Poems Old and New

Dance of Life

2012-01-27T21:19:00.000-05:00

Edward Hopper, Morning Sun

Dance of Life

The geometry oflight and shade

As early morning, likea contusion—

The day’s daily dolefulserenade

Begins—brokenpromises, confusion,

Registering as layersof rectangles

In which woman’sheart, light as a feather,

Is chained likelimber legs by bangles

Or lissome footloosefeet by leather.

The dance of life,how like a minuet,

So classical, so—shallwe say—Euclidian:

Often a solo, seldoma duet,

And only rarely Dionysian.

Later, long afternoon shadowsand light

Give way mercifully to desire and night.

Robert Forrey,2012

Fashion Plate

2012-01-22T10:53:00.000-05:00

Automat (1927), Edward Hopper

Fashion Plate

She was botheredby what uncle Ned said—

That she, likemost women, was fashion’s slave,

Who had gotten itinto her cloched head

She was riding highon a suave wave

To Paris when shewas actually bound

By the chains ofconvention and would find

Herself—if she heldher fashionable ground—

On some Chanelisle where the natives dined

On older women whowere not du jour.

She sat therewondering if someone, this day,

Took her photo forthe rotogravure,

Would she someday bethe picture of passé—

The butt of bad jokes,like Thomas Crapper—

The louche, low-waisted,flat-chested flapper?

Robert Forrey, 2012

Nighthawks

2012-01-18T12:05:00.000-05:00

Nighthawks (1942), Edward Hopper

Nighthawks

Not drinking his coffee, not listening

To the two guys’ stupid conversation,

The lone man stares at the urns, glistening,

Wondering, “Why inGod’s creation

I’m so fuckingaddicted to the stuff,

Starting the firstdamned thing in the morning

Till late atnight, like I can’t get enough—

What I need’s trafficsigns all over, warning—

On the road to hell—DANGEROUS CURVES AHEAD,

Like Lana Turner, HAZARD:SOFT SHOULDERS—

Or Rita Hayworth, CAUTION: RED HEAD AHEAD.

Bare arms! I won’t lookat how Red folds hers,

Because she knowsshe’s driving me nuts.

Don’t think I ain’tgot your number, toots!”

The man with thecigarette is telling

The counterman aboutthat night’s big bout—

How Billy Conn, likethe dummkopf Schmeling,

Would be champ,but he tried to knock the jig out

In the thirteenth,and was K.O’d himself.

“What else do youexpect? A mick hoity-toit,

A light heavyweight, a goddamn elf,

Matched up with thatbig nigger from Detroit.

I lost a bundle on the fight, right honey?”

He says to the redheadstaring at her nails.

“Don’t get mewrong, Gus, it’s not the money.

I just hate itwhen a white fighter fails.

On the radio you can’tsee the fight—

You can’t tell Lewisfrom Conn, black from white.”

3

She knows meninside out, as two exes

And dozens of otherscould attest.

A veteran of thewar of the sexes,

She’s seen theworst and none of the best.

Childless, pushingforty, she knows men won’t

Be taking her tofights when she’s fifty,

Or to bed either,unless they’re drunk—they don’t

Care if you can’tcook, sew, are unthrifty—

Like the jamokewith his back to the window,

The one who can’tstop not looking at her—

No girl, nopersonality, no dough—

Is he her long darknight of the future?

Men! Which one ofthem isn’t a moron?

They act like theydon’t know there’s a war on.

4

Augustus Jones was the counterman’s name,

But customers andA.A. friends called him Gus.

The Village was a greatplace when he came,

The year of thecrash, on a Greyhound Bus,

All the way from WhatCheer, Iowa,

Where he’d workedas a small town soda jerk—

Not, following hisfather, studying law—

But wanting to makepainting his life’s work,

Like Grant Wood, ofAmerican Gothic fame.

But drinking and aserious heart attack

Had taken the aspirantout of the game.

He’d made aresolution: Never look back.

His artistic dreams had come a cropper,
But he lives on—in Nighthawks, by Hopper.

Robert Forrey, 2012

Usherette

2012-01-13T07:00:00.000-05:00

New York Movie, Edward Hopper

Usherette

Which was moreboring, she wonders,

Working here orthe Five-and-Ten?

Her life so far isa series of blunders,

A merry-go-roundof wrong men,

Or boys rather, nothalf her age,

Emotionally andmentally.

Wasn’t it time not just to turn the page

But to really change,fundamentally?

If only she hadfinished school,

But that bored herso much it wasn’t funny.

Her aunt had toldher not to be a fool—

That with herlooks she could marry money.

She sometimeswonders if she could

Save enough for a Greyhoundto Hollywood.

Robert Forrey, 2012

Cloud Computing

2012-01-12T07:44:00.001-05:00

Cloud Computing

Do not wear your heart upon your sleeve:

Too bad that’s advice that’s rarely taken.

Do you recall when someone had to leave

The office if a close, a very dear relation—

A parent, spouseor, god forbid, a child—

Had suddenly leftthis world forever?

How devastated they were, how wild

With grief, their prospect of recovery never?

But now that there’s an office in the cloud,

It makes no differenceat all whether

We bare, tear,break, or lose it in a crowd,

Because digitally our heart’s always there,

Like a bird, high above, secure, unstressed—
Tweeting in its electronic nest.

Robert Forrey, 2012

Night Watchman

2012-01-09T07:40:00.002-05:00

Night Watchman

The moon kept himcompany

On his nightlyrounds,

Just over hisshoulder—unearthly,

Pale, emitting no sounds—

But still giving familialadvice,

Like a mute uncle who signed—

“Loneliness is asmall price

To pay for peaceof mind.”

Robert Forrey, 2012

Maiden Wake

2012-01-08T00:05:00.002-05:00

Maiden Wake

My tomboy playmate,whose name

I forgot many years ago,

Was imprisoned, likein the game

We played—ringalevio.

