Beauty Contest: Old and New

Men would walk for miles

To see Lisa’s smiles . . .

  

But the guillotine they’d put their heads beneath

To see the space between her teeth.


                                      Robert Forrey, 2011

Born in South Carolina on November 17, 1943, Lauren Hutton (above) began college at the University of South Florida, in Tampa, and graduated from Tulane University. She began her career as a fashion model whose slight gap between her two front teeth was the endearing imperfection that made her famous. She went on to become a movie star, a cosmetics honcho, and a motorcyclist. She posed nude in Big magazine at the age of sixty-one. And photographer Richard Avedon immortalized her left breast in 1968. 

Moon Painting by Julius Grimm

Moon Talk

On one night in the life of everyone

the moon shines as it never

has before or ever will again.

Tripping out on the moon,

a poem should be tantalizingly

close to comprehension without

making dollars and sense.

No matter what the moon may say,

a poem should not go all the way

on a first date or at any date:

“Oh, do not swear by the moon!”

In the sluttishness of time

ads unpack their artlessness

with words worth less than

the wait for eons of silence on

the dark side of the moon.

If an ad fails on the moon,

Have we sounded the depths

of meaninglessness?

Words have become like

those sled dogs described

in Call of the Wild  who when cut

from the traces want to curl

up and die, who live only to pull

mad men across moonscapes

of meaninglessness and don’t know

what to do with themselves

out of the race for dough-ray-me.

Out of a meaningless context,

and into the mooning of aristocracy

of the likes of the Earl of Sandwich,

the Viscount of Hinchingbrooke,

which became the courtesy title

for the heirs apparent to the earldom

and after whom the sandwich

and the Sandwich Islands are named.

Better to howl at the moon

than fall for frankincense,

which is used in embalming,

perfume and religious rites.

                        Robert Forrey 2011

Somewhere

 Little Fourteen-year-old Dancer, Edgar Degas

Somewhere

Life is lived over there, somewhere,

Before the dream, before stretching

The muscles, before the splendor in the ass,

Before the pennant, unfurled,

Before the picking up of essentials,

Before the consciousness of class

And sexual differentiation, the glissé—

The step that would have made

All the difference—the partner,

The crush, the groove, the world.

                    Robert Forrey, 2011

Hells Bells

All our lives, nonbelievers in the Holy Ghost,

We’ve had to listen to your infernal bells

At ungodly hours from coast to coast,

Not just to your chimes but to your morbid knells,

Like just now, at 7 A.M. Saturday.

What on earth was that one all about?

And from which steeple did it make its way,

From which congregation, without a doubt;

From which one true faith, Judaic, Roman, Islam—

From which sect, so insanely sectarian—

As they sing, pray, kneel, or salaam?

It’s all warmed-over Assyrian.  

For whom do these bells toll? They toll for thee,

Because they sure as hell don’t toll for me.

                                      

                          Robert Forrey, 2011

Be Prepared

Old men, like boy scouts, should be prepared

For certain advertisements in the mail,  

Ones that  assume you have not been spared

The ravages of age and do not fail

To mention, now that you’re on Medicaid,

Supplemental catastrophic insurance,

Or a miracle space-age hearing aid,

Or a miracle pill, you know, for endurance;

Or a solar-powered, ergonomic wheel chair,  

Or tell-tale stain resistant pajamas,

Or a Jack LaLanne Las Vegas time-share,

Or a Club Med for seniors in the Bahamas.


Unlike the Master Builder slipping from his steeple,
You’re saved by plastic from falling very hard
Because the American Association of Retired People
Mailed you a preapproved membership card.

Old men, be prepared for all this, and more,

 As you approach sixty, seventy, even eighty—

Be prepared, as you  are going out the door,

For your appointment in Samara, your cruise to Haiti.

The only question—and it’s anybody’s guess—

Is who croaks first, you or the USPS?

                                   Robert Forrey  2011

Digitalis

A low-tech school has become a draw for parents

 at high tech companies like Google

                                                   News item in the NY Times.

They’ve thrown the world an electronic bone.

  They want every dog wired, except their own.

                                         Robert Forrey, 2011

Non-Campus Mentis

(for E.F.) 

Far from the tables down at Mory’s,

Far from the campus bells,

In the morning of our past glories,

But within whiffing of factory smells—

Do you remember New Haven,

Circa nineteen hundred and sixty-six, 

And the building about to cave in

Where as grad students we’d mix—

On the wrong side of the tracks—

With bohunks, assorted odd balls,

Bohemians, beatniks, blacks,

And schlepping bubbies in shawls?

