Greetings from the Land of Enchantment to all who dare to write . . . .
Feste (the ClownPrince) & Portia (the Princess)
GLUCOSE IN THE AFTERNOON (IN LIEU OF SIESTA)
The sun past the high-nooned thumb of the mulberry tree
Reminds me I’ve not got my latest fix on the latest
TV murder, verdict, air gab, war crime, spree. . .
So mind shuts down to the tune of shadows, least
Of mostly not-news, stymy of
stymies. I am calm,
If calm means lack of active weeping. Dumb,
If dumb is void of vicious thinking. The hum-
Ming birds have long left the mulberry’s sum-
Mer comforting shades, my vision of wings out
Of it – to feed on sugar cased in crimson –
Brief messengers. Of what, I think; and what
Am I lying, dying here to learn? What done
And said and televised in erasure’s spirit
Can fuel me for use, for anything but flight?
LEFT BEHIND - Pamela Hadas
[This is a poem inspired by the dog Kato, left behind at the murder scene where O.J. Simpson left the bodies of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman]
A wife by a knife, one life by another
left for good, improbably made dead and just
one sole live witness, horrified animal
stupidly left for good and dumb behind his howl
to pull, his tongue
against the human cheek and ear and hand
so quickly helpless and knowingly helpless
against her cheek and ear unable to wake
her hand or stroke to life the voice essential
to feeding hushing soothing the stunned
hackles and trembling hocks.
Astounded animal.
Good dog. Set loose by no means or human
reason to rush or hold back the time taken
for a dog's precisely ignorant nerve to enter
incredulous witness strike the right wrong note
the moment the sharp despaired illumination
of scene, dark, end.
No human riposte
in ticked off digits will ever come close
to such candid discovery.
So unreasonably
precise, discrete, obviously thoughtless
abandoned broadcast ---a puppy's shrill fathom
of monstrosity, unspeakably beyond
all doubt.
The dog's clearly inarticulate throb
assassinates human private sleep and silence.
Not carelessly. Shame. Muzzle dappled, open
throat salt-streaked, sweet blood on his breath,
Kato the Akita, better hero than mere namesake
floods the loyal helpless dark, keening loud
for his deadly beloved to return knowing
to undo knowing.
And then no matter how
loud the animal cries for the senseless
body's sake beside itself.
Only a dog.
No matter how suddenly there beyond
human measure.
Hysterical puppy.
Unreasonable to believe.
Inhuman pain.
Dogsbody.
Dirtied.
Bites.
Cry.