I recall theyellow shades were drawn,

Which sunlightturned to stained glass—

Glowing like the world’sfirst dawn,

Lighting theparlor in a High Mass.

I remember littleif anything

Else of that, my maiden wake—
The open casket, the whispering,

The eye contact I darednot make,

And the thing thatoverpowered

All else—her, pale and embowered.

Robert Forrey, 2012

Buffalo Bill

2012-01-06T12:54:00.000-05:00

Buffalo Bill

Across the sky, all afternoon

Great herds of albino buffalo,

Cumulusly, in mid-June,

Silently, whiter than snow,

Inch their way to the moon—

Or, perhaps, much farther still,

To the green plains of eternity

Where a mercifulgod will kill

Them with kindness, show mercy—

Like a benevolent Buffalo Bill.

When the last herd disappeared,

The sky turned spectacularly pink.

As a blood-red sunset neared—

A flood of innocence—I think

Of a non-ungulate with a beard.

Robert Forrey, 2012

Once More

2012-01-05T09:20:00.001-05:00

Once More

With a head cold that’slasted three months—

All winter—it’sdown to the unheated garage

Again to deal withthe blasted wreck.

It would help if Iwas a mechanic,

Which I definitely am not.

In fact, as ateenager,

I hated cars andwouldn’t learn

To drive one—aphobia, I guess.

I’m glad I gotover that.

I even playedfootball in high school.

Slowly, I lift thehood up,

Thinking to myself,“Is this worth it?

Don’t you haveanything better

To do with a dayoff

Than tinker withthis wreck?”

I thought of allthe things

I could be doingwith my time—

With the rest ofmy life—thinking

Of something otherthan my ex- or the field goal

I missedthirty-two years ago

That would havewon the Thanksgiving game.

“Fuck it!” I tellmyself. Stop living in the past.”

Though my fingersare already numb—

My circulation isn’twhat it once was—

I think, “Aw, whatthe heck,”

Turn on the radio,pick up a wrench,

And dive once moreinto the wreck.

Robert Forrey, 2012

The Pontiff, the Atheist, and the Nonsequitor

2012-01-04T08:06:00.000-05:00

The Pontiff, the Atheist, and the Nonsequitor

On Fresh Air, Hawking biographer Kitty Ferguson
said she's not sure Hawking isn't a believer.

Will or will not Hawking convert?
Will he, finally, see the light?
Will he, like T.S. Eliot, revert
To the Anglican rite?
“When the time comes to depart,”

The pontiff whispered, “atheists must—

Unlike chimney sweeps, however smart—

Turn to Jesus, not to dust.”

“Besides,” the pontiff added, “It’ s my tiara.”

“We’ll see if it is,” said Rivera.

Robert Forrey, 2012

Conversations with the Dead

2012-01-03T06:15:00.001-05:00

Black Tomato

Conversations with the Dead

To the mother dying in a hospital bed,

To the father who was always in arrears,

To the sister who was cruelly misled,

To the brother who lived in dread—

In conversations with the dead,

I try to make up for the lost years—

For the tears I never shed,

For the things I never said.

Robert Forrey, 2012

Plastic

2012-01-02T06:52:00.000-05:00

Plastic

With a plastic flashlight,

We see with enhanced vision.

We make an incision in night,

We see inside the elision:

We see a plastic spoon.

We see it with misprision.

We see a plastic moon.

We see plastic sacristies.

We see the black balloon.

We see wrappers in trees.

We see plastic in its lair

Of unbiodegradable possibilities.

We see all this—reflected clear—

In an ersatz Indian’s glycerin tear.

O, wild west Indian, thou ghost of movies seeing,

Thou, from whose unseen presence rappers dead

Are driven like leaves from technicolor fleeing—

Yellow, orange, and McDonald red—

Our once clear streams and blue oceans

Are not just polluted but bloated

With empties of spring water and lotions—

A planet plagued and plastic-coated,

Created by the Great White Father, a demiurge

Who is naught but to whom each defers.

In the beginning was the urge

To create the miracle—polymers.

O, God—O, Madalyn Murray O’Hair—

Ungodly plastic is everywhere!

Robert Forrey, 2012

Readers Digest

2011-12-29T08:44:00.000-05:00

ReadersDigest

The GreatAmerican Bathroom Book, II:

How come I never heard of number one?

Just who among the literati knew

Reading the classics could be such fun?

They weren't published in the capital of hype—

No, not in New York, but Salt Lake City!

626 pages of five-point type,

Which, in terms of bite size, is itty-bitty.

“Single-Sitting Summaries of Great Books,”

Classics, from the dawn of civilization on,

Heavy fare the average Mormon overlooks,

Now digested for him for the john—

Classics he can read in just one sitting:

The Catch 22is he must be shitting.

Robert Forrey, 2011

Lascivious Carriage

2011-12-28T07:38:00.000-05:00

LasciviousCarriage

The woman of lascivious carriage

Is related to everyone in town,

Either by blood or marriage:

Every long face, every clown;

Every doctor, lawyer, and chief,

Every teetotaler, every drunk;

Every policeman, every thief,

Every nice kid, every punk:

Every depressive and manic,

Every ex-husband (all cousins)—

Her hairdresser, mailman, and mechanic—

She’s related to millions, not dozens.

Considering how many have lived and died,

We shouldn’t prejudgeor disparage;

Considering how steep and long the ride,

We’d never have made it without her carriage.

Robert Forrey, 2011

Games

2011-12-26T08:00:00.002-05:00

Clueless (2007), Robert Forrey

Games

They were different from the beginning

And if only he had seen in what ways

And not been preoccupied with winning

But rather had cleverly played it as it lays,

It would have been a less frustrating game,

One played with many fulsome round objects,

In which there’s no place for race, grief, or shame

Defiled under the rubric pet projects.

But that’s always the way with perfection,

Which is not what it’s cracked up to be—

Bootlegged hankering after rejection

Is what it is, to speak dishonestly.

Aren’t we always playing games at the shrine

Not of what’s mine, really, but of what’s thine?

