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.

Pandemonium

Hortus, a suburban devil of Pandemonium,
Is lonely tonight for want of a loyal friend:
Anyone, sick or foul, human or fiend,
Even a specter enriched with plutonium.
The lights glare like angry souls at the palace,
And the burning rivers between here and there
Drown out the sweet, anguished tintamarre
Of endless victims of his own so-called malice.
Cold comfort for Hortus, who once boasted
The brightest shield and the longest spear,
Who stalked the palace halls without fear,
Now to stand out here, alone and untoasted.
"Curse you all!" he cries, "I don't deserve this!"
But knows there's no leaving Satan's service.

The Power of Babble

Their hero made sentences not drawings

With crayons and one day broke in half

Eighty-eight in the box (for no reason),

Leaving little pieces for the cawings

He scribbled so his friends might read and laugh.

No judge would banish him for this treason.

He built a tower to gild his language,

Then praised their god when his hate made them spit

At words others spoke and rip up the page

They'd written, substituting bullshit.

The tower still stands, rotting and silent,

But for the greatest of men who scribbles

On a clapper-less bell senseless dribble. 

Asleep, he mumbles alone in his tent.