Quite Different Chains: free verse

I’m not sure
I can even write
“free verse”
anymore.

Ever since I started
using specific
poetic forms,
I find
myself
writing poems
to be read aloud;
their purpose,
if they are to be effective
when spoken,
dictates employing some kind of
cadence,
at least the semblance of some
rhythm.

You see, even there, a sense of
time
emerges from what might
at first glance or gloss
appear to be just a bit
of prose.

It’s poetry, they say,
if it provides
a distillation of a thought,
an image meant to show not tell,
a conscious fight against just
words for words sake.

To agree,
or disagree,
with such a notion
is to put yourself
in one of two
opposing camps.

Myself?

I’d rather set up tent
out in
the land between.

21 MAR 2017

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The Squirrels: free verse

The squirrels
have gone on strike;
I can hear them
chattering,
each one voicing their dislike.

The gist
is not flattering.

Yesterday we had the trees removed
planted too close to the house,
against the back fence,
that blocked the sun
and housed the squirrels.

The trees had to go;
they were damaging roofs
and fences and walls.

But try explaining that
to a squirrel.

16 APR 2004

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For Allen Ginsberg

I can hear you breathing, America
Will you catch up with me
Dangling your embittered and jealous umbilicus
Asking
Who among you when your child asks for bread
Will hand him a grenade?
It’s not some dark sin that hides you
That tangles itself between your hunchback slouch
Taking the offense
And turning it to saccharine misgiving,
Writing manifesto after manifesto
In depressed Republican villages,
Burning books
(besides, who reads?)
That betray the lies:
The absence of a common enemy
A booming peacetime economy
Unprecedented availability of information.
No one wins this anti-trust action,
America,
I can hear you breathing,
Sweating,
Cursing your unseen enemies
In the absence of the rear view mirror
I was young, once,
But you were born to bed pans and liquid food,
To hearing aids and walking sticks,
To constipation and incontinence.
Can you hear me, America?

2001

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