Robert Forrey, 2011

Church in a Holler

2011-12-23T08:46:00.000-05:00

Church in aHoller

He kept an album of “holler” churches,

A photo record, a disbeliever’s portfolio—

Places of worship among pines and birches—

Each time he thought it was complete, bingo!

He would findyet another one, hidden

In some unfamiliar holler,

As though the many miles he had driven

Were just a drop in the bucket, smaller

Than the eye ofan agnostic newt,

Smaller than the smallest molecule,

Smaller than any doctrine he could refute,

Smaller even than Voltaire’s ridicule.

Always anotherday, another dollar,

Always another church in a holler.

Robert Forrey, 2011

Christopher Hitchens

2011-12-22T09:04:00.000-05:00

ChristopherHitchens (1949-2011)

Addicted to truth, booze and cigarettes,

He was both obnoxious and brilliant.

Despising both steeples and minarets—

He was God’s most atheist militant.

“Faith is the surrender of the mind,”

He wrote, “the surrender of reason.”

The faithful were not only blind

And dumb but a social lesion—

A lump in the breast of human kindness,

A persistence of a primal madness,

A recessive gene for blindness,

A JohnnieAppleseed of badness.

Religion’s not for the blessed, the chosen—

Beneath all the folderol, it’s poison.

Robert Forrey,2011

Rebel Without a Clause

2011-12-21T07:08:00.001-05:00

RebelWithout a Clause

He had teaching not only on the brain,

But in every corpuscle and platelet.

Teaching English to the Appalachian—

Something he hadn’t larned to hate yet—

Was tol’rabble, really, not all that hard.

But as mangled part’ciples ‘cum’lated

Like young ‘uns and wrecks in the front yard,

As his brain became as confed’rate-plated

As poor Guv’nor Wallace standing in the door

To bar each blackguard Yankee intonation,

He knew he’d become one of ‘em, to the core.

Born agin to The Birthof a Nation,

He retired to that unspeakable hell

Where ornerary folk don’t talk good or spell well.

Robert Forrey, 2011

Careering

2011-12-20T04:27:00.001-05:00

Careering

On his birth certificate, it said

His father’s occupation was “boatman,”

But bootlegger’s what it should have read,

Including his ninety days in the can.

One brother was a sailor, one a stevedore,

One a house painter—“asshole of the trades,”

As it was known—a patron of whores,

Seducer of immigrant hotel maids.

He didn’t know what he would like to do for

A living but, in high school, in a bind,

Told a career counselor “astronomer,”

As though the universe was on his mind:

Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight,

I wish I’ll have the wish I wish tonight.

Robert Forrey, 2011

Savoring the Stars

2011-12-19T08:02:00.000-05:00

Savoring the Stars

As a child he could see some stars at night

Even though he lived in a big city.

Since then he’s been thankful for the slight light

They threw on the galaxy’s velocity

As it expanded towards infinity.

Though he couldn’t have named one by sight,

The constellations offered security

Like Linus’s blanket did from Lucy’s spite.

The stars relieved religion’s anxiety.

If they failed to make the crazy world all right,

At least they tempered the inanity

And fueled his imagination’s first flight.

Pity the city boy: star light, star bright—

He savored the first star he saw at night.

Robert Forrey, 2011

Fruit

2011-12-17T08:01:00.000-05:00

Fruit

“A poem should be palpable and mute

As a globed fruit . . .”

ArchibaldMacLeish

It’s not Adam’s apple—

It’s Eve’s peach.

Meaning, like Snapple,

Should be just outof reach.

Robert Forrey, 2011

Sunday Drivers

2011-12-16T07:02:00.000-05:00

SundayDrivers

Poor Max, he’d lost his way.

Ex-lover, ex-husband, Ex-Lax—

Showers of April, not flowers of May—

The minimum, not the max.

His losses were not negligible,

He never made monetary gain.

His mistakes weren’t fungible,

He capitalized on pain.

What did she do for him? Not much.

He was one of them, not one of us.

It’s we who’re really out of touch,

We who’re lost, that’s obvious.

We’re the blindfolded survivors,

Cruising through life like Sunday drivers.

Robert Forrey,2011

Rapunzel

2011-12-15T06:54:00.001-05:00

Rapunzel statue in Old Market in Dresden

Rapunzel

There was a continual blather—

A family of squareheads, by the score.

No dear mother, only a drunken father:

It never rained but it would pour.

In the tumultuous household, no peace—

No appliances, no servants, no au pair.

The only time the racket would ever cease

Was when a daughter braided her hair.

It was a miracle on 42nd Street, like heaven.

The father watched silently as if in a spell,

As if he was a boy of six or seven

Listening to the tale of Rapunzel,

Imagining by means of long blond hair

How they could all escape the witch’s lair.

Robert Forrey, 2011

Allusions

2011-12-14T22:56:00.000-05:00

Judith Slaying Holofernes (1612), by Artemisia Gentileschi,

who used herself as the model of the Biblical Judith (on the right)

and her teacher Tassi, who raped her as a young student, as the model for Holofernes.

Pederasty

2011-12-13T06:29:00.001-05:00

Though it was a dark secret during his life, the Rev. Horatio Alger, Jr., whose

name became synonymous with the American Dream, sexually molested boys

in his Cape Cod parish whom he claimed to be just horsing around with.

Pederasty

It’s as American as alcohol,

As American as hot showers;

It’s as American as football,

As American as athletic powers;

It’s as American as Penn State,

As American as Joe Paterno;

It’s as American as home plate,

As American as a can of Sterno;

It’s as American as basketball,

As American as Syracuse;

It’s as American as standing tall,

As American as never lose;

It’s as American as owning a gun,

As American as Number One.

Robert Forrey, 2011

For an analysis of the pederastic character of Alger’s fiction, click here.

