ESSAY: AN EXAMINATION OF THE SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY BY EDGAR LEE MASTERS

 

I FOUND THIS ESSAY IN THE LOST AND FOUND and thought it might be of some interest for those who like to go into the weeds a bit about poetry collections. Masters was an American poet, writing in a very different time and place than today. I re-read the essay and found I was a pretty smart guy with lots of things to say! (A lot more than I seem to have these days.) Nevertheless, I enjoyed revisiting a moment of enthusiasm I had as a (mature) student taking an undergraduate poetry course one summer, back in the day. Check out Master’s anthology or write your own epitaph…

Cheers, Jake.

 

"IF SPOON RIVER HADN'T ALREADY EXISTED, Edgar Lee Masters would have had to invent it!" So might have begun a book review of The Spoon River Anthology shortly after it was published in 1915. In his collection, Masters provided a range of characterizations (there were two-hundred and forty-four individual ‘epitaphs’ in his book) such that the reader, any reader, might have felt they were witnessing the uncovering of the underbelly of small-town America. The book’s range of characters is considerable, from the town drunks to the town’s politicians, from the very poor to the very rich. Masters describes the lives of husbands and wives and lovers. He describes the lives of solitary men and women, and the lives of those caught in the press of communal life. In his poems, Masters portrays lives that were filled with bitterness and despair, as well as those that expressed great joys and satisfactions. His poems are compelling partly because the portraits he drew of the people of his fictional Spoon River so typified the inhabitants of a small American town that they might have been the friends and relatives and neighbours of many of his readers. The truly compelling aspect of his portraits are, of course, that they were in the form of epitaphs supposedly composed after death by the person who died. Such epitaphs suggest that the speaker of each would likely tell the truth about his or her life, given the assumption they no longer needed the deceptions and evasions of the living. Such ‘gravely-spoken’ truths by the recently-departed, however, might prove to be at odds with what other people had known about them during their lifetimes. Equally true, such truths might prove to confirm what others suspected had really been behind the fictions that many of the speakers had lived their lives by and now, in death, willingly debunked.  Such intimate portraits, drawn by Masters, would have struck a chord with many of his readers as they compared their lives and the lives of those they knew, with the lives as revealed in the epitaphs of the dead of Spoon River. And despite some obvious datedness to his work, many of his poems remain compelling for today’s reader, as well. 

I would like to examine Master’s anthology in two parts. In the first part, I would like to examine various aspects of the collection that suggest it is a Modern volume of poetry. One of the book’s appeals, when it was first published, was its non-traditional style and format. More specifically, the collection blended the traditional with the modern. It drew its sources from traditional literary, stylistic and graphic sources and reworked them in a new fashion. While not departing from the conventional to the extent of some of his contemporaries—the Imagist Poets for example—Masters nevertheless managed to create a collection that was sufficiently radical in style and conception to capture the interest of many of his readers. In the second part of this essay, I would like to examine some of the thematic concerns that Masters appears to be engaged with in his collection. I will look at some of the broad connections he suggests that act to thread together what might appear, at first reading, to be a random collection of portraits of individual lives. Specifically, I will examine his ending pieces “The Spooniad” and “Epilogue” to discuss these connections.

 

