Thirsty Bird’s Lament
I was parched,
but from my perch
I saw a peach.
My body arched,
I made a lurch,
’twas out of reach.
And then my wise
old owl friend
let out a hoot,
reminding me
that I like water
more then fruit.
Whether Forecast
Russia’s orchestrating a new US civil war.
And we are recreating Archie Bunker.
On one side are gathering the immigrants and poor.
On the hill the rich protectors hunker.
There’s screaming and crying all over the channels.
The old and the cold are all pissing their flannels.
There’s armies that stand in the way.
And lord help the pregnant or gay.
Gun club rednecks’ new adventure:
hunting season on transgender.
The cities are teeming with patriotic spies.
Left is right and down is up. The sky is filled with lies.
Dandy Dandelion
Is the dandelion a flower, herb or weed?
The answer could be strictly in the beholder’s eye.
One thing that’s for sure, it’s got a light and fuzzy seed.
Windy days can see a haze of dandies in the sky.
They’re natives of Eurasia, though they’ve made homes everywhere.
Unlike some other plants, they’re not invasive.
They work against erosion, mine for gold, give ground some air.
And one need only look: they’re not evasive.
They’ll just stand there in the grass when young and brightly yellow.
I observed my father dig them up and make them gone.
Seeing them pop up in spring would surely kill his mellow.
Though it wasn’t big, he thought the world of his damned lawn.
I especially liked it when they aged enough to fly,
would blow the seeds off, chanting them away.
In that respect, I guess, it was first plant to get me high.
The first of many, I can hear some say.
MAY 30th (redux)
A Frank Blair (1915) hologram
bleakly announces the death of Sun Ra (’93).
So opens the new Howard Hawks (1896) film,
a bizarre new take on the murder of Joan of Arc in 1431,
starring Keir Dullea (1936) and Michael J. Pollard (1936)
as a conjoined-twins version of the heroine, voiced by Mel Blanc (1908),
whose last vision is of Jimi Hendrix at Berkeley (1970),
the great lefty axeman portrayed by Stepin Fetchit (1892)
in a marvel of editing. An uncredited walk on by Clint Walker (1927)
as Turk Lown (1924) relieves tension and leads to the final gasp
as Gayle Sayers (1943) and Lydell Mitchell (1949) arise from the pyre
as Joan’s conjoined souls and are transplanted into the bodies of
Mike Sadek (1946) and Mike LaCoss (1956) as life’s eternal battery.
Somewhere in the mix, Max Carey dies (’76).
He is played, with lifelike precision, by John Felske (1942).
Joan’s song vocals by Idina Menzel (1971).
“Hymn To Sun Ra” by Ceelo Green (1974).
The movie is dedicated to the memory of Claude Pepper (d. ’89).
But I Never
I got a canker in Sri Lanka.
I got a blister on K-2.
I thought I might go mad
in old Islamabad.
But I never got sick of you.
You could insult me for an hour,
then make me laugh for two.
You’d join me in the shower
if I wore one shoe.
I got a thousand itches
and I hate me some bitches.
There’s one I really loathe in Timbuktu.
You served me whey and curds
and made me eat my words.
But I never got sick of you.
You put me through my paces,
hooked me up with braces,
made both bad and good dreams
all come true.
It busted up my pride
and made me hot inside.
But I never got sick of you.