newly made
sorry…she might be sorry, devoid
she and he and they and we
of inequality, of future sense
It isn’t clear the last word spoken would be forgiveness
Thinking of confessional wrongs and circumstances
More, when less your angel advocates in language
That upon the gelatin soul stamps jealousy
Spread Your Arms
You’ll go out on a monitor
Hiccupping with your backbone wishing
for a final arch. Your chest cavity slumbers uninspired
Ten nervous snacks swallowed in the last hour
Your global gut draws its own gravity
“What goes on?” a staffer asks
The feeling is bubbly like root beer
The feeling is fear, like money on an island
sunk below the flood tide…that is all they’ll tell you
The feeling is retributive, victims sworn
to wayback themselves to the last good moment
And mark you with a dagger in the next
when the mathematics of elimination spot you
motioning with the notion you can dance
The feeling is rejoicing, of the most Bacchanalian asteroid
anticipation the feeling is peeve and irritation
“You don’t mean you haven’t called someone?”
Giggle. Hand over mouth. Eyes crinkle.
“Maybe he’ll get up again.”
“Well, I’m game. Let’s watch awhile.”
But then. You may rise, peer over one
shoulder and another, scurry to the toilet
and carry on like nothing
Your lips may pucker in, the way you’ve learned
to express the weight when no one cares for you
They lose, you have friends; and yet, suckers trust
Smart guys knew it for a sham
Can’t be harmed
If Only Others
Outed from bark made mulch by thermal shock
the beetle takes a chill that starts a frail cough
a worm’s meandering charts the tops
an infestation census-taker
feels the math mid-century young adulthood’s
unexpected death on meeting the proboscis
of a predatory wasp synthesis in skin and bone
above susception once and arteries of plants
the solidity of mountains
the temptation to belong at cost
On a day in November
Thunder but isn’t thunder
when the bowling ball rolls down the lane
at EST am we’re still in details and coffee
email then injustice, nature’s atoms her refusal
first she wants them
now, of nows, so many find themselves
stalled and suing for permission
This frenzy kills a number of bureaucrats
minor officers and supervisors of egress
exactly those desperate eager who’d wanted to rise
on the strength of this
their terrible willingness
the fingers on your hand take
random fiberglass found melted
and must, for what it touched
wield almost mythic poison
you wish to die a succubus
a kiss from you destroy them
Note of Glass
Both ordained to meet had threaded
each themselves the Past to the Place
hers the soul collecting ants and mosses
his unfreed, the patriarch beheaded
affected lineage in unexpected ways
of cashing necks stuck out for losses
caps to wear and choices wedded
to debt…debt to a woman, unpaid
by trillions, from the last shareholders’ purses
short walks from safety eyed by ruffians
style explodes among the drab
the brilliant thrilling cobalt velvets
(not impossible to rhyme but tough one)
animal familiars scorn the psychic flab
no respecter of feckering can’t-help-its
modern deitesses’ pedestals in dustbins
now heroes need to prove to her they can
no more togethering because it sells best
Partnership gives parity to A and B
Almost a combat employing seconds and thirds
And winners wrestle next with personality
Sadly actual, the draw of a dullard’s downspeech
While she on her side gets tuffet, whey, and curds
Things done without, on his side, mourned for howlingly
A wilderness of methane goes between
Steppingstones formed of plastic ash McTurds
Culminous trysts of damaged trust and celibacy
Aground
Soldiers, duty dull dull and foul
made penalty by bouts of deluge it is no use
to say the farmers need it
we’ll all of us eat the fruits
but today is different, the other asks, how then…
For, don’t we? put a thousand prisoners to the sword
But yet we drink and bathe in the waters below
Drink the wine of grapes and eat the corn
The insurrectionists, the border wolves…
the gods of conquered peoples live, the priests say
if they are worshipped, and…
Recall that man who stirred the coals
thinking the fire gone out—
You prattle, but devils have ears, answers the elder
it won’t dispel the drought, I grant you
I feel the gods are deaf to us and laugh
Rain on the prisoners to give them ease…see, that one is dead
the leather that binds his wrists weighed slack
If the Lawmaker felt mollified by the Emperor’s harsh hand…
well, you’ll see, it will be another sickly spring
when the seed sprouts and withers, it is in that
we see their sport. I suppose, whom the gods would destroy
they first make hope
Ask Yourself Expert
Ask anyone who knew you
then were you the mildewed sponge retentive
of cultured damp ask yourself expert
on passing bucks pop-psych books
you liked the idea of being in touch, liked touching
on subjects au courant liked the bodies
mangled for rockets in The Right Stuff
liked swinging graceless but not locked
as now your limbs’ tabetic walk
winds prophecy backwards
to your high school clique
they didn’t go there in those days
but you did
liked sending out for things delivered
playing host at parties given
by business friends consumed
rhino tusk and tiger gland attained
the will and secret strength of kings
or demi-godly potentates
found a doctor who let this be
took his fee, permitted doubt wrote
down for you rare it is, strict odds on your side
and what is possible and what is not said
another truth we see the unexplained
for what is mortal is not divine
he shrugs
Male and Female
You might be nothing much
a hatchback human utilitarian, cute thing
a nice or not nice
who says I’m not
named with a name without a hope for yourself
the profile of a popular young’un
a ranch hand from a feet up, TV on
waiting out the ninth month harlequin, a chase, a wyatt
a movie kid, precocious little mensa-ling, a riley or a jess
worried chastity and reins on, helen, mary ann
you came with a best-by date, and it doesn’t alter
he recalled
she would enter the bathroom when they’d got that close
Would you hate it if I had my neck done?