Appalachian Elegy

2011-12-12T07:29:00.001-05:00

Plywood panels on a boarded up building in Portsmouth

Appalachian Elegy

I feel like I am standing on a ledge,

Geneticallyspeaking, of the world,

Where they areclose to the razor’s edge—

About to be evolutionarilyhurled

Headlong from theirenervated station,

Disqualified fornot holding up their end

Of globalized digitalization.

With the Chinesecoming round the bend,

The signs ofdecline are everywhere—

In the physiognomy,stare, and speech,

In the particulatematter in the air,

In their infernal tendencyto preach.

And my only contributionis going to be

This patheticattempt at an elegy.

Robert Forrey,2011

Etymological

2011-12-11T08:55:00.000-05:00

A stained glass depiction of Polonius, the officious adviser in Hamlet,

who tells his servant, “By indirections find directions out . . .”

Etymological

There’smore in a word than is intended

Or what isthe blasted point of it all?

Definitions should be endlessly extended.

How dowe get out of Eden except fall?

The pasttense of the word wend is wended,

But theword wind, to be etymological

(Itrhymes with mind, wherein it’s suspended),

Is what could be considered elemental.

Wind is fromOld English, that which is bended,

Twisted,or not—strictly speaking—logical.

The pasttense of fend, my friend, is fended,

Which word’s not just apt, it’s fundamental.

Thepoint’s not to be specific or shout,

But byindirections find directions out.

Robert Forrey, 2011

Troubled Sleepers

2011-12-10T06:09:00.001-05:00

Sleeping Gypsy, Henri Rousseau

Troubled Sleepers

Dreamsare the country of those who are lost,

Fortravelers who can’t find their way;

Forvoyagers, anxious and tempest-tossed,

On unchartedseas of billows and spray;

Forpilgrims sailing for the wrong shore,

Beleagueredbelievers at a false shrine;

For asailor taken up with a whore,

Or a peddlerat the end of his line;

For a lostchild crying in a crowd,

Or a preciouspet who has gone astray;

For thesun all winter behind a cloud,

Or Bernhardtalone in a shallow play.

Blessedare troubled sleepers who, waking, find

A lovedone next to them and peace of mind.

Robert Forrey,2011

Not Now

2011-12-09T06:43:00.000-05:00

The Persistence of Memory, Salvador Dali

Not Now

Thepresent, the now, is first and always

The imperialisticmoment of time,

As if pastand future were only a haze

Surroundingnow—time’s moment sublime.

A trillion nights and a trillion days

Exist only as the eternal now.

Past and future are a nominal daze.

Now, now is—shall we say—the holy cow.

Now is only a momentary craze:

Now is always at the scene of the crime.

Now always plays it exactly as it lays—

Now is an irrefutable cliché of time.

And yet, there’s the dream of liberation

From now—in a word—imagination.

Robert Forrey,2011

Einstein: Tic Tac Toe

2011-12-08T07:24:00.001-05:00

Einstein pondering the problem

Einstein’s GeneralTheory of Tic Tac Toe

His personal life was in shambles.

His marriage was a mess.

“My mind, instead of racing, rambles,”

He wrote his Yiddish mistress.

He was hitting the laughing gas hard.

He wasn’t sleeping much either.

Inhaling N₂O by theyard

Was his idea of a breather.

He was being such a dumb cluck.

He was being such a schmo.

His mistress told him, “Such a schmuck!

Tic Tac Toe? What’s to know?”

Standing at the blackboard, he pondered

The covariant X’s and O’s.

When his mind wandered, he wondered

What, if anything, a schmuck knows.

But stubbornness was his dominant trait—

His sense of destiny his mission.

He was willing to stand and wait,

To be faithful to his vision.

“Eureka!” he exclaimed one night.

It was better than sex.

When he finally saw the light,

It was N₂O =X+X+X.

Robert Forrey,2010

Sphinx of the Sky

2011-12-06T22:01:00.001-05:00

The Sphinx of the Sky

The landscapewas green but the sky was gray,

gunmetal gray, with an ineffable hawk on high,

suspended silently, like a sphinx of the sky—
seeing everything, at least during the day.
Obsolescent oracles never try
to answer the question why.

Robert Forrey, 2011

Portnoy's Complaint

2011-12-05T18:43:00.001-05:00

Original cover of the novel (1969)

Portnoy’sComplaint*

GrantedRoth’s no Václav Havel.

But if it’snot the great American,

Then it’sthe great Jewish-American novel—

Not Enemies: A Love Story, not Dangling Man,

Not Call It Sleep, not The Natural,

Not eventhe Biblical Exodus—

The sentimentalizingof the sexual,

Therepression of the Oedipus.

It’s themah-jongging of “Hello motha,”

It’s thede-shlonging of “Hello, fatha,”

It’s theshtupping of the shiksa,

It’s the rutting of the mitzvah.

AlexanderPortnoy’s not Oedipus;

He’s the ur-putz—he’s Oediputz.

RobertForrey, 2011

*Click Portnoy’s Complaint

See Robert Forrey, “Oedipal Politics in Portnoy’s Complaint” (1982), in Philip Roth’s
Portnoy’s Complaint, ed. by Harold Bloom

"Sweet Are the Uses of Adversity"

2011-12-04T19:55:00.001-05:00

“Sweet Are the Uses of Adversity”

If troublesare really blessings in disguise,

Life’s been very good to me, I know:

Grave’s Disease, diabetes, depression—nothingbut blue skies—

But what didI ever do to deserve Ohio?

RobertForrey, 2011

Confessions of a Shabbas Goy

2011-12-04T06:23:00.000-05:00

For a Jewish crone thin as a wraith,

Each Saturday, for a quarter, he lit her oven,

Which she could not do because of her faith.

She looked like she belonged to a coven

Of witches, with what resembled a mustache

And straggling white hair she’d combed with a rake.

Reflected in her eyes, each wooden match

In his hand burned like a witch at the stake.

He did not confess his sin to Father Jack,

In the confessional or the rectory,

But with each quarter he bought a pack

Of Camels at the corner grocery.

