JOHN GREY
What I'm Doing Now
Despite their tiny confines,
these goldfish are wanderers.
Not for them, the shelter of the castle,
the calm of the tiny pebbles in their sandy bed.
Wherever, they are, it's not enough,
so they move on and on and on,
even if the place they come to
is the one where they've just been.
They can't hitch-hike across country.
They can't eat in bus-stations,
spend an hour or two
shooting the breeze with a stranger
in a town that's barely made it to the map.
Not for them, pine forests one day,
desert the next.
Or a night under a starry sky
followed by bunking on the floor
of a college's roommate's apartment
in St Louis.
For all their restlessness,
they can do no better than
glide round and round,
through the castle,
over the pebbles,
by the grinning glass-distorted faces.
"Do goldfish ever stop,"
somebody asks.
How could they,
with no gold fish bowls to stare into.
In the Land Where Pessimists Dwell
If spring is to be believed
and here nature and I differ
then the proffered hand
of bud and limb
can be shook by even
the most indifferent spirit.
But I have no faith in seasons.
To me, it's just weather
rearranging the dead bits,
painting some of them over
so fools will think them new.
For all their masked intentions,
heat is just bare-knuckle snow,
light is merely darkness counterpunching.
I firmly believe that
it's all January,
that I was born, will die,
in the frostiness
of New Year celebration.
Oh I've believed in spring, all right.
I've shaken that eager hand
of supposed change.
But I froze up doing it.
I turned the page
but not the calendar.
_______________
KC WILDER
Visions of High Mindedness
on acid rain stained
streets i wanda
in my dinged up
tarnished honda
if i suddenly decided
i'd go off nowhere
i would not know the benefits
of breathing soot soaked air
i'd not know the magically
consistent gray monotonous tone
thrown up by these
buildings drab
i might have no impetus
to inch past its hair brained scheme
the vapid rapid pace of things
a source of mass insanity
hanky pankies everywhere
as i turn to trundle off
in search of
goodly transformations
not unlike klaus kinski
in a 1960s movie
buttressed & supported by
visions of high mindedness
Ghost of Eddie Stanky
the spirit of this baseball great
cant be kept away
his scabrous tongue inside dugout
wisecracks on the chisox play
filtered up from underworlds
an undetected way
the ghost of eddie stanky
looking skanky
holding sway
signaling & signing
to the players
cracking jokes
coughin up a loogie
goin up in smoke
Cartoon Boys Inner Battle
his hardnosed unforgiving way
almost never wins
struggling with demonic nature
traced back to his kin
cartoon boy a desperado
wrestling with a voice that brays
"stop yourself from fruitless dreaming"
this goes on all day
shaken by his cartoon rage
at war with himself this kid
hates the way
his aura strays
paralyzed in misty fields
behind primitivo shields
crouching in the dirt
fighting for self worth
slings & arrows of misfortune
in this way materialize
it is near impossible
for cartoon boy to fraternize
he soldiers on
despite how screwball
storms & stress
unscrew his head
_______________
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