TO SIDNEY’S DEFENSE
The erected wit with its complete set
of screws and mock I-beams and moist
whimsy fluid in its jests, sit on bookshelves
tickling their fondlers: No one fakes
the howl of metaphor’s swamp land
or construction. A glum guy hawking
his straight face limps to and collapses
in your Lazyboy. A deadpan woman
binds your thighs together with typewriter
ribbon because you cracked a smile
when making an omelet. Costumed
narrators with their tongues in each
other’s cheeks warn of rubber girders
and steel girdles of sadists and masochists.
Extreme sites and eccentric buildings
have their own histories to love.
Clever’s cleavage and tease’s testicles
seduce until you have an urge for
a cigarette while rolling and rolling in
an open mind, a sculpted planet as a mate.
BOXES OF LUST
Leapt into by mating animals,
the boxes of lust delineate
the streets as wooden cages
taming slugs or pacing beasts
using family brands of compassion.
The unique sets of keys
each of us owns to a destiny’s ark
were dreamed and deeded fruitless
and placed in an atheist’s drawers
in favor of chocolate coated wolves
and brief erotic teases in exchange
for security. Parents would serve loins
best by merging their children
through property rather than hiding
a son’s claws in a bouquet or placing
cleavage on a store shelf for men
to wear as mustaches. If the lions
don’t lie belching lamb, the most
the neighborhoods could offer other
crated cowers and roaming singles
is a variety of private kindness
grudged against city and town
and random dead end passion
sired in the back seats of cars.
JINGLE ON THE BOARDWALK
Americans want their poetry to kiss
them on the mouth in public
and hang on them through their day
or forget it. So bus loads
of rhyme schemers throw themselves
at pedestrians at every stop.
The attention drives bystanders
and fawners to cheap hotels
where the Homer kings memorize
the spray of words around ballparks.
When a week at “top ten” shakes
a pant leg free of humming,
the fans strike out to revise the play,
and the Coca-Cola crowd
turns on the pouts for the new gush
from pucker prosody rushing
to their sides. There is never mind
for the choirs lodged in bookcases.
Even though engaged at rendezvous
behind closed curtains, intuition
and language perform the orgasms
of several lifetimes. Should magnets
working their magic on prefab
nostalgia generate the pursuits
of intimacy, a subtle song travels
from ancient feet through hearts
to first breath in the world.
