Post-Operative Report

Can you scalpel the soul with the knives of your science
Separate sin with your blade—
And dissect human psyches with all your reliance
Placed in experiments made?
Empirical evidence augurs for “yes”—
Instinct suggests “maybe not”—
And there’s gore on the table. The wound is a mess.
Wisdom less knowledge you’ve got.

1983

Wing-Song Macabre

Ghost-bird flapping loud,
Like a rustled shroud
Strikes your misted window-pane,
Cawing your last name.

Like the legend said,
Death wings overhead
Shudder like a knelling drum
When your hour has come.
1982

Evaporation

I’m dreaming your face
In the silvery dawn:
An opaline image of white.

Evanescently faint,
Like a hand-painted saint,
Piously pale in the light.

I worshipfully wait for
The sharpening lines
To clarify features of you.

But planes in your face are
Are dissolving in space,
And another dull day starts anew.
1982

Day Death

Sun drips down,
Hardens, brown
On the land:
Bloodied sand.

Sunset burns,
Daylight turns
Into dark:
Sputtered spark.

Gods of day,
Dying, say
“Night has willed
We be killed.”
1982

Dead Rainbow

The color of rage is gory red,
The color of love is gold,
The shade of indifference is lead,
The grey of love grown cold.

The color of hate is ebony,
The tone of faith is white,
The color of your disdain for me
Is black as loveless night.
1982

Immortal Mansion Macabre

The white house on the hillside
Bright as ivory,
Entombs lost generations,
Coffined lovingly.

The mausoleum glimmers,
Glinting skull-white pale
A marble paradise where
Ancestors prevail.
Hearken! Hear them wail!
1995

Golgothan Solace

The wooden frame to which you’re nailed
(Roman penalty)
With outspread wrists and spikes impaled
Transcends mere agony.

Between your brother thief and you
Upon His wooden span,
Sags a Shape soon raised anew,
Reprieving faith-filled man.
09-05-95

Phototropism

I.

The grave is the adolescent goal,
Death s the teenage cult,
Byronic, the melodramatic role,
With suicide, oft the result.

II.

Transcending malaise is the urgent task,
Evading those marble tombs;
Your soul in Sonlight beams must bask,
Defying Death s crypt-like gloom.
10-28-94

Bay of Pigs Encore

The Cuban migration commences
Refugees floating ashore;
Floridians mount their defenses,
With weapons unweilded before.

Radiation transmitters are mustered
Incinerate Castro the goal!
Too many times has he blustered,
His ashes now swirl, as waves roll.

SunMart parking lot, Silver Spring Blvd.
Ocala, Florida, 3:00 a.m., 09-03-94

The Death of August Derleth: July 4, 1971

The summer air hangs still.
Hawk and whippoorwill
Wing mournful down the graying skies,
Hearken to their cries!

And then the faintest breeze
Murmurs in the trees,
And at the Lonesome Place
Spirits sigh in space.
04-20-94

Women Need Words

Good morning, dear, how are you? The breakfast tastes so good,
I ll call you from my lunch break, the way I said I would.
And I ve got one word for you that s in my vocabulary,Army, mother
And that word s forever and it s in your dictionary!

The Army wrote your mother With the deepest of regret,
And the police told your sister, We ain t found your little brother yet,
And the preacher gets the final words, upon the wind-swept hill,
But I just said I love you, and I know I always will.

Women need words, yes they do,
Women need words, sincere and true,
Women need words such as I love you.

Wedding ceremony, and somebody says I do,
And later he says, I m sorry, and the lawyers say its through,
Women need words but they don t always get the ones they need,
They get separation and visitation and liberation. Indeed!

Women need words in the morning,
And they need them in the afternoon,
Women need words at the crack of midnight, underneath the moon.
1993

Chill-Charred Winterlude

December warmth is frozen hell,
Icicles stab your psyche through;
Frigid furnace emberswell
Frosted flames ignite in you.
12-13-93

Anonymous Inquisitors

Do you hear gratings creak
Upon the cellar bricks?
Just autumn winds that wreak
Deceptive, noisy tricks.

And did you hear the knell
Of bells from long ago?
The belfry long since fell
In ruins, this I know.

Who calls your name aloud
Outside your bolted door?
I sleep. No one s allowed
To rouse me while I snore.

Excuse us, please forgive
Our frivolous remarks
You ve moments left to live
Our claws will leave red marks!
06-14-93

Crosswalk Encounter

I saw the old Death Angel
Walking cross the street,
Disguised as a pedestrian,
Visage coy and sweet.

I rolled up my window,
‘Didn’t pause to wait
I drove right past the lady
“Can’t we have a date…?”
“No time to talk…I’m late…”
03-05-93

Song of the Stellar Assassins

Can you hear the blades revolving
Within the crystal sphere?
Hear them descend rotate and rend
Your scalp and half your ear!

