The Daily Muse: Poem of the Day (POD) #11-20 11. Bathtub Poetry The only taboo subject in poetry today Is the idea that anything might really be taboo. And talk of forbidenness Is the only talk Forbidden. To talk about sin that is really sin Is like distilling bathtub gin During Prohibition, Because the radical sect Of the politically correct Strictly prohibits prohibition. So the spiritual drunkards like myself Must continue to buy their scripture At the usual places: The speakeasy steeples Of the new taboo. 12. Epithalamium1 "Helpe me mine owne loves prayses to resound" --Epithalamion, Edmund Spenser for Keith and Paige 1. The Institution Welcome to the mystery, The delicious knot; Welcome to the institution. It's a funny place, Complete with padded rooms, Locked corridors, and men in white. You meet the strangest people here, And each one of them is you, Wearing someone else's clothes, And sometimes none at all. It's a Catch-23 And God swallowed the key. So you're both here to stay Either way. 2. The Love Bug The real people inside you Will start to emerge Like cicadas, Crawling from their crunchy skins, Because marriage is sticky Like a pine tree with sap: Your emotional exoskeletons Hunched and clinging To the sweet and bleeding tree, As you climb with your green and still-wet wings, Drying as you climb, until you fly And play that eerie insect music with your legs Together, because both of you are new. Welcome to the best thing you will ever do. 3. Hangliding on the Moon Welcome to the envelope, Now push it; Lick the sonic boom of joy. You're astronauts now, forever, Made of the eternally right stuff. Splashdown and re-entry are a blast, When those heat resistant tiles start to melt, And you begin to pull those G's, As Jupiter's, O, pink moons revolve around you. Men aren't from Mars, And women aren't from Venus. There is a greater distance between us. We are more similar than the same. Neil Armstrong was wrong: this is the one kind step for man. 4. Hoo-Ah! Welcome to Parris Island, To emotional boot camp. Welcome to D-Day And the storming of the beaches. If you liked Ike, You'll like this even more. Air Assault, Hoo-Ah3, Semper Fi.4 Amphibious landings Are the reason why The plane you're jumping out of Doesn't fly; It swims across the sky Until you reach eternal velocity, The Divine viscosity... . 5. ....Pause...Applause! At which point You'll need the paws. Notes: 1--epithalamium=Gr. "at the bridal chamber" (a song commemorating a wedding) 2--Lit. "You are my dog paws." (Russian version of "You are my honey bun," etc.) 3--"Who, us?" (Alleged Marine response to being told they were going in first) 4--Latin for "Always faithful" (Marine motto). 13. The Silos of Our Souls (Oak Grove, Kentucky, 1992) What I remember Is how tobacco leaves hung To dry and age From the roughly hewn rafters In the still, haunting Fall Like perfumed bats; And the dust from their wings Caught the light of dusk, shooting Through the weathered boards. The crotchety cats crawled On the beams above us As we sought refuge from our longing, From the changing landscape, In that intoxicating chamber of decay, Where change, contained, seduced us With the sweet, nostalgic smell of death. Concentrated, charged, we emerged Into the fields of fireflies forever... And climbed the silos. 14. Poetry Hangover Loose leaf pages and legal pads Strewn across the room Like empty cans of beer The day after the binge, The orgy of books. Spread open, sprawling, spent. The voluptuous volumes Ravished by my reading lust. Drooling drawers and tongue-tied closets Survey the scene of my excess. Byron's passed out in the hallway, Faulkner had to call a cab. No one was in any condition to drive, So I just kept reading. 15 . Wherefore Art Thou Metaphor? I love the way you are Not like anything else. I understand more The way things are By comparing them To the way they're not. To call a spade a spade is truth, To use a metaphor's a lie. Art is artificial, And so is the sky. If you say it's only blue, Is it more or less true? 16 . Untranquil Thoughts Recollected I sit and wait. Things start coming back to me. A suction of sorts Draws them crawling Back into my head. Sometimes I wait all day For those elusive memories To return. They're shy and a bit jumpy at times. If you make a single move They scatter like deer. Then, they sneak up on you When you start to doze And blindside you. Memories are slippery And sticky at the same time. You can never catch good ones And hold them still, But when you want to ditch bad ones, They stick to you like glue. Peel one finger off, And they stick to the other two. I don't know what we'd do If we kept them all on file Or locked up in a zoo. But I suspect it's healthier To let them roam In the wildlife sanctuaries of our mind. It is this wildness in our minds That separates us from machines. We must cultivate it and let it grow Comfortable with what we do not know. 17. Nobody's Doin' It Let's start a movement, you and I, 'Cause nobody else is doin' it. Let's not give anything a try-- Get everyone not doin' it. We'll climb back in the closet When everyone else is comin' out And rebel by being normal When normal's lost its clout. Instead of succumbing to peer pressure We'll create a peer vacuum, And as they climb out of the closet We'll suck them from the room. Then wait until the coast is clear And sneak out with our broom To tidy up the place a bit And dust around the tomb Of moral relativism, May it rest in peace. The tomb is empty But nothing was released. 18. Dragon Park I'm sitting in Dragon Park Next to the Stadium Where Vanderbilt plays its games, When a voice comes suddenly out of the sky Which seems at once Like someone sitting next to me And the God of the Universe Speaking from above. I think of the crotchety old man Whose doing the play-by-play, Sitting in a cramped booth, Smoking and peeping through binoculars, Consulting his charts and statistics, And commenting on the game. Could this be God? The cadence and the clarity of his voice Comfort me somehow By bringing order to the chaos, The craziness and emotion, Of a game nearby. Thousands of people in a bowl-- A civilization in early times-- A quarter mile away, And I in a park, Alone. How is it possible? The voice rings out To cars who do not hear. Perhaps it's on their radios. Perhaps they're on their cellular phones. How would He speak to us today? I wonder. Too cold to think about it now. Time for home and warmth, But on the way A gust of wind That nearly blows an older man Right off the curb. How unlike the flag above me That has no greater joy Than to be blown. In fact, depends on it, For limp it has no meaning . Finally, I face the wind And yawn into it, My mouth as wide as it can be. It fills me up like a balloon And carries me into the sky, Up above the flag, Into the current of the voice Where I can see the children play And the old man leaning into the wind Losing his balance once again. 19. The Bride of Paradox; or, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Computer 1. My fingers infinitely tangled in the hierarchies of her hair. 2. The endless variations of her thoughts, mysterious fugues. 3. All statements about her are false, including this: including this. 4. Her paradoxical beauty unproveable, yet no less true. 5. She doesn't make sense of nonsense, or understand the universe with words. 6. She has limits; she cannot think some things or not think others. 7. She understands the problem but refuses to play the game. 8. She's different when things stay the same and constant when they change. 9. She's dumb as an ox, A glorified calculator. 10. Ignorance at the speed of light is still ignorance. 11. How will the moths adapt their wings To smokestacks of information? 12. Intuition cannot be reduced; it is a path that must be walked; 13. The only way to resolve a paradox is to marry one. 20. A Good Point You have a very good point; In fact, the best in this joint. Your point is sharp, Like the string of a harp, Like The World According to Garp. All points are carping carp, Or coy koi. Carpe Diem! Carpe Carp! Seize the fish! Anoint this joint, And bless your very good point. hibits prohibition. So the spiritual drunkards like myself