He misspent a long adolescent spell
In an inarticulate Catholic hell.

*Click Shabbas Goy.

At fourteen, hisecumenical love,
Rhona Gold, theproctologist’s daughter,
At last agreed,wearing a surgeon’s glove—
A touch she addedto what he’d taught her.

She was absentfrom school the next day;

In fact, she wasout the rest of the week.

He was glad,because what could they say?

When she didreturn they did not speak.

A genuflecting Catholic reflects:

He had been her shaigetz,* she his pigeon,

But she was not just the opposite sex,

She was the opposite religion.

They were not a Capulet and Montague,

They were—what was worse—gentile and Jew.

Robert Forrey, 2011

*Click shaigetz

Sir John Gielgud Reads the Sonnets

2011-12-02T07:00:00.000-05:00

Sir John Gielgud Reads the Sonnets

His reading of the sonnets is dreadful,

Perfectly dreadful, for instead of reading

He declaims grandiloquently, a headful

Of British ham on some moldy breading

By the English master of yackety-yak,

With an Intro by Harold Bloom, no less,

And a foolish illustration by Sendak

Who couldn’t possibly care and know less

About Shakespeare, a fitting complement

To the great blowhard of the British stage.

Do you see why I’m so impertinent,

Why this Yankee colonialist’s rage?

Gielgud was simply too much for the task:

Is a little less ham too much to ask?

Robert Forrey, 2011

Sex

2011-12-01T04:33:00.000-05:00

Gipsy Rose Lee

Sex

Few things promise more or deliver less,

Like a rat who can pull out of a hat

A long stemmed Rose in a state of undress

Who takes a powder in seconds flat;

Or a stevedore who unloads cargo

That consists of an embargoed tryst

On an imaginary Key Largo

In an archipelago that’s just mist;

Or an email from Nigeria telling you

You have won the heart of Miss Lagos

And sending your bank password in lieu

Of cash is all you do to be her boss.

Sex is Mother Nature’s way to insure

That our precious species will endure.

Robert Forrey, 2011

The Snake Pit

2011-11-30T06:34:00.000-05:00

The Snake Pit

Each day I see people walking the street,

Arguing with themselves, waving their arms,

Or dancing to an imaginary beat,

Or stopping and performing mad salaams

To each startled pedestrian who passed—

The disturbed who, in the 1950s,

Lost souls, were unmercifully harassed

By boys who liked to cruelly tease

Stray cats, shy girls, and the mentally ill,

Who ended up in the local “snake pit,”

The red brick asylum, high on a hill,

Where those who had mentally failed to make it

In the intolerant city far below,

Now, like uncaged birds, freely come and go.

Robert Forrey, 2011

Remembrance of Things Past

2011-11-28T12:25:00.075-05:00

Remembering Things Past

A trove of yellowed letters in the attic
Remind me what life was all about
Before email and omnipresent plastic.

That was long before Jobs took a bite out

Of the apple, before Adam and Steve,

When Google’s first name was still Barney,

Before Gates slipped ASCII up his sleeve,

Before all of the technical blarney;

Before the War, before the Bomb, before C.A.R.E.,

Before Hope’s jokes, before Lamour’s sarong,

Before Angelina went everywhere,

Dragging the adopted kids and Brad along:

As long as folks of a certain age last,

Eden’ll always be remembrance of things past.

Robert Forrey, 2011

Patriarchal Trap

2011-11-27T16:32:00.034-05:00

September Morn,* Paul Chabas

Patriarchal Trap

She tried to close the bridal gap.

She refused to play the conjugal game.

She wanted to escape the patriarchal trap

Where the wife takes the husband’s name.

Eschewing sweet September Morns,

Or playing the patsy, like some dames,

She took the bull by the horns

And hyphenated her two last names.

Robert Forrey, 2011

*Click on September Morn. Within the last decade or so, as I recall, somebody wrote about September Morn, saying that far from being pornographic it is cloyingly genteel, or as Wikipedia puts it, “kitschy,” although that description is anachronistic and inaccurate. What I mean September Morn to represent is the antithesis of “patsy,” and when “she” grabs the bull by the horns, one horn represents September Morn, gentility and sweetness and sentimentality, the other represents “dame” or “broad,” the other extreme of how men view women. “She” didn’t want either extreme, but what she achieves by using husband-father as her last name is not an affirmation of feminism, as many women apparently assume, but a reminder of the inescapable patriarchal character of language in human culture. Language is a patriarchal trap, but it’s bad enough taking a husband’s name; taking the names of both husband and father doubles down on the patriarchal. Incidentally, the word “patsy,” derived from the girl’s nickname Patsy, is another example of patriarchal language, because “patsy” usually refers to a male who is like a female, i.e., is a pushover or easily taken advantage of, is a “sissy” or “weak sister.”

A Sewer Runs Through It

2011-11-27T07:43:00.000-05:00

After the Ohio River recedes

A Sewer Runs Through It

When the river rises and then recedes,

It’s obvious we’re in deep trouble

Because it’s like what proceeds

From war-torn cities where the rubble

Remains in the streets months later.

Here, it’s an unbiodegradable “crick”

Coagulating at the Mountain Dude equator,

A jungle of exhausted tires and plastic.

No, this mess isn’t the result of war

But of the arrogant assumption

Of an Olympian right to litter

By the gold medalists of consumption.

Since the town can’t prevent or undo it,
The river runs like a sewer through it.

Robert Forrey, 2011

Lucretius

2011-11-26T08:34:00.007-05:00

“All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the politician,

and ridiculous to the philosopher.” Seneca the Younger

Lucretius

We are relatively few,

But we are not alone.

Not Muslim, Christian, Jew—

But we have grown.

We have committed no sin,

But we are not alone.

In spite of the dogmatic din,

We have nothing to atone.

We neither groan nor pray,

But we are not alone.

Unhappy donkeys bray,

Hungry dogs gnaw on a bone.

Religiosity bores us,

But we are not alone:

No more Hallelujah Chorus,

No more hellish moan.

