David Jackson THEY WILL SAY
OF my city the worst that men will ever say is this:
You took little children away from the sun and the dew,
And the glimmers that played in the grass under the great sky,
And the reckless rain; you put them between walls
To work, broken and smothered, for bread and wages,
To eat dust in their throats and die empty-hearted
For a little handful of pay on a few Saturday nights.
READY TO KILL
TEN minutes now I have been looking at this.
I have gone by here before and wondered about it.
This is a bronze memorial of a famous general
Riding horseback with a flag and a sword and a revolver
on him.
I want to smash the whole thing into a pile of junk to be
hauled away to the scrap yard.
I put it straight to you,
After the farmer, the miner, the shop man, the factory
hand, the fireman and the teamster,
Have all been remembered with bronze memorials,
Shaping them on the job of getting all of us
Something to eat and something to wear,
When they stack a few silhouettes
Against the sky
Here in the park,
And show the real huskies that are doing the work of
the world, and feeding people instead of butchering them,
Then maybe I will stand here
And look easy at this general of the army holding a flag
in the air,
And riding like hell on horseback
Ready to kill anybody that gets in his way,
Ready to run the red blood and slush the bowels of men
all over the sweet new grass of the prairie.
***
Passepied
Obsession will haunt you.
You fear the thing you want.
You want the thing you fear.
You slink back to your old haunt —
A red bandanna,
Blood red disrupting the white light of day.
Why can’t you stay away,
Let the waters flow gently,
Let the sands nuzzle you into oblivion?
Pass, pass, let it all pass,
Let it while itself away.
Pass, pass, like a passepied:
Eloquent and haunting,
Spirited and daunting,
Daunting and passé
Rochelle Hope Mehr
rochellemehr@hotmail.com
***
Feline Audition
Old fat rhythm and blues
sing your purr
rattled out, until our next quick love affair
wink at me temporary
Carry on
sentry, still trophy
indeed appreciated
so safe so sound
our nest
And you
before me awake await
sweet charmer, green eyes
powder room
good morning
Infinity trace
round feet i stand
win the part but still
each day
audition
***
