HOW SOME POEMS GET WRITTEN

 

While she's not my muse and I

Am not her poet there's a rush order

For six-hundred foot-pounds of poetry

By Monday so she, professional to her

Blunt fingertips, inspires me 

As best she can and refuses my offer

To buy her afterwards. some coffee.

PASSENGERS

 

No one asks a yotaka for a poem

Or expects her to draw pictures;

If she walks by a screen painted gibbons

Do not hand her letters. No afterworld

Claims yotakas. Their ghosts rise at dawn

For long days riding the ferry 

Back and forth across the Sumida River.

EXTRACT FROM "OLD DOC SOBEK'S POCKET COMPENDIUM OF THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW"

 

The left hand of the healing goddess Abiala

Holds a revolver. Use no extra words praying to her;

If she answers your prayers it is customary

To make her a small gift. A few chocolates

Will be sufficient. Never pray to her twice

On the same day. Do not give her bullets.

UNAMUSED

 

There is no limit to the ingenuity

Of those who hate God. strapping Him

To every bit of space and every morsel

Of time and requiring Him to know

Everything. Imagine being able to see

Utagawa Kuniyoshi's Cat Dressed 

As A Woman Tapping An Octopus 

On The Head and not laughing

Since, before Kuniyoshi was born,

You knew he'd make this picture.

NEW JOB

 

Old man in a hard season

Learns italic hand

Advertises for muse. Thinks

More dignity for starving poet

Than hungry old man.

STORAGE SPACE

 

In the place where his heart once was, the wizard
Keeps old spells, most of them useless and some
Extremely dangerous; he’s puzzled to find
He cannot bear to part with them. He has dreams
In which his teacher’s ghost questions his decision
To put his heart in an unbreakable egg under a silver bird
Nesting on an unscalable tree seven leagues
Past the end of the world. “Such plans,” the ghost says, 
“Never work. Trust me, indignant time will bring the girl
Who climbs the unscalable tree just as the silver bird decides
To return to life and the unhatchable egg 
Hatches. Man, you’ll look like a fool!”  On waking
The wizard checks his conscience— first rousing it
With a hard kick — to see if he’s sorry now 

That he removed his heart to make storage space 

Or that he killed his teacher and is pleased to find

He isn’t. Not a bit.

SELF-KNOWLEDGE

 

Old man always knew he could

Turn into a coyote. Never saw

Much point in it.