“Resist!” I wail
as left-brain soldiers
goose-step through my mind.
A single right-brain
freedom fighter
guards my entry door.
“Sergeant Triage,” I command,
“Slit no envelopes
not addressed by hand.”
Left-brain troops outrace
General Sinister,
lurching in his jeep.
A death platoon, their orders:
Quarter any soul you roust
on shadowed streets!
I stumble round a corner
in my mind,
see soldiers bending
over a broken child;
they raise blood-smeared faces,
fan out, move toward me.
The general pulls up in his jeep,
commands they heave the wasted
child at my feet.
I shift my weight and hold his gaze,
refuse his invitation
to look into the corpse’s face.
If I can keep these guys at bay til Pegasus
arrives with my right brain,
then I can mount and ride the sky....
Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows.
- Edmund Burke
DEAD END whoops a roadsign, squares
its yellow shoulders to my view; I yank
on the handbrake, angle wheels to the berm
the way I’d park an oxcart centuries ago.
I stroll inside a diner, slide across cracked vinyl,
elbow-prop my chin, watch the sun extract itself
from a rusty chain of clouds. The droop-eyed
waiter flares a lemon-tasting look when I say No
to coffee, raise my pluming mug from home.
Soon he brings me soft-boiled eggs in scalding shells,
smiles, leaves my breakfast koan: how to reach
the molten core without scorched fingers
or crunched teeth on shattered snow.
Sol’s now leapt a wall across the street,
dances on its top, thrusts a cutlass in my eye.
My other pupil hides behind my nose, tries
to focus on a poem scratched to life last night.
I almost tossed this poem in the fireplace
that stared at me, ashen jaws agape, as if I were
a dentist sent to stuff it full of failed poems,
forbid it swallow til I torched its molars clean.
By the time my meal’s done I realize
this poem’s going nowhere, can’t be prodded
from the page. When I get back I’ll have to
crumple up its egg-stained lines, fire its twisted toes
inside the fireplace, watch it prance for fifteen seconds,
all it rates of Warhol fame.
Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.
- Robert Frost
My cat went berserk at dawn, balanced on a ladder,
wildly swatted the doorbell clapper like he’d trapped a bat.
Now I’m clapped inside my sports car, lolly-gagging down
a mountain road I’d hoped would zoom my spirit free.
Frustration yanks me out of the parade of pick-ups,
wagons, mini-vans, halts me on the shoulder, thumbs
tobacco in my briar pipe, bends a match’s flame.
I rejoin the caravan, nicotine shooting
through my veins, breathe deep, smile,
steer one-handed, invent stories for each life
that dawdles with me down the road.
On semester break, I’ve fled a stack of bluebooks
to see if muses find a roost where left-brained
hurricanes have whipped the branches bare.
I’m not sure which half of my gasping brain
needs nurture, rolfing, rest, and change.
Should I turn back to the office, slump behind
its oblong eye, let my fingers roam the keys,
hope they’ll stroke some lines of verse?
Or should I pull off at the next café, guzzle
coffee, grab a pen, let it romp across a page?
Mad cat whispers, When in doubt, do both!