Recently in Poetry Category

After watching the Biden/Palin debate, I got online to see what the media were reporting because, you know, what we think matters far less than the narrative the media promulgates. But I got sidetracked by a cool little program at Wordle. You paste a bunch of words into a field and out pops a "word cloud," such as the one I posted using Wallace Stevens' "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." Naturally people had pasted in the words of Biden and Palin to see what each emphasized, and the results were interesting, and I suppose if you have a mind to, you can search and find those word clouds, or you can make your own, because this post isn't about the vice presidential debate.

Wordle takes the words you paste in and sizes them according to their frequency. It turns out that Biden's most-used words were "John McCain." Palin has great love for "also." (Common words such as "the" and "an" are deleted.) And not surprisingly, Stevens' favorite word in his blackbird poem is "blackbird," with "blackbirds" a bit further down the list.

You can cheat, too. Instead of using actual sentences, you can simply type in random words, repeating the ones you want larger. But that gives me moral qualms; it's the behavior of a cad, a rogue, of someone you nod at as you pat your wallet.

A hole in the ground isn't
absence, the dirt is elsewhere, a mound,
or thinly spread.
The hole in the wall mocks -- nothing
missing,
the edges caved in but still there, it's all still there
yet there is a hole in the wall.

I know why there is a hole in the wall, my foot
flew an instant before my head could
stop it
damn drywall. I blame it for

losing at poker disconnecting my call wrenching
my heart.

The fucking thing almost broke my toe.

At a dinner party or convivium, Romans, like the Greeks, reclined on divans, drank watered wine, ate delicacies, and passed the evening. What kind of evening depended upon how much water the host added to the wine -- quite a bit and good conversation was expected; just a bit and debauchery ensued. Getting an invitation to such a party often required persistence and skill. The first century Roman poet Marcus Valerius Martialis (known in English as Martial) expresses frustration at the invitation-leeches who frequented bath houses to waylaid potential hosts:

For hours, for a whole day, he'll sit
On the public lavatory seat,
Not because he needs a shit.
He wants to be asked out to eat.
       --Satire XI, 77

Guests ate with their fingers and brought their own napkins, often of excellent quality. The theft of these napkins by unscrupulous diners prompted complaints:

While everyone else is laughing & drinking
you extend
              a surreptitious claw,
Asinius,
              towards the table napkins
of the negligent ...
              an unattractive habit
you misguidedly think funny.
       --Catullus 12

Keep your eyes on his right hand, pinion his left,
and he'll still bring off a theft.
...
[He] never brings a napkin when he's asked to dine
but he always takes one home -- yours or mine.
       --- Martial, Satire XII, 8

Invitations to these dinner parties, especially when offered by the politically and socially elite, conferred status and honor, and in the case of young poets hungry for food and love, opportunity for gratification. But as Publius Ovidius Naso (Ovid) in Amores I.4 shows, frustration instead of gratification was just as likely:

Your husband? Going to the same dinner as us?
I hope it chokes him.

So I'm only to gaze at you, darling? Play gooseberry
while another man enjoys your touch?

You'll lie there snuggling up to him? He'll put his arm
round your neck whenever he wants?

No wonder Centarus fought over Hippodamia
when the wedding wine began to flow.

I don't live in the forest nor am I part horse
but I find it hard to keep my hands off you.

However here's my plan. Listen carefully.
Don't throw my words of wisdom to the winds.

Arrive before him -- not that I see what good
arriving first will do but arrive first all the same.

When he takes his place on the couch and you go to join him
looking angelic, secretly touch my foot.

Watch me for nods and looks that talk
and unobserved return my signals

in the language of eyebrows and fingers
with annotations in wine.

Whenever you think of our love-making
stroke that rosy cheek with your thumb.

If you're cross with me, darling,
press the lobe of your ear

but turn your ring round if you're pleased
with anything I say or do.

When you feel like cursing your fool of a husband
touch the table as if you were praying.

If he mixes you a drink, beware -- tell him to drink it himself,
then quietly ask the waiter for what you want.

I'll intercept the glass as you hand it back
and drink from the side you drank from.

Refuse all food he has tasted first --
it has touched his lips.

Don't lean your gentle head against his shoulder
and don't let him embrace you

or slide a hand inside your dress
or touch your breasts. Above all don't kiss him.

If you do I'll cause a public scandal,
grab you and claim possession.

