The Dead End Street

On a street in an old mill town
there live twenty six poets
in houses made of words

The first owner of the Greek Revival -
the Formalist  – lives alone with his books;
stacked in columns, aligned in perfect rows
of equal heights – most are damaged by rain
falling through the holes in the old shake roof

but just last year
the Confessionals
had the house condemned;
now they roam the empty halls
listening to echoes and
putting out their cigarettes
in the garden fountain
while they bore each other
to stone with their only
subject

around the same time the Beats
bought the dump next door,
a fixer upper if they had a dime,
they put out the cigarettes with
the card tables and metal folding chairs
for all the angelheaded hipsters
from the cold-water flats

When walking by,
one must avert the eyes
and ears from the waving
of Ginsberg’s flacid organ
his Howling lips;
Ferlinghetti is still
constantly risking
absurdity and they
wonder why
there are no women
in this pigsty of a
tent city

             The Imagists…
what to make of this house -
a house of mirrors
with moving walls
hidden staircases;
the doors melt
in the doorjams,
the glaciers knock in
the kitchen cupboards,
a bowl of pears hold
summer in their purple hearts

The haiku poets
walk up the mountain at dawn
when the bank foreclosed

on the tenement
at the north end of the street
that casts blue shadows

At the peak they join
the heavy hearted Romantics
looking down on the ruined
earth, all of its defiled Edens
praying to imperfect gods
as the beautiful souls float by
with the blow wives
on the breeze -
they who have forsaken
the very idea of home

At the edge of a wood sits
a cottage of moss-covered stone,
last house on the left:
The House of the Moths.
Beyond the wrought iron gate
form and sound
collapse into nothing
behind locked doors

Home to suicides and rapes
slaves and concubines
housewives and freaks
unlucky immigrants
border jumpers
bug huggers
Fairy Dairy Queens
depressives and junkies,
The Man from Nantucket
singing sea chanties and
dime store hymns

These are the Outsiders,
the voices, softer than a whisper,
flutter in the darkness still
waiting for someone
to turn the key
rusting in the lock

Read Full Post »

The Quotidian Inferno

Every week we are given three writing prompts in class, and we have to do a “timed write” for ten minutes. Usually these prompts are pretty strange. Oddly enough, with the exception of one, all of my (very few) published poems have been freewrites; this is probably because the prompts are so weird and I’m forced to use new materials to construct the poem. Here are a few examples of past prompts: “When I was in the Underworld,” “The King said once again,” “At the edge of the continent,” etc. Last week our prompt was “At the Quotidian Inferno.”

I happen to love Dante’s Inferno, but I have to admit to having horrible nightmares after re-reading bits and pieces of the cantos, especially the ones with hybrids. I suspect Dante might have suffered a psychic break of some sort to commit these vivid images to words. And, yet again, he’d never seen Las Vegas.

Waiting at the fiery gates
of The Quotidian Inferno,
our guide is a Greek in vintage Pumas.
Says he goes by P. V. Maro.
He’s got something to show us.

“Nine levels of scary, a dark wood and
a Satanic freak show at the end.
Don’t worry about the pets, they don’t bite.
I know the way through the joint,
up to a point. Or down to one.
It’s bigger than the Mall of America,
And darker than the Chunnel Tunnel.”

Even if it smells of sorrow and rotten luck,
your curiosity overtakes you.

“For a few bucks,” says our guide,
“Get a personal, behind the scenes tour
of the garden of earthly delights!

A carnal carnival, a dark themed park–
centaurs stand knee-deep
in the shallow rapids of bloody rivers
among the bobbing heads of murderers
to ensure their suffering is eternal.
It scares the stuff out of the living,”
says P.V. Maro with the vintage Pumas.

“At the Sinner’s Apothecary, one can find
remedies for dropsy, drops for Gluttony
cooling agents for Lust, elixirs for Avarice,
leeches for Usury, placebos for Fraud
snake oil for Greed and a stinging nettle
mouthwash, special-made for Heresy.

In the Quotidian Inferno Funhouse
you can walk across burning sands,
confess to the Harpies all of your
marital indiscretions; your own
Congressman is shaking hands
at the Lake of Boiling Pitch, where his
molasses fingers trade in sticky secrets.”

Sensing the sale was going nowhere,
P.V. Varo had a change of heart:
“There’s another joint across the strip–
if you want, half-way between here and
the Contrapasso, just past the Acheron–
The Garden Variety Paradise!
Nice place, good food, clean fun.

Funny,” he says, lighting a cigarette.
“but it never draws a crowd.”

Read Full Post »