Warmonger

No bullet can penetrate my new skin,
Sleek and orange and exquisitely thin.
I'm so perfect now, a parade of me
Runs past the black flags of the armory.
I'm joined by a smart, lock-loaded army.
As we march, everyone behind his hood,
Goose-stepping, a phalanx — might over good —
We stare down the innocent and swarthy.

Scylla and Charybdis Have Fun with Odysseus

The most treacherous, the spawn-of-mythos

Murderer — mirage of a whirl pool

Beneath hanging cliffs -- who can’t even hunt,

Must make his fate, deep, and anonymous,

The passing by of the delicious fools —

Some polling pols in their pathetic punt.

Homebound, risking the Straits of Hormuz a

Sailor thought long on vicious Scylla --

Better hands full of mates torn asunder

Than let his rudderless vessel founder.

He straddled the prow with a golden shield

Upraised to fend off raking teeth and claws.

The monsters ignored him and scythed their yield,

Leaving the leader to his insane cause.

Narcissus Looking in the Pool

I should call that man a nattering ass

Who says he created my looking glass

Since I opened his mouth to amuse me

With my own exquisite philosophy.

No one can say I didn’t make the world

That flaps like a flag some soldier unfurled.

I needn’t apologize that I willed

To have that soldier spared, wounded, or killed.

There’s no one to extend my regrets to,

Except my entirely imagined “you.”

I make, making sure I can’t change today.

“Prove it!” you demand, which I made you say.

There’s only my beautiful Narcissus

And can be only him and me, no “us.”

Note: Narcissus looked into a clear, unblemished pool of water to see himself, which in Ovid's account, was a secluded spring that no other animals had ever approached. When he leaned down to quench his thirst, he mistook his own mirror image for a water sprite or another being, and fell deeply in love with it.

The Mocker Mocked

“Upon three lines of argument
I’ll construct an actor’s mask
Not for what is, but what is meant,
Should an impudent audience ask.
First, ‘Witches’ nipples make the thumb
Feel glad about its thumbing task.’
Second, ‘My swift tongue can out-drum
The quarrel fought between your ears.’
Last, ‘The idea of me will come
To satisfy your deepest fears.’
Now, dear friends, with your kind consent,
I’ll put this on. Hm, it appears
You conclude my grin’s indecent.
I’m booed when I expected cheers!”

Not to Trouble God

At the point of the intersection

between the rhetorical line

and point, there’s a dimension,

not of space, nor of time

(those have been imagined

more thoroughly than I’m

imagined by myself), but of sin.

Not the brand to trouble God,

this sin is words that begin

without being misunderstood

(because the speaker winks!)

and conclude that bad is good.

Actor’s Mask

Hiieee! Hiieeea! Hi! Hiiee! Hi! Hi!

Look closely, now. I am cellophane thin,

Imbued by hand with the hues of a lie

And the pentimento of ancient sin.

I hide my eyes with a mendacious squint

And my thoughts with an enigmatic grin.

My hair and skin share a fiery tint.

I am both angelic and indecent.

On stage, politicians deliver speech

After speech and reveal what?, you will ask.

All actors pour out their souls, each to each,

All for naught — only I can mask a mask.

Haiku, 5/16/26

 I waken early

To half-darkness half-daylight --

A mourning dove sings.