I'm bound to see all this. It's what I shan't see
that worries me -- the goings on under your cloak.

Don't press your thigh or your leg against his
or touch his coarse feet with your toes.

I know all the tricks. That's why I'm worried.
I hate to think of him doing what I've done.

We've often made love under your cloak, sweetheart,
in a glorious race against time.

You won't do that, I know. Still,
to avoid all doubt don't wear one.

Encourage him to drink but mind -- no kisses.
Keep filling his glass when he's not looking.

If the wine's too much for him and he drops off
we can take our cue from what's going on around us.

When you get up to leave and we all follow,
move to the middle of the crowd.

You'll find me there -- or I'll find you
so touch me anywhere you can.

But what's the good? I'm only temporizing.
Tonight decrees our separation.

Tonight he'll lock you in and leave me
desolated at your door.

Then he'll kiss you, then go further,
forcing his right to our secret joy.

But you can show him you're acting under duress.
Be mean with your love -- give grudgingly -- in silence.

He won't enjoy it if my prayers are answered.
And if they're not, at least assure me you won't.

But whatever happens tonight tell me tomorrow
you didn't sleep with him -- and stick to that story.

I dare not ask a kisse;
       I dare not beg a smile;
Lest having that, or this,
       I might grow proud the while.

No, no, the utmost share
       Of my desire, shall be
Onely to kisse that Aire,
       That lately kissed thee.

              --Robert Herrick, H-663.

Authorities did not say who found us, but detectives were interviewing employees. "I was ballistic," Queen Anne said, speaking presumably of her lace and recent rumors that it was wild with uninhibited caterpillars. "When you pay $80 a week," she said, “you expect better care than that." The heat of July had driven us all inside, and an uncle who identified himself only as Donald was helping us try and dig a few of the toddlers that had been down five years and needed thinning. But the humidity was slowing us down when what we really needed was some swallowtail butterfly stock. We spent much of the time instead having fun with the phrases, "It is very odd to have two deaths this close together," and "It is much harder when you are talking about a small child." We have always said that it was un-American to have detectives before 9 o’clock, but often we do just that. In the heat we felt a little guilty going to bed before the job was done, at least where whacking down all that beauty is concerned.

We made many references with silent delight,
sitting and smiling on into the night.

When young, when conflict fouled
the brisk progress of backyard baseball,
we'd shout, sulk, someone
would yell "redo" or "do-over,"
and we'd have at bat again.

The whole episode
no more than three or four minutes
of hurried but necessary time
taken to get back to real play.
Forgiveness essential, implicit, unspoken.

We were happy,
or at least pleased to live
without hard currency
in the absolute artifice
of our self-correcting space.

Thirty years later, pretense plays
only in designated zones:
joyful ruse, oh rare keyboard,
you have become our freedom,
our breakneck speed,

our frightful soul.

To learn the bounds of palpable or pale
makes for fights on Saturday nights
though this has been road-tested by other critics.

Similarity is an ode to a nightingale same
as anything else--far feigned in their reaches,
those same men loved likeness or beauty.

In a three month conversation with California,
acquiring legal pads isn’t enough.
Nor is rain a safe bet.

While flipping through an anthology of Dorothy Parker's writings, I came across this poem. I used to like Parker much more than I do now -- the cynicism and cheap (though clever) shots she is famous for wore on me after awhile. However, this poem is quite fun:

From a Letter from Lesbia

... So, praise the gods, Catullus is away!
And let me tend you this advice, my dear:
Take any lover that you will, or may,
Except a poet. All of them are queer.

It's just the same -- a quarrel or a kiss
Is but a tune to play upon his pipe.
He's always hymning that or wailing this;
Myself, I much prefer the business type.

That thing he wrote, the time the sparrow died --
(Oh, most unpleasant -- gloomy, tedious words!)
I called it sweet, and made believe I cried;
The stupid fool! I've always hated birds....

Of course, Parker's poem refers to one of the more famous of Catullus' poems -- "Lesbia's Sparrow" I guess we could call it; his poems don't have conventional titles. When I was going through my embittered Catullus phase, I didn't post this poem because, well, it's the poem always anthologized and cited and I'm much too cool to be so obvious. ...

A decade or so ago, I wrote six or seven poems. This one was the first. I wish I knew when I wrote it, but it must have been in '93 or '94. Upon reflection after 10 years, I did one tiny bit of editing.