Not that it’s your business, ha ha, if I do or don’t
an idea of separate estates of what it is to date
came back and he began to think, if I had a bedroom of my own
if we spent money on the house, he said
we aren’t spending money, she said
but…your neck
oh, christ
he forgot her neck
he forgot buttoning her jeans
while she held her diaphragm sucked into her ribs
he forgot that she joked and fell to anger
he did not forget no place to put a foot
but split he doubted accident would cross his path
again
she remembered laudatory words
the boy-auteur who’d given her a walk-on
this large fat woman acting her only role
by critics’ circles spoken of for prizes
she from a girlfriend’s corner seeing the poor soul
roll out under lights course tears at a false son’s
inconstancy
the tears were physical pain
the producer cracked wise whispering in her ear obscene
if they’d known him
the good folk tut-tutting when the fat woman died
would still have hired the man and cast her aside
That You Love
I mean nothing. I said nothing…
Now I’m stuck having to explain the reason
Reason, little bunny, love is gutter-dredge, not heritage
Well, the way you fetishize the phrase who cares
There’s no legitimacy when you’re crafting dolls
Tough break you’re croaking on your pond
You salivate at someone’s feeling bad
Or it’s fealty, loyalty to a suit
The suit is diamonds, the queen your card, candidate
And when the dopiness of that makes you shunt it to the back
As the ditty goes, if you can’t inspire love
Sing it…every one of us needs…
Sing it…every one of us needs…
Sell it, when you’re singing in your car, and you wouldn’t believe
Enough is understood
there are bits and pieces of you everywhere…
bright dog ears of paper lodged on the floor
bits, I mean, the future you couldn’t read, canny know-it-all you were
when you reassured your actions-speak-for-themselves inductees
But hey, I don’t hold the puzzle piece, I just shape the fit
Old filthy talk and the girls aren’t patient with it
Witnesses, the line about fear never written
A soon-to-implode-in-cellular-decay Malibu Ken
must by the rabid skunk got bitten
It’ll come out, just when things get interesting
It’ll come back, just when they drop you in your hole
It’ll be a sad discovery for your impoverished descendants
All the phones you sold
All the friendly help you hired to do the job
Overcast
Resolved
Raven
Wonderfully Made
Not a Living Thing
What would I Do
Into Water
lie of a lucky meeting
friends for years…
Crumbs Enough […]
Overcast
Self-abnegation hunting insects
All chemistry or all dispassion
Not dissected into ego and asked to answer
The tailored monument to Jones or Brown or Miller
We can’t feel surprised
What, Mr. Jones, is atonement
What, Ms. Brown, do you call repentance
How, Miller, do you ask forgiveness
You needed training…if your simple assignment
were to value solely the one assigned
If it were yours and you had some pride
His story is that he has
Atoned, Jones
Not blessed with all life’s advantages
And to his mind, sizing up others he knows
Fair, that is, equal, gets distributed in a way not so
You’ve already paid, you are always paying
Ms. Brown is always borrowing, tends to repent nothing
Credits herself a year’s income, sells a few things
Uses the principle of 99
Thinks she’ll never live so long
Miller says you can’t show weakness
Treasures this as a business axiom
The idea broadly that others win
When they think you’re a loser
Though nine times put to the test the tenth
Time perhaps
This, in a limited way, is true
Resolved
How to have human conversation.
Begin with a medium of exchange. When we last spoke on the phone; when I received your email. Introduce a subject of exchange. You had mentioned a plan to. You had been having difficulty with. You had informed me that.
B, the one inquired of, says yes, it is all sorted.
A says I am glad to hear it.
What is at this point causing our stall?
How does a plan in success manifest?
Will I be able to see the results?
Where/How will I be able to see the results?
Answering this, B must be factual. The results can be found here. By this means you will locate them.
How does a problem resolved manifest?
What signs does B see of resolution or continued difficulty?
A, you were experiencing a lack of syntactical updating, when last we spoke.
B, yes.
Stall.