The lesbians on the ground floor—

The one so sophisticated, refined,

The other as butch as a stevedore,

But still sensitive and kind;

Or the pancaked sisters on the second floor,

With always a smile, like June Cleaver—

Jesus Christ was their savior,

Champaign music their Saturday night fever.

When the  trains roared by so fast,

The  building would swing and sway—

A relic from the distant past, 

Like the music of Sammy Kaye.

One morning, in a suit and tie,

As he was going out the door,

Our tireless super stopped, to cry,

Before regaining his composure.

His name, as I recall,  was Sven Anderson.

Ninety-one, he lived on the floor above us.

“I'm going to bury my last son,

Then I'll be back.”  Lord, love us!

The building, no architectural jewel,

Long ago succumbed to age

And the curse of urban renewal.

Relentlessly, time turns the page.

Now, as retired scholars,

With ivy degrees engraved,

We treasure more than fame or dollars

The non-campus mentis we craved.  

                           Robert Forrey 2011

Hendrik Goltzius, Lot and His Daughters

Schizophrenic Election Sermon

“The incest that occurred between Lot and

 his daughters has raised many questions . . .” Wikipedia

religion is the greatest nostrum the world has known

incest is the key to the kingdom come keeping

it all in the familiar terror story of poly tricks

the drug in dust tree bears bitter fruit butt its

the only butter we have lap it up last upper cut

the greatest story ever tolled the belles are toiling

stalking in tongues walking in girly cues in front of city hall

in the vin yarns of the lord we are not what we seam

as skitch told a whopper we stitch together sketches

worlds away wins going away where ass the truth in ending lies

mummy is the root of the bold weasel accordion to a red book

I was a bouy bobbin in the bay of bees gay as mourning

fourscare and severed  heads ago walking among chill brains

the moon was made of jeez I wish I cod fish like jesus cod

cold shudder at first but things wormed up till the funny money

pulverized everything under the panoply & the son seed

what chow maid mien when I mined the ancient womb

for curds and ways commit teed off frank & stein more daze

and the twelve apothems carry stares to the sum of the nation  

and the web stirrup up the pot of birds spoiling for a flight

in the doyly cart blanch light ochre straw every rhyme

and myrrh maid you never saw the whiz dumb of running

for pubic orifice prick up the hail columbia queen  of oh shun

the devil demonizes givin mints to the poor of heart

the lawn care g-men and s-men culling the grasshopper from the tares

and the hell of infernal mary is a cuke the feds fail to keep check of

the cherry ochre straw the cheery male is in the bouncy czech

who has predatory erections every time the belle is in her court

if jumping to conclusions was olympic event gold galore

copping pleas don’t fool the stool prigs who are steeling the lions

against the day they can color and see them being fed in pens

while the aints go marshing in small numbers to the poles

while the dingbat preaches from the hearth of coal

from the demonic suction of the odd ball hoity tots

the schizo discourse of the yenta grass shopper  

after lot played with his doters madness is divinest incense

ministers are mixed up and the lord lacks sense

god helps those who whelp themselves in the virgin version
a tail kalbled together with spittle and lice

                                                 trebor yerrof 2011

Michelangelo, The Flood from the Sistine ceiling

The Flood 

The town’s in shambles.

Drugs take a toll.

Everyone ambles,

Except crooks on a roll.

The town’s half dead.

The state’s taking over.

No, the ex-mayor said.

We’re rolling in clover.

The town held a meeting.

The voters were aging.

There was plenty of seating.

Indifference was raging.  

Politicians were there,

Up to their old tricks,

Including the ex-mayor

And his dominatrix.

The auditor, too,

Yes, he was there.

Can’t add two and two

But can fill a chair.

Very few attended.

A mad woman presided.

The meeting ended

With nothing decided.

There’s no tomorrow.

In the Bible it’s written

That towns like Gomorrah

Will be smitten.

Noah, is this the norm?

Or is this the ark before the storm?

                    Robert Forrey

Dictionaries

I fell in love with dictionaries—

Even with those I didn’t understand.

Like mail order brides one never marries,

It was enough to hold them in my hand.

Like iridescence in an aquarium—

Lustrous Cassels, Collins, Oxford, Larousse,

American Heritage, or Merriam—

There were different schools of fish to choose.
To change my metaphor to aeries
And my insignificant sonnet to birds,
Atop the pile of dictionaries
There were high flying thunderbirds.
In skillful hands that held quills and pored—
In Spenser, Shakespeare and Donne—words soared.

                               

 The Gink

                                     The Gink at two                              

The bottom book is Merriam-Webster’s

Second International, published in

Nineteen-thirty-six, when mobsters

Ruled the roost, three years after I’d rushed in

At thirty-six  Condor Street, a rare bird.

