Short Poems

Elvis sets the mood
Moonlight and Cadillac
Barefoot in the back


(Previously published in Poems Md, Apr 2008)

Wouldst thou know thyself, observe the actions of others.
Wouldst thou other men know, look thou within thine own heart.

There is this cave
In the air behind my body
That nobody is going to touch:
A cloister, a silence
Closing around a blossom of fire.
When I stand upright in the wind,
My bones turn to dark emeralds.

Who wants my jellyfish?
I'm not sellyfish!

Whether it's dusk
or dawn's first light
the jasmin stays
always white.

The Mother of Heaven, in her window by the Jade Pool,
Hears The Yellow Bamboo Song shaking the whole earth.
Where is Emperor Mu, with his eight horses running
Ten thousand miles a day? Why has he never come back?

Last night my girdle came undone,
And this morning a luck-beetle flew over my bed.
So here are my paints and here are my powders
And a welcome for my yoke again.

Ich am of Irlaunde,
Ant of the holy londe
Of Irlande.
Gode sire, pray ich the,
For of saynte charite,
Come ant daunce wyth me
In Irlaunde.

Now o' nights the ocean breeze
Makes the patient flinch,
For that zephyr bears a sneeze
In every cubic inch.
Lo! the lively population
Chorusing in sternutation
A catarrhal acclamation!

When Diogenes quietly sunn'd himself in his barrel,
When Calanus with joy leapt in the flame-breathing grave,
Oh, what noble lessons were those for the rash son of Philip,
Were not the lord of the world e'en for instruction too great!