Conversation is Essential

Conversation is essential you say as I think of

The way you stroke my calf with the edge of your big toe
the big toe in a black leather boot
sheathed by a purple stocking
The way you stroke my calf
not discussing the virtues of garter belts
the black garter belt that keeps the purple stockings
secured high under your black skirt
The way you stroke
swings the hoop earrings
above the lacy black bra
in your purple silk blouse
The stroke

After a few drinks one late night almost 10 years ago, I wrote this verse. Now, to paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen, I know poets, I went to school with poets, and, my friends, I am no poet. But this verse I've always thought wasn't as bad as most of my attempts.

For the moment

Stubbing one out and lighting another
glowing, sweatered, the heat high
and a half-empty bottle of Bolla Soave
far from 2 a.m. anxiety attacks, savoring
what remains:
my Silk Cuts, my Greek,
my guttering lavender candle

and wanting to use it all!

But for the moment the single naked light bulb,
and the stirrings from the poem I reread
and the muffled thumpings
of the anonymous lovers next door
and the battered smiles in Ella Fitzgerald's songs
match the quizzical smile of your
Japanese photograph,
knowing that glacial erosion leaves
what is strongest.

For the moment
I know why in Kurosawa's dream the old man laughs.

12/95

A friend, perhaps sensing I was blue, reminds me to breathe, and sends this poem:

Fall Cleaning

straighten this life
and it’ll bend
shake out the dust
and the dust will settle back in the throat
smooth the sheets, by noon
someone will lie in your bed
a clean house: an invitation to chaos

go ahead, re-pot your root-bound begonia
it will probably bloom
but you must ask yourself
what is it you desire?
if the answer is money
you’ve come to the wrong place
if the answer is love
you’ve misunderstood the question
begin again

see, eastern standard time comes with dinner
dark by five, entree by seven, sleep when you can
stuff that stuck is made of
tough as cane and taller, we crave this
like water, like these hills that hold us
we want to be old
and forgetful
or at least forgiven

we want a night sky to tell us something
about living, for moonshine
to blast us, lighten our fingers
we need rain, soft dirt, wild ginger
hollows that pull us down to streams
sound for direction
autumn the best season

what is it you desire? breathe
in that moment, you breathe fire and fog
remember, you have a day job
you go to school, put things in order
hedge, rearrange, keep a date book
you just need an edge, space to fall into
where gravity’s low, time is untidy
possessions don’t weigh

here, leaves let go and give shape to wind
that shuffles dust through door cracks
you keep house, you keep trying
dishes washed, again
laundry drying, symptoms scoured til they gleam
still your ghosts come calling, what to do?
how to mean? now, put out the welcome mat
sweep it clean

She walked around our bed with ease,
dark skin nut brown against blue walls,
and ever gave her most to please
and spoke of love complete with all

her skin dark brown, when these blue walls
were painted in a burst of joy
to tell of love complete but all
the silence of a little boy

was painted in a plea for joy
in early love before despair
made silent such a little boy,
who watched her start to part the air

when love moved far beyond despair,
who never did his best to please,
and watched her move around the air
to walk beyond our bed with ease.

I post this picture of John Reinhart Weguelin's Lesbia because it's lovely and I can. Painted in 1878, Lesbia depicts, of course, the frustrating love of Catullus' life.

Friends remind me that not everyone knows of Gaius Valerius Catullus. He was a Roman poet of the first century B.C. famous for his lyrical and often scathing verse. Lesbia was the subject of much of his poetry -- poetry often surprisingly tender or shockingly vulgar. He's also one of history's great masters of invective:

I laughed. Calvus. I laughed today
when someone in the courtroom crowd, hearing
your quite brilliant expose of
the Vatinian affair, lifted his hands up
in proper amazement, and cried suddenly:
"A cock that size ... and it spouts!"
I laughed. Calvus. I laughed.

But he's most famous for his 26 Lesbia poems. Usually, Lesbia is identified as Clodia Metelli, the wife of Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer. If this is correct, then she's the same person accused by Cicero of poisoning her husband and committing incest with her brother. Of Catullus' 26 Lesbia poems, 10 are homages to his love for her; two compare her to other women; four gripe about their quarrels; six accuse her of infidelity to him; three charge her with specific affairs, including the rumored liaison with her brother; and four are just outright abusive (some of these categories overlap).