Masters borrowed the idea for his collection from an ancient Greek source known as The Greek Anthology, a huge collection of verse that had its earliest entries dating back to the Seventh Century BC, including many epigrams and epitaphs. Like many Modern poets, Masters borrowed from tradition and antiquity for his inspiration and concepts. We will see he has borrowed much that is old and has attempted to make it ‘new’. In terms of purely physical aspects of the work, its graphics, for example, the fact that Masters (or his publisher) chose to entitle each poem using gothic black lettering gave the collection a sense of history and tradition suggested by the medieval print style. But because each poem’s title (with a few exceptions) was the name of a person: “Jim Brown”, “Amanda Barker” “A.D. Blood”, for example, the sense of high tradition, chivalric combat , heraldry and so on, that is so often associated with the Gothic script, is seen here to be debased. Here, the collection draws upon a traditional print form but uses it, in the Modernist sense, to suggest there has been a lowering of standards in the modern world. Here, the black letters are now only a decorative font used in the listing of common American names: here knights have become shopkeepers and clerks. Another interesting aspect of the graphic component of the collection is the use of illustrations. Illustrations are found throughout the book, often as the headpieces of poems sited above their titles (where they suggest the carvings found on tombstones). Many of these illustrative headpieces offer the traditional imagery of tombstones: flowers or wreath motifs, vines, cherubs or elaborate cornice designs. Other headpieces offer what can be thought of as artistic interpretations of the character of a poem’s speaker. For example, “Mrs. Benjamin Pantier” is seen as a kind of spider-woman figure, ensnaring in her web what the reader takes to be is her fly of a husband (see Fig.1). “Mrs. Sibley” is depicted as the enigmatic figure of Cleopatra: she will not reveal her secrets to us (see Fig. 2) “Doctor Meyers” is seen, satirically, as a Christ-in-trousers figure (see Fig. 3).
The illustrator, Oliver Herford, draws frequently from mythological imagery and, most humorously, in his headpiece for “Edmund Pollard”, interprets Pollard’s unfulfilled lust in a scene depicting a winged Pan-like figure pursuing a similarly winged, naked female figure (see Fig. 4). 

IN STYLE, these illustrations are modern. They suggest the emerging style of illustrations that were then gaining widespread acceptance in the daily cartoon strips of the burgeoning American newspaper chains of the early twentieth century. The cartoon image, of course, acts both to interpret and add to the written text it accompanies. A further quality of the modern cartoon is that image and text are to be taken as a whole unit; separately, they do not convey the full impact of the story line. Herford’s illustrations do interpret and add to the text, but they are not an integral part of it. While his illustrations are not cartoons in the modern sense, they borrow from the genre’s graphic techniques. His frequent use of mythological characters, portrayed in a modern, illustrative style, acts in the same way as the gothic print style discussed earlier. Both suggest that values are debased in the modern world: the great stories and passions of the past are now seen as mere illustrations for petty and selfish lives. Modern lives are seen to be cartoon-like, trivial. There are exceptions, of course. In a number of illustrations, Herford depicts figures that suggest the simple, direct pathos that Masters also saw to be at the heart of many modern lives (see Figs. 5, 6).

Thus far, I have discussed the physical aspects of Master’s collection. Now, I would like to review some of the organizational aspects and techniques he uses that suggest Modernist poetics in his work. One of the chief organizational aspects of a Modern poetry collection is the poet’s attempt to impart to the reader the sense of the work as a unified whole, that all the poems in the collection are inter-related or related in some manner to a larger theme or structure. The collections of Whitman and Baudelaire are early examples of the Modernist tendency in poetry collections. This tendency came, in part, from drawing upon earlier literary traditions. Modern poets took example from works such as those by Chaucer or Dante that attempted to be a comprehensive examination of all aspects of the human condition, and for the Moderns, the lyric poem was seen (because of its intensity of focus and its dynamic power of expression) as the main building block for such a poetic edifice. Such a collection of building blocks, properly connected and cemented together, was seen, in Modernist terms, as the most valuable of literary achievements. In the Spoon River Anthology, there are several examples of Masters’ organizational strategies that suggest he was thinking along similar lines. His title for example, suggests a kind of unity. The word “River” suggests the traditional image of the flow of life from source to ocean, from birth to death. The word also suggests an image of change and at the same time an image of constancy: the river flows but it remains the same, you may enter it at any point or time and be both ‘at’ a particular spot, and, at the same time, be part of the larger whole. Masters’ collection seems to reflect this idea, as suggested by his title, in the apparent randomness of the poems ordering. The collection does begin at a source, “The Hill”, and ends in the depths of Infinite Space, so in this sense there is a ‘direction’ to its flow. However, the reader has the sense of being able to enter into Spoon River at any point and leave it at any point without feeling that they have left off their ‘journey’ at some midpoint. Every point is a midpoint in the collection, as well as being an ending point and a beginning point. (I will comment on Masters’ thematic concerns that I suggest here, in the second part of my essay.)

