Melancholy Inventory

Today I did something I’ve been putting off for weeks.  I wrote the third of my opera libretti (librettos?  whatever), the one about Edith Sitwell.  Here’s a little excerpt, in the style of Facade:
Melancholy Inventory
The gilded bee
The satin sea
The black sun rising over me
The honeycomb
The marksman’s tomb
The exit from the morning’s womb
The sheep-like crowd
The laugh [...]

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Tie the knot tighter

This poem is part of my response to Kathryn Joyce’s chilling book Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement.  I’m not sure about the semi-rhyme structure – I may rewrite it into fully rhyming stanzas.
Tie the knot tighter
With love, humility, trepidation
Innocent-hearted they met at the altar
To take on that weight, that heavy expectation:
man and wife, a [...]

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Soldier

Only a small thing, hardly worth mourning
Your unnoticed fallenness outside my door,
To the world you are nothing, worth less than nothing,
Just one thing, soon replaced by one more.
But to me it is momentously foolish.
A waste and a reason to wonder why.
And I think, who has taken this power to decide
When so minor a thing as [...]

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Gospel song

So I DID write a poem today.  It’s really a song – you have to imagine a fake gospel song when you’re reading it.  Here it is:
I prayed that God would lift me up
To that great suburb in the sky
Where I could drive a great big car,
And lay on a soft couch, eating fries.
I prayed [...]

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Nothing to do Saturday: Return of the poem

So with one thing or another I haven’t been writing much lately.  Unfortunately, due to my vow to be guarded about my personal life, I can’t give you many details, or else you would understand.  Though I have no new poems to post, let me post one from about six months ago.
I seem to fall [...]

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No more David Duchovny dreams…

…Though I did see “Californication” for rent at the video store the other day.  Coincidence?  Maybe…
My alveolar ridge is fully healed, but my sister was in town today so I haven’t done any work so far.  In a minute!  In a minute!
In the meantime, here’s a poem:
Revenant
The ghost has returned, the one I renounced,
the pale, [...]

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Untitled 1

Here’s a new rhyming poem, inspired by a singularly uninspiring Sunday afternoon I spent in the Junction a few weeks ago.  It’s gone through numerous versions.
I was restless.  What I craved I couldn’t declare,
So I sought it in the endless city sprawl,
But everything was closed and no one was there,
And from the black sky fat [...]

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Cautionary Tales

Cautionary Tales
An egotist on a bicycle
Falls, hard, and breaks his nose.
Goes to show – wait, where does pride go?
Insecurities topple a market,
Lifetimes of debt in an instant wash away.
Illustrating – wait, what were they taking?
A dictator, already struck blind and deaf,
Falls dumb from his balcony during a speech.
You understand – wait, by whose will and [...]

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Charm

In an effort to cheer myself up, I give you a poem I wrote a while ago. For some reason Ben refused to use it as Parkdale Revolutionary Orchestra lyrics. I can’t think why. I like it.
Charm
A clover, a pot, a windowpane,
a melody – you’re in love again,
a magic book in a [...]

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