New poem: "Just a Penis with a Thesaurus"

 

Just A Penis with a Thesaurus

 

DFW, Boy Wonder and brilliant writer

in his own right, called John Hoyer Updike

“just a penis with a thesaurus,” which,

in that ironic way of every small writer,

caught the great author’s genius for ferreting

out the deepest meaning of the mundane human

experience— “The way! The way!” Thomas

Wolfe described it in “You Can’t Go Home

Again”—through the creative art of writing

fiction, like Updike’s scandalous novel

Couples that broke the sexual barrier of fiction

and got his face on the cover of Time (the

first time), and DFW went out and hanged

himself on the back porch of his house

in Claremont, California.

 

Composed in Georgian Bay, Ontario

Saturday, April 13, 2024

New poem: "My Afterlife Perspective"

 

My Afterlife Perspective

 

I have an afterlife perspective on life

that gives me all the freedom I want

to walk through every system of human

thought and not get stuck in the mire

of inevitable doubt; and as happy as I

am in my afterlife perspective, it’s

not something that I can share without

being labelled “strange,” “weird,” or

“something else.” But not unlike the

mystic poet of Amherst, Massachusetts

who told her truth “slant,” I work my

afterlife perspective on life in the poems

I write, because that’s what I’ve been

called upon by life to do.

 

Composed in Georgian Bay, Ontario

Monday, April 8, 2024, on the day

of a total solar eclipse.