A, what evidence, in your syntactical updating, do you see of improvement?
B, I have learned not to correct sentence fragments, which are of style, considered acceptable in many contexts.
How is information augmented with follow-up information?
A, you had recently received more data from key demographics.
B, yes.
Stall.
A, the data you recently received from key demographics, has in what way been helpful to you?
B, it lends greater accuracy and supplies up-to-date phrases known to be in use on international opinion-sharing sites, to my human conversation.
Is the raven a raven
Ravense in banishment
a portion decreed in traveling provender
gold from an inheritance drawn
for horses, wagons, hired arms
and all supplicants to the shrine
lepers under command of the charismatic
Ravense spurned favorite of the chief cloraven
Now scourge left answering to
a wandering hermit’s advertiser
a flaring mercenary barnacled on
for his gift of the Harphthan, too rare, too scarce of knowing
a marred face once admired
bears the mark scarred upon
“arrogant one”
What is the etymology of this clo
Is the raven a raven
Is the sound analogue to another
In saga chiseled on flagstones laid face down
Who walked this road and never guessed
It was a funeral promenade
Did they labor this mystery, secret into earth
in a siege town
Wonderfully Made
The psalmist makes good report of himself
God sighs that the trick of vision could not be worked
When the heavy-brained article came to move and apprehend
He had hoped praise, in parlance, would mean humility
But what do things mean? It has feet to carry it here and there
Eyes to see and ears to hear. It has…that gift that in the engineering
God was willing they understand as linear…
For pathways as He recognizes them
Trace their chronology, and the order of the astronomical web
Expands itself exactly as laid
The bolt flies all in a trice…so that each bad choice
Shows plain, going through time, thirty years…fifty years
Which is to say, no time at all. This erring figure of man or woman…
And for their sake, again, he’d thought of lightening burdens
Why should it prove in their nature to strongarm
They have been provided for
A father can’t do everything
His garden is all the gardens of the world at once
He’d always meant His creations to progress
And when they’d needed particular help, to say
Why so beset by fear and greed?
Why, are these future-sensed ones so inherently evil?
He’d tried the experiment, sending a part of himself to tell them twice
To explain, by a face they would know, that they would always
Be Provided For
They wanted more
Not a Living Thing
Now you believe it, repeat it
But cautious, or not cautious…either
Cross what might be judgment in a mind so possessed
with Fear of Daddy and a dog’s hierarchy, severed by sex
You’d like, with a laugh, your grimace of apology
Which has never been that
To be a powerful, persistent foe
To be a victim, too precious to pursue
Searching history, we won’t find the answer
Quite
She, or any child born helpful
Pleased by praise and work to do
Cares for plants and animals because
a simple one takes love with love
Everything she’s given charge of safe and fed
Someone, call him John, a friend
He calls himself, says yes, no, the info was good
Offers to be on his watch, make sure others get
Maybe the symptoms fade with time, think I’ve read they might
I am a doctor, or a man of security, or a secret DARPA researcher
Think of what it means to win a grant, to be employed
A paucity of dark adventure native here in choice
(Me play on your predilections, make you paranoid)
Can be repaired, the Magnavox, your young soul prisoned
in a Lucy sitcom chiding rising star Wayne Newton
a vigil-shrine holds place in your garage
Both that, and the kick-and-scream you manage
against the end you plump
More for parents, neighbors, than yourself, but
still you like for old folks early deaths
Old tickers fibrillating
Grandpa shoveling snow, sudden, can’t be helped
Not bones in yellow flesh kept alive with a drip
What Would I Do
I, what would I
You’ve come to such a jaded heart
Asking participation
Modern in your diction saying
Join the conversation
You talk of people in their shells
But watch them leave the trenches
Watch them start and dart the salvo
Find they’ve grown the legs of a mussel
Crackers extract them inch by inches
Footloose. Fancy. Free. Behold
the halves are empty
It’s the salty broth encroaching
Credit-homes encrusting shorelines
Like a margarita garnish
Like the bilge flushed out by cruiselines
What, alternative to stalking off
What, to fetching the elephant gun
Or rooting for Yellowstone to win
Or culting fresh sectarian fun
Searching 5000 spells for the very one
That unmelts the mind of a moron
All home-crafted witching trends to the same effect
Your thinker on the fritz
Your days stacking into missed…
Yopportunities, like dishes in the sink
insults getting borderline personal
narcissistic as a cloud of daffodils
anecdoting on stressful endings
Running out of the only constant
Grubbing for it under the sofa
Into Water
Which would be the more vulnerable if it were only a game
Or should the haptics of drone dragoons invest
the operator with a true-to-life experience
The prey, she
going flat in the underbrush, with a weapon of her own
We’ll say a bolas, charged in a backpack and her glasses
project the enemy view, at the drone’s homing
She fires
