HENRY VIII
Henry VIII
Wrote music
And poetry
Like most people do. Henry VIII
Killed a
Number of women
Like most men do.
But Henry VIII
Was recorded in history.
Most people who write music, poetry,
And kill women are never heard of.
THE RICHEST MAN IN THE CITY
A man,
Up to his waist in gulf water,
Used a chain saw
To saw the water.
He was sawing the water into blocks,
Said he could use the blocks
To build expensive houses.
What puzzled him
There was no sawdust
As when he sawed down forests.
There were always large piles of sawdust,
Cost much to move away.
When his hired men
Waded out with wheelbarrows
To pick up the blocks of water,
They could find none,
He fired all of his workers
At the end of the day,
Hired a new crew the next day
To pick up the blocks.
OBSERVATIONS IN SPRING,
A YOUNG MAN'S FANCY TURNS TO.
Surrealists invent fur-lined tea cups,
Saints wear hairshirts.
The gentle man wore a gold wedding ring
That had a hair-lining on its concealed circle.
DAPNE
Daphne,
You, a darkness,
Amorphous,
Annulled Apollo,
Saved from death,
The amorous.
Now, your leaves
A landslide of love,
Dig up
The Babel Tower
Buried in
The inner forest
Of my blood,
Birds sing
In unknown tongues..
CLOSE AND FAR APART
The dark earth under spiderwebs
Is wet, loose, sinks and oozes
Under the pressure of our boots.
The morning sky looks like mimosa,
Colors paler than usual,
I dream our livers are pastel colored.
No, our lives are something
In black and gray, like smears
Of Franz Kline, not the formal
Organization of a Whistler.
Her life inaccessible to me,
Like a stained glass window.
We walk together, very close,
Wind shakes a tree, white petals fall.
We walk together, never touch.