 

“Spoon” is also an interesting word that implies another meaning of unity for the collection. “Spoon” suggests several possible images: the use of a spoon to eat, reflecting perhaps basic human urges and activities. It can refer to human sexual activity, as in the word spooning. As well, there is another human characteristic, stubbornness, or perhaps the failure to engage with life, that is seen in the phrase, to be ‘spoon-fed’. I do not mean to propose that all these meanings of “Spoon” are to be taken into account when reading the anthology. Rather, the word “Spoon”, with its various connotations, suggests the idea of the range of concerns that the book will address: the range of human types and activities, from the fool to the genius; from the celibate to the lover; from the failure to the survivor. In this manner, the word “Spoon”, as part of the collection’s title, directs the reader to expect there will be a comprehensive review of the human condition from Masters, and that the work itself will be a resulting unity in its examination of the whole range of human experiences. This idea (of an all-encompassing literary creation) is of course another example of drawing upon traditional sources and placing them in a modern context. Organizational unity is seen in the overall structure of the collection. Masters (or his publisher) had put as the front piece to the book an illustration that is captioned with a warning to youth not to ignore the call of their destinies. They are urged to listen to their ‘muses’, to struggle to understand themselves and life, as suggested by the line: “‘Tis vain, O youth, to fly the call of Apollo.’” (see Fig. 7). Once you have been called, you can never return, the line seems to suggest.

 

Masters begins his work then, with a warning and he ends his collection of epitaphs with a portrait of someone who has failed to respond to the call. In his youth, Webster Ford (“Webster Ford”, Spoon) heard the call of the muses. As a boy, he had a vision of “Delphic / Apollo” appearing before him, but his friend, the banker’s son (someone who has never heard the call) says, “‘It’s / Light / By the flags at the water’s edge, you half-witted / fools[.]’”. From that time on, Webster could not listen to the call, fearful of the scorn of his society “[a]nd from thence, as the wearisome years rolled on”, he never again tried. In his epitaph, he prays to Apollo to forgive “the shame of a fearful heart[.]”. He hopes others who are more brave than he will take the warning of his fate. He heard the call but refused it. His life became a torment, a “dying trunk”, yet it was “burgeoning / In laurel leaves”. He was dead, ever aware of what could have been. The illustration and caption of the front piece are taken, of course, from the poem “Webster Ford”. Between the front piece and the final epitaph, Masters records hundreds of lives, revealing how many have never heard the call, like the banker’s son, or like Webster Ford, have heard it but were unable to respond, or those few who have both heard the call and answered it. 

 

In terms of a more formal organization for his collection, Masters ‘frames’ his work between a prologue and an epilogue. However, the prologue, the piece entitled “The Hill”, is not officially called a prologue and the piece at the end is not really an epilogue in the official sense of the word. This may seem puzzling at first, but perhaps Masters means to suggest an idea similar to the one he implies in his collection’s title. Like a “River”, the reader enters his work at any point. There is no ‘official’ beginning, and the end, in terms of the “Epilogue” is a play in itself: it does not so much sum up the preceding body of poetry as ‘echo’ it and rework it—but on a cosmic scale. Masters seems to suggest that traditional literary organization is arbitrary, therefore, he ‘reworks’ it to suit his thematic purposes.  However, “The Hill” acts like a prologue in that it introduces the range of concerns suggested by its title. From ‘the hill’ the reader sees that Masters will be examining those who have lived lives filled with despair and bitterness, those who have experienced pain and disappointment, those who have lived violently and died the same way and those who have simply withered away. 
As well, in the wonderful character of “Old Fiddler Jones”, we see Masters examining people who have embraced life, lived it fully and died without “a single regret”. 