it falls
If it is conceived by evil men
Made to shoot flame or blades
Or gaseous poisons
She will run in light-changing camouflage
Distort the timing of terrain matching
Cancel the program with an infrared ray
And the tech made keen by a physical sense of flying
Has a brain-alteration, after fifty or so trials
Become so ethically useless as to need retiring
If it were only a game, standings would sit as evidence
Players proud to have their scores preserved
Every year renew the quest for vengeance, the loser’s turn
The cup to hold, the champion’s name engraved
lie of a lucky meeting
when the banqueters were invited to the theatre
the room reminiscent in décor
wallboard smoked-white studded each six feet with phone jacks
cardboard curtains stiff-flocked as a Christmas box
of Scotch, Season’s Greetings, a shade called ruby blush
threading carpet humped in heavy traffic spots
commercial rugging stained by carted coffee pots
heel-gouged, by hard-heeled business climbers
bumper-carring rumps of grasping rivals
at conferences here
centers of gravity orbited by strong-set hair
strong jeweled broaches, discount storebought Scandal
cologne their invisible bodyguard
hazarding the ridicule of drunks who swear they’re not
never are, couldn’t, ate a big steak dinner
cords loop across to every place
except of no place thought significant
the banqueter had crashed someone mid-call
backing unthinking and sits at a corner shy
watching the others rise and crowd the double doors
fallen strands on blazers bald pates glint
in oils, ignorant of cancerous purples
the room reminiscent of conflagration
before it sparks
satisfaction and recoil, mental picture near a vision
what advantage, flee this minute and survive
unwelcome custody of the incident, I
don’t know a soul, am not sorry to be alive
but quaver at a camera, whisper a string of lies
A stranger is found at his side
The stranger says, I admire your choice
Why don’t we walk out, see me to the parking lot
We’ll talk, and wait to learn what time this is
friends for years they were not really friends
beginning with the category of
or, just state it…what…are the several measures
or, measuring, in strict equity
or handicapping
handicapping to find the margin
margin of tolerance, where do the stresses fall
fallback, or setback, a drawback…to work and not be free
which is circumstance, not my fault
which in you is a mental disease
every time, she writes in an exercise book
she wants to do what they (of the media) advise, get these arguments
in clear words, not get buffaloed
not get head-butted off the stage
have a script to hug and draw from
courage no no no
pay attention I don’t say please
no I don’t say please I say shut up
I say every time you felt yourself judged…
Which was only conscience speaking
Your mind went off, some rancid chemical trip
And you had to prod at me, you had to prod
You couldn’t say I’m sorry, you had to see
if I was really mad
all along, I’ve been really mad
I haven’t forgiven you
I think I can’t
Crumbs Enough
Red God White Sun
Push
Switch
Flame
Fall Sick
Ash
Amulet
it hates
calmly
Bride to Be [ . . . ]
Crumbs Enough
Do the things we did become forensic
Difficult to reminisce on
Small attentions
No one else recalls our birthplace
Growing up for us dispersal
Early burial
Make me a paper doll
Make me sorry to have been naïve
Make me want to see again
Make me sketch her clothes alone
Do the things we did become abashment
Difficult to see the last of
Grubbed from trash of
Make your testament and dispositions
Make your final lengthy plea
Make your silence count for answer
Make who’d valued you receive
Red God White Sun
Back from a moment in prototypia
she watches dawn, inked-over
herself still as the unsafe
hunger neutral before muscles
beauty, remember
she does not counsel the surviving
to waste on it
curtain tatters take…broken blinds…first warning, shush
there is mud in early morning, gullying rain by dusk
lunatic electric that makes roulette of animal life
this is what she does
drinks of settled water ponded in the new low spot
masks her face and arms with eddied trash stuck on
so her eyes can see, or crusted mud alone
It’s the high flat perch you need
cars and trucks choked dead at angles everywhere
block streets, mummified forms within blow exposed
lost again
the surviving learned in their separate ways
not to shelter in sheltering things
the strange thick air bears projectiles
the splintering comes, doors muffled in
crack yours in desperation, be buried in dry quicksand
it takes seconds
Not walls, not stairwells, not trash bins, whipping makes dunes
You’ll have to endure the scouring
An attic floor or a roof
Fire escapes with grillwork coveted
But the fighting is bloody no one partners
With the steel pipe she carries for weapon and tool
She smashes windows, searches cars for bottled water
Snacks in plastic wrapping
Poor corpses she shrugs aside
And if she finds Doritos or a Twinkie
Very sorry to share it, she would be
Push
Fashioned as a closet with a window
and shelves in the lower third unmounted
A superman-booth made for withdrawing
A nook with a desk and chair arrangement
for the filling out of questionnaires
unsuspected occupation for retired clerics
A keyhole in the wall for peering
The vista peered upon a garden
only a pathside bed with pinwheel
impatiens, a time-travel box
Because to see through glass
is not to speak and touch
