(1987)
Reprinted with permission of "Hellas," Vol. 8
#QuatrainDescriptive
The Billionaire’s Apologia I pass this wretch sprawled agains… and idly but with studied bonhomie drop into his cap a dollar bill, while wondering at the deep dispar…
M. The Old Widower’s Effluvium His cachet evolves from subtleties… as he is groomed for an ever small… He doesn’t sweat for he cannot toi… so baths now seem superfluous,
Sure, ask who died, and ask why J… Won’t have Brad’s baby, whom she’… Read how the princess slept with h… See Mary’s image on a slice of br… Get proof that so-and-so’s a murde…
Relativity at the foundry Behold the scene at the iron works Where whirls of girls and harried… Surround the boss, a man of vision… Who, visualizing a new division,
Ask Not Whom the Toll Bails A Grecian corpse’s mouth containe… Placed there by kin who thought he… To pay the toll required to cross… (A job that Charon got through po…
Vocations Envy those conjoined to function: ballerinas shopping in fifth posit… humming coroners ladling brains silent Harpo honking his horn
///Channel-Surfing Segued The score now even after Jordan’s… up yours, you punk, confess before… she’d deceived you, Lance, her pre… see the Bible, frayunds, Isaiah f…
The Jacaranda in Spring (Near Rhyme) What discount art inspired this ta… Eleven months a year you’re quite… Too dark and gaunt, we thought, to…
Now, the fathers, having suffered… prospering, gave unto their begotten plowshare… seeds that their begotten might also pro…
An Abomination* Ice-gleamed streets, sky an ebony… and a girl accordions her tiny car into the back of mine. She, carmine-streamed, head throug…
“Saint Chris’s statue on my dash Will surely keep me safe,” he said… But then one day he struck a pole And hit the dashboard with his hea… Oh, woe! Six-inch Saint Christop…
Electrocutions show our love of ri… We give the favored one a kingly f… As well as pen and ink so he can w… The thoughts that we will prize wh… We see his needs are carefully add…
The Rest Home Bus Arrives at th… I love these ladies. No, I’m not a new kind of pervert… I love them because they persevere… because they have guts.
A Funeral Cortege Verse now slain by latest dogma, down the cobbled street come mourn… trundling Verse’s coffin forward, charging all to note the corpus,