Evening Verse

I went into the dead lands of the West
In search of treasures that do not glitter
Nor sparkle in the sun. It was not gold I sought.
No, it was bones, ancient bones, fragments left
By beasts long gone that I sought and found.
I prised them out of their native rock and scanned
Them all with tools of subtle science and thought,
That I might divine their tale done so long ago.

And I said to a man, a poet was he, behold these works,
Listen to the tale told by the bones in the stone.
Here are the bones of ancient kings,
Giant beasts that shook the world.
By this subtle clue and that subtle sign
I do deduce
That this is how they walked
And that is how they ate,
And this is how they lived
And that is how they died.

The man said to me, a poet was he, how drear.
Tis paleontology you have, no poetry here,
No beautiful rhyme, no classical theme,
No humanist thought, no literary scheme.
Tis only science and moldering bones.

He went his way and wrote his works of
Eldritch beauty chained in clever words.
And I, no poet I, wrote naught but only wept
For the man who only saw bones.

Heather ale and witches three
Oh, what mad poet must I be
That witches broth and heather ale
Must bind together in my tale

The hound that howls in darkling glen
Will bare his teeth in verse again
The landlord locks the oaken door
Lest witches three be witches four

The poets word calls forth the knight
Who in the darkness does delight
In deeds that all good men do fear
As nature raw comes too near

The elven lords are on the hunt
And reason sweet must bear the brunt
Of madness mixed in verse and life
When prose and poet meet in strife

The oaken door is barred tonight
The tavern glooms in failed light
And the poet hears the witches wail
As he sips his heather ale

The ice winds blew from out of the North
And mammoths dreamed of tundra bare
Then ice walls fell and hunters came
To hunt the beasts that filled the land
Those giant beasts left giant bones
And mammoth dreams were dreamed no more.

The grass grew high and the grass grew wide
And bison dreamed of warmer lands
Where thunder herds could eat their fill
In endless seas of prairie grass.
Then hunters came and rifles spoke
And bison dreams were dreamed no more.

The grass grew high and the grass grew wide
And cattle dreamed of prairie grass,
No longer free but rancher owned
And raised to feed the human horde.
Then settlers came and broke the sod
And cattle dreams were dreamed no more.

The plow came in and the grass went out
And farmers dreamed of raising crops
Of corn and wheat and other grains
In turn to feed the human horde.
The land knows not who next will come
When farmer dreams are dreamed no more.

Mammoths, bison, cattle, all,
Each a lord of the dreaming earth.
They came, they went, they dreamed, they died.
Their time was short. The land’s is long.
The land endures. Its dreams will last
When other dreams are dreamed no more.

Father, Father, whom shall I wed?
Who will share my unwarmed bed?
Father, Father, I burn with lust
Who is the lass that I shall trust?

Be not so eager, my only son;
Married life is more than fun
Choose wisely, son, or not at all.
There’s more to love than nature’s call

A coiled serpent in the stone,
His crystal lace encased in bone,
Wept tears of blood upon demand
To feed the Earth beneath the land.

The night that falls, it fell at noon;
The blades beseeched a feathered boon.
The seasons turn, the living die
To sate the Sun beneath the sky.

One hundred million years ago
A lord of beasts ruled the land
He lived, he killed, he ate, he died
And left his corpse to history

His fellow beasts, the killer kings
Had done the same. Their bones were stripped
By scavengers and disappeared.
No trace was left. Their time had gone.

By chance his bones were buried first
Before the hand of time could steal
The last, dead trace of that which was
And, buried, they lay beneath the Earth.

The waters flowed and inch by inch
A quilt of silt was laid upon
The bones that lay beneath the Earth.
Unseen, unknown, they turned to stone.

The restless Earth reworked itself.
The world changed and changed again.
Mountains rose and mountains fell
And the land that Was was no more.

In all this time and all this change
The silent tomb within the stone
Was undisturbed. It kept his bones
Preserved, a token of the ancient past.

Until at last the restless Earth
Unveiled the tomb of the killer beast.
The hard rains fell, the hard winds blew
And scoured free that ancient tomb.