Cloistered, picture the year past
All things live before they are proven not
All things in experiment with chance to improve their odds
The mind in containment normal with nothing
quite past, and no one dead
the watcher with money enough, the present micro
the body not hungry
the householders ignorant
of themselves as hosts
Switch
your living was got by pleasing cats
unthreading shoestrings of thin cord and leather
letting stains that mark deliberations
dashed in on places of established quality
boundaries where the departed show no signs of rising, stains
be left in service to an outreaching new dynamic
where the human way, so faulty
gets no nod of ordained ascendency
the cat would like a bit of chaos
a hole or two inviting mice
a light left on at night
to draw through screens left torn
some interesting moth
you came before the Angels’ Tribunal
how you had done with the cats was chief
among the thirty-seven things
your passing of the first stage in criteria is ranked
“Remember, here we don’t speak of bad or good…
You are eligible to earn points, in detachment from material
objects, but…it so happens…
You have scored a two. A two is not failure, however
it’s the cat’s judgment, not yours
You haven’t minded the sofa, but you must learn
to rejoice in it”
Flame
You’re old
You’re a tactic with a history
purloined memory you tried and applied
On the word of a bombast, his nazi*ish ploy
it makes the town flame wonder
what propagation popped the hinges, and whether
here, in this place, a type too coincident
gathered, for reasons the investigation hasn’t
chaffed out
a touch of butane burner
might clear the husky side effects
spotlight the germ, slightly scorched
Jack of the lantern with his interest maxed
a severed head, but with cable attached
feels ignored, feels shrunken and poor
feels his inside parts slime the porch
You’re sparked
Can’t deny you were happier as a smolderer
You tried the flight of a fevered cinder
Splinter-sized and red with ire
Largely you burst when the day seemed warm
mapped hotspots to show how the wind was blowing
Cash-pots a joke for a future airing
Gift box a token to fuel reacting
Damned if you do have a past sitting banked
Damned if you don’t dare the oxygen tank
Something about your face and hands
Says been in places best not to have been
Fall Sick
Unlikely partners, the woman who owns the teacup shop
and her neighbor Moses Harry the cronut baker
Night and day, for contrast, these inquisitive elders
At the seat of government, on someone’s behalf
(a background billionaire?) corruption runs rife
So it seems, for the murder rate, in an unvisited burg
unshadowed by the sprawling complex
of a pharmaceutical factory, not campused by a college
The murder rate is about one in three thousand
this raises no eyebrow at the statehouse
Often it’s the new people
never mind that a town barely incorporated
boasts quite the showing of crockery fanciers
Same with the other downtown characters
a decade running their quirky stores
(but in backstory, for many years more)
Everyone here spends money like water
the book dealer with Amazon doesn’t truck
so they must all be amazing readers
the clothing boutique sells party togs
(as rich families live here, and have dress up parties…)
while the doctor who wouldn’t have time for them all
does, every sufferer met in the course
has been treated by young doctor Lemon
an amateur naturalist who knows her poisons
Moses and Tish this time find the body is
that brazen filmmaker’s, who’d rubbed so many
the wrong way…well, no one in Meadowsweet wants
put on the map
“You don’t kill over an insult,” Moses says.
Don’t you, though? It’s 2020
But surely in Meadowsweet we’re all sane
“An accident, and a panic,” Tish tries.
Dr. Lemon would know, but it looks like the Jeep
backed over him twice
Ash
You were bound to burn out your time
that short fuse not adequate to the role
of guiding light, beacon on a hill
Steady star by lost at sea to navigate
More the fuming little stick
of dynamite laid like landmines, planned things
ran afoul of the implacable hour
You had, like all of us, to pick and choose
Let’s sift through what you picked
Let’s word associate, let’s play
Deluxe, the one with proper nouns
A sense of character, to start this round
A living face, from which to come
the statement prejudiced
maybe it’s yours needs taking
that you swallow information
that I state in understatement
has been sourced not unreliably…so much
as made up whole, from motive undisguised
Lost at Sea: (conversational) A friendly
observation about anything, to anyone
Little Stick: I was told by Popeye to expect this
Lost at Sea: You don’t make sense
Little Stick: Did some object make a noise?
Amulet
First carry a sofa onto the stage
Foreshortening allows the table feet away
The table is useful, its magazines and small props
Prompting lines of dialogue
The actress has complained about the velvet
That carries light beautifully but catches at her tights
She and he perch in three-quarter pose
More athletic than viewers can surmise
A cup that to, in her dressing room, she speaks lines
Never quite fixed in memory the song they argue over, entering
Insensible, she wants to call it, and the joke of course
Is her rendering of it, the breathy oohs of the prelude
His parents are there, behind the bar, stage rear
No, she seems nice, the mother says, where she can hear
Did you want coffee, or more alcohol? Dear?