Can you hear the pilots chorus
Their extra-earthly tongue?
A stately hymn your requiem
The space-sprites now have sung.
02-25-93

Retort to Time

The crispness of your knife goes snick!
Cutting up my dreams like celery,
To make hors d’oeuvres that you, Time, pick
And gobble till you’ve swallowed me.

But while you cut, your blade will knick
Hard upon my iron bone;
It trims me to the very quick
But still, my skull will dull its hone.
1992

Jungian Serendipity

The telephone rings and the voice you hear
Repeats the thought in your brain:
Just synchronicity, loud and clear,
Links you on some esoteric plane.

It s not telepathy, mind-to-mind,
But incalculably doubtful odds,
Defying coincidence, like a blind
Toss of the dice by the gambling gods.
199

Somewhere, Under the Rainbow

The ghost of Judy Garland
Is visible at night:
Amphetamine-white phantom
Floats through the moon-mist light.

The Emerald City’s toppled,
The yellow bricks are dust,
And Dorothy’s dead in Kansas;
Tin Woodman s gone to rust.

The ghost of Judy Garland is audible as well
New York, New York’s her kind of town
Manhattan-angel’s hell.
10-92

Hester Prynne

The whiteness of her virtue
Bleeds red with scarlet sin;
Her crimson cheeks alert you
To guilt concealed within.

Like sapphires set in ivory,
Or roses wet with snow,
Once-pallid flesh turns fiery:
Her shame for all to know.
10-21-92

The Gallery of Gothic Princesses

I.

On the right is Emily Bronte,
Bard of Yorkshire moor
Her talented, tormented family
Wrote novels which still endure.

II.

On the left s Christina Rossetti,
Who chastely did refuse
The goblin s fruit of ecstasy;
Pre-Raphaelite recluse.

III.

In the center s a filmy mirror,
Dusty-looking glass;
You rub it till it s clearer
And see a skull-faced lass
Yourself& at Requiem Mass.
09-28-92

Night Songs

Night songs on the radio,
Disc jockey popping pills,
Accepting payola from Satan
Blood, on the turn-table, spills.
04-14-92

Rendezvous With the Reaper

I can t remember the date of my death
For the life of me.
I scribbled it down on a fragment of brown
Paper bag. Now where can it be?

For I d hate to miss out on that vital event;
I have to be there,
With everyone dressed in their ebony best
Else they’ll think I had nothing to wear!

04-13-92

Marriage is Forever

The voice in the attic clamors,
As you ascend the stairs--
The sound subsides and stammers
Just wind. There s no one there.

Old jewelry and dresses,
Your late wife s finery,
Her wigs and braided tresses&
You turn too late you see
She s coffin less, and free.
03-06-92

Prehistoric Precision

I.

Stonehenge wrought of bluestone
Each massive megalith
Positioned by shamans (date unknown)
For timing the heavens with.

II.
Cheops awesome pyramid
Aligned with compass care,
Demarking distance, map-like grid,
Emplaced, finitely, there.

III.

Star-clocks and calendars,
Astronomic gauges,
Immortal instruments, sighting stars,
For scientists and mages.
03-03-92

A Family Visit

Your prison is a tomb,
A vaulted, marble room
Where your wan spirit lives,
Denied the peace death gives.

And now your spirit goes
In shrouded coffin clothes
Across the headstones for
Your brother s portal door.

His new wife sees you clear
And screams. He s here, he s here!
Your former wife was her
And he, your murderer.
02-20-92

The Woman s Victory

From the ivory height of Heaven
I am catapulted down
To the bottom side of Nothing,
Where envy gilds my crown
Separation, subjugation,
Force my frantic frown.

1991 (see 1989 Plummet)

Archeological Reverence

The golden chair of opulence
Seats a stately emperor,
Enrobed in royal purple hue
Of lichen moss that shrouds his bones from view.

And yet he holds you in his thrall,
Millennia since he has lived,
You bow before his exhumed throne,
And kiss, in fealty, his toe of bone.
11-16-91

Illiteracy

Children never learn today
Where the meadow-fairies play,
Where the elves bask in the sun
Where their inch-high horses run.
11-02-91

From a 23rd Century Text

The gates of Time yawned back,qq
And let the Western seas attack,
Hurling tidal waves
That turned the towns to graves.

Atlantis sank before
And then the California shore
Settled out of view
Below Pacific blue.
11-01-91

Galactic

(For Columbus and Armstrong)

I.

Old sailors pine for salt and spars,
New vessels sliding down the slips,
Valiant skippers holding by the helms…

II.

Young sailors dream of reaching stars,
Midshipmen berthed in rocket ships
Trajected far to planetary realms.
09-28-91

The Lens of the Future

I.
From three-power up to nine
Telescope tunnels through space
Galileo scanned God’s vast design:
Thirty-power soon found its place.

