Elegy For A Toy Poet (With A Single
Lousy Rhyme At The End)

He wanted to be better than every other poet
who ever walked on the face of the planet,
every poet who gazed at the moon,

every poet who went blind,
every poet who bled into his own lungs,
every poet who drank sea water

until his carcass washed ashore.
He wanted to be better than every other poet
who died on a mound of mud below a bridge,

who died of a heart attack in a taxicab,
better than every poet ever killed by clever death.
He wanted to die young

yet still be the dean of poets.
But none of this will ever come to pass.
Because,you see,he was just my stinky gas.

Emily Vacations In Hull, Massachusetts

My futile attempt at re-creating Emily’s
“I Started Early Took My Dog”

This is Emily on the stone beaches of Hull,
each wave gnashes its tentacled tooth
against her delicate ankles.

Her dog stays on the wooden steps,
licks its nose and barks at the Atlantic,
its fur wet from the wind.

The Atlantic and her pack of wolves,
retreat, advance, retreat,
the rocks roll over on their side

while Emily walks back to her dog.
They climb the steps together,
these chunks of sky carved from Paul Revere.

The bay struggles from the sea
and the North Church long ago had lost its God.
A seashell path carries Emily’s sound in silence.

Her dog catches up to her,
having stopped to sniff
the distant past.

The Rape Of Sylvia Plath

Sitting in a poetry class being conducted by,
you guessed it, Emily Dickinson,
a puzzled look spreads across

Sylvia Plath’s face, the look spreads
to her clothes, her shoes, the very chair
that confines her, the look spreads

to the Harvard buildings, the adjacent grounds,
grass becomes pale, trees topple,
squirrels stand at attention and atonement.

When Emily completes her lecture
everything comes back to normal,
everything returns to its rightful place,

it’s as if nothing has been said,
it’s as if nothing has happened at all.
But, that look never leaves Sylvia’s face.

Emily “The Astronaut” Dickinson

Emily’s in the Shuttle maneuvering
the arm to release a spy satellite
for the military-industrial complex

which rules the country
contrary to popular belief.
Apparently nobody listened to that

old bald-headed bastard Eisenhower,
and still today no one
wants to hear the truth,

face the facts, come to grips with it.
So you say, “Hey, Emily’s just doing her job!”
The perpetration of this indignation

doesn’t bother you because you’ve been brainwashed---
but look at the bright side of it,
your brain is nice and clean

when Emily puts the Shuttle arm away.
Her butt and breasts are just as sexy weightless
as when they’re being dragged down by gravity.

The Mechanics Of Emily Dickinson

Emily was working on my car,
she had grease & oil all over her hands,
her overalls were zipped down

just enough to reveal her bosom.
She told me the part would cost
an arm and a leg,

the labor charges, at least, another leg.
I said, “OK, go ahead,
fix the damn car,

I’ve got to get to work,
I’ve got to be able to write the poetry,
I’ve got to put food on the table!”

She had the car done that afternoon.
Soon, I, the cripple, was writing the best
automotive poems ever written.

The Americanization Of Emily

Emily Dickinson on safari in Kenya,
shoots a lion, guts it, skins it,
cooks the meat on a stick campfire,

wears a bonnet made from the lion’s head,
growls and scares away the natives
who carry boxes of her bloomers

across the grasslands, the ravines,
to and away from watering holes.
Her family always knew she had it in her,

that killer instinct, viciousness, bravado,
brass knuckles, Derringer hidden in her crotch,
blood-thirsty to the bitter end,

kick you in the balls kind of Amherst girl.
But you don’t see that when you see her face
peering out the window from her upstairs room.

Honest Old Abe

I thought I saw Honest Old Abe
wandering the streets of Washington D.C.,
“The slaves don’t appear to be free,

they look worst off then they did back when.
Looks like the Confederacy won the war,
Johnny Reb, Robert E. Lee galore.”

He found his own memorial,
he talked to Thomas Jefferson,
the Washington Monument was deaf and dumb.

He listened to the Congressmen talk,
he listened to the Senators rave,
he thought, “These cowards are so brave!”

I thought I saw Honest Old Abe
wandering the streets of Washington D.C. already lame.
He pulled off his stove-top hat in shame,

heart-broken, sick to his stomach, embarrassed.
He tried not to think of the current Administration.
What, oh dear God, what has become of my nation?


Part Two:

When Lilacs Last In The Dooryard Bloomed

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed,
he walked up to the present President and said,
“What the hell is going on in your head?”

Honest Old Abe never minced his words
and he always came right to the point,
“Today’s politicians only grunt and oink,

they think they can correct the world’s wrongs
and ignore the ills of the nation
relying on a future fix from re-incarnation

and they’re not even Hindus!”
Honest Old Abe toured the capital,
listening to the crap and bull.

He decided the country wasn’t worth the bother,
so he kept on walking out of town,
leaving the silly nation in the hands of the White House clown.

Why Are Our Soldiers Dying In Iraq? (Uttered in
a Whinny Voice)

Why are our soldiers dying in Iraq?
Because Usay and Qusay are on the loose. We kill them.
But our soldiers continue dying in Iraq.

Why are our soldiers dying in Iraq?
Because al-Zarqawi is on the loose. We kill him.
But our soldiers continue dying in Iraq.

Why are our soldiers dying in Iraq?
Because Saddam’s instigating violence. We hang him.
But our soldiers continue dying in Iraq.