We’ll stand with Lucretius,*

But we are not alone.

Beliefs noxious and specious

Like the cuckoo bird have flown.

We preach the gospel of humanity,

But we are not alone.

The truth has made us free:

We reap what reason has sown.

Robert Forrey, 2011

* Click here.

Black Friday

2011-11-24T09:31:00.016-05:00

Black Friday

Whom the gods destroy, they first addict to shopping.

Life’s one endless whirl of bargain hunting.

It’s worse than free basing, worse than pill popping—

Steer madness, with hoofing and grunting—

Anything to be the first turkey in line

After the stuffing of Thanksgiving.

Getting and shopping—isn’t this a sign,

Is shopping the purpose, of living?

Is shopping worth getting trampled to death?
Is shopping more satisfying than sex?

Is shopping what we’ll do with our last breath,

What we’ve been doing since Tyrannosaurus Rex?

After 9/11, with the market sharply dropping,
Did Bush really tell us to go shopping?

Robert Forrey, 2011

Sonnet Written in a Doctor's Waiting Room

2011-11-22T23:27:00.044-05:00

Ballet Dancers, Edgar Degas

Sonnet Written in a Doctor’s Waiting Room

He deeply mourned the life he had not lived,

The life misfiled in the drawer marked X—

The bus, the train, the plane that never arrived,

The unsigned peace treaty with his -ex;

An only child long taken for granted;

The dancer, out of a painting by Degas,

Whom he’d sworn to marry, then recanted—

Beaucoup broken vows, beaucoup faux pas.

Has the time come to say “Bonsoir,”

Like when a French flick ends with “la Fin”?

Was this just a B-movie or Film Noir?

Que signifie ce ciné, mais enfin?*

Of the important things, he never took note

In the hundreds of poems he never wrote.

Robert Forrey, 2011

* “But what’s the meaning of the movie, anyway?”

Bringing Up Baby

2011-11-21T07:35:00.002-05:00

Bringing Up Baby

Aztec priests offered up the hearts

Of Virgin girls to whatever gods may be,

But we offer up behinds of little tarts

Who want to grow up to be “Baby”

And master the art of make-up—

Like Maybelline’s sixty-four online lessons

To help Sleeping Beauty wake up

And make lashing impressions

On sadistic guys who can’t keep their eyes

Off the barely pubescent signoritas,

Like the Olsen twins—to our surprise—

Were transplanted into little Lolitas.

Where are we headed, what’s next:

Mascaraed toddlers who’re oversexed?

Robert Forrey, 2011

On Falling Asleep Over Stephen Booth's Annotated Shakespeare's Sonnets

2011-11-20T09:36:00.008-05:00

On Falling Asleep Over Stephen Booth’s

Annotated Shakespeare’s Sonnets

How can we ever possibly be awake

Enough to find all the hidden meanings

For comprehension’s imparting sake,

Or the non-senses, the demeanings.

In the interstices, most often, sex,

A lingerie shop of Freudian slips.

The cunning linguist makes Oedipus Rex,

An Elizabethan fakir takes head trips.

All all is is the awe-filled awl. Who knew?

And “wit”? You don’t know the half of it.

No man to himself ever can be true,

Unless, like Polonius, he’s a twit.

The entendres induce supposing,

Meaningfulness a mystical dozing.

Robert Forrey, 2011

The Comedies

2011-11-16T12:40:00.000-05:00

Hippolyta in Balanchine’s ballet Midsummer Night’s Dream

The Comedies

I was ailing from dark December’s blahs

When I dreamed a midsummer night’s dream,

With birds bursting like bees from Hippolyta’s

Hair, like morning from a bowl of cream.

A pair of lovers were not star-crossed,

Were not Romeode and Julieted;

Hermia’s brain had not been tempest-tossed,

As her furious father protested,

By Lysander’s conceits and amorous rhymes,

By knickknacks, bracelets of hair, and rings.

Summer’s certainly the best of times

For buttermilk, foxglove, lovers, and weddings,

But no time for a virgin to have to choose

Between a nunnery and execution;

Since Hermia had but one life to lose,

It’s a Hobson’s choice if ever there was one.

Summer’s the season for birds, butterflies,

And fairies, for daffodils and eglantine,

For ambles, pools, swings, flings, blue skies—

Nothing but blue skies for the saturnine.

So what if a man in love’s a horse’s ass?

Even in summer a little puck must fall.

In time, everything comes to pass.

The apple must be eaten. Ripeness is all.

Winter kills but sweet summer reneweth.

“Therefore my heart is glad,” says the Psalter.

Tragedies end bloodily in death

But comedies happily at the altar.

Robert Forrey, 2011

The Tragedies

2011-11-15T13:12:00.007-05:00

“Like window dummies on Rodeo Drive”

The Tragedies

In Romeo and Juliet, Act I, Scene iii,

When Juiliet’s mother queried

Her—a virgin and a bride to be—

How she felt about getting married,

Juliet—unaware of the web fate would weave,

And not knowing the varieties of love,

Or what her mother had up her sleeve—

Replied, “It is an honor that I dream not of.”

In Hamlet, Act III: “to be, or not to be”:

Struggling with doubt, the prince, anguished,

Thinking of suicide, not matrimony,

Said, “‘Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished,”

Which is what Juliet might have admitted

About marriage if she’d been a bit older.

A “breeder of sinners”—Hamlet got it in his head

That Ophelia was vile and told her

In a rage, “Get thee to a nunnery,”

Where women can’t turn husbands into ghouls,

Or the battle of the sexes into gunnery,

Or sons of glovers into fools.

“To sleep, perchance to dream.” But what comes next?

That Juliet would one day lie on her back

And like all Eve’s daughters be oversexed—

That’s the import of the nurse’s wisecrack:

“And pretty fool, [Juliet] stinted and said ‘Aye.’”

With rue the dour prince’s heart was laden,

For ‘aye’s’ what his mother on her back would say.

