New Songs, Post-Foetry

[Foetry1]

On The Cover Of The APR

Well I'm an MFA poet
I've got a prize, dontcha know it
And I'm loved everywhere I go
I write about beauty
And I write about truth
And I put on a pretty good show

I started up a press
And my poetry's the best,
But I don't think I'll go far
Oh, I keep gettin richer
But I want my picture
On the cover of the APR
APR!
Gonna see my picture on the cover
APR!
Gonna buy 5 copies for my mother
APR!
Get my smartass face on the cover of the APR!

I got poets I'm schoolin'
And I've written a blurb or two
And I'm going to judge a contest
If you're my friend, I might pick you!
Whooohooo!

My press makes money
And you know what's funny?
No one thinks that poets get rich!
But I sent out a letter
And I'm making poets better
Who agree to be my contest bitch!

I got a prize and a press
But I got in a mess
When Foetry shot my star--
But I'll keep gettin richer
And one day I'll get my picture
On the cover of the APR!
APR!
Jorie Graham was on the cover!
APR!
Hey, I'm a sexy little mother!
APR!
See my big fat face on the cover of the APR!






submitted anonymously

[Bugzita]

Rather amusing.

[Foetry1]

How Many Times Did I Look Into My Soul And Say No?

A dozen times.  And, honestly, it wasn't easy
to look there, the soul wasn't the half of it, there was
the world and my physical self too, and my
body wasn't the heroic variety,
you can't have a bad case
of acne and write like Shelley, or maybe
you can, maybe that's the point,
but I shouldn't be allowed to make my body the excuse,
I should have gone to church
and helped people and been good
but I didn't do that.  OK it wasn't
twelve times it was more like ten thousand times
but no one thinks they can save
the people they read of in a newspaper
who die and it's hard to just help yourself
but what am I talking to you for, you don't
care, in fact, it's worse, you're dead to me,
because I'm dead.  This is one of those
poems they teach in school, a good poem,
and you can't do anything to help
the poets of good poems, they are always dead
and I'm sure this poem's good,
I tried to make that clear from the title,
So I will not say another word.
What do you think this is, anyway?




submitted anonymously

[Foetry1]

I Try And Describe Myself

All these poets seem indifferent and cold,
Boring! Black and white!
They put their love in monuments
Of stone, frozen, it seems, long ago
By outer space without limit; they strive
To put words together, like spark and dark.
If perfection is darkness, they go that way.
For them, nothing has to be alive.
They spurn the hot-blooded day;
Day will melt their monuments.
They take whatever their readers know
And present it as if it were their wisdom,
Whispering and dropping slow
Into deception and valley,
A perception of soft, sweet glow,
Passion intellectualized!

I brought flowers once to Karla Karrar,
A girl I barely knew, invaded her
Backyard after wandering the hills
For flowers that were almost weeds;
Among weeds, I found strange flowers.
Those were thoughtless thrills;
I was young and could discount them;
I was no poet, then.
But that is one sweet memory.
Now I hope you'll be able to tolerate me;
I am the book jackets you see, the blurbs and the vanity,

I am the poet now.
I am going to give you love, and by God I am going to give you flowers.
Will you watch as they are depicted as that
For you, right here, in color, for the next two and three quarter hours?





submitted anonymously

[Foetry1]

I Flew Over

I flew over the round world, round-eyed,
Spying what the raven who first rode westward spied:
Three ravens, who sat, like the ballad, in a tree.
The ballad did not mean a thing to me.
But I sang it because my voice was smooth
And of all things done with the mouth I loved,
I loved to sing, and make vowels and consonants move,
That I might please, simple as daylight sighted
When black in the forest is first removed
As day inside the wood is first ignited
By a Greek, burrowing sun,
The same one, Mediterranean-whited,
Who blues the wave, now in this mossy wood,
Spilling sun-change on shadow, day-improved,
As each shadow plays upon the day,
Turning around to look at itself, day's shadow,
Wanting to inhabit music, luxury, and play
In spots between trees, dying into harmony
As song finds a small misunderstanding pleases.

