Friday, September 25, 2009

Hey, Batter, Batter

Whatever it takes to write a poem
I don’t have it.
All the editors of America agree.
Nor could I ever hit a baseball well enough
to impress any coach
glancing up from a clipboard.

In the evening this late in the year
the sun presses green and golden through laced leaves
like light through sacred glass.

Lines like that
always kill me—
swing and a miss.

The truth you must not tell:
My poems yawn about the heart
forever wounded.
I am much too old to make the team.

I stand in the cage
humming dollar after dollar through the machine
swinging the lumber.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Private Language


The sender of the list is not the same as the receiver, even
if they bear the same name and are endowed with the identity
of a single ego....

Jacques Derrida

My lists of essential things,
achingly composed,
my dashed off notes,
of what I might forget to do—
all, all for someone
I can’t ever know, someone
whom I cannot meet, however long I pace
the parking lot, something like my dad
who left before my first tooth
and did not report in
until the day he jumped the train
and died. It’s how it is: a shame.
Someone who does not exist
isn’t calling your name.

Friday, September 18, 2009

Conservapedia?

What a web, what a web.

The above named website includes the following "definition" of "Liberal":

"A liberal (also leftist) is someone who rejects logical and biblical standards, often for self-centered reasons. There are no coherent liberal standards; often a liberal is merely someone who craves attention, and who uses many words to say nothing."

If there are creatures on earth with brains sufficient to form sentences of this level of complexity who can, without intending parody, purvey such notions, and if there are creatures on earth with brains enough to decode such sentences and yet take them seriously, as though they were declaring anything supportable by their mere grammatical structure, the species cannot survive. If something so simply, obviously, excruciatingly biased can--without irony--set up shop under the sign of truth or fact, the most fundamental notion of sanity must be dismissed. Lincoln in a clown suit, moments after the battle in which scores of devoted soldiers sacrificed their lives, reciting the Gettysburg Address and expecting--no, and receiving--applause could not be more absurd.

Shit Passes

On sunny days we chased the furniture around the room.
For God’s funeral, we donated food and scooped a contribution from the plate.
The bumper sticker provides us with a useful lesson.
When we found the lost child we gave it back.
Our neighbor keeps offering us the use of his tools.

We can’t help suspecting the last was at least as good as the next.
When they talked about our life, we knew it was our life, they used our names.