Early on,  I got the  nickname “The Gink,”

A word in neither the Second or Third,

Published in nineteen-sixteen-two, I think.

But Gink’s  in American Heritage,

Published in nineteen hundred sixty-nine:

“A man or boy . . . considered odd” [page

557] “in some way.” Oh, that’s fine!

I was nicknamed by Hughes,  the oddest man,

Who died in the madhouse at Mattapan.

                                Robert Forrey 2011

Governor Walcott (1847-1900)

The governor’s  life was so unlike mine.

His father was a waistcoated Walcott,

His mother a Frothingham,  a fine

Old family, into everything—free thought,

Banking, politics, law, and fine art,

The kind of people—Unitarians—

Who wanted New England to be part

Of whatever glorious plans

A rational god had for humanity,

Which meant laying to rest can’t-do Calvin

And his un-American  innanity

Of depravity and original sin.

The state house statue of Walcott says it all:

God meant America to be imperial.

                                                                    Robert Forrey 2011

Junior High

My unhappiest stage, where misery starts, 

Was Garfield Junior High School,  as a teen, 

When I imagined myself in the parts

Played in the movies by James Dean,

Whose smile was crooked and whose chin was cleft.

He was the idol of my junior high heart,

Because I often felt prepubescent, bereft—

Not  popular, not funny,  not smart—

No valentines, kisses, or sleepovers.

I lay awake nights, surfing radio stations,
Wishing I had a head like Dink Stover’s 

And the hips of Elvis’s gyrations.

I was the sad sack, the dreamer,  the dunce:

Oh,  how I wish I could go back, just once!

                              Robert Forrey  2011

Statue of Washington in front of Capitol Building

Death, Be Thou Proud 

Death ennobles both man and beast,

Deifies the greatest, elevates the least.

Look at the moose head on the wall

Or Washington’s statue on the Mall.

The least of us, with our last breath,

Are taken seriously at death.

The least of us, even the most pedestrian,

In death, stands tall as the equestrian.

At the heart of every megalopolis,

Looms the ennobling necropolis.

                             Robert Forrey  2011

Appalachian Grammar Lesson

Every other man in this town

is either a lay preacher

or is trying to bed Miss Brown,

the young English teacher,

who tells her students to pray—

as she has often  prayed—

that they won’t confuse lie and lay,

and the present with the past participle, laid.

                                      Robert Forrey  2011

Paradox

Newton explained why spheres attract,

Why apples fall to earth,

But he accepted  as a fact

The Fall and Virgin birth. 

Because a man’s a polymath

Doesn’t mean he’s smart.

Einstein, though a whiz at math,

Was a relative fool at heart.

                                     Robert Forrey  2011

An Anglophile’s Lament  

In 2008, The Times named Philip Larkin “Britain’s Greatest Post-War Writer”

Buggers! Has it come to this, dear Albion,

Home of Shakespeare-on-Avon?

Please remember Will in thine orison.

And listen, Albion, hearken:

Never again my door darken,

Not when the best you can offer is Larkin.

The tide is out, way out, and what a smell

Emanates from your island, post-imperial!

The unprincely Philip sounds your death knell.

Paunchy and raunchy, he’s like a Brit rapper

Who typed his letters on the crapper

While trying to hump the last English flapper.

Racist, sexist, excremental to the core—

Like Jonathan, but only more.

Tits, toads, twats, and twaddle: what a bore!
Where is the quill Will held dear?

 Where is the Will of yesteryear?
Wherefore the Larkin of skittles and beer?

                          Robert Forrey 2011

Life Savers were invented by Clarence Crane, father of the poet, in 1912.

Art work by Mel Ramos. 

Life Saver

When Hart Crane jumped to his death

from the deck of the Orizaba, in 1932,

no one threw him a lifesaver.

I knew a lovely woman named Beth,

who grew up in Cleveland, too,

next door to Hart, the little shaver.

It was the era of booze, not meth.

He was beaten by a member of the crew

the night before for asking a sexual favor.

According to witnesses, with his last breath

Hart said, “Goodbye everybody!” Not, “Adieu!”

which would have been more in keeping, graver.

American kids loved sweets to death,

as much as flappers  loved to screw.

Hart’s father, therefore, invented the Life Saver.

Candy was dandy but the iceman cometh.

It didn’t matter what was what or who was true:

Sex was something to pursue, not savor.

Things have changed as I approach my eightieth:

It’s nobody’s business what you do,

what your sexual preference is, or favorite flavor.

Beth once wrote a triplet, using “begorry”

to end the first line; ending the second with “sorry”;

and the third, felicitously, with “Forrey.”

                                        Robert Forrey 2011