The fragile bones within the stone
Lay bare and open to the Sun.
The rain and wind, they ate those bones
And a hundred million years were gone.

I sought her love and wooed her well
With verse and song and flowered wreath
And loved her more than I can tell
And walked with her upon the heath.

I touched her hand, I touched her heart
With word and deed in earnest dream
That we might never be apart
Forever wed in love supreme.

She cried some tears and said to me,
“I have no love I can return.
The troth you wish, it cannot be.
The flame you seek, it cannot burn.”

I kept my peace and said to her,
“Fear not my dear, I understand.
So think of me as your brother,
Affection pure makes no demand.”

She went her way and I went mine
To part as friends in sweet delight.
Of blighted love I gave no sign
Save tears I wept throughout the night.

The unseen stone lies on the road;
Its shadow falls upon the crib.
The summer lands lie inbetween
The East that was, the West to come.

“Speak to me of times gone by.”
I said to the man on the bench.
He was old, that man on the bench –
Shriveled and old with wrinkled skin.

He dozed in the Sun, half awake,
A remnant from another day
His time of deeds was over now
The time of dreams enveloped him.

“When you were young as I am now,
How did you live and how did you love?
What is it like when open farms
Still stood instead of city blocks?”

“What was it like when horses served
Where automobiles now course the roads,
When television didn’t exist?
Tell me, old man, what was it like?”

“How did you love and how did you live
When your muscles were strong
And your limbs were sound?
Speak to me and tell me how it was.”

He looked at me and spat on the walk
And smiled as though it were work.
“I remember,” he said, “I remember”
And he shut his eyes and dozed in the Sun.

Three lists for evolutionists under the sky
Seven for the creationists with their heads of stone
Nine for the lurkers doomed to cry
One for the List Lord on his dark throne

In talk.origins where the posters lie
One list to rule them all, one list to name them
One list to bring them all and in the darkness blame them.
In talk.origins where the posters lie

The horseless man is incomplete;
He doesn’t know the unity
That’s shared between the men and beasts
Who ride the range and eat the wind.

The place and time where I grew up
Is far away and long ago.
The land was wide and people scarce
No city ways were there for me.

I rode a horse when I was three
And drove the cattle in my youth
I went by horse to country school
To learn from books by way of grass.

I knew my horse; I loved my horse
He gave his back; I gave him food
And shelter from the winter storms
The horse and I were friends, and yet …

I never knew a maverick
A horse that ran forever free,
Who never felt the bridle’s touch
Or had a saddle on his back.

My horse and I were in between
The wild that was, the town to be,
The city ways have claimed my soul
And I shall never be …
A maverick.

The empty land is filled with grass.
A tumbled stone or two remains
Of that which was, the child’s home,
The house that stood upon the plains.

The trees that grew are broken stumps
The gates, the fence, the barn and all
The buildings where the children played
Are gone to grass and grass alone.

The pile of lumber weathered gray
Is gone as though it never were.
The garden where the veggies grew
Is grassy land with all the rest.

A granary stood, a barn and more,
Each with roofs where children ran.
The thousand places that they knew
Were burned into their memory.

All gone. All gone. Nothing now is left
Save memories in some aging minds
That see the past in empty grass,
A past that was and is no more.

All dirty gray, bereft of leaves,
The fractal fragments cut the sky,
As barren now as they had been
Through all the days of winter’s death.

The frost is gone; the snow is melt.
The time has come for luscious green,
For endless leaves to fill the sky
Through all the days of summer’s life.

Not yet! Not Yet! A moment first!
For life has needs that must be met.
Each living thing before its death
Must sow the seeds of life renewed.

When winter’s done and and barely dead
Some colors creep along the gray,
A tinge of browns and yellowed greens,
On branches not yet flush with leaves.

A tree must make tomorrow’s trees.
The tiny flowers must have their turn
To wash the sky with colored life
While trees prepare to milk the sun.

There is a time before the dawn
A subtle time of fading dark,
A time of skies in pastel hues
Before the blatant sun of day.

And so it is in early spring,
A subtle time of fading gray,
A time of flowers in the trees
Before the blatant green of leaves.