Catullus apparently had an affair with her before her husband suddenly died. That it was tumultuous is apparent from the poems, many of which are downright misogynistic. That it also inspired lyrical love poetry is testimony to the conflict in Catullus' head and heart.

Lesbia loads me night & day with her curses,
"Catullus" always on her lips,
       yet I know that she loves me.
How? I equally spend myself day & night
in assiduous execration
       -- knowing too well my hopeless love.

Like much we have of the ancient world, Catullus' poems survive by a fluke. In 14th Century Verona, a rolled-up manuscript was found in an old jug in the wine cellar of a rich merchant. The manuscript contained more than a hundred poems, ranging from two-line epigrams to 400-line extended riffs. The original manuscript disappeared a few years after it was found, but not before two copies were made. The copy that survives is in the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

Curious to know how many kisses of your lips
might satisfy my lust for you, Lesbia;
as many as the sky has stars at night
shining in quiet upon the furtive loves of mortal men.

After some nudging, I post this villanelle, written for a poetry slam competition in 1995. God save me....

                                 Dead End Street

She said I could see her as a dead end street,
but the bed can't feel for the future it's penned.
Seeing the ex for sex is hard to beat.

She calls, of course, when she feels incomplete
and longs for good timing, tongued where and when:
that pitch doesn't change for a dead end street

where sheets like a painting by René Magríte
consume the most a friend can give a friend
when the ex for sex is hard to beat.

Your modern diet seems indiscreet
choked down with a mouth full of men
who take all the spaces on your dead end street

where I'd feed you now, but you don't eat meat,
and I can't fill up on this grainy blend
of ex and sex that can't be beat.

To miss the future is obsolete
when we learn, too late, things aren't on the mend;
but I've parked it hard on this dead end street—
the ex for sex is hard to beat.

Time to pull out the ol' Catullus (Peter Whigham translation):

Lesbia says she'ld rather marry me
than anyone,
       though Jupiter himself came asking
or so she says
       but what a woman tells her lover in desire
should be written out on air & running water.

I've been thinking about fathers and sons lately. This is a 12-year-old poem, without revision.

                                 Daddy

In this, Dave is right—
what you miss is what you can't
give away.

Dave and I sitting on the second
story porch of the Long Branch Saloon,
sunning our white teacher's chests,
imagining that the young girls
we've seen leave and come back
in a late 80's Honda sedan, stoned,
long for a little of us.
We're safe. He's married,
and I'm with him. We're safe
and they know it, and allow us
a little knowing chuckle from the second floor.
We know what they've been up to.

"I think I'll be more upset
if he's not mine," I say.
And Dave leans forward, agonizing the question,
hands spread out somewhere between
applause and surrender—"it's
what you can't give," he says.

We're deep into our fifth beer (an ex-
student bought us this round—I'm not
kidding, teaching is that good),
and we're wondering where our children are.

After reading some of the political limericks posted here, a friend was so incensed she had to get outside, soak up the morning sun, and walk it off. During that walk, this came to her:

Dubya lied his way into Iraq,
Cried "Our democracy's under attack!
       So when you re-elect me,
       I'll swear to protect me,
and my complete disregard for the facts."

The other night, while at the co-author's house, we looked again through William S. Barring-Gould's The Lure of the Limerick, a terrific, odd-sized gem containing some of the funniest limericks I've ever read. As we all know, the best limericks are dirty as all get out, but while cruising the internet I came across some decent political limericks.

When George was elected as President
On spurious votes - that's self-evident -
       To cover his shame,
       He made war on Hussein,
With excuses egregiously magniloquent.

There once was a Prez called Dub-ya
Whose bad guys had germs in a bunk-ah.
       When asked to show where,
       'Cause they simply weren't there,
Hopped back on his plane and said fuck-ya!

Two of our favorite limericks:

A habit obscene and unsavory
Holds the Bishop of Wessex in slavery.
       With maniacal howls
       He deflowers young owls
Which he keeps in an underground aviary.

Exhuberant Sue from Anjou
Found that fucking affected her hue
       She presented to sight
       Some parts pink, some parts white
And others quite purple and blue.

The warmth of a glass of red wine might have produced this glow. One of my treasures is an old battered copy of The Complete Poetry of Robert Herrick, published by Norton in 1968. I'm a sucker for the lyrical, and at times have favored the sharp tongue and bitter lyricism of Catullus. Lately, though, it's been the Herrick.

