Tuesday, February 2, 2016

The Encyclopedic History of Pipe Tobacco in the Poetic Arts

Scratch the pipes; cut to the whiskey

Poesis, poem of life
Poesis, product of strife:
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy meter, ink thy lies?

In what cellars dank and dark
Burnt the fire of thy art?
On waxen wings dare he aspire?
Damn the heat! Damn the fire!

And what vision and what wit,
Could twist the meaning of thy script?
And then thy words began to beat:
Damn the accent, damn the feet!

Damn the meter, damn the rhyme,
In what sonnet was thy time?
What the ballad? What dead foot
Dare its buried rhythm loot?

When the bard threw down his lines
And water’d English with his iambs,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who set the bar, believe?

Poesis, poem of life
Poesis, product of strife:
What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy meter, ink thy lies?

Monday, February 1, 2016

Kathleen's Son

You wear your confidence like sweet surprise
In cocky eyes, the brooding brow, the jaw
That’s firm and square but shoulders soft because
She perseveres at making this memoir
That you protest each time the camera’s shown
But submit to standing still, on the brink
Of front porch steps where growing up got marked down
While secretly, increasingly, you think
You’re grateful after all for the making
Of memories and hands and eyes that make
Them, eyes that will close, hands not embanking
All the horizons that your own will take
But that have held in mind and loved and named
Each victory, defeat, and every size,
And who is there, unseen, outside the frame,
But framed, reflected in your daring eyes.