To do list for 2018.
December 31st. 2017
Global warming is so easy to fix,
Unlike the spleen of cultural conceit,
And life is a soiree where we all mix
And the best way of avoiding defeat.
Central Australia needs a small sea,
Fed by canals that come from the ocean,
And dug by robot koalas scot free
With solar power providing the motion.
Then, every structure gets a white roof
To reflect the sun as would an icecap.
Underneath, humans can relax aloof
Sipping cocktails of tropical rice sap,
Cropped from a library of heritage seed.
An arsenal of tolerance...Indeed!
Lamentatory lines composed upon a Boxing Day park stroll.
Whimper not that future robots will kill us
Because their cold logic tells them they must.
For efficiency's sake they won't make that fuss.
Only arms need be lopped to gain their trust.
That border betwixt "man with" and "man at",
Where arms are concerned, was always thinnest.
Such is the way of this animal planet
And has been so since arming beginnest.
The octopi have four times as many
But certainly not four times the choler
Or predilection for pinching a penny
Like any well armed human scholar.
Thus I fear men at arms must ONLY grip books
Or robots will replace their arms with hooks!
Christmas Day
The presents are open, the tree is lit,
And we've emptied the giant red socks.
Yesterday's ham is reduced a bit,
But how can you tell if it came with hocks?
The shells are cracked and the filberts chewed
And the refrigerator is stoked.
Soon some more coffee will be brewed
And the woodstove embers lazily poked.
But best in show is that rare Christmas snow
Which fell this year in a civilized way
And not in a vigorous subzero blow
That moves into town for a two month stay.
Second only to albinos out farming
How can anything so white be so charming?
Distractions
December 7th
That wacky two bush hand bird of fancy
Was always perched just outside the window
Making academic successes chancy
Like equations, or essays by Rousseau.
It's feathers were too brilliant to ignore
It even squawked in all the richest hues.
Sometimes it sang and other times would soar
High above concentration's avenues.
It flapped and fluttered to keep me focal
As blunt reality spake "excusez-moi".
I heard the rude gallic in it's vocal
As my attention suffered coup d'état.
....What's this? All along it was NOT a bird,
But Sir Metaphor's helmet plumage... coiffured!
Tax reform
December 7th
If a punishment ought to fit the crime
Then the wealthy must be bled with leeches
Or at least endure this humble rhyme
To counteract conservative screeches.
They say dollars are not national blood
But mother's milk only they must suckle.
If others suggest that they share the flood
The response will be a haunting chuckle.
Somehow, laughing all the way to the bank
Has become a respected way to act.
Whatever happened to that tough old yank
That would shake his head at that lack of tact?
He sits, there, by an economic ghost
And warns "Healthy leeches make a sick host".
Glorifiable
November 29th
The farther away from my youth I get
More florid pleasures become understood
And less and less do I pointlessly fret
About the earnest things I once thought good.
Now I sail the seven syllabic seas
And navigate caesura's shifting swells
Because there is no better way to please
a mind wherein surplus glory dwells.
Now infested with rhyme's chirping dulcets
I've come to expect some order with words
And not waste time with prose sermonettes
Worse than... the scattershot droppings of birds.
Verse revives much like wine from the grail
Then the mind blows...like wind in a sail!
Hail Siftonia!
November 27th
Things manifest themselves in odd places
As when venal folks do things that are kind
Or dark horses winning triple crown races,
Or lofty thoughts in a simpleton's mind.
And humans achieving an edified state
Doesn't seem a very likely default
In a part of town whose ultimate fate
Is exalting commercial asphalt assault.
Ah Sifton! Where finance cracks beauty's nose!
Where good taste gets a hard knuckle dusting!
Where motor oil and gas are all that flows
And all of the cheeseburgers...are disgusting.
So many acres razed, and cemented,
A dried prune bonanza into curbing.
Am I alone to think it demented
And environmentally disturbing?
Can we not bring back a measure of earth
And again root something that offers shade?
How could those trees of yore been shorn of worth
Without the citizens feeling betrayed?
Some neoclassical gardens would help
Or some gothic ruins with creepy caves.
Or laboratories with man eating kelp
Under a vaulted roof with sexpartite naves.
And where are all the naked bronze girls,
Accompanied by stream spitting cherubs,
With mermaids and nymphs diving for pearls
or dining on clams in big marble tubs?
Dammit Jim! The fine arts need a doctor!
One that gives business facades a facelift.
Someone who chisels on Gamble and Proctor
And treats architecture as a public gift.
We need odd manifestations right here
And not just in Paris, London, or Rome.
Of course, a good start is a midnight sonneteer
If you want a suburb to seem like a home.
Today's Weather
November 22nd
Zephyrus blew in cheerfully today
And effusively shook hands with Chinook.
The boundless sphere of Atmos was at play
And vented all the nooks it overtook.
So I opened all the windows and doors
And bid the sky give it's greatest gust.
