All writing

Underneath my window
stands a birch, all white.
Shyly clad in powder,
silvery delight.

Off the fluffy branches,
like a snowy trim,
flowering white offshoots,
velvety, each limb.

Sleepily, it stands there,
covered up in snow
as the snowflakes kindle
in a golden glow

And the dawn, so lazy,
pulling up the line
covering the  branches,
newly minted shine

***********************************      *****************
Белая берёза
Под моим окном
Принакрылась снегом,
Точно серебром.

На пушистых ветках
Снежною каймой
Распустились кисти
Белой бахромой.

И стоит берёза
В сонной тишине,
И горят снежинки
В золотом огне.

А заря, лениво
Обходя кругом,
Обсыпает ветки
Новым серебром.

Author notes: Yesenin was Isadora Duncan's lover

painting Mt. Fuji
can so often be kludgy
picture with 2g

Roach Motel posts No Vacancies sign

Ambivalence was trying to decide
if choosing half a dozen of the other,
an option that's so easy to deride
you wonder why a man should even bother
to favor it above the six of one,
where, incidentally, this all began.
Contorted, indeed wracked with indecision,
proceeded, although under the provision
that there will be no on the other hand,
and thus assured, grew confident and strident,
pretending its dilemma is a trident:
perhaps it, after all, had found its voice.
But then again, it had no other choice.

Why seven days, I often wonder.
Why not eleven or not ten.
Was it a bungle or a blunder,
and did he stop and start again?
His ways mysterious and spooky,
he surely wasn't playing hooky,
until the sabbath, at the least,
and having seeded plant and beast
had every reason to continue,
but inexplicably, he stopped,
as though the work could not be topped,
like he was done with bone and sinew,
the whole thing plainly getting old.
Got over it, just like a cold.

timid or confident,
alien, resident,
idiot, genius
steeped in convenience,
richer or poorer,
corrupted or purer,
peasant or courtier,
pacifist, warrior,
poet or sage,
never opened a page,
in tents or in palaces...

we cling to our fallacies

To hear the lamentations of our women
(here "our" is not possessive in the least,
and honestly, possession of a demon
is probably a fate you should resist)
but nonetheless, to hear them, you must fathom
that vive le difference as it's described,
which separated Mother Eve from Adam,
the presence thereof thoroughly proscribed,
historically, from female only venues,
but now a fairly regular event --
(do you remember lady version menus,
designed as such to hinder and prevent
the lady from discovering the cost?
That paradise, like all the others, lost.)

see Aphrodite
come, watch the tide coming in
she is born again

Of all the fearsome creatures of the night,
the werewolves and the poltergeists, the mummies,
there's one that will induce my fight or flight:
ventriloquist abandoned feral dummies.
I surely fear the monster underneath
the bed and even more so in the closet,
and also nearly anything with teeth,
but dummies, of all things? One's left to posit
the presence of some trauma, long repressed --
deep seated fear of clowns is an example,
a healthy disrespect of the possessed
by demons -- there the evidence is ample.
Or is it that I've simply been unlucky
and watched too many episodes of Chucky?

she's a little verklempt
in this painting by Klimt
an attempt to preempt
to avoid being crimped
but stays silent -- been told
that her tears are pure gold

Author notes: art by Klimt

His rhyming now ambitionless and lazy.
Alliterations literate but stale.
The metaphors more Lucas than Scorsese;
they're hooking neither Jonah nor the whale.
Clichés abound in sentence after sentence,
no letup in the roses that are red,
nor any sign of penance or repentance
for sentences that struggle to be read.
And yet I sense some hints of former glory,
in brief though somewhat reticent refrains.
A hint that there's a bit more to his story,
a bit that, despite everything, remains,
refusing to surrender or to die.
Who is this poet? To be sure, not I.

What's left, then, for a poet, when all meaning
is squeezed, wrung out from adjective and verb,
the simplest of sentences needs gleaning,
and metaphors, if anything, disturb?
When words had ceased to serve their proper sentence
and punctuation rarely gives a pause,
vain adverbs fail to sanctify repentance
and participles, partial to applause,
forsake -- indeed abandon rhyme and reason,
relying on the maudlin of free verse.
Should meaning manage to come back in season,
and bring with it -- both blessing and a curse,
ability to recognize a poem,
we'd best be ready to pretend we know 'em.