NOT MY CIRCUS, NOT MY MONKEYS. Five new poems...

36

Dinosaur Man

Dinosaur Man is dying,

not of disease or hunger,

but of fear of letting go

of his dinosaur body;

and as he gasps for air

he screams in anger and

rallies his strength to

stay alive. But Dinosaur

Man cannot stop the flow

of time, which is a cosmic

function, and as his body

quickens with the higher

frequency of service to life

and not himself he fights

to hold onto his power;

but time speeds on, and

one day, hopefully sooner

than later, Dinosaur Man

will be an artifact.

 37

The Poet’s Mystique

What does the poet know

that the rest of the world

doesn’t?

Why does the world flock

to poets for the right

sentiment?

And why are poets

so difficult to understand

until we probe them?

Not everyone loves poetry,

but those that do cannot

get enough of it, —

Why is that?

 38

Bob and Carol

They made a truce again

to not argue the whole day;

but the more wine they drank,

the more contentious

they became.

My mother made fried patties

with left-over mashed potatoes,

which I loved dearly, and I made

fried patties with left-over rice

and mashed potatoes too.

The evening was getting on,

and the wine was running low,

so Penny went into the house

and got more wine and a plate

of my rice and potato patties.

Bob and Carol are long retired,

and look for things to do;

Carol goes out shopping every day,

and Bob stays home and fiddles

about with little projects.

Couples argue for no apparent reason

other than to be right in their opinion,

and the more Bob and Carol drank

the more contentious they became

over my fried patties.

“They’re made with mashed potatoes,”

contended Bob, who was born to be right;

and to hold onto her precious ground

Carol downed her wine and countered,

“They’re made with cooked rice.”

They broke their truce again that day,

as they fought for their opinion;

and when I told them that my patties

were made with left-over risotto rice

and mashed potatoes, they failed

to see the irony.

39

My Stolen Book

GREAT SHORT STORIES FROM THE WORLD’S

LITERATURE, and stamped inside the front cover

of the book: Property of Nipigon Red Rock District

High School, which I stole five decades ago.

I love books, and I never tire of collecting them,

especially books on great literature, my favorite

passion; but I failed to see why I was so possessive

of the books I gathered like a greedy hoarder.

Penny finished reading the book she had picked up

on her weekend getaway to New York City with

her two sisters, REPORT FROM GROUND ZERO, and

she went through my library and selected the book

I stole in grade twelve for her next read.

“These are the best of the best,” I said to her, with a

strange feeling of nostalgia; but when I went back

to work on my new poem, I felt a storm brewing inside

me. Not knowing what it was, I poured this feeling into

“Bob and Carol” and ensouled my poem with its own

mystery—the gnostic secret of great literature.

Penny read the first two stories this morning, “The

Passover Guest” by Sholom Aleichem, and “A Passion

in the Desert” by Honore De Balzac, and she enjoyed

them as much as she enjoyed Alice Munro that I had

introduced her to when she won the Nobel Prize for

Literature in 2013, and this didn’t surprise me.

But a weird feeling came over me when she showed me

the duct-taped copy of my stolen book this morning, and as

I walked down the stairs for my second cup of coffee it hit

me why it bothered me for her to read GREAT SHORT

STORIES FROM THE WORLD’S LITERATURE.

It wasn’t my stolen book that I fetished, nor the enviable

artistry of the great short stories, but their hidden treasure;

and the idea of her reading my stolen book threatened me,

not for the precious life wisdom of the stories, but for my

fear of her discovering in them my most coveted secret

which I spent a lifetime ferreting out like a blind mole

in the soul of the world’s great literature.

 40

Master of Broken Boundaries

Surfing the channels on TV one night I saw

the title Another Woman, which I had seen

before; but I was so intrigued the first time

that I decided to watch it once more.

I hate Woody Allen, who has mastered the

art of broken boundaries; but he wrote

and directed Another Woman, and I have

nothing but respect for his artistry.

It’s not so much his cloying angst, which grows

more peevish with every new movie that he

makes, that exasperates me; but his seductive

sense of unbounded willful selfishness.

“The heart wants what the heart wants,” Allen

justifies his personal ethics, which he projects

upon the screen of life, and he quotes Nietzsche

and Jean Paul Sartre to support him.

Jena Rowlands is the other woman in the move

Another Woman, reflecting Allen’s recurring theme

of broken boundaries, and the story breaks when

Rowlands sees her stupefying self-deception.

But that’s the secret of Woody Allen’s longevity,

his wanton exploitation of man’s vulnerable nature;

and not until this peevish little man respects moral

boundaries will I ever stop hating him.