The Cobblers Catch
Come sit we by the fires side;
   And roundly drinke we here;
Till that we see our cheeks Ale-dy'd
  And noses tann'd with Beere.
        -- Hesperides 629

It's enough.

It happens in extraordinary places
during intolerable times, ones ill prepared for
in the worst kind of way, after bracing
oneself against the high winds of lovespeak
whapping the heart’s shutters about
in a rhythm only those whose consciousness
is condemned to love’s not-knowing
by their own riotous self-destruction can bear,

as when watching the characters on a copy of Key Largo—
in an effort to arrest the violence there to quiet one’s
heart thumping here, one might pause the thing
when a bully says “sock in the kisser,” or later
with all the cards on the table, at the moment
of menace but not unendurable fury
when reports of death on the outskirts come in,
one might stop as late as that and survive.

The film, against what some may tell you, will not
go on but will stop right there with you.
And you, a guest with matching handbag,
or possibly one of the hired help Huston never
but in hindsight might have cast in a brief
but convincing role, will pick up a whisk broom
and begin sweeping up fragments—
action useless and confusing in the petrified frame

as other characters stare their frozen panic
or despair or desire or hope right at you,
who cannot bear another second of the pain
this story will cause and so stop the thing
before the storm rages out of control, bringing
the safety of those not yet dead even on screen
into yourself as though you could prevent
some misery at your own expense.

After a few years of violence a little pain
in the extremities feels ok, expected even,
maybe even wished for, a stage direction
to exit the proscenium floating fantastic,
knowing that the audience, whatever
else it feels about character,
is grateful for the performance—
and backstage, there, it happens.

Or when one performs attenuated arguments
over bookish issues late into the night to shore up
ones’ defenses against emergent voices
in slim volumes of overpriced essays written
long after one is through thinking oneself
full of potential—it happens then also.
Fleshed with the jealousy of what others can give,
you find yourself following someone,

and, to bring things back round to a safe
meandering through shared reference
you say something about a desire to see
an exhibition at a museum several hours away,
and there it happens, an attempt to find currency
in conscious communication wrought
at first fall—an agreeable lover who
indulges and occasionally modulates your stories.

A single thing writ against desire to stop for definition
runs page into page and falls over laughing into the glow
of paused action on a screen, someone there about to trade
two lives for one and hope of salvation. And you stare,
alternately assured and confused by film and feeling
and the ownership of pronouns you throw around on nights like this,
when dialogue is delivered as easily to self
as to the other unlooked for who speaks in similar voice.

It happens when one desires only to whirl and laugh,
divining storms in unsophisticated ways, but one knows
there is now machinery for prediction, there is gadgetry
even to insert a facsimile of oneself into a film
and perhaps, who knows, become a character
who saves the day, or plays a strong Ophelia,
one who carries on, slaps the protagonist into active love
for the integrity necessary to survive a month’s madness.

To pause? Or to play, whatever the consequences,
even if the Persians are coming again and penultimate
Phidipodes runs 140 miles in two days for refusal
flat and Spartan, even if the flower blooms not knowing
what to do with itself, even if everything has to be an experience
that is one’s own, one becomes fascinated by new sight—
that passionate sameness scientists and philosophers long for:
the response of jealousy, startling failure and again,

startled but austere almost without hope
and the thrilling success of one thing,
the color and shape of leaves in the tall tall trees.
It happens here, that hard problem of consciousness
hard up against the hope of satisfaction and success
with a dynamo whose internal musical system
is something like ones own, who will consciously
rouse you to the work of new creation.

It happens often in garden apartments, but not always, and
sometimes in the fumbling and unbearably painful ways of youth,
while wandering around with one’s toaster searching for an outlet,
or when weeping over lack of comfort, in ordinary places,
in quotidian times when even the smallest culturally
discernable items invade everyday concerns. Or after a storm
when the sun’s setting light plays itself off the mirror
of one’s wardrobe where a kiss has been placed

—a shadowed brilliant moment on the opposing wall,
lips surrounded by intense light, carved
by the slats of blinds, wind blowing leaves
of hickory trees into the path of the setting sun,
the penumbra as time passes harder to make out
until one gasps and glories in small snatches
of time as it flickers and reappears, if
flickers is the word one can use for

something like this which is shadow
and not the light around the object creating
desire for it in reflection so obvious one wants stillness,
for the cool and early evening breeze to calm
the leaves, for the sky to decloud
and a last illumination play upon mirror and wall
before the creeping edge of tree and wind
and window and wardrobe declares the end is here.