I find the raven inside every shadow--
The world does not allow absence.
The philosophy was "Everything exsts."
Do you hear my song as it invades the day?
As I watch the stretched earth all day changing,
Hated not for blindness but being near-sighted,
Officials ask for my fur, my impressionism;
Hollow inside, my answer is low and murmuring:
'There is only you, there is no impressionism."
The light takes time, as time, always away, takes.
The prose is the photograph the sly poem takes,
The prose who lived years ago somewhere else;
The prose is someone else's.  It surrounds my house.
The sun inhabits the fire that inhabits the sun.
The many beautiful prevent you from loving one.





submitted anonymously

[Foetry1]

The Lady Who Was Yours


Bored with the universe of stars
She finds towering examples of crossword puzzle solutions
To her liking.  She loves poetry that has no truth
But hints at truth that might arrive
Long after she has gone to bed.

And when she retires to her toilet at sunset,
Which comes these days at quarter after five,
She sometimes thinks of the power
Hushed in the blanket of her memories.
Now, in the dead quiet of her quiet estate,
Where even ants do not enter,
She thinks on lines she read today:
”I am God
And I have put together a man
Who can sneeze particles
With the force of a jet engine.”

Lines like these amuse her
And the most pleasant thing she knows is to be amused.



submitted anonymously

[Foetry1]

Stump Hall

The policy of the student handbook
stumped both student and administrator alike.  
Too many cooks spoiled the broth!  
Education’s broth, the student’s soup of learning,
oh little chunks of pedagogy, spilt on the steps of Stump Hall!  

Too many students were stupid, were stumped,
were left stammering, and studies were stuck in a loop.

Who was to blame?  
We have to blame the handbook.  

The college president sent the provost
who sent the dean who sent the faculty
who sent the egg who sent the hen to find out why
students were stumped by the handbook.  
Was the handbook stupid?  Or was it the student?  
The administration knew students were stumped, but how?  
How was the administration informed?  
Was documentation sent over to the proper official?  
Were the documents properly stamped?  
Who stamped the documents documenting the stumped students?  
Were the forms stamped firmly?  
Who was informed about the forms when the students were first stumped?  
Was the handbook printed with love or logic?  
This is what the president wanted to know,
stamping in rage before the trembling provost,
dean, bishop, parking official, senator, governor, Labrador,
student senator and student president—the one who was stumped
and stammered in front of handbook
and students holding stamped documents
at the registrar’s in Stump Hall.  
The shuttle wasn’t running and the transcript printer
was printing to beat the band.  
Where was the official stamp?  
The student president wanted to make an official complaint.  
The handbook said no grievance could be made
without a form, sealed, stamped, signed, and soaked.  
The stumping began, then.  
Every stamp brought a new stumping,
and then the stammering started,
a stammering that stuck to each lonely stamp.





submitted anonymously

[Foetry1]

Whale Island

As I approach Whale Island
I notice there are no whales
And no islands.  There is
Nothing but sentimentality
Of story in someone else’s words.
“You go to Whale Island,”
The elders told me,
With knowing wink and nod,
The grin we see which says
All one needs to know
Of the real life and the real God.

So here I am approaching
Whale Island, that those who are gone
Never got around to seeing
Because they were saying
Something else for a long time,
The usual things one says on the sod
In a coat of flesh, with no understanding of God.

Now Whale Island, in all its beauty,
Looms in front of me.
I laugh because Anita Gota
Shared a laugh with me
When I used the word
“Looms” in a journalism project.
Every time we saw “looms” in a newspaper
We laughed.
Here it is.  Whale Island.
Now isn't this odd?
I cannot tell, either,
Why there is laughter and fever
And unrequited love forever
For all who toil or trip on sod,
Howling in their suit of flesh
For what was once so beautiful and fresh
Before Whale Island was mentioned, or God.




submitted anonymously