Then Jupiter s moons loomed in view.
Heresy! Earth wasn t right
In the midst of Creation a new
Insight suffused its strong light.

Could people traverse what lay there?
Hypothetical pioneers far
Ascending the galaxies stair
Ladder-like, star after star.

II.

The moon was the goal to reach,
Johannes Kepler briskly agreed
Like Columbus toward Salvador s beach,
Borne at incredible speed.
09-21 & 22-91

Rejection Slip to Editors

I cannot sing to the wax-eared deaf,
Nor paint for the color-blind,
So flunk my verse with the grade of F
Sheer praise of the highest kind.
09-08-91

Shelley

(The Birth of Science Fiction)

I.
Young Shelley at Eton imbibed the mystique
Of science romanticized into extremes:
He gave his poor tutor a shock and a shriek
Electric jolt! eliciting screams.

II.
Explosives and fire-balloons were his joy,
Chemicals tainting his fingers and arms,
Steam engine blew-up (another mere toy).
Mad Shelley continually causing alarms

III.
His tutor named Walker is wholly forgot
Blueprint for someone whose name we ve all read
Frankenstein s prototype, likely as not,
Mixed up with Shelley in wife Mary s head.
9-23-91

Inscrutable (2)

You prowl in the weeds in search of a sliver
Of timber from logs where her cabin once stood.
But the structure is gone from the Little Pigeon River,
Its remnants embedded in a mansion in Brentwood.

You hearken for echoes on the hollowed old speaker
At Studio B where the tourists now gape,
Where Joshua Jolene and the poor, sinful Seeker
Were captured by Porter on RCA tape.

You pause at the quick-mart for a tabloid injection
Just how many wigs can one woman own?
And how many escapades dodge our detection?
Three-fourths of her story will never be known.
07-13-91

Blood Harvest'

Hay is threshed by the rotor blades,
Hay along with the arms,
Legs, and heads of the milking maids,
Down on the carrion farms.

Farmer Misogynist reaps his yield
Satan nurtured the crop
Psychopathology wet the field
Whing! Now the rotor blade lops!
07-10-91

Bareback Rider

Out on the heath hies a lady in white,
Riding a giant toad;
Who is that woman, luminescently bright,
Spurring her steed on the road?

West Country witch whom, legends recount,
Transformed her man with a spell:
Cuckolding lover, she made him her mount
Unclad, she straddles him well.

Reptile croaking along on the path;
Lady, equestrienne witch,
Whacking his scaly skin with a lath,
Hopping each brook and broad ditch.
07-01-91

A Little Bit Deeper Than Usual

This time you put the knife in a little bit deeper than usual,
You twisted the blade a time or two, too much,
This time my thoughts run a little bit deeper than usual,
I ve lost my sensitivity to your touch.

This time the wishing well seems a little bit deeper than usual,
The old oaken bucket comes up, without a dream inside,
This time the river of tears runs a little bit deeper than usual,
And I don t think I m going to make it to the other side.

This time my memories run a little bit deeper than usual,
I think about al the crazy stuff we did,
We ran hand in hand right through the green meadow,
Picking wildflowers like a couple of lovesick kids.

This time the talk ran a little bit deeper than usual,
A couple of lawyers going to send us both a bill,
And the children s nightmares run a little bit deeper than usual,
And that old flame. I wonder, does she love me still?
Does she love me still?
6-8-91

In Vain Pursuit

Limpid nymph amid the leaves
Furtive, as the twilight weaves
Shadow raiments round her limbs;
Naked as the sunshine dims.

Mauvish-tinted pigments drape
Twilight on her supple shape;
Down the forest trails she ll dart
Drawing me, with racing heart!
05-31-91

September s Showers

Summer weeps and grieves,
Rain-tears moisten leaves,
Grey replaces blue
Autumn cries anew.
1990

Ballad uf A Reincarnate

I.

Lady with a lyre,
A female troubadour
Was staked and set afire
At Castle Montsegur,
The year? Twelve Forty-four.

II.

Transmigrated soul,
Reborn to stum anew
Where Appalachian coal
Blends dust with mountain dew,
She sings for me and you.

The Grand Ole Opry stage
Becomes her home at last;
But memories from an age
Immemorially past
At times leave her aghast.
1990

Reverie (2)

Far over the mountains and lands away
Expands a voluptuous scene:
Lush valleys of dewy, silver-green
Where frivolous fairies play.

In meadows of velveteen moss and grass
The unicorns graze and browse,
While over the crimson-colored cows
Pterodactyls slowly pass.

So track the meandering, winding trail
That wends through your restive mind
Relaxing your weary eyelids, find
Your path to the dappled dale.
12-26-90

Reunion (2)

December winds moan,
As tomb-gratings groan,
With Lorna bestirred from her sleep;
She slides back the stone
Committed to vows she must keep.