Sudden blackout and her alone in the spotlight
Glimmering to a soft blue bright
I can make this work out glorious-ly
I can fool the world, but I can’t me
Oh, to make a wish and have it be!
Her costume has changed, though the iridescence of her dress
Is an effect, she rises to her feet and step-glides left
Other dancers in dark, shining bodysuits, move catlike
The amulet that is the sorceress-aunt’s bequest
She lifts overhead to a faux-starry sky
The prop has an LED, her thumb sets the switch
Do I wish him more than ordinary?
Is it plain and good I want?
Play the princess in a hero’s story
Or myself be Lancelot?
Is it love surpassing love I dream of
Or a friend to hold my hand
As we grow old…
For we’ll grow old
Do I dream him with a dashing humor
Banter quips devil-may-care?
Me the naïf in a gamine’s story
Femme fatale, or stern Jane Eyre?
Is it life embracing life I dream of
Or a friend steadfastly there?
As we grow old…
For we’ll grow old
it hates
it curls into a fetal crouch
reminds itself of cruel conspirators
doesn’t remind
from the couch, it watches
a song once loved now sells young customers
sailcloth uppers
organic scuffs, the rubber
sustainably harvested, no less…
Harvested! Makes it think of the old tractor brand…
All snuffled up by corporate raiders, think onwards of
Caterpillar…Caterpillar selling women’s shoes!
Dire convergences in a world that insists
On coming to
it would like to read something by O’Reilly
but the Star Trek redshirt comes to mind
history has its lessons
think of uncool stereotypes
why would the “no man” not be no xm?
(by year two-thousand what the heck…)
Isn’t this where those people are headed?
The ones who call it uneducated
it absorbs information in a continual spew
its regurgitated jumble, the Weltschema of Fox News
saved coins and Grandma’s gold and land itself
attic finds, war bonds, and handstitched quilts
and three downstairs guns…one in the flour canister
one under the sofa, one atop the TV cabinet
to an actual intruder, three handy gifts
calmly
rise, this is the answer
tell yourself I’m better, I’m free
Free to go, yes? Yes, one white-clad figure
addresses, the others ignore
yes, through those double doors
keep walking, painless arches flattening
back straightening
Please. I want, you say, finding the way
cordoned, by strange gryphons
To go home.
Why? So promptingly the question
from the winged door-warden comes
you are no longer sure you belong
you have no picture of it, a house
watching the street traffic calmly carry on
you will work at this new job through eternity
rescue the molecules to assemble the ordained
Eurypterus. This monster-scorpion won’t sting
He is larger than the souls of men and finds in them
playthings
Not your concern, but the claw of anchoring earth beseeches
the clay shapes losing names before eyes still
as missing friends…no, worse
I had children I made human beings
Bride to Be
She is going to marry; she will bargain for herself
A right-hand place, that of first wife, an ear beside the throne
A voice of calm and counsel, bent on knitting borders
She has two offers, and prefers of these, one
She asks that her kinswoman carry back this word
My way binds hands the better, my sympathies assured
Being somewhat divine, the queen’s younger sibling
A member of the household, but long consecrated to the gods
Is oft entrusted with her brother’s will
May leave his house, permitted to play envoy
The streets are now in a winter state
She has gone down on horseback with seven soldiers
One to lead, two either side, two behind
They walk their mounts in the mud at a stately pace
Each forward rider, a head before her, bears the king’s banner
They pass the gate; a mile they go through thin woodland
One of the rearguard is given a message
He gallops ahead where the ground is firmer
Carves behind him a trail of crescents, up the hill
Soon, as they approach, the widow’s flag is raised
To say she is at home and welcomes them
At once the hearths are set to blazing
The feast will take some time, but mead is served
“Daughter,” she says, for she has fifty years
“It is the time of life when one has done one’s duty.
I will tell you a story.”
They say Dame Fortune’s favors bless the bold
It may be so, yet such must fall with no great fealty
For equally the quiet, biding soul
Gains much, by patience… in time, she may gain all
(two)
I was for solitude and a certain path
That crossed a bridge so narrow
Here where the men stood off
In disobedience I spurred my mount
Daughter, you have seen it for yourself
How rare this treasure is
To be alone
In my father’s household dwelt a rival’s son
Sent to beg my lord for sanctuary
By an uncle had usurped the crown
This, in the affairs of men, is courtesy
His name was Alderic, and my father
For some flattery the youth had offered
Had gifted him a peregrine
I with my merlin…
And I feared
He’d set the falcon on her
He had such humors
And called to me, following
Words I did not hear
Had I been unencumbered
Coming to the widening of the way
Along the river I’d have dared the chase
“If you gave me your advice…”
His voice was there, at my left side
“I would take it.”
We were alone.
