Poetics and Ruminations

Alfred Kreymborg Gnomes

Six Tailgaters

 

You might be a mouse

Or something that lives on one, like a louse.

 

Never a mouse ever sees

One of its lousy fleas.

 

Washing away the flies; or are they fleas?

Won’t get rid of them, even by degrees.

 

Across endless tides of endless seas

Flies, lice and fleas will bring us to our knees.

 

The earth will turn and spin and fairly soar,

There’ll be quintillions of them, maybe more.

 

When they require gardens in their lives,

They chew on us until they give us hives.

 

Copyright © 2012 Wesli Court, all rights reserved.

 

Lewis Carroll Gnomes

 

Six Tailgaters

 

Mists that enshroud her dawning years

Thicken as she swills her beers.

 

When the topers are mellow,

She’ll handle any fellow.

 

“Do you want a battered hide?”

I asked, “The rest of you is fried.”

 

Rolling on the hearthrug, full of tricks and fun,

We had a lovely time until she came undone.

 

With 'thoughts as boundless, and souls as free'

We fiddled around as she diddled me.

 

Still she haunts me, phantomwise,

For she was merely bantamsize.

 

Copyright © 2012 Wesli Court, all rights reserved.

 

Ted Hughes Gnomes

Six Tailgaters

 

We sit late, watching the dark slowly unfold;

 

We knew all along that daylight could not hold.

 

Though all mankind wince out and nothing endure

Our disappearance won’t be premature.

 

Once upon a time there was a person

Who didn’t care at all for life’s coercion.

 

No indolent procrastinations and no yawning states, 

We know what destiny our flesh awaits.

 

A spider's web, tense for the dew's touch…,

Once we are trapped we hope it won’t hurt much.

 

I saw my world again through your eyes

And I will watch it until the evening dies.

 

Copyright © 2012 Wesli Court, all rights reserved.

 

Larkin Gnomes

Six Tailgaters

 

They watched the landscape, sitting side by side,

The bride and groom defying time and tide.

 

Someone else drowned in that lash-wide stare;

I was not snared in those coils of peroxide hair.

 

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows

Through which one can peer to see bevies of bimbos.

 

Man hands on misery to man —

It’s part of God’s mysterious plan.

 

That vast moth-eaten musical brocade

To fend off death that we carry on parade.

 

When churches fall completely out of use

Will our imaginings be less obtuse?

 

Copyright © 2012 Wesli Court, all rights reserved.

 

John Crowe Ransom Gnomes

Six Tailgaters

 

Legacy

 

I know a woman with a terrible tongue,

No one remembers the songs she has sung.

 

Mooning 

 

Where is your love by the mellow moon?

She disappeared next afternoon.

 

Coverage

 

A black cloud full of storms too hot for keeping

Got beneath my shingles and started seeping.

 

Dandy

 

I was dapper when I dangled in my pepper-and-salt;

But I hung out with pigs, got dingy to a fault.

 

Solace

 

His love-words dropping from his lips,

He takes a sip and a couple nips.

 

War

 

Captain Carpenter mounted up one day

And never came back…what more can one say?

 

Copyright © 2012 Wesli Court, all rights reserved.

 

Milton Gnomes

Six Tailgaters

 

 

What a Muse Meant 

 

Hail, divinest Melancholy,

You’re much more fun than being jolly!

 

 

Holy War 

 

Hymns devout and holy Psalms

Fill the air as we drop our bombs.

 

 

Faith 

 

I have some naked thoughts that rove about

In search of seamstresses to clothe my doubt.

 

 

Eve 

 

To hide her guilty front with innocent Snow

She hung a fig-leaf o’er what lies below.

 

 

Fun House

 

'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights,

My love and I seek our delights.

 

 

Phew!

 

Her high birth, and her graces sweet,

Are canceled by her smelly feet.

 

Copyright © 2012 Wesli Court, all rights reserved.

 

 

Sylvia Plath Gnomes

Six Tailgaters

 

Campaign 

 

Ungodly as a child's shriek

I hear the politicians speak. 

 

Rap

 

O Cacophony, goddess of jazz and of quarrels,

What popular idiot gave you the poet’s laurels?

 

Sailor

 

Percy bows, in his blue peajacket, among the narcissi.

He hopes his mates don’t see him and think him a sissy.

 

60^th High School Reunion

 

Fat always, and out of breath,

So many of us have caught our death.

 

Breakfast

 

“How now,” Father Shawn crisply addressed the ghost,

“Won’t you have a slice of this heavenly host?”

 

Chef

 

When I am quiet at my cooking I feel it looking, I feel it thinking,

But what I don’t want to do is smell it stinking.

 

Copyright © 2012 Wesli Court, all rights reserved.

 

Yeats Gnomes

William Butler Yeats

 Six Tailgaters

 

 The Castle of Art

 

I made my song a coat

And threw it in the moat.

 

 

Rap

 

That crazed girl improvising her music

On a kazoo makes quite a few sick.

 

 

The Secret

 

Here at right of the entrance this bronze head

Whispers in my ear, “All has been said.”

 

 

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik

 

When I clamber to the heights of sleep

I fall from a scarp into the deep.

 

 

Karma

 

I dreamed that one had died in a strange place

And neither of them now has left a trace.

 

 

Melancholy

 

Who can distinguish darkness from the soul

Or tell delight in life from the deepest hole?

 

Copyright © 2012 Wesli Court, all rights reserved.

 

 

 

 

Keats Gnomes

Six tailgaters.

 

Tippling Season

 

My wine overbrims a whole summer,

But liquorless winter’s a bummer.

 

 

After the Panty Raid

 

Pale were the lips I kissed, and fair the form

That she showed off for me there in her dorm.

 

 

The Comic Garden

 

Here are sweet peas, on tip-toe for a flight,

And here are popeyes itching for a fight.

 

 

The Empty Garret

 

Souls of Poets dead and gone

Have nothing left that they can pawn.

 

 

Western Manners

 

Shall I gulp wine? No, that is vulgarism

Practiced on that trail they call the Chisholm.

 

 

Waken and Blossom

 

Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose;

Try not to get a nettle up your nose.

 

Copyright © 2012 Wesli Court, all rights reserved.

 

Byron Gnomes

Six Tailgaters

 

I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs

And listened to you dishing out your lies.

 

While sadly we gazed on the river

The booze was attacking my liver.

 

The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars

Gave way to neon and the noise of bars.

 

Love may sink by slow decay

For it was never meant to stay.

 

The love where Death has set his seal,

Is where the worm must make its meal.

 

Explaining Metaphysics to the nation

Is easier than suffering deflation.

 

Copyright © 2012 Wesli Court, all rights reserved.