She was old.
She wore a purple dress,
The Scandal of the neighbourhood.
And so it is with women;
The young must pay
Beauty’s price.
They must obey
Grundy’s law.
The old are free
To wear a purple dress.

He was old,
A dirty old man.
They all are, you know.
He never wore a purple dress.
It’s different with men.
They grumble a lot
And they never wear a purple dress.

I read to her the poem you see
And this is what she said to me,
“I saw a man the other day
Who wore a purple dress.
It really was a sight to see.”
I smiled a bit
And kept my peace
And thought to myself,
“I shall NEVER wear a purple dress.”

The maiden cried when she read the poem
The pedant sighed when he explained the poem
The poet lied when he wrote the poem
And everyone knew what the poem meant

Living in the automobile
Within the plastic and the steel
A slave to your velocity,
The drivers world is all you see:

Black ribbons in the middle of the night
With all their borders edged in white,
A world reduced to traffic lanes,
Traversed by cars with human brains.

A scientist says
That eating Chocolate
Is like falling in love.
It’s a chemical thing,
Something in the blood.
I wouldn’t know.

I bought a box of chocolates
And ate them one by one.
And wriggled in ecstacy
With each and every bite.

When I was done and they were gone
I looked at all the empty wrappers
On the floor and said,
“Did you love me, Chocolate?”

I never knew that I would write
The things that I have written.
Wherever did you come from,
You little words upon the page?

I had a thought, a plan, a scheme
A brilliancy I’d meant to write
And nothing came. Instead I wrote
Some little words upon a page.

And thus I told a tale I never knew
And set in verse a strangers song
With words I never meant to write
These little words upon the page.

No angel ever wept in tears
To hear the music of the spheres
The lovely stones that course the skies
Were never made for human eyes

The stars are there if you but look
At them and not the poet’s book
Their song is but a poet’s phrase
Tis him and not the stars you praise

Play dough people.
What do you say
To play dough people?
They smile and they laugh
As they eat their fries.
They’re nice, I think,
All pudgy and white,
But what can you say
To play dough people?

The great American store –
It’s tacky and tasteless
The goods are all shoddy
But I shop there

The muzak is bland
The coke is too sweet
It’s really quite awful
And I keep coming back

Tick tock
Tick tock
The hours run on
Like little mice
Under the feet
Of elephants.

The echo chambers of the heart
Seduce the mind to play with art.
Enamelled jewels wrought in words
Are sweetly sung as though by birds.

I do not know
What a lion would think
If a zebra presented her rump,
Invited the lion to dine
And asked in return
That the zebra’s foal
Be allowed to nurse
Upon the lioness.

What does Emily want?
Eighteen years and just
Touching the edges of life.
You see the quiet reserve
And wonder what it hides.
Shy enthusiasm
Bubbles out unexpectedly.
She smiles
And the sun comes out.
You sit and write
Another poem
And wonder
What does Emily want?

Visions from a private Hell,
Hid in stories poets tell –
Shapeless flowers strangely grown,
Rusty trash from Reason’s throne,
Symbols rampant without sense
Caught in verse, layered dense,
Hid in stories poets tell,
Visions from a private Hell.

I keep some pets that I should not,
Some little dogs that eat my soul.
No friend of man for all they say
They live, they love, and loving, kill.

He was just a little boy,
His face was smeared with food
That never found his mouth.
Nobody knows what he will be
When he grows up.
A thief, a priest, a president,
He might be any of these.
Today he’s just a little boy.

His buttons were loose,
His shoes were untied,
His mittens were lost somewhere.
He was crabby and tired
And he fussed a lot.
My goodness!
He might become a saint.

Books! Books! Books!
A world filled with books,
Books that pour out words
Like raindrops from a leaden sky.
Wise men, fools, women, men,
Each in turn feeds a press
That prints a book
That dribbles words
Into a host of sodden minds.

Dribbles? Nay, floods!
A roaring flood of words,
A rising flood that seeps
And, seeping, creeps
Into each and every crevice,
Carrying muddy thoughts
To minds quite lost
In a raging sea of words.

