Phony
I see a pillar cornering your house—
Is that a penis?
An extended middle finger?
Tell me your house rises from a swamp—
The pillar fends off slime,
Or you salvaged material from a fallen municipal.
Otherwise, I call it puffery—
Stucco over concrete over hammered steel.
Why not the square truth of milled lumber?
If you want art, then showcase something worthy—
Peel a tree.
Click here for my son Ben's view of real, which then inspired the naporhymo #8 poem . . .
after "Magpiety" by Czeslaw Milosz:
Mongoosery
Dead beast but not dead to some, steady work for ant troops
Charged with fur stripping, hide chewing,
Transforming the carcass to community.
A mongoose was robbing nests, we said: Mongoosery?
What is mongoosery? We can never befriend
A mongoose thief, a scooting belly across wet grass, a mouth
That snarls and hisses, gnashes metal bars,
And so we lure and trap and coldly shoot mongoosery.
Since however mongoosery always returns
Our ducks keep laying down treasures.
Who thinks to warn the ants: multiply richly,
We count on your rank instinct to forage.
One more, after "This Be the Verse" by Philip Larkin:
Brown Be the Dirt
It’s such a crutch, to blame the world
For things that didn’t happen, or did
And fucked you up like wars or drugs
Or Latin—veni vidi—SHIT!
But what if you could share the blame
By owning up to luck and spin.
You could restart and learn the game
Or cry and moan and drink more gin.
Society will let you off.
Esteem is culture’s new excuse.
If you’re entitled, please don’t scoff
When boredom sinks to self-abuse.
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