#using form

      Replacing slate with bitumen,crumbling shiplap with new tongue-and-groove,       we sweat the same as those other men            who raised this crooked barn  and who, we’d like to think, would still approve.             Like elders speaking in low tonesto kids who ask about the recent dead,       the ancient headers creak hoarse groans.            In wind, the rafters strain   as thunder…

Look: formal verse can be china for tea, a golden goblet, a mug made of clay. Free verse is putting mouth to stream to drink. Yes, you could cup your hands… but do you think museums want to buy that to display your “memorable skill”, your “artistry”? ***** ‘Formal vs Free’ is published in the current ‘Blue Unicorn‘, in a section loaded, as often, with verse about verse. Photo: “Red-figured…

Form is a slippery seed to be grasped. Free verse is form with its bra hook unclasped. Blocked is me chewing my fanciest pens. Pun is a test of my spouse and my friends. Drunk is the poet who’s making a pass. Prize is a unicorn chased by an ass. Tome is Uranus-sized ego unbound. Deep is the grave of my darlings I’ve drowned. Rhyme is the hill where I’m willing to die. Meh is the mic hog who…

Washington Square, playground of NYU, and you are in the grass, your shoes and socks like sloughed snakeskin around you. Speed-chess players at concrete tables cuss and slap their clocks as cops with nothing nine-one-one to do roust dormant derelicts from greenhouse layers of coats and trash. Nearby, a Gingko tree, and under it a blonde in horn-rimmed glasses eating up The Stranger by Camus. You…

To Anyone who still may be attentive from Infinity, we bless you from our dot in space and thank you for our privileged place. Give us this day on which to feed a bit more gluten than we need, and when we’re adequately fed, help us to get and stay ahead and save for our retirement enough plus twenty-five per cent. May old age find us cheerful still, our life in order like our will, with neither…

We kissed. And then I told you (it was over dinner at some fancy restaurant) I loved you, but I couldn’t live like this, meeting from time to time; I needed more. Dinner at some fancy restaurant, and timid sex at your place; that was all, each meeting. From time to time, I needed more than you were ready for, so reticent and timid. Sex at your place – that was all. Each meeting’s end, I tried…

With things like tongs in the palm of his hand Tongue-depressors or langues-de-chat He tappets the rhythm of his one-man-band As he struts in the gutter with a tra-la-la. He twinkles his fingers and he flicks his wrist Hey-diddle-diddle and fiddle-de-dee And his two tame twiddlesticks jump and twist With a click-click-clackety, one-two-three For Nifty’s bones are made of wood And they click like…