100 Short Poems
Repurposing
America is always ready to reimagine and reuse the glories of its past.
Hence the Thriller Villa once owned and lived in by Michael Jackson
now houses the inimitable Liberace Museum Collection that
displays his bejeweled pianos and memorable stage costumes.
So its visitors, all agog, can luxuriate in reflected American greatness.
January 6th, 2021, Washington, D.C.
Our choices led us there.
Vigilantes with zip ties in body armor
Conspiracy crazies with ad hoc weapons.
People cocooned in anger and grievance.
We chose to believe the lies spun for us.
Before and after
Before: Elderly Irina Fyodorovna on a drab armchair
watching TV in her apartment in Slovyansk, Ukraine
where profligate Russian artillery suddenly finds her.
After: the TV upside down, blood pooling on the floor
a relative roots in debris for a photo to put on her grave.
Bodies at Buna Beach
(Photograph at Papua new Guinea,1943)
Three lie splayed on the wet sand
just above the calm retreating surf,
the nearest one half burrowed in.
All are foreground to a half-sunk boat,
its prow tilting up toward the sky.
Coronation
In a white satin gown embroidered with gold and silver thread
the princess rode in the Coach of State drawn by eight gray geldings.
Wearing a gold crown and coronation ring, she took an oath.
The abbey audience cheered: "God save the Queen!"
Outside, eight calm grey geldings each ate an apple.
Fire Eater
Bosnia. Somalia. Chechnya. Syria. Yemen.
For years I went where most reporters wouldn't.
But eventually I married, settled, began an expat family.
Then Russians invaded and shot me dead in the street
my splayed limbs calling for others to find and report on.
February 2022
Children's coats hang on pegs
beyond a shattered front wall.
With one exception,
no one wanted
this senseless war.
I was a teenage Pharaoh
Enthroned at nine, I had ten good years
to return things to ma'at and luxuriate in
the wealth of Egypt, the tribute of nations.
When death arrived - too early and all unexpected,
they clothed me in gold, and walled my body up.
Discernment
is seeing clearly, at last,
that life is as checkered
as local mail delivery
in an election year
during a global pandemic.
Came the Dawn
Perhaps it is the preferences of a 24/7 culture,
or the vagaries of taste in the 21st century
that made this phrase now seem so passé
- an erstwhile subtitle from the silent movies,
and, like them, now a culture fossil.
The “Most Christian King”
was a title that Catholic popes traditionally conferred on
the kings of France. Some worked hard to prove it.
Francis I roasted heretics like spitted game before Notre Dame
with France's nobles and high ecclesiastics all assembled there
to affirm their stalwart allegiance to Christianity's "Prince of Peace".
Marcus Aurelius
After the sudden battle
on the verge of dark woods
the bodies of the fallen
speak to me without speaking,
illuminating my thinking.