Here is the garden where simples grow.
There is the hill where high winds blow.
This is the rill where waters flow.
Where is the corn that fed the crow?

Here is the grove where lovers laid.
There is the inn where strangers stayed.
This is the pond where children played.
Where is the milk that fed the maid?

Here is the sword that set men free.
There is the court where lawyers plea.
This is the the light that mystics see.
Where is the rose that fed the bee?

I saw some soldiers on parade
Their uniforms were piped in braid
Their boots were black and polished bright
Like glass, they glittered in the light.

Tis grand I said, that’s what I’ll be
The soldiers life is the life for me.
I didn’t know the price was blood
Or how I’d spend my life in mud.

In time I too went on parade
With polished boots and fancy braid
And caught the eye of admiring youth
Who saw the dream and not the truth.

The trees that stood stand no more
The chippers ate their wood
The land was ripped by earth machines
And graded smooth to form a lawn

The things that lived beneath the leaves
Are gone as though they never were
The rill that ran with water in the spring
Is paved
And now the water runs
Through sewers to the sea.

New life has come, tame life
That fits the needs of man –
A grassy lawn, a flower bed,
Some cats and dogs as people pets
And with it all, a river new
That flows with human trash.

Each day, each year
Another place of life
Is stripped.
Each day, each year
Another bit of wild
Disappears.
Each day, each year
Another human house
Is built.

I glower a lot
Life hasn’t been fair
I’ve never received my due
And it isn’t my fault.

I’m angry a lot
Other folks aren’t as deserving as I
I tell them so and yet, somehow,
Someone else always gets the rewards
And it isn’t my fault.

I suffer a lot
And nobody cares.
What other folks suffer
Doesn’t matter.
What I suffer
Does.
It isn’t fair
That nobody cares
And it isn’t my fault –
It was never my fault.

The geese are in the North
They flew there in the spring
The easy times are here
But summer’s wearing thin

The geese are flying South
Their honking voices cry
You’d better do it now
For summer’s almost gone

Some place, some where, quite long ago
Just where and when I do not know
There lived a worm beneath the sea
Who had some fateful progeny

She was the mother of us all
Each animal, be it large or small
That lives or died upon this Earth
Descends from her through distant birth

The tiny corals building reefs
The garret poet nursing griefs
The crab that hunts with vicious claws
The pompous solons crafting laws

The sauropod, the trilobite
The vampire bat that flies at night
The wolf that hunts the frightened hare
The spiders climbing through the air

Ancestral apes with clever hands
The scorpions upon the sands
The tetrapod that first bore toes
The firefly that courts with glows

All came from her who had no name
By chance that ancient worm became
The mother of each living race –
Her sisters died without a trace.

Pawn to king four
The old man sits in the park
Puffs on his pipe and plays
Pawn to king four

Tis a marvelous move
Twas Morphy’s choice and Fischer’s too
The greatest masters all have played
Pawn to king four

The gulls are crying overhead
Mother’s children scream as they run
The sun is bright as the old man plays
Pawn to king four

His clothes betray his wife is gone
Weathered wrinkles line his face
The young men work and the old men play
Pawn to king four

Above the land on which I roam
The feathered creatures make their home
As swift as wind, as light as breath
They fill the skies with feathered death

Behold,
I wandered in the summer lands,
Bereft beneath the sun,
In search of floral blessings
That vanished with the spring.

Where doth the Lily grow?
What shady brook doth hold
That shy and fragrant bloom
Whose sweetness did enchant me?

This dripping sweat and burning sun
That summer brings –
They please me not.
The making of the world was not
As I would have it be,
And yet

There were times in younger days
When gentle breezes blew
And sweetness filled the air
As lilies bloomed.
Such a world was fair
And I would have it be.

Behold the summer lands
Where heat and barren brown
Hold sway and hapless travelers
Such as I forlornly ask:
Where hath the Lily gone?