This overall organizational structure adds further unity to the collected poems. Of course, the most obvious unifying feature is the fact that all the poems are written as epitaphs ‘composed’ by the dead. All are spoken (with one or two exceptions) from the grave by those who are “on the Hill” at Spoon River.

In his portraits of the dead of Spoon River, Masters relies on Modernist poetic techniques. For example, he uses free verse in all of his poems save for his two end point pieces. The “Epilogue”, in addition, uses a traditional rhyme scheme that is in keeping with its Medieval Mystery play format. As well, to some extent, he suggests the Modernist in his attending to the ‘thingness’ of his subjects: the fact that he entitles almost all of his poems with the name of a person suggests he is directing the reader to focus on the individual. Here, this person—this is what is important, he seems to be saying. This emphasis on the particular, the small (perhaps Masters would say debased) modern human being is in keeping with the new poetics emerging at the time. So, too, is the idea of his collection: Spoon River. It is an actual place—a river in the state of Illinois, and as a fictional town, it is a particular, focused imaginative locale within which Masters places his vision of the human drama. He further particularizes his collection by using colloquial language and his imagery is of typical, every day small town life (with occasional flashes of madness, violence and transcendence.)

 

In style, many of his poems are confessional, personal and intimate. They are directed toward the reader, the “passers-by”. Some are short, fragments almost, such as “John Ballard” whose movement toward a more joyful, celebratory understanding of life is cut short in his final line: “And now I was creeping upon the secret, but--”. One final example of the Modern in the poems is the unreflective, furious activity with which Masters characterizes most of the people of Spoon River. He portrays them as involved in politics or acquiring money or sex or power. Some despair, having failed to gain any of these. Many of the lives, as summed up by their epitaphs, suggest their overriding characteristic was one of possession: they were possessed by their emotions, by their passions, by their beliefs and social conditions, or by their physical or mental states. As a summary statement of their lives, their epitaphs suggest that many were  trapped or stuck in particular states or fixed with particular ideas that characterized and often distorted (or destroyed) their lives. Thankfully, there are exceptions to this rather bleak vision of modern humanity. “Fiddler Jones”, I have mentioned before, played “with life all his ninety years”. And there is the beautiful vision of “Lucinda Matlock” and her husband “Davis” who lived full, rich and long lives. As well, there are several portraits that suggest some kind of spiritual transcendence and a freedom from the past in, for example, such poems as “Elijah Browning”, “Isaiah Beethoven” and “Arlo Will”. However, for the most part, the portraits are of individuals whose epitaphs reflect their attachment to the transitory aspects of their lives: sex, grief, or the moments of their own deaths or to their pride, their anger or their fears. 

 

Up to this point, I have discussed the organizational aspects of the collection as found in the collection. However, Masters himself provides a further clue to its organization in a 1933 essay in which he states the following:

 

“[I]n its definitive order…the fools, the drunks and the failures come first, the people of one-birth minds got second place, and the heroes and the enlightened spirits came last, a sort of Divine Comedy…” (Norton 206).

 

The reader may be somewhat taken aback to equate a “spirit” like Fiddler Jones, with all his apparent joy for living, with that of “Thomas Rhodes” who is clearly a figure in the book that suggests most strongly a malevolent and dangerous self-possession. Both poems occur within the first half of the collection, suggesting that Fiddler Jones is a fool and Thomas Rhodes is of one-birth mind. Neither, of course, is in the section that would seem to be reserved for the enlightened, but the idea of being fixed or possessed, that I have discussed earlier, may suggest a reason for the placement of such characters as Fiddler Jones in the section Masters seems to have reserved for ‘fools’. Masters may be suggesting that, despite all his zest for living, Fiddler Jones and those like him, remain fixed on the joys of the dance, of making music, to the exclusion of other considerations. Thomas Rhodes, in his own fashion, remains fixed on his own independence, of being “self-contained, compact, harmonized, / Even to the end”. Each, then, in their own way, fails to move beyond their own worldly preoccupations. This is the way it is with so many of the characters found in the anthology. If one phrase could summarize the tone of the epitaphs in Masters’ collection, it would be matter-of-factness. Despite whatever kind of life the speaker depicts he or she has lived, in the summary statement of their life—their epitaphs—they express their lives as a matter of fact: as a fact, fixed at a certain point in time, at a certain level of development. 

