Poetry and Other Artifacts
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Glass Quandary
lcmt The integers of mesmerism, composed upon
wine roots and pure silica, catch the winking bride
as she eats a box of grasshopper dreams and slow roses,
sleep-trapped in an algorithm of snow and smoke. She breathes in ciphers, wrongly, waking nearly when the golden tiger of the fifth invisible eden,
ever hunting acorns across an infinite field of orchids,
bites the moon's shoulder bone. Outside her nescience,
the alchemist draws five broken bells, tropic and black, with his grasp baffled, his nerves crystallized in the cacophony of their sounding portions,
summoned by rosin, muffled by blue chalk,
implicated in the vertebrae of narrow edges,
plunged into the melancholy of blade glare. An exact component is missing. Perhaps a hollow twig hidden under
the truncated piers and girders
of seven more days, or maybe
a gaudy stranger emerging
from the gaunt outrage
of a cavernous dusk. The Agate Hinge and Other Poems, Intaglio Galosh Studio Press, 2009
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De Aegypto
Ezra Pound I, even I, am he who knoweth the roads
Through the sky, and the wind thereof is my body. I have beheld the Lady of Life,
I, even I, who fly with the swallows. Green and gray is her raiment,
Trailing along the wind. I, even I, am he who knoweth the roads
Through the sky, and the wind thereof is my body. Manus animam pinxit,
My pen is in my hand To write the acceptable word.�
My mouth to chant the pure singing! Who hath the mouth to receive it,
The song of the Lotus of Kumi? I, even I, am he who knoweth the roads
Through the sky, and the wind thereof is my body. I am flame that riseth in the sun,
I, even I, who fly with the swallows. The moon is upon my forehead,
The winds are under my lips. The moon is a great pearl in the waters of sapphire,
Cool to my fingers the flowing waters. I, even I, am he who knoweth the roads Through the sky, and the wind thereof is my body. I will return to the halls of the flowing,
Of the truth of the children of Ashu. I, even I, am he who knoweth the roads
Of the sky, and the wind thereof is my body. Canzoni, 1911
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Caption from the cartoon Geranium Lake Properties by Wm. Yost for June 8, 1989
lcmt Every fourth day at cockcrow, the same hard-eyed figure pierced with four spindles passes by the dropping tower.
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Carpet Tacks (The Hardware Ballad)
lcmt A good Australian of large experience,
an exporter of blue shoe tacks, found
the mousetrap in the letterbox and
was flattened by an unknown grinning
dog sitting in front of our school
many years ago. Many years ago
we used small ballad arrangements
for Young Children and Hardware.
We also researched a variety of
sharp pins protruding through
a broad range of carpet tacks. We sang: "From carpet tacks to sealing wax�
Hammer tack! Bobbin puller! Rubber mallet!�
No village dressmaker has ever died�
Hammer tack! Bobbin puller! Rubber mallet!�
Of pins in the digestive organs." You did the top. Razor sharp bits that
had been soldered to the bottom�nails,
screws and pieces of a broken barlow knife�
eliminated the need for using nails with
thicker shanks and wider heads placed
through the edges of skin wounds.
Hidden under the edges were other
discrete magnetizable items at
greater risk of notice and repair. We sang: "From carpet tacks to sealing wax�
Hammer tack! Bobbin puller! Rubber mallet!�
No village dressmaker has ever died�
Hammer tack! Bobbin puller! Rubber mallet!�
Of pins in the digestive organs." I can only imagine a misguided restitution
when you attempt to find and demolish
the basement, attic and back steps of
the later Proust novels. Without the
carpet-tacks of incident to keep
the readers in place, attach them
to the floor with wire nails. We sing: "From carpet tacks to sealing wax�
Hammer tack! Bobbin puller! Rubber mallet!�
No village dressmaker has ever died�
Hammer tack! Bobbin puller! Rubber mallet!�
Of pins in the digestive organs." Pull up the master and trim with scissors.
Promptly spread a box of vanity
beneath the under section of the batten.
The color is black. Avoid using glues,
varnishes or formaldehyde, even though
I bought them along. Let us not try
to build a single hammer. Dispel the sloop. This poem is included in The Agate Hinge and Other Poems, Intaglio Galosh Studio Press, 2009.
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Caption from the cartoon Geranium Lake Properties by Wm. Yost for Aug. 7, 1985
lcmt I don't converse with twiglike demigods or loiter around vintage meteorites.
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Caption from the cartoon Geranium Lake Properties by Wm. Yost for May 22, 1986
lcmt Steep crags of machines serrate the great outer curve of its spine�steppes of steel and silica crevassed into the back of the drifting leviathan.
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