But now a gift!
A late burst of sun clearly outlining the lips’
form, the curve and tuck of each
which have pressed one’s own.
There is no film for this, no art, no words;
one relies instead on trust and memory
if one can bring these things back
after years of abuse and neglect

to see something beyond recollection:
a promise, a voice, a certainty and agony
of not knowing what play, what town.

                                                           Despair is the least of our errors.
                                                                                           —Lautréamont, Les Chants de Maldoror

One kid, worried, slows
his bike, calls ahead to
the others and pulls it up

hard against the concrete
slab our neighborhood’s
little corner store sits on.

You can tell there’s something
he’s supposed to do or say
or maybe, more importantly

not do or not say. Some voice
of history or anger or fear
has put the brakes on him,

a mother with another coming
along and one hooked on her hip
has lectured from a doorway,

or a brother with curb
cut teeth in his hand shaking
in fear of the suddenly distant future

pulls him up short just when the whole
bunch of them are ready to go
careening past me down the sidewalk

I’m on after a pint of milk
for the morning coffee,
something I’m going

among other things to quit
because sooner or later you
count it all as regret,

and ashamed at your regret
in the company of those
able to lament time twice

yours but which in the geometry
of regret expands exponentially—
regret raised to the power

of years passed when
as the wheels shudder to a stop
you think that quite possibly,

given time not so far
beyond the reach of a mind
taught to think in wasted time

in the future you might
regret this moment of
regret as part of a larger

and more potently disabling
portion of grief which includes
the past and far-flung future.

          It is here
that desire overtakes you
and you want to confess,

to make your regret a promise,
a cry to God that here
you will forever and irrevocably

change, leave self-doubt, finish
what you’ve started and produce
something the future can rest

on. You want to show
desire in any way, to write,
to have someone

call out your name
and only yours, her cry
broadcast to the neighborhood

that all is healthy, regrets past,
fire born fecund evidence
of the new faith found

resonant on sound waves
shocked from the pelvis
but still that nagging

that this too might
be party to failure, that
this resolve might not

mark the beginning of new
deeper and more vital
regret but might simply

be another surfacing
of the same horrible desire
that puts such regrets into words—

“hey, but hey, dammit hey!”
this other kid gives him a shove
to the shoulder and the look of now

unmistakable despair:
“see, man—we coulda been
still going fast.”

The woman next to me is wholly different
from anyone I have driven this way with before.
She says the word “dapple,”
and she knows how to use it.

So this, then, is what carbon is for.

For the chips that drive the machines
that drive the work which drives the insurance
that drives my health well enough to drive here to. . .
          ah, I am falling in love.

Sometimes you skim over the best moments the first time through. I missed this little beauty at first, but whilst egotistically cruising some past entries of A.J.'s over at Toadking to see if I'm mentioned anywere (the dirty little secret of blogging, my friends), I read his wonderfully compact entry on the process of using figurative language to capture, as Donald Hall puts it, "the unsayable said."

A.J.'s entry brings to mind Li-Young Lee's "Persimmons," which, though it suffers from the stigma of the oft-anthologized, distills the agonizing desire, the need we have for precision--a need that can be met only by the figurative.

Hall practices what he preaches, by the way. "Affirmation" is a fine example, a fine Bit o' Nifty.

St. Pauli Girl has always
deeply offended
me, with piano accompaniment a salty
pretzel. I did three as
soon as soon as Caesar
ponders. That almost caused him to secure some dirt at
us. this way or other musicians; and from Denton frequently astounds
me at teades@yahoo.

I came across a bit of nutty nonsense that generates "poetry" from the contents of web sites. If you give it a zillion goes, you get stuff that almost makes sense. Like this:

For the school papers
for work, with bottles of the
answer, between
this
was not the Toadking Taxonomy of eye candy
he had lusted over
a sip from his house
like peanut shells on
my musical
friend who works with
the answer,
between this
was something or Other musicians;
and took customers to back rooms to sell
products.

Or this:

Nifty At the docks.
Sailors would Be entertained.
They did the
pop of eye candy he just
smiled and Mud
I asked. Leaning across the
Tweety backpack. But a
keyboard and danced
with rock and the poet
lit up a young Johannes
Brahms supported
his third of
sex to back rooms to get dressed, So they
were
suspicious.

I don't think my poet friends need worry.