 

The reader is told that the “Spooniad” is a work ‘written’ by the late Jonathan Swift Somers, one of the characters of the collection. We are told it is incomplete, Somers apparently having died before being able to finish even the first book of his planned twenty-four book ‘epic’. The “Spooniad” is, of course, Masters’ wry depiction of another example of the debasement of modern culture. Based on Homer’s Illiad, this modern ‘epic’ is anything but epic. Instead of a battle between two great civilizations, the “Spooniad” records the battle between the forces of Prohibition and the anti-prohibitionists. Helen of Troy has become “Flossie” of Spoon River. Hector is now “Bengal Mike” and Ajax is a “hog eyed”. Allen. Agamemnon has become a corrupt businessman. The action is fragmentary, like modern life, Masters may be suggesting: it leaves off in mid-sentence, inconclusively, unfinished.

Perhaps more interesting, however, than Masters’ depiction of the failure of modern culture to rise to the epic levels of past civilizations is his reference to the role of poetry. In the  introductory ‘footnote’ to the “Spooniad”, the reader is told that Marion Reedy of “Reedy’s Mirror” publication originally ‘found’ the copy of the “Spooniad” among the papers of the fictional character Jonathan Swift Somers. Marion Reedy, of course, was an actual publisher. It was he, in fact, who first published Masters’ poems. This imaginative portrayal of a fictional character having an ‘existence’, in a sense, beyond the text of the story is Masters’ way of drawing attention to the limitations of fiction, be it epic or a parody of one. By ‘crossing the line’, so-to-speak, between fiction and reality, Masters directs the reader to note the boundary between fiction and reality, and to remember the limitations of the medium. The “Spooniad” is limited, he reminds us—not because it is a parody—but because it incorporates only so much information into its view. It records barely two days’ events that are supposed to have occurred in Spoon River. Of course, it selects what events it will record and how it will record them. Homer’s epic, while on a far grander scale, is also limited in this sense Masters seems to be suggesting. Both epic and parody are like the epitaphs of the dead of Spoon River; both record certain events, express certain ideas, but only up to a point. Thematically, this points to Masters’ concern with unity in his collection, and the image of the river is again helpful. The river is a whole, not limited to any of its particular parts. This point will be seen more clearly in Masters’ final piece: “Epilogue”.

 

I have said “Epilogue”, though it is not an epilogue in the formal sense of the word. It does not ‘summarize’ the events of the preceding body of poems, nor is it, in the dramatic sense, a final act or scene. “Epilogue” is itself a play. Specifically, it is based on the Medieval Mystery play tradition. The play seems, initially, to be a bizarre mix of gods, voices, and scene changes. God is introduced as a voice behind a screen. He is seen as indecisive and pre-occupied, concerned with the larger organization of the universe. He appears to be indifferent, even unaware, of humanity. He is ineffectual, losing a game of checkers to Beelzebub. The scene changes and we see Beelzebub, together with the Nordic god, Loki and a (possibly) Hindu deity, Yogarindra, creating Mankind. God does not even have a hand in the matter, and Beelzebub creates humanity to annoy God. At this point, the reader is puzzled at what to make of Masters’ rather bizarre parody of yet another literary tradition. Again, the suggestion is that Masters is commenting on the inability of the modern world to achieve a cohesive vision, this time a spiritual one such as was found in Medieval Christianity and celebrated in the Mystery Play cycles. Here, though, Masters may also be commenting on the idea of limitations: limitations of ideas, philosophies, religions; limitations that are found in our specific personal visions, our own limited beliefs and world views. By creating a kind of dog’s breakfast of gods, Masters may be suggesting that all religions are limited to their concepts and that one god is just about as good as the next. The Christian god, too, is ‘on-par’ with the rest, perhaps even a little more remote and irrelevant than most. In parodying literary traditions, here and in the “Spooniad”, Masters may be saying that artistic visions, as well, are limiting; they have only so much scope.