She preens before the mirror
Studying with little worries
The image that she sees;
She is own and finest work.
Each hair’s in place as though
It were a sculpture
Machined upon a lathe,
The lacquered symmetry only broken
By wanton curls that tease
And artfully entice.
The paint and powder on her face
Emphasize her features
And yet conceal
The marks of artifice.
Accessories and garments
Are all in place just so,
Coordinated in color
And stylish in the latest mode.
She regards the image in the mirror,
A model of perfection,
And yet, unsatisfied,
She touches here and there
As though perfection
Were never hers to win.
At last she exits
Onto the stage of life
To play the role of femininity.

The August sun was shining bright
The world was lit with summer light
In front of me beneath my feet
There was a dead man on the street.

Some people came, the cleanup crew
The ambulance, the flashing blue
And though their work is now complete
There’s still a dead man on the street.

It happened long ago.
He was our nearest neighbour;
He lived a mile away.
We would visit now and then
As country folk are wont to do.

He and his wife
Had a little house
Filled with clutter
And a wonderful grandfather clock.
They were old
And the house smelled old.
It was special, that house,
If you were a boy.

One day he had a heart attack.
He had it in the haying time
And he couldn’t do the work
To gather in the hay.

The neighbours came to help;
They had a haying bee.
The men worked in the fields
And the women cooked the food,
Lots of food for hungry working men.

I was a child then;
We children played
While men and women worked
And we ate fried chicken.
It was a holiday for us.

The neighbours gathered hay
They hauled the hay
They stacked the hay
And when the day was done
Weeks of work were done
And all the hay was in.

That’s the way it was
At the haying bee.
It happened long ago
And I was there
When all the neighbours came
And gathered in the hay
At the haying bee.

I do so love
The beautiful people
They dip their barbs
In the poison of their wit
And speed them on their way
To annoint their chosen others
With the emblems of their
Superiority

When I am dead
And the mourners come
To the funeral rites
(If mourners there be –
I won’t know if anyone’s there
And I won’t care;
The dead never do, you see)
And some old geezer
With a solemn face
Is telling lies,
Is telling folks
What a wonderful chap I was
Then I would have him give
A little oration for me,
Some words,
And this is what I’d have him say:

Do not mourn for me
Cry for yourselves if cry you must
The loss you feel is yours
And none of my own.
We have but one life to live,
One cup of life to drink,
And I have drunk mine
I’ve drunk it to the full.
I have what you have not,
I have it all now,
All that life will ever give.
So do not cry for me;
Cry for yourselves if cry you must.

And if you care to remember me
This is what I’d have you do:
Enjoy a summer day
Kiss a lover in the dark
Read a poem or two
And through it all
Drink your cup of life
And drink it to the full.

Men plant trees
On the praries.
They grow there,
And having grown,
They die.
The grass returns;
The seedlings never take.
The dead trees stand there,
All twisted and gnarled,
Like driftwood
Hanging from the sky.

When I am old I shall mumble a lot
And scratch my privates in public places
And offend the goodly folk
Who hold their noses up as I go by.
I’ll do it then, I swear I will
And they’ll never know
I’m mocking them.

When sunflowers fail
They do not fail
In the manner of wheat and corn;
For fields of grain wither to brown
And sunflower fields blacken instead.
The great green leaves fall away;
Each plant becomes a stick.
The yellow eyes that once
So proudly followed the sun
Are humbled;
They bow their heads in ebony.
Row upon row the sunflowers stand
Like candy canes awaiting Halloween

Dog Person!
He barks at the moon
But not on Fridays.

The last rose of summer hangs there
Curled and brown like crumpled kleenex
Dead but not gone, it doesn’t know
That winter comes.

Another bottle, another day
The shelter’s full, that what they say
And where I’ll stay, I do not know
But it really doesn’t matter
As long as I have got
Another bottle for the coming day

People pass; some give; some don’t.
They laugh; their clothes are clean.
They aren’t like me and I’m not like them.
And I don’t much care for I have got
Another bottle to get me through
Another day

I drink when I can and I don’t much care
What I drink or where. For when I drink
That black place in my memory
Goes away, although I can’t recall
Exactly what was there.
And I don’t much care;
Another bottle is all I need.
And it really doesn’t matter
About another day.