You cuckold! you ve nailed
Her coffin, but failed
To fasten the wooden lid tight.
So Lorna, unjailed
Returns to set certain wrongs right.

The castle dogs smell
The odors that tell
Them something putrescent is near
No, Lorna! you yell
(Of you, that s the last your dogs hear).
12-26-90

A Plea

Evanescently blurred, half beyond recall,
Her voice down a midnight hall
Or her visage in oils once glimpsed on sale,
Remote, and feminine-pale.

Whoever was she? Forget, forget
Her classical silhouette:
Let her image diffuse in a twilight haze
Of vapored blues and greys&
12-20-90

Yellow Rider

Now the villagers are waking from the dreams inside their heads,
They're locking doors and windows, and they're hiding in their beds;
It's a yellow rainy morning with a mist across the sun--
You hear the hoofbeats coming, terrifying everyone.

It's a legend sprung to life and it's a horror story true,
You listen in the silence and you know you hear it too,
And the sound is getting closer till it's beating in your bones,
It's hammering and clattering upon the cobblestones.

Yellow Rider coming
Through the early light of day,
Hear the hoofbeats drumming--
Too late for you to pray.

And the Rider's coming closer, still you stay inside your room,
You're looking at his stallion. and his giant hat and plume,
You cannot see his face because it's hidden by the brim--
You recognize his saddle so you know it must be him.

It's silver-mounted leather from a Gypsy caravan,
His uniform is yellow silk imported from Japan,
His sword is Spanish-crafted, and his pistol made in France--
There's nobody escaping, everybody's had his chance.

Yellow Rider coming
Like a bandit through the town,
Hear the hoofbeats drumming--
All your hopes fall down.

Now the Rider is departing just as swiftly as he came,
He's taking someone with him and I will not tell his name,
It's either you or me or maybe someone else we know--
The Yellow Rider's leaving as the sun begins to show.

And the people are appearing at their windows and their doors,
The merchants all are opening their markets and their stores,
And the villagers will make believe he never came at all--
But 'way out on the high-road you can hear his mournful call….

Yellow Rider going,
And he's taking someone new,
Someone we're both knowing,
Is it me or you?
Is it me or you?
12-12-1990

Lamia

The lady bade me linger for awhile
Beside the cypress in the burying-yard.
She fetched me to a graveside with her smile
And set me on a marker cold and hard.
She smiled. It all comes down to this, you know,
That kings and merchants, each the same,
Will sleep as brothers is a marble row
Till mosses blanket over each proud name.
I shivered mid-November air breathed chill
And I looked down at my watch. The hour was late.
I said, However much I d like to listen still,
My appointment scheduled in the village cannot wait.
She smiled and begged my pocket-knife from me,
Then carved my name upon the cypress tree.
12-10-90 (04-18-80 Lamia)

Bandit s Bull s Eye

I curse the brigands as they ride
Off with the peasants hog,
And a sack of corn from the peasants crib,
With a sword through the peasants dog.

The thieves curse me as I track them down,
Archers at my command,
Encircling them with their bow-strings taut,
Aimed at the outlaw band
Suddenly, I bring down my hand!
05-21-90

You Music

(for Anne)

There s music today, and the melody s you,
Progression of chords is new
But exquisitely right, and the rhythm is tight,
And the lyric s so magically true:
Written in laughter, written in pain
But it s you, and the echoes remain.
1989

The Defrauding of the Worms

The ashes of the years diffuse in dust,
Their motes exuding mauvish glow
That alters grey to black. But I ve no trust
In Time, that cut-purse thief, who robs us so.
For, graveward borne, my gathered decades shorn
From off my limbs, my soul but cuts adrift
And cheats the maggotry of Death. Forlorn
And cheated, Satan rues my flight! Christ s gift
Of sweet perpetuation foils those worms of Earth
Who rend my flesh when nothing live, lives there.
My human husk decays& to wait rebirth.
Ethereal, my soul s exultant, where
Abide infinities of angels& white
And efflorescent& beaming lucent light.
1989 (rev. 92)

Progress

Modernity has ravaged golden thrones,
The Kings are toppled, ornate crowns displaced,
That roll and ring upon the palace stones:
Decapitated, those heads the crowns once graced;
And severed, all the links of language with the past.
Dumb, unlettered beasts, we grunt and snort
Among the vine-choked, fluted pillars. No words last.
Antiquity s philosophies abort
Inside the wordless womb of Now. We swine
Have overthrown the ruined emperies,
Boar-tusk crude, we rove--barbaric and bovine.
The parchments all are shredded. Smashed, each frieze
Of carved Hellenic majesty. We root
Amongst the marble rubble where weeds shoot.
1989