Why are our soldiers dying in Iraq?
Because Iran’s supplying weapons. So we invade Iran.
Why are our soldiers dying in Iran?

Dammit, Won’t You Be My Valentine!

I went to Wal-Mart to buy you flowers,
but everything they had was Made in China,
redneck candles made in Both Carolina,

vases made by non-English speaking I-talians
or Slavs, icicle-hearts made by Canadians.
Heart-shaped kangaroo sweaters made by Australians.

I was going to buy you a stuffed bear
but it turned out to be Republican real,
a rose-holding smiling, clubbed to death baby seal,

a card that yelled I Love You
Forever And Forever And Forever
which the author apparently thought was clever.

I decided to buy you a necklace,
it had to be gold since you’re allergic to silver,
a bracelet, maybe, but the drugstore didn't deliver.

Then I went to the flower shop, when lo and behold,
an Indian clerk was behind the counter,
I said, “Don’t you work for Dell as a tech supporter?”

I told him I wanted a dozen roses
and he handed me a dozen dahlias.
I had to point out the roses’ genitalias.

So I got you these damn roses
for Valentine’s Day, my darling, mi amor, my dear,
no necklace, no bracelet, no candy, love’s a pain in the rear!

The Brown Recluse

She had more talent in her little finger
than the school of quietude, post-avant and flarf
who only teach school children how to barf.

She visited more lands than Magellan and Marco Polo
by sitting in her bedroom looking out the window
to witness Ahab ride the mighty minnow.

She wrote new poems everyday
each with a distinction
unlike Ashbery’s monotonous extinction.

Her punctuation was different
with hyphens so dramatic
and lyrics epigrammatic.

She hid all her poems in a chest of drawers,
hid others in the attic and some in her mind---
those are the ones that we will never find.

A Poem By Eduardo C. Corral

Josefa Segovia was tried,convicted & hanged
on July 5, 1851 in Downieville,California for
killing an Anglo miner,a man who the day before
had assaulted her.

Are the knees & elbows
the first knots
the dead untie?

read the rest of it here

Henry’s Elegy For Anna Nicole Smith

The scavengers have killed her,
the buzzards, bloodsuckers, Draculas,
the hangers on, the greedy

who feed on the carcass of the living,
the slimy media types, the cable networks want
fresh blood every day, pounce on their latest victim,

parade them out to the nation,
screaming, see, see their weaknesses,
their shortcomings, their humanness.

But the critics never turn the camera
toward themselves, they never look in the mirror
to see their own putrid hearts,

they never smell their own foul scent.
Whether you’re a fallen astronaut,
a runaway bride, or Ann Nicole Smith,

the buzzards tear at your flesh
even while you try to crawl away.
There's nothing left for the hyenas.

Henry’s Roundabout Elegy For Cesar Vallejo

Shelley threw up water,
Keats coughed up blood,
Sylvia smelled of gas for months.

Hart Crane went swimming forever,
Weldon Kees paralleled parked on the Golden Gate Bridge,
Lowell never made it to his final destination,

Mandelstam lies frozen in Siberia,
Mayakovsky pulled trousers from the clouds,
Pasternak hung a bow-tie around his own neck,

Dario declared himself poetic dictator of Nicaragua,
Neruda ate his Isla Negra with chili
and Vallejo would have gladly eaten garabage.

Lalo Delgado And The Invisible Man

The age demanded
more than a Chicano could give it,
being the invisible man,

a stranger in his own strangeness.
Bogart was on the other side
and imagined Aztec ancestors

were like a mist of algodon---
the very cotton that
Henry’s family picked

row upon row upon row.
Henry’s mother
singing every rhyme in free verse.

The pianola replaces the shineola.
Henry’s Aunt Tola
lived in worn-out Zorn

just before the creek turned Greek.
There was no trace of Samothrace.
If there was, indeed,

an Aztec princess,
it slips Henry’s mind
and Lalo’s vision.

Flintstones

I ring the doorbell at the stone’s front door,
a caveman answers with a club.
He’s wearing furry underwear,

a single strap of fur around his neck
holds up the gosh-darned thing.
I tell him I must have the wrong address,

he grunts and slams the stone door shut.
It falls off its gravel hinges,
reveals the old lady inside,

she’s not a looker, the ugly children
huddle next to her, he grunts again
as I hurry down the street of rubble.

Purported to be ron silliman
posting the hard copy of his latest blog entry

this according to Mark Woods

The Legacy Of George W. Bush

The Jacket

He folded his jacket over the ship’s railing
with impeccable manners
and jumped into the warm sea

where an already bloated Shelley
was bobbing up and down
with every swell.

Keats’ bloody lungs
were attracting sharks,
Byron was surfing half a mile away.

The bridge from the mainland
to the barrier island
shone in the noonday sun

and as Crane sank beneath the waves
his jacket continued on its maiden voyage
scrutinized by the haberdasher William Logan.

Hallar Y Perder


There comes a time when you
have to face the facts
that you’re an ex-Mexican.

The prodigal son was serious, at first,
then mischievous, and then
he wanted to create beauty,

but, now he wants just the facts.
He only settles for reality
and the reality is that

he’s an ex-Mexican.
There’s no going back.
These new arrivals are just that,

they can not be a part of him.
They bring the same confusion
he had to outgrow, overcome, cast off,

unchain himself from.
He doesn’t know what lies ahead,
but he’s an ex-Mexican now.