Masters’ play moves forward in an interesting fashion after the creation (and “Fall”) of Mankind by Beelzebub. Earlier, Yogarindra commented on the fate of Mankind, saying that, “Something hated him / Made us over him, therefore failed him”. She refers to “[s]omething” as having created humanity but we have just witnessed Beelzebub as the creator. Something else, therefore, is a play here beyond the three gods and it is something of which they themselves are only dimly aware. Suddenly, voices are heard announcing that it is, “[o]nly an earth dream”; “it” perhaps being the play itself. The three gods vanish and there is a following scene depicting a conversation among the “Voices of Spring”. One of these Voices may be the voice of God. In the end, the Voices apparently address “The Sun” asking, finally, “Where do you lead me?”. While it is not clear that the Sun directly answers the Voices, it nevertheless comments on its (the Sun’s) place in the larger universe, implying that it is but a small part of a much larger whole. It notes that its “children” (presumably the Voices and humanity) call it “great / The giver of life and day”. However, the sun does not see itself as great. It is acted upon, in turn, by forces far greater than itself. Next, the scene ‘telescopes’ even further, with the “Milky Way”, more enigmatically perhaps, commenting on its position in the scheme of things. Then a Voice (whose is unclear) asks if the Milky Way would be “lord”. Finally, the “Infinite Depths” answers with: “Infinite Law / Infinite Life”  and the play ends.

The movement of the play suggests that at each stage, from (the Christian) God, to Beelzebub, to the “Voices of Spring” , to the Sun and so on, there is a turning outward and a questioning of the limits of knowledge or, at least, an encountering of its limits. Masters seems to be suggesting that any kind of knowledge or art or philosophy or religion is, in the end, only part of a yet greater whole. I think Masters suggests that our vision is often bounded by the particulars of our lives and like the epitaphs from the dead of Spoon River, we often limit ourselves to what has already been—permanently—carved into stone.

 

 

Works Cited

Masters, Edgar Lee. The Spoon River Anthology. NY: MacMillian, 1916. Print

---.The Spoon River Anthology. Ed. Richard Ellman and Robert O’Clair. NY: Norton, 1988.  Print.

 

PROF COMMENTS: GRADE= A.  Don, this is complete, very full of helpful insights into theme and structure (and individual poems), and beautifully presented. It’s one of the best introductions to SRA I’ve read. The only flaw, if there is one, is that it ends on “Epilogue” which, though helpful with ELM’s ‘philosophy’, is not the last part of the book. A masterful job. Thanks for your note. Good luck to you, too. It was a privilege to get to know you a little.

 

 

 

 

POSH POEMS AND TONEY TOMES

Choices

I’d fancy an eye

to see the sky.

Of course a nose

to smell the rose.

And an ear—

your voice to hear.

And some hands

to sift the sands.

I’d rather my hair

grew better there.

(Though I prefer

a skin of fur.)

Or a tail.

Or wings to sail!

Or some claws

and toothy jaws.

I would fly or swim,

all on a whim.

Why, in the sea

a fish I’d be!

Under earth—

an earthworm’s girth.

In the air,

a bee so fair.

I would come alone

or come along.

I’d come to stay

not far away.

I’d go round

in all I found.

Not find ways

for other days.