“And why,” I answered him, “do you say so?”
(three)
Why, he said to me
When guests arrive and all the household
Join the feast
And the women, those
unplighted, keep them to their couch, apart
You with your eyes demure
Sipping long from a single cup
Watching, under lashes, mantling
Changeable, like the leaves
Lifted to silver by a breeze
I know by this you think on things
Think
For me, upon a riddle
And said he, daughter, then
My name
In a soft and certain way
On my pommel crept the merlin, catching with her toes
For dismounted, dared bend near him
I…to see his knifepoint map upon the ground
“Say that I raise an army…in this your father pledges me
To stay his hand, not interfere
And my brothers…I mean those men loyal to our house
Will come at my command…here”
He took my elbow, as to steady me
“Have you ever seen the lay of the land
That you would know one neighbor from another…thus”
I saw what he had drawn
(four)
But you say a riddle.
Well, I know but little, I am ashamed
I have seen twenty winters, nearly…and
My father and my brothers buried
Where I cannot pray upon their tomb
Lady Tamarilde, how…?
His ways grew with these falterings
Dear to me, confiding and unsure
But I repeated him again, how?
And then, abashed, though not at all
He said, I have not been counselled
Only since disgraced by my uncle
Have I heard, been told, a man takes back his own.
But I mean to do it, lady, I mean to. And—
So also do they say, a bad start makes a bad end.
And indeed, Daughter, I saw it
I asked him, is that city there you’ve marked
That the men of Rome call holy
That they claim enshrines a saint, of their gold and purple faith?
Vergrandis, have I got it right? Vergrandis.
You must tell me how it sits
On a hill? Upon the fertile river lands that flood in spring?
He stood then, with elation on his face
And stooped to me, and raised me, and kissed me
Well, I will propose a hunt…
Why will you not, I stopped him, ask that mendicant
Friar, who passes here
Whether a lady, whom you know, may not ride there
Under guardianship of an entourage, of her father’s knights
And seek audience of the bishop
And beg of him to teach her…?
Why his church did choose this site.
(five)
Alderic. Do I not know the name? Is he that man
Tills yon spit of land, so thin and barren
Trades in horses…
Have a care, young daughter. Vestal to a carven goddess
These our conquerors will have you cloistered
There your nose may humbly point, as your Mother Abbess
Orders, not in air
Humbly, my queen, I beg your pardon
Laughter
Your seat is that I once was placed on
You will love, as I have loved
To find a lecher, quartering his men
Making captives of your brother’s peasants, scattering his grain
Names his price to take the road again
But I would pray vengeance on him
Simpleton. I did the like
Went I to my father’s throne and knelt there many hours
When he’d supped and taken of his warders
Each accounting of each lamb and every vine in bud
And trespassers, their fleece-cloaked shoes, scented by the dogs
At the rise of moon he said, making show of wonder
Why, daughter…
This that plagues my child’s heart
Keeps her from her mother’s side
Taking neither food nor drink
This day long
Be it naught to do with Alderic
He dares beyond his place
He too, on knees before me…did you know of it?
I have sent him hence
And do you weep? Be at peace
Whate’er you ask, I grant
Provided it has naught to do with Alderic
(six)
Now ask me, did I love him
Did I set my mind at schemes, did discover for the trying, how
To the watchtower hill the daughter of a king
Might walk as the risen sun, repulsing sight
My maid and page in train at my command
I lowered myself within the earthen fort
to the level of the camp
I moved aloof to their ladder, climbed
While men behind hands gazed
Until my own look catching theirs, the overbold
Warned I might recall a face
Canst thou judge, archer, that rider below, the insignia
He bears
I see red of madder, yellow from the dyers’ weed
He cupped his eyes obedient to me
Murmured, shy of his peasant’s speech
“Lady, we know the rogue for Alderic
Hold from the felling of him, done right enough
But there…our captain has it so of us…”
At my father’s bidding, yes
How strong the wind blows here!
And with a sleeve I wiped my cheek of tears
Still bent o’er this, cuff of my underblouse, fluttering
The archers crimson-faced, mortified at my distress
So fearful, each, to speak a word, to touch me
Loosed I the map I’d stitched in plain flax, so as to bear the weather
I have no lettering, child, and nor did he
But I had marked the place I meant to ride to
In figures crude, hands linked, himself and me
(seven)
If he would be there to meet me
I would risk the chase
My father in that fretful time did keep me, guarded close
Such of quandary was my trial, to love and doubt
(and that I must, that he was not soft and pious, made me proud)
I thought of what might be feigned, illness and madness
Death…they say it can be done
But Alderic would hear of it, what then?
Perhaps for his Thisbe he would not fall on his sword
Perhaps this face…I looked in every glass
Was common in beauty
He would sigh and think of war
My chamberwoman’s bed each night was placed across my door
“Do you have kin, Hesmunde?”