Beauty’s a bawd’s beholden handmaiden.

It’s Ophelia, not feigning, who, forsooth,

Distracted, commits suicide by drowning.

The course of true love never did run smooth—

Not exactly Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Juliet, Ophelia; Romeo, Hamlet—

Females arms akimbo, males stiff: none alive.

In Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet, it’s what you get,

Like window dummies on Rodeo Drive.

As tragedians know too well, life’s hell—

Full of accidents, sin, and salacity.

In Shakespeare, things don’t always end well,

But sweet are the uses of tragedy.

Robert Forrey, 2011

Martina

2011-11-14T09:06:00.002-05:00

Martina

As I played my concertina,

I had a nervous breakthrough

When it came to Martina.

I saw that it was true

That the cow jumped

Over the moon,

And that the diner slumped

Over the table since noon

Would soon ask for the check,

And that the transsexual star

Was playing with a full deck

And was a member of the D.A.R.,

And, above all, that it was unpatriotic

To think Republicans are crazy,

Yes, collectively psychotic,

About who is, and is not, lazy,

And that the Democrats’ faith

in Harvard’s Elizabeth

Warren was only the wraith

Seen just before death.

I’ve never known it to fail,

Whether it’s a kiss or a peck:

The check’s not in the mail,

But the male’s in the Czech.

Robert Forrey, 2011

Mix-up

2011-11-13T09:37:00.000-05:00

Sounding notes

Mix-up

The trail to follow is not sense but sound.

History’s a puzzle whether the earth’s flat or round.

The question is who knows more, NPR’s Steve Insky

Or Princeton poet-lauriate Robert Pinsky?

Previously the rinse cycle was as stirring

As a speech by Hermann Göring.

As much as public flatulence,

Periodization is a sign of decadence:

We’ve moved on from Rin-Tin-Tin and Tom Mix

As well as from Bauhaus and Bendix.

Did Aztec priests cut out virgins’ hearts knowing

That wouldn’t stop menstrual blood flowing?

Robert Forrey, 2011

Lines Written After . . .

2011-11-12T12:46:00.005-05:00

Lines Written After Seeing the Opening

of Charlie Rose’s Shakespeare Series

Looking at Shakespeare, at hers and hism,

I thought his imagination was trapped

In the enchanted ground where polytheism

And monotheism overlapped;

That he held the good book in one hand

And in the other the Metamorphosis—

No matter the tears strained nor laughter canned,

No matter where the intrusive nose is.

But that’s not the half of it, and yet . . .

In him masculine and feminine

Were paired like Romeo and Juliet,

Like country music and Loretta Lynn.

Mon professeur, mon semblable, mon frère:

Do we eat the forbidden fruit? Do we dare?

Robert Forrey, 2011

Gilded Trough

2011-11-12T07:50:00.000-05:00

Gilded Trough

Whom the gods would destroy they first make fat

By overfeeding at the Gilded Trough.

They looked to me, in the corner where I sat—

The somewhat anemic and scoffing prof—

Like the gods’ next meal, on the hoof.

Crowded, but with more than enough seating,

The Trough was recession proof—

There’s no let up in American eating.

On this Veteran’s Day, young Sues and Als

In uniform could feast for nothing.

That’s the least we can do for guys and gals

Who defend our American way of stuffing.

O, hungy gods! O, fearful meditation!

At which trough will you engorge our nation?

Robert Forrey, 2011

Late Bloomer

2011-11-10T11:28:00.002-05:00

Late Bloomer

Every man in his humor,

By the minute or the hour.

You could call me a late bloomer.

But which kind of flower?
I’m almost eighty.

I’m way over the hill.

Bar the door, Katie,
There’s time left to kill.

I don’t follow schedules.

I’m late catching the bus.

I don’t follow rules.

I’m a late blooming crocus.

Robert Forrey, 2011

2011-11-10T07:28:00.008-05:00

Epitaph

So that was what life
Was all about!

Why did it take so
Long for me to figure out?

Robert Forrey, 2011

2011-11-10T06:36:00.005-05:00

Eglantine

More important than lose

is find;

More important than body

is mind;

More important than comes

is goes;

More important than thorn

is rose;

More important than receive

is send;

More important than begin

is end;

More important than now

is auld lang syne;

More important than rhyme

is eglantine.

Robert Forrey

2011-11-09T13:11:00.008-05:00

Occupy Wall Street?

Being able to vote for a naïve snob

Nominated by a political party

Is not much good if you can’t find a job.

Whether you’re Sean, Juan, or Artie,

Whether you’re red state, blue state, or just green,

Whether you’re a dropout or boola-boola

Whether you’re gay, straight, or in between,

There’s nothing more important than moola.

All that rhetoric about freedom crap

Won’t put any food on the table.

What good is all the liberty claptrap

If the workhorses have no stable?

What’s the point of rationalizing it?

Occupy Wall Street? Hell, try nationalizing it.

Robert Forrey, 2011

2011-11-08T15:54:00.000-05:00

Art work by Industriousants

Birds and Bees

Now birds and bees are in the news:

They’re having trouble reproducing.

Call it the environmental blues,

Call it the struggle we’re losing.

The definitive reduction—

Call it genocide, if you will,

The universal destruction,

When no specie’s left to kill;

The end not just to tribe and nation,

But the end to feathers and flight,

The end to sex and pollination,

To religion, to wrong and right.

We’re the one species—how odd—

The only one that believes in god.

Robert Forrey, 2011

2011-11-08T07:19:00.032-05:00

Galaxies merging three billion light years from earth as seen through the Hubble telescope

Time and Space

“Go and catch a falling star . . .
Tell me where all lost years are . . .”
John Donne

To edge obliquely into time makes sense;

To go frontally’s asking for trouble.

We can’t take much more of magnificence

Than merging galaxies glimpsed through the Hubble.

Like children who become dizzy and fall—

After spinning—flat on their face,

We are as adults flabbergasted by all

That unimaginable time and space.