Armistice By The Sea

In the wider course of men,

long-ploughed fields and lands

raked by centuries of metal and bone

fall beneath the sky’s dimming light—

their course is now sought

in rows of golden mirrors.

But it’s to the sea we must turn now,

with its unpredictable waves,

for the sea shows us where we’re bound.

It's waters reveal 
the long ages of our being.

Salt-flecked foam is laid 
like gifts along the sand,

like strings of pearls

for gill-lost creatures.

So that we'll remember the waves.

And recall them, 
even as we pace along that shore,

even as our ways are culled,

again and again, 
by the ever-changing sea.

Carbon Feet  
It was seen as Future’s retreat,  
And really—no meaner a feat! 
For a rock, it might have been neat.
(Baby’s out with the bathwater.)

Now science is mostly right there.

(Of course, it is mostly laid bare.)

Out of the lab, should we still care?

There is nothing left on offer.

So next comes the jeopardy spin,

To see who will finally win.

With indulgences there for sin,

Cold fingers hold onto our slips.

Oh! We had parceled out it all!

Like gamblers not heeding the call.

And we did what we could to stall,

Then we ran to cash-in our chips.

We relied on the past for truth.

But we gave that task to our youth.

Oh, we’d handed to them our noose,

Our foreheads starting to glisten.

In the end, neither fortune nor fame.

In the end, we’d only declaim.

In the end, we’d call out each name.

But no one was left to listen.

Moment

A milky sky,

pale in a deep

winter’s evening.

Over distant black trees

it’s snowing swirls

of icy sugar snow.

And your breath comes

in puffs of soft vapour

that hang in the air

a moment

Was That My Inside Voice?

Let’s microwave the little tots!

No more nappies or training pots.

And nail their flesh upon the door.

Let Angel Death come here for more.

Scald old women in boiling clay.

Eat their pantries bare today.

Throw old men from hilltops high.

Steal their robes from where they lie.

Poison water for the sick.

Add powered glass, a final trick!

Treat the weak to sharp axe blows.

Let them die in winter snows.

…...

Become strongest of the strong

and pretend to get along.

Then claw and bite and crush your way.

And live to live another day!

Father Doesn’t Know Best,

Anymore

From cardigans and pipes

on to home-school and wipes,

Father doesn’t know best, anymore.

From king of the castle

to home-maker hassle.

(“I can’t wait till they open the door!”)

From Leave it to Beaver.

(Ah, sexy June Cleaver!)

You’re on-call now 24/7.

From a God-given role,

the house dice have been stole.

(Now that sweet spot’s found just in heaven.)

And with moms on the make,

they’ll soon pick up that rake!

“Oh, well. How was your day today, dear?”

And your children commend

your new stylin’ apron.

You are finding it all a bit queer.

For what Father once said,

to the clan that he led,

was written down and carved into stone.

But you wake now from dreams

Of a world filled with screams,

And of dying in the dark alone.

.....

Such reminders are clear,

for the time—it draws near,

and too soon we’ll be moving along.

And those things that were true,

all those things meant for you,

mean you’ll never be sung of in song.

The Lonely Pube

Dark and tightly curled

like Oswald nowhere near the grassy knoll.

...

Rifle down.

Your cited comrades

long gone.

You stand exposed

along the white rim of the world.

Your time is over.

Your days of humid leisure

are over.

The compact between bodies has expired.

And the heated exchanges of the past

give way to a colder war.

……

Commissions found you acted alone.

You battle time and loneliness alone.

Fair pleasures give way to darker rites—

You remember you once belonged 
to thousands.

You had a role and a purpose.

You shared a common project.

Now? You’re shunned.

Out of place.

Looked at askance.

No one is sure (not even you)

just where it is you belong.

The trust you took for granted

has turned as cool as porcelain.

The engendering fountain you adorned

is beyond your reach.

.....

The sun rises and the moon sets.

Stars wink in and out of existence.

