Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
All day, either at the office or at home, busy about business till late at night, I having lately followed my business much, I find great pleasure in it, and a growing content.
a rat out at night
I eat a wing
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 13 March 1661/62.
open the knives
of my heart to rust
blooming like a sunset
the earth’s stillborn twin
glows with purloined light
dimming the stars
and the midnight creek
has one or two things to say
it shimmers as it should
a freight train
labors up the valley
wailing at every crossroads
I feel a howl
uncurling like a leaf
from its shrink-wrapped fist
almost full will do
for an almost fool
to raise his coyote muzzle
Fortune can be a fickle lover,
can be a beggar standing outside
the gate in blood-stained rags,
waiting to turn the tables on you.
It can be a miser who keeps an eye,
two feet, two hands on his hoard
of coins because he thinks the world
is only out to impoverish him. The sun
shines on his back and on the bustling
city, but he won't be allowed to buy a stick
of cotton candy on the beach or a golden
bullet for the gun in his secret pocket.
Fortune this week is the despot shuffled
off a plane and into a cell, there to await
trial; while in the hallway, his wife
pleads for mercy. Fortune pulls a sword
out of a gleaming cloud as if to smite
the mountains and part the sea and all
else in its path. Every blade has two edges,
every sky a moon and sun. Fortune slaps
one cheek then asks you to turn the other—
a game it never seems to tire of. Fortune says
this is one way to rid yourself of illusion,
and prepare for the breakthrough just ahead.
putting my phone away
the plushness of the moss
at its greenest now
at the end of a hard winter
a butterfly dances past
like a lost carnival float
the naked trees sway
gray and weather-eaten
i find a habitable hush
in the shade of a pine
though from time to time
a moan interjects
the sound of friction
with a too-close neighbor
a wild lettuce seed drifts
on a pompon of down
up over the mountain
and out across the valley
where every raw patch
of plowed or scoured earth
calls to the migrant killdeer
as an unclaimed shore
The trains of Norfolk Southern rumble
past the new cafe. It's the same line
that carried vinyl chloride in 2023,
when something overheated and 38 cars
derailed on the edge of East Palestine,
Ohio. Think of the rain that must have
hissed and crackled in the aftermath.
Of dark plumes rising into the earth's
free troposphere, as families packed
their children and pets into cars
and drove away. A couple of years after
cleanup, some people have returned
but some have stayed away. I don't
blame them. How does anyone know
the earth has no more toxins,
if air and water particles are
no longer sheathed in emissions?
When even one coupler misaligns
and a railcar wheel slips the track,
your mind runs away with it— You won't
even have time to blow kisses or wave
goodbye, in the brief moment of cartoon
suspension after you're run off a cliff.
At the office from morning till night putting of papers in order, that so I may have my office in an orderly condition. I took much pains in sorting and folding of papers. Dined at home, and there came Mrs. Goldsborough about her old business, but I did give her a short answer and sent away.
This morning we had news from Mr. Coventry, that Sir G. Downing (like a perfidious rogue, though the action is good and of service to the King, yet he cannot with any good conscience do it) hath taken Okey, Corbet, and Barkestead at Delfe, in Holland, and sent them home in the Blackmore.
Sir W. Pen, talking to me this afternoon of what a strange thing it is for Downing to do this, he told me of a speech he made to the Lords States of Holland, telling them to their faces that he observed that he was not received with the respect and observance now, that he was when he came from the traitor and rebell Cromwell: by whom, I am sure, he hath got all he hath in the world, — and they know it too.
in order that I may
have order I sort
and fold old news
like a king with a black pen
for a speech
made by the world
Erasure haiku derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 12 March 1661/62.
When I get high I go low
Tell every bad joke that I know
Submitting to gravity
I succumb to depravity
But at least I’m not doing blow
*
For some reason, this bit of nonsense popped into my head the other morning, and not knowing what else to do with it, I thought I’d inflict it on share it with Via Negativa readers.
"...you are not as heavy as the cup of earth,
not placid as is the cup of water, not
turbulent as is the cup of air..."
~ on the Four of Cups, Rider Tarot
In the card, the man seated crisscross
under a tree wears a mildly petulant
expression. A hand emerges out of a cloud,
offering a draught from a golden chalice.
In the foreground, three other cups in a row
might mean he's already drained them. Did he
not like the flavor in any? Does he no longer
care for the offer of another chance? Under
its tunic waistcoat, the tired heart looks
for the hinge in every conflict, the signs
saying it's time to push out the long skewers
that have turned it into nothing but a plump
pincushion. Just look outside: someone has raised
an arbor, started to deck it with flowers and fruit.
At the office all the morning, and all the afternoon rummaging of papers in my chamber, and tearing some and sorting others till late at night, and so to bed, my wife being not well all this day. This afternoon Mrs. Turner and The. came to see me, her mother not having been abroad many a day before, but now is pretty well again and has made me one of the first visits.
rummaging and tearing
sorting the night
into moth or wisp
a mad first visit
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 11 March 1661/62.
The mascot of my school is a lion; a monarch,
to be exact. Meaning king, the creature who sits
atop the food chain in the wild. Except its statue
on the quad has no cojones; just a rough undersurface
of concrete. Is this departure from anatomical
correctness intentional? A conservatism made
sure the mermaid mascots around this port
city are flat: flat-hipped, flat-chested, no tit-
illation of boobs beneath painted bandeaus.
It's not clear when balls was first used
to mean both the possession and lack of bravery
or nerve. Decades ago, my ex pushed my father
against the wall and swore lukdit mo to his face,
meaning dickhead. We were living with my parents
and he was angry at not being the man of the house.
I didn't have the nerve to speak up against this
injustice. Perhaps I hadn't grown my own balls yet.
But really, I had not yet come to understand
how strength, like in the Rider tarot, can be
a woman subduing the fearsome beast so it lets her
pat its head and scratch its chin, while the symbol
for infinity whirls gently above their heads.