Frozen Gold

The infantile Pope
pisses in the snow
& declares virtue:

“Only I can make
frozen gold on snow.
Look! Taste it!” he

shrieks. Nobody does;
he still has decades
to perfect this ruse...

(06 APR 10, Santa Clara CA)v3

Spring depends

on where you really are:

Auden mocked T.S. Eliot’s
“April is the cruelest month”
as New Englandish, because
April’s not cruel in England.

So far, it’s been rainy here,
just S. of San Francisco Bay.

(05 APR 10, Santa Clara CA)v3

Bass falsetti

Yest. San Jose Peace Chorale had its annual practice/retreat up on Mystic Mtn (just above Alum Rock, an East San Jose latino neighborhood.) This poem's about what it took out of the basses to sing one semi-bilingual piece.

Bass falsetti

We struggle to master the rhythms
of “We All Smile (in the same language)”
in a 4-part arrangement of texts of saints
Juan de la Cruz & Teresa de Jesus,

that I know isn’t quite Spanish, but
isn’t quite not. The bass part’s high,
written way up on the staves,
forcing us to sing painfully high

in throat-straining falsetto. By the time
we reach the end, we're badly strained,
totally falsed-out; can this really be
what the composer wants for effect?

(Easter Day 2010, Santa Clara CA)v8

Seagulls

Seagulls squawk!

reminding me
I’m not that far*
from salt-water*,

just south of south
San Francisco bay,
remembering

Massachusetts Bay.

Note: Remembering Massachusetts Bay simply, isn't possible because it's dramatically different in each season: snowily awful in Winter, thrillingly windy to hurricany in Fall, nicest in late Spring, scorching in high Summer, so the name's long & complex to anyone who's actually lived there for long. How does one 'remember' San Francisco Bay?
* far (fah) & water (wahtah) rhyme in New England.

(04 APR 10, Santa Clara CA)v4

The Last Pope

The Last Pope

Disgraced
beyond endurance,
The Last Pope
writes his resignation
in invisible ink
on virgin vellum,
so that as he writes it,
nothing appears.

He smiles at the efficiency
of The Holy Spirit that
reads all, erases all.

Ritually, he drops the sheet
into a flaming brazier.
These illegible words
appear & disappear:
Consummatum est.

(31 MAR 10, Santa Clara CA)v4

Neo-wild Showtime!

[Buffalo Bill & Annie Oakley’s ghosts
posses John McCain & Sarah Palin.]

Surrounded by neoinjuns,
Buffalo Bill & Annie Oakley
shoot their way to neoFreedom,
cracking shots at illegals!

Today’s wild-wild-west show’s
restaged for our neo-wild times;
nobody hates government now
more than the tea-partiers who

dump government tea-bags into
the Grand Canyon. There they go,
floating down the roiling Colorado,
churning whitewater into brown foam!

(27 MAR 10, Santa Clara CA)v7

Insanirators

Scraping the bottom of the barrell,
they come back up inflamed with
predictable, pitiful, & endless rage;

illiterate, insanirate, they incinerate
Themselves in trying to obliterate Us.
They're their own Armaggedon.

(25 MAR 10, Santa Clara CA)v4