Curses upon the Thief or Thieves
Who Stole the Old Blue Couch from
my Front Porch during the Early
Hours of June 7, 1986
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May you lie on it
with a splitting headache.
May you moan upon it
with a migraine throbbing
into full strength.
May your veins bulge
and your vessels swell
behind your brigand's brow.
May you toss and turn
in excruciating torment.
May you fall off
and break your arms
and legs in a dozen places.
May you groan upon it
with aching wounds
and bruises and plaster casts.
May you finally expire on it.
May you be stretched out
on it as upon your bier.
May you be buried with it
--the blue couch on top--
so you will never crawl out
to steal any other treasure!
Note: Such was the imminent impact of
the poem that three days later
there was a knock at the door
and the contrite thief returned
the couch where he had hidden it. |
At the Dairy Queen
Pendulous plants throw
plastic shadows.
Numbers entreat the air.
Supplicants rise,
yearning and expectancy
in their eyes and mouths.
Over the counter these devoted
offered coloured paper, file back
twitching for the package rations
the hidden Dairy Queen
bestows on them--her uniformed
sworn retainers ring
the altar and mark the tally.
Between the hungry bites
those intervals cry out
and that wide
open hamburger,
giant mollusk on the wall,
cultures her pearl
of mayonnaise poison
for a millennium to come.
Haney, B.C.
Eat Your Heart Out
for Keith Wilson
Just imagine that,
Instead of feeding upon a rat
Thomas Hardy's sister's cat
Showing its avid devotion to art
Sniffed around his bottled heart--
Then gobbled it up à la carte!
All Souls' Anti-Salts: a Hallowe'en Fantasia
Candy, toffee, lollipops!
Fill your bags!
Trick or treat!
Pillowcases
stuffed with chocolate booty--
linen cornucopias,
the unsalted
sagging horns of plenty!
Children, go home now,
salt away your goodies
and rest your heads in bulging pantries.
Don't let your dreams cave
in with cavities
or wicked wizards will come
to trap you down
like hpyer dentists ever ready
to drill teeth
in manic bursts.
Who can appease the dead's voracious need?
Leaves lurch down the streets
between the ghostly
children's feet.
Bared branches--
stark with no starch.
They are lean
and craving.
So feed the roots then with thick syrup!
Fill the sweet cravings of the dead.
Only the living need
salt's brine and bite.
Vampires this is your sole night off!
The Anti-Salts, the sweet eaters
have arisen
and hired
thousands of part-time
helpers.
Blood will be saved in deep saltfreeze
like herrings left behind in diamond molds.
The night, O the night
carves sweet
meats and honey flesh.
Already the pumpkin mouths are toothless
from too much
sweetness and light.
Each flutter of flame
from the fleshly gourds
streams into a kiss
that is chewing
and currupting the saltiness
of living hunger.
The crystals of salt
may be strong and able--
but the crystals
of cane
strike
and triumph sweetly
tonight!
Ichthyopoesis
I have a friend--don't we all--
who's sworn to perverse ichthyolatry.
He has countless nets, rods,
painted lures--
a cornucopia of ichthyophagous
disasters in the making.
My friend, the ichthyologue,
wherever he goes transforms streetlights
into the protruding eyeballs of carp and pike.
When he sees a poor drunk pissed
to the gills
and wriggling on the pavement
he exclaims about magnificent bait.
In his dreams, my friend, the ichthyographer
entices the world with choice morsels.
A galaxy of fish he hooks
on his hungry poboscis.
He twitches so, it's simply
proboscidiferous.
Cool as a clam, loose as an eel,
he lures the university
from his spinning reel.
And then, early to rise
wakes to his minnower world.
Makes for streams and lakes
where the real fish congregate.
May he always pull in is catch
with a triumphant aha!
and never fall into the jaws
of the anthropophagic piranha.
Velcro
The pleasing velcro
of my cat's tongue
grazes my hand
in interspecies
covenant.
She nudges the palm
that will feed her
and unhumanlike
harbors
no ingratitude.
She is all
expressive
of simple need
and since I am not
mouse-size
I don't have to be furtive
in my ways.
Shrink me, however,
and I'm
a sure goner.
Who's Going To Get Fried?
Should we be like fish
without a care or wish,
foolishly refusing to worry or fret
as we head direct
into the Internet?
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