Her head she bowed, wary her words
“What is the need of asking?”
I had bought a sleeping drug, uncaring I would use it
Yet—
“On pain of death,” my father had warned the poor creature
I knew it
The third night passed, the fourth morning I rose vowing
I would ride to the meeting place, only an arrow outfly me
If so, so be it
A king in his might slays whom he will
And the God of Rome pursue him
And the gods of our mothers be deaf unto him
Let the fruit on the branch then wither betimes
the son, and the grandson
and the son of the grandson
Render them dust for gold
Sow in the battle-soaked blood of their fields, thorns and tares
So, roundly, Daughter, did I curse my own house
(eight)
I dismounted
This tree that marked the knoll had no known like
her heart agape at the root, her wood aged white
polished to gloss by the antler of the stag
the bark of her burnt and lightning stripped
the curious leaves we ladies pressed
on cloth to trace their pattern with our needles
He’d laid his camp all round the spot
My mare quietened to a dainty walk
In my secret mind dared I to think
He protects me, he has done all this to keep me safe
Yet that the young men for mayhem chafed
I sought of the wisewoman harbor
She sat before a charcoal pit
O’er which a wet skin held the smoke
And called me, being elder, daughter
Daughter, what do I here? I tell you.
The third day hence shall stones I’ve cast
by their colors declare the fate
of your father’s kingdom and Alderic’s
once every man his brazier
hath borne to the hearth of his married home
And if the fire speed and it does not rain
Good fortune, child, to you and to your swain!
(nine)
Fire in the open court, logs arm’s length wide
After a day’s burning poled to embers furnace red
Men with plucked birds pierced on iron pikes
Walk out, lower these where slots
Are spaced in the squat stone wall that guards the pit
By this light Queen Tamarilde’s guest sees the ensign
Of some other arrived sans hurrah and trumpet
Nor yet, of armed escort, accompaniment
He sits at the banqueting table, the weathering years
Made smooth on his companion
Not wholly his mirror…for the emissary notes
the eyes and chin might be her hostess’s
The devices of the banners are gold
Stag’s heads on field of madder-rose
We shall dine, and Alderic himself, as you suspect
Will, if in age I sentimentalize, my wanderings correct
Of these two men the visitor prefers the sire
That they are converts of Rome makes neither
Worthy grace to a priestess of the old faith
Devilish lads are all, like any girl, she cares for
She eyes her choice with the challenge of it
But Alderic rises from the couch
His arm he offers to his queen
The younger woman takes the seat arranged her
Next the lovers’ mild-eyed, callow son
(ten)
“And the wisewoman gave her seeings
The crystal cooled to yellow or green…”
Queen Tamarilde’s smile, first arch, fades rueful
Girl, you may know your arts…but had you
My years, I should see you less smug of your prompts.
Your own augury may prove aught but uncolored
“I have not tried the stones,” her guest murmurs
“It pleases me,” the queen says, to all
“That Aldebert will tell his father’s tale.”
She scarce would turn and meet that face
The boy to whom so slyly she is introduced
“And lady, may I know your name?”
I think, she wants to say, you won’t…
But: “Wilhelmina, it will be, when I take my vows
It is Wildulfa now.”
Aldebert gives her his cup, and she, for manners
drinks. He, with a modest, efficient way, is
possessing the moment, adept as a student-priest
My father’s stone came sundered from the fire
It otherwise had been the blue
of our ocean under a changing sky
The girl from her cushion lifts a glance
To capture Alderic’s eye
“Our god knows of what he uncloaks
To mortal curiosity
You see that I have not been marked for death”
And you, Queen?
But Aldebert speaks to her again.
(eleven)
“She was in my father’s camp, what would hers do?
Dishonor…would he assume it so?
The cruelest of his knights, bloodiest of his kin…”
Aldebert halts in attentive pose
In sudden suspicion Wildulfa sees
her gift of prophecy under trial
“But there was no slaughter, rather, trickery…”
The legbone stripped of meat she drops
in a meaning way
and harvests a smile of insufferable secrecy
“Not trickery,” he answers her. “A better thing.
You know the flag of truce must be revered.
The company sent to deliver Alderic’s head
were thrown in doubt…”
“A fight they had anticipated, not a parley.
Arrogating to himself, in exile, sovereignty…
Do I mean exile,” she adds, “or do I mean disgrace?”
This barb, too, draws but a lively look exchanged
Alderic says, “Disgrace, I grant you, fairly said.
I was green, not yet had proved myself in battle.
My dispute not with my lady’s sire, but mine own uncle.”
“But truce my father sued after…
‘As I am now your son.’ A double-bond of kinship
Whereupon…he pledged his oath and asked as well,
the use of his new father’s seasoned men,
as officers, each to hold command.
Then shape his band of ruffians into champions.”