It is time to ask:

Do you stop to think

of all the others like you

come before and those

who will come after?

And do you really think you’re alone?

Do you only see your future

in your past?

Or are you able to imagine

something completely different?

A Dangerous Gravity 

A child walks where a man falls. 

A cry reveals a city. 

Tears wash away empires.  

There’s no one left to pity. 

The air licks a candle's flame

Where two lovers breathe at night.

But someone waits in darkness

who is jealous for a fight.

A man reaches for a blade

to carve lines in history.
A woman reaches for the same
to answer a mystery.

Children laid upon a stone

in lands soon torn asunder.

A child’s blood is cast upon
the earth; it shakes in thunder.

Great ships cross divining skies.

Now old patterns will not hold.

Old charts crumble into dust,

in a tale too often told:

Worlds held above all others,

in filigreed skies of stars.

Thrones are placed upon the land
that make what is dearest far.
.....

Round about lay entropy,

And the calling of the cards.
(What's left is for the dealer
as he sends away his guards.)

Alpine Poetry

Write to the top, always keeping

the summit in sight.

Rest only as long as you have to.

Pay no mind to the other climbers.

(Ignore their flags and ribbons

and blowing pages.)

Keep looking at the top.

See where it touches the sky.

Write to that.

Climb past all the camps with their lighted tents 
and comforts—

You have only your own way to go.

And when you finally reach the peak,

having used up the last of your rope,

look back from where you’ve come,

then look to where it is you have to go.

Remember, mountains have

more than one side

and you’ll need

to write your way

down, as well.

Turkey Dinner

With All the Trimmings

Like a vampire full of blood

or some angel 
down on her wings;

or like a king weary of his subjects--

you lay in the puddle

of gravy and meat bits

that was your plate,

grateful for having consumed

more calories

than a boatload of refugees.

Life is good.

Death is better.

Who knew?

WHEELHOUSES                 

He was in his wheelhouse   

as quiet as a mouse.  

Day broke—it was no joke!

Just like a thousand china plates.

She was in her cellar,

kissing with her feller.   

Thunder clapped; the walls rapped! 

In time for supper with The Fates.

Captain once was able,

setting all the tables.

‘Till cups chipped, napkins ripped.

(So much for sailing to the moon.)

Is that ever-after

laughing to the rafters?

Devil’s sup? Captain’s cup?

But still the goose will cook too soon.

……….

Raining’s pitter-patter,

wetting all the matter.

Flowers bloomed! Rockets zoomed!

What are we serving at the wake?

Lastly, bits of laughter,

taunting what comes after.

Who's begot? I forgot.

Don't leave the latch up by mistake.

Here's another load of poems I found dumped by the side of the road last night. I don't know who keeps litter-bugging my house; I wish they would stop. It's very frustrating to find old poems fluttering around your property. And embarrassing.  Papers and word bits find their way to the front door. Some try to slide their way through cracks and crevices and chinks in the wall's mortar joints. They gad about, catching on the window sills and shutters, shamelessly draping themselves over the front bushes and stuffing my mailbox. They make such a mess! They're worse than toilet-rolling your Grade Five teacher's house at Halloween! What am I supposed to do with them? I have no choice other than to (shamelessly) pass them on to you, dear reader. Sorry about that! So I'll get my rake out and put this pile onto your doorstep. Read 'em or add 'em to your compost bin. 

They're all oldies except WHEELHOUSES. I did some editing, and I find myself comfortable with them--they're like an old pair of slippers (if I wore slippers) that keep my tootsies warm and cozy. If they do anything like that for you, I'm glad. 

I won't talk too much about them. They're pretty straight forward. TURKEY DINNER still gives me gas. WHEELHOUSES took a while to write. ALPINE gives me airs. And for those who are waay too young--FATHER DOESN'T is based on a TV show of the late 1950s-early 60s called "Father Knows Best" Ahh! The good old days! That's why they're old days, I guess....

Cheers,
Jake