The length of days is pitifully short

To rightly comprehend the heavens.

The ball is not, so to speak, in our court.

For us, at best, it’s sixes and sevens.

I saw my first falling star at age six.
The universe’s still up to its old tricks.

Robert Forrey, 2011

2011-11-07T11:04:00.006-05:00

Surfing

It’s one of the consequences of

Being a sole survivor of the past;

It’s the legacy of family love

That we don’t know about till we’re the last.

Surfing gracefully to summer’s shore,

We became seasoned in insensitivity.

We never understood what winter’s for,

Or the inevitability of a cavity.

A skill’s a poor excuse for living

As surfing is for independence.

A smile’s no substitute for giving

Nor hanging ten for permanence.

Only when standing alone, on shore,

Do we finally know what the ocean’s for.

Robert Forrey, 2011

2011-11-07T07:16:00.002-05:00

“How can we know the the dancer from the dance?”

Irish Folk Dancer

We were walking along 8th Street

In the Village when she said to me,

Out of the blue, “Don’t you dislike

‘D’ words, don’t you think they’re dreadful?”

I replied, “Don’t say that, dear,

I think ‘D’s’ are delightful.

And what about you, an Irish folk dancer?”

But are “D’s” delightful,

Or was I only being clever?

There’s disease, debilitate, and death,

For starters, not to mention decrepit,

Demented, dastardly and dandruff.

But the scarlet letter that burns in my brain

When I think of her is not “D” but “G”—

Not “G,” for glad, glorious, or good—

But “G” for—we danced the dance—gonorrhea.

Robert Forrey, 2011

2011-11-06T08:27:00.002-05:00

Daylight Crazy Time

It’s that time again

To turn the clocks back,

Or is it forward—what a pain!

It’s giving me a heart attack.

It’s so inane,

Is it light or black?

What do we gain?

Who’s keeping track

Of the hour or train?

Clickety-click, clickety-clack—

It’s driving me insane!

Am I going forward or back?

Am I in the wrong lane?

Should I have lunch or a snack?

Is it a fracture or a strain?

Am I a doctor or a quack?

Is it an hourglass or a brain?

Am I in the sack

Or on a plane?

Am I a camel in Iraq

Or a potato in Maine?

Am I on time or on crack?

Wait a minute, it’s plain

As the nose on my face, Mac:

It’s spring forward, fall back!

Robert Forrey, 11/6/11

2011-11-06T05:39:00.011-05:00

A Book Review

She was daddy’s girl like no girl ever was.

An only child, the apple of his eye,

She would, like him, have died for the cause.

Not for them the pie in the sky by and by.

It all came down to dialectics,

To the class struggle, to staying the course.

But history had some dirty tricks

Up its sleeve and, in its pants, even worse.

According to Intimate Politics,

Father was an incestuous pedophile:

Patriarchal politics were in the mix,

A dirty commie was in the woodpile.

About him who was closeted but nearest,

Her book should be called Commie Dearest.

Robert Forrey, 2011

Medicine Man

2011-11-05T12:00:00.002-04:00

Medicine Man

He was a wizard, a magician,

a medicine man, juggling ten balls

in the air while talking like a patrician,

like one of the New England Saltonstalls,

when in truth he was born a poor Hoosier.

Behind each Jay Gatsby there’s a Jay Gatz.

Who says buggers can’t be choosier?

In his career he wore many hats.

Behind the Dream’s the American scream,

though American ears can barely hear it.

Americans are rarely who they seem.

Addicted to success, they grin and bear it.

He rose to the American seventh heaven,

But ambition, not virtue, was the leaven.

Robert Forrey, 2011

2011-11-04T06:02:00.004-04:00

The Starling

The integrity of dawn is what sees

Him through the long summer day.

A late afternoon breeze

Is enough to carry him halfway

To dusk and from there

He takes wing and likes to alight

On a telephone wire where

He spends the balance of the night,

Occasionally waking up

To listen to long distance lovers

Having quarrels and making up,

Like some chickadees or plovers.

Robert Forrey, 2011

2011-11-03T10:15:00.045-04:00

X-ray vision version of vintage postcard of Times Square at midnight

Times Square at Midnight

We make the TV trip on New Year’s Eve

To bawdy, gaudy Forty-Second Street.

Fascinating to visit, but we must leave

Because it’s the toxic neon teat

Of the advertizing industry—

A few blocks from Madison Avenue

And the mad men who market inanity

And ads that pop-up like the pox on cue.

Now they’ve wired and wi-fied each one of us,

So we’re 7/24 in Times Square,

Being screwed by an electronic incubus.

Nothing helps—not Camels, Jim Beam, or Bayer.

There’s no escape, not on terra firma,

Not even from telemarketers in Burma.

Robert Forrey, 2011

2011-11-01T11:45:00.103-04:00

Halloween Sugar

Boon of the candy manufacturer,

Benefactor of every dentist,

Halloween’s the number one malefactor,

Topps in America’s Ten Worst Holidays List.

Little girls dressed as angels or tarts

And tots in the arms of mothers are taught

To trick or treat and break men’s hearts.

Each Snicker with some pain is fraught.

Fresh from blue-collar neighborhoods,

Grabbing what they can of Good and Plenty,

Little boys dressed as bums or hoods

Foreshadow what they might be at twenty.
Pity the addict, who’s so meshugga,

Who first got hooked on Halloween sugar.

Robert Forrey 2011

2011-10-31T12:46:00.042-04:00

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.

2011-10-31T07:00:00.000-04:00

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

2011-10-30T15:05:00.006-04:00

Degas, Little Fourteen-year-old Dancer

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

2011-10-29T21:31:00.000-04:00

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

2011-10-27T08:17:00.016-04:00

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

2011-10-23T13:26:00.005-04:00

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

2011-10-23T12:50:00.022-04:00

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

2011-10-23T07:45:00.011-04:00

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

2011-10-21T14:36:00.003-04:00

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

2011-10-18T05:54:00.034-04:00

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