Then, like a Titan with titanic snores
It blew out some of summer's old dust!
Oh how handy is the turbulent sky
To give chase to hackneyed fragrancy
And, thus, offended olfaction deny
By boosting rank...wafture...vagrancy!
And...if I could somehow train a nor'easter
I'd fly around on my blasted keister!
Game night (December 10th)
November 20th
Now as we drift through winter's long nights
Great minds need to be greatly diverted.
Preferably without family fights
Or anything hauntingly perverted.
A prerequisite for peaceful hijinks
Is a hall, like Valhalla, with tables.
But where no swords and only booze glass clinks
As auditory background for fables.
But no afterlife locations will do
When the revelers have hearts that still throb.
Luckily there's a place we can use in lieu,
A house in Washougal just right for the job!
And it has the cleverest of names,
The Buffalo Ranch... Throne of Games!
On Ginsberg's "Howl"
October 13th
Once, I possessed an open mind
Which I assure you was my own
I used it to read Ginsberg's "Howl".
Well, I don't wish to be unkind
But those words seemed randomly sown
My first reaction was a scowl.
So I tried a second reading.
His words looked clipped and pasted,
Mashed to the page with cruel force.
Was he desperate? Was he bleeding,
Or perhaps just strangely wasted
By some bizarre urban remorse?
Was there a narrative to track,
Or should I have bothered to try?
Words like photos pinned up on a board
And in between all is black.
Could I, from this, some deep meaning pry?
Was there something I ignored?
I thought it some chaotic list
From a generation not so great
Of a world full of flaws.
His knowledge of words can't be dismissed
And it's not a poem I hate
For the bleak picture that it draws.
But frankly, the Howell to be well versed in
Is the rich one they call... Thurston.
Harvest
October 7th
Set not too quickly oh dangling moon
For we need effect of your soothing beams.
Treat the raging apes to some subtle tune
That lulls them into tranquilizing dreams.
With backlit nimbus set care adrift
To be marooned upon some distant shore
Or lodge it tightly in some comet's rift
That it might not be found...forevermore.
Gild with ease the spheres where music plays.
Such overtures are all too lacking
At our clumsy Earthbound soirees
Where good taste has, of late, been slacking.
Oh host that ennead, before you sink,
Of every muse that makes mankind think...
Far beyond this place of rude distraction
To ponder some Hesperidean satisfaction.
Struck thus and with cares neatly dispatched
A mind may, at last, find peace securely latched.
The Midnight Ride of The Sonneteer!
September 30th
Racing his sonnet cycle through the night
The witch hour poet rode with demon speed.
The world of verse was a scene of blight
And of his mighty wit there was great need!
His bardocucullus, though tightly snapped,
Caught the evening air dramatically
And as it's endings fearfully flapped
The rest behaved ...Micro climatically!
Core heat retained he sped from rhyme to rhyme
And deftly dodged yet another cliche
to menace the literary paradigm
That says all poets must be blasé!
Yes, vehicles of genius need steering
For superior midnight sonneteering!
On sonneteering
September 21st
Perhaps it's a protected position
Like laureates and supreme court judges
Or pyro technicians with ignition
And the bakers who flavor our fudges.
But mortality and time have a say
And word farers have only so much clout.
Inevitably there will come a day
When the new bard carries the old one out.
I do recognize I could use more pay
And would even take Canadian dough
In trade for poems about Thunder Bay
And the ways in which it may drain or flow.
P.S.
Numismatists are in a great pickle.
No one can improve on the old beaver nickel.
The Merry Mint
There is, in August, some merry mint to see.
Oh it declares that status with it's bloom
And shares it with each and every bee
From cheerful dawn until the twilight gloom.
From bloom to bloom the bee must land and flee,
More cargo must be taken to the hive.
They cannot fail her royal majesty
in the mission that keeps them all alive.
But, diligent speck, where's your domicile?
How far do you fly in this wretched heat,
Mere meters or an arduous mile
Before you make your final flight complete?
Your procedure seems dreadful, plucky little bee,
That merry mint you pluck supports the bourgeoisie.
Nocturnal Mortality
August ?
The calendars ruthless march takes a toll
And each year there's less vinegar to piss.
Yet maturity may prove sweetly droll
And that I will accept in lieu of bliss.
That major muscle group bombast of youth,
Wherein the vinegar was the fuel,
Had me so embarrassingly uncouth
You'd have been better off with a mule.
Now, sometimes, towards the end of a day
That inelegant vigor seems misplaced.
Time is no captain's order to belay
And so what I have left I must not waste.
Therefore of slumber a sonneteer must care
Happily, it must be midnight somewhere.
Dog Days
Now Helios, scourge of the blanched and bald,
Descends from his searing annual peak
Much less likely to brutally scald
Some pitifully hatless, hairless freak.
The dog day beams of the harsh solar disk
Should've flocked whitey to a haberdasher
To better fend off radiative risk
From a heartless stellar atom smasher.
