Socrates

You -- god of something we want & we lack – 
Sacrificed to a life of questioning
& Generations before the Lord took

His own Life for some odd strange answers.  Look:
What the hell do you see now, looking back?
Thousands of academics answering

Counter-arguments at symposiums,
A talk . . . on an essay . . . about a book.
The Forgiving God deals with all those Hymns

Sung by all those armed, those willing to fight.
But you deal with people equally right:
Know-it-alls all full of propositions.

People like you have started Religions.
Not you.  You just died to ask us questions.



Snakes & Snails & Puppy Dog Tails

Ignorance is not knowing anything & being attracted to the good.
Innocence is knowing everything & still being attracted to the good.
– Clarissa Pinkola-Estes.


All this reminds me of innocent things
made up of the pure 
Then
of memory . . .
a fish with a hook stuck in its gullet
& frogs tied up to a bicycled string,
a dog wanting, & waiting for a sign
of the bone in my behind-the-back hand,
only long enough for a feigned toss,
 & that dog chasing empty expectancy.

“I was a little world made cunningly.”

I feel younger, not un-knowing again,
but the pain in the heart of attraction.
Like innocent desire compels it.

These thoughts are caught in a throat that is mine.

& I recall that fish flopping madly.




Sit on the barstool next to mine

2 seats down she removes the clams from their shells, 
1 at a time, then tosses the clicking casings into the bowl.
You watch her suck the linguine into her jowls.

What breaks you down so much these days?
It’s not the relentless February storms,
dark mornings or icy nights, 
or 28 days that seem to go on
relentlessly longer than May’s 31.

What drains you so much these days
is not persistent fatigue, insomnia or illness;
it is not 4 sweating hours each night,
the cigarettes, the beers, or sinusitis.
It isn’t depression, your diet, or exercise,
although your body never lies
except when collapsing limply late at night.

What drains it all from you these days
is not the labor law autopsy photo,
proving more than the other attorney’s drone
as you listen to her on the speaker phone,
& ponder the relatives of the anonymous one
who fell head first into the wood chipper,
now one-half biped, without chest or head.

No.  It’s much more simple, more right
than any of these basic, tragic recurrences.
It is something once rare, now become common.
Hard working friends, like love alone did, are dying.

2 seats down she removes the clams from their shells,
then tosses the clicking casings into the bowl.
You watch her suck the linguine into her jowls, jealous.
She is beautiful, you are alone, & you want to say:

Please sit on the barstool next to mine . . . 
I want to see living . . . 



Available Space

9 planets – & not an Eros 
or Cupid among them.


But we’ve still found 
2 homes for Mars.



Acquisitions

The red-faced neo-conservative political pundit,
a total hog, a local celebrity from public tv,
walked into the liquor store, my liquor store,
where I worked, & he asked for “good Scotch.”
“I don’t know Scotch,” I said . . . honestly.
“It’s an acquired taste,” he said . . . with a smile.

I said nothing, but I certainly thought
about acquired tastes.  I thought a taste for love
must be acquired, since one must acquire a lover.
One can read the works of love, I thought, read
special guides from the East, or one can
simply listen . . . to one’s lover . . . & then act.

One can acquire an equally inexpensive
taste for books, for knowledge, using the library,
& one can acquire a taste for poetry, or prose, 
learning the greats, or just learning the adequate,
even, without ever dropping a taxable dime,
or spending one’s Scotch-drinking time, learning, 
or even listening to the words of some other. 
One can love & love words.   Is this acquired?

Can one acquire a taste for generosity?
 I wondered, say, float some money to a friend, 
but later give one’s time to the holiday soup line,
having grown into it?  Is that . . . acquired ?  

Later, I imagined my customer, the fat-faced hog
he is, with money, hating taxes, drinking Scotch.
I imagined him finishing his bottle of top-shelf
liquor, as I finish my own cheap beer, given my
acquired taste for cheap beer.  I imagined him 
later, red-faced, kneeling before the toilet bowl, 
throwing up a soul, tasting like top-shelf Scotch, 
unlike language, or love, but still, an acquired taste.