SUITE 615

In Marlowe's office
three of the filing cabinets
are empty.
When I become fictional
I mean to use them
to store old moons 
and memories
and donuts.
Marlowe
Will not mind.

FOR AESRED

The nun and the monk

Argued they'd had no choice;

The old well insisted they replay

The centuries-old story.

This excuse was accepted

Their son became

The god of certain fish

(Freshwater trout, mostly.)

His twin sister grew up

The third-most beautiful woman

Of her generation and died young.

ONEOF THE REASONS

When I taught Constitutional Law a djinn

Audited the course, sitting towards the back

When he grew bored he'd animate 

Small men made of fire and send them 

Scurrying around his chair. Sometimes 

They'd wander down the aisle

And strut behind me, imitating my gestures.

I blame this, partly, for the university's 

Refusal to grant me tenure or to now admit

I ever worked there

THE PROPHET - R

To get the atmosphere right, John Glassco,
Distinguished Canadian poet and pornographer,
Travelled from 1966 to 1935 to write his memoirs.
He took a room a few blocks away
From  the hospital where his younger self
Was convinced he was dying. He visited 

 One afternoon and made terrible prophecies:
"You will be mayor of a small town in East Quebec;
You will win the Governor General's Award for poetry."
"Tell me," young John gasped, "tell me that I will still
Write highly stylized fetish poems and novels!"
"You will; they will be published under many pseudonyms."
"It's all right then; I suppose I will have to live."

QUAERERE

Fearing I was missing, God

Took out an ad for my return

Or reliable word of my whereabouts 

In the Wolfenbuttel Aviso

For December 15, 1632. 

The Thirty Years War was then

An adolescent so God

Wasn't surprised that no one

Had time to tell him

Where I might be found.

Not giving up, He then

Engaged Eugene Francois Vidocq

Who searched Paris from April 1830 

Through July 1831. Vidocq concluded 

I was hiding among the unborn.

Since 1927 Schrodinger's cat

Has, from his box, acted as God's agent

Buying and selling, saving and damning.

He may some day tell God where I am.

Then again, he may not.

MELITAEA TRIVIA

In 1934 a Persian butterfly flew 

Into a convoluted sentence

Otherwise about a canal

And the tar-stained ghosts

Of ancient sailors; someday

They'll fly off. The sailors 

Will follow, taking the canal,

Leaving an and and an if

And three puzzled adjectives.

SHAH RUKH

Every dawn a large angel, his head bent 

To avoid scraping the ceiling, brings Shah Rukh

Six undeniable truths. At dusk a smaller angel

Wraps the truths in black wool and a demon,

Smaller still, carries the truths away.

Once the moon fully rises three old men

Come sit by his bed, whispering lies

So that the Shah can fall asleep at last.