Yet still they bare their high albedo pates,
As if those dainty scalps were made of tile,
And chance poor dermatological fates
instead of deflecting rays with style.
Think they a hide as thick as a donkeys?
Nay! Not the foolish mortals men call honkies!
Terrestrial Rotation
August 5th
Apollo's furnace daily does it's worst
And wildfires turn the sunsets red.
It seems like all of the Earth has been cursed
And out of doors is just no place to tread.
Even the night offers little reprieve
From nature's sentence of oppressive heat.
I now believe what live lobsters percieve
Or any other kind of boiled meat.
Luckily, poets work around the clock
To produce something cool for the ages,
And, I find with this planet I can block
All sorts of distracting solar rages.
Yes, when daytime air reeks of sylvan death
Bright sonneteers favor a midnight breath.
Satan's Toilet
July 21st
Yes, civilization is on the ropes.
Chivalry has taken one on the chin.
And as for all the pierced and tattooed dopes
I just don't know where the deuce to begin.
It's all too much like the Huns at the gate
And the worst of them all is president.
About that I know it's cliché to prate
But that house needs a new resident.
No one really wants things to be crude.
Texans don't even want oil that way.
And so from refineries they extrude
A substance for the devil's own bidet.
Well refined or not some things are just bad
Like tweeting to much that something is sad.
The Phantom Ossature
July 6th
Smelting verbal ore into cool verse
Is a delightful way to pass the time
Since my unruly mind I now coerce
To snare stray thoughts upon a strand of rhyme.
Only thusly may madness be tamed
Or forged into rarefied coherence
Rather than be lost in aether unnamed
Like Frisbees over oblivions fence.
Oh how that ominous border offends!
How dare it threaten my fragile story!
I'd have entropy itself make amends
For all it has done to mortal glory!
So I scratch away on parchment or wall
To boldly state that with mirth I will dwell
And although one span of life is too small
I will find merriment in some ink...well.
Yes, I'll jot thoughts down and jot them nicely
Then get them printed so they will linger,
Then do it again twicely or thricely
And in this way show eternity...my finger!
Cheeky Monkeys
June 27th
Turning cheeks and praising meeks start our weeks
Then it's back to boss hard ass on Monday.
Monkeys need more than lip service techniques
If they're to get along when they play.
Sunday morning peace takes it's toll I guess.
Apes into angels is too much to ask.
Evolution is too lengthy a mess,
There must be some way to speed up the task.
Let us create a robot courtier
That might demonstrate how to dine and dance
And to behave graciously sportier
Whenever sick folks shit in their pants.
Let us make robots of special talent
To temper our goofus with gallant.
The Frenchies Seek Him Everywhere
June 22nd
Modern conversation can be a fright
With All those pistols on rustic hips.
The savages are ready for a fight
If you're reckless with the use of your lips.
Barbarous dolts might think I'm perversed
Should I savor some silver tongued love.
Yet, glad fancy must be warded and nursed,
I fear poltroonery gave it a shove.
Then the internet beat it down more
And told it to get a haircut and job.
But, some seek fancy as never before,
Chafed by terse snob or rude slob...
They seek it there, they seek it here...
and expect it from a midnight sonneteer.
All for one and one for all
June 21st
France too once suffered a cockalorum.
Then, as now, the spoiled folks always felt
That the thing to do was to deplore'im
Since he, like farts rudely dealt, had smelt.
The spoiled, rife with their own sort of rank,
Had lost all of their ancient street cred
And that is why it is they we must thank
For the national leader good people dread.
Now no one knows what's false and what's true
And mercy is a merit to be mocked.
Valid scrutiny gets beaten askew
Until Justice itself gets defrocked.
The peeps are vulgar. They stew in base fear.
The antidote is... The Midnight Sonneteer!
The Call of The Wild
The quarter moon greets this first night of June
And in between some screens of breeze-borne cloud
It weakly teases out a nearby croon
That would make the most fervent canine proud.
Oh call to the pack mighty neighbor hound!
Surrender to that lunar seduction
With your finest lycanthropian sound
And never spoil it with reduction!
Curse not yourself with thoughts of tranquil sleep
For the villagers must be made aware
That tides during a quarter moon are neap
Or... of human sleep a dog just doesn't care!
I cannot think why else the brute must bay
But clearly the owners think it's okay.
Happy Birthday to #9
April 18th
I do not know, as yet, if you have heard
About the poet who rules the night
With chiseled stanzas of well chosen word
Like the sort that might give werewolves delight.
He champions the old gothic whimsy
Like Edgar Allan Poe or some old ghost
Whose haunting voice is not weak or flimsy
Like some daytime T.V. talk show host.
Oh the time has come for all to witness
The genius of my nocturnal thought
And glorious linguistic fitness
The kind, you know, that just can't be bought.
But hold! The bells have struck! Your day is here!
Happy Birthday from...The Midnight Sonneteer!
