HOW DID I GET HERE?

[Something's come up -- something good, by the way, that will take me out of town for about a week, so this is the last daily poem until I get back. I'll add a few more poems to today's to prevent withdrawal symptoms.]

Saturday morning, men mow with motors
sunny suburban lawns. There are no children
on the streets. How easily we've been fooled!
Just because, when we get to suburbia,
we are each given a power mower
and a jogging outfit instead of a harp
and a halo, we think we're still alive!
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Here are the extras -- all recent poems:

I'm a poet,
"poet" from Greek for a maker.
I don't make a living,
but I live a making.
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On the Goggled Not Being Ogled

Men who don't make passes
At girls who wear glasses
Often commit sexist offenses
Against girls who wear contact lenses
And conduct panty raids
Against cool chicks in shades;
Men have little to sez
To Duchesses in pince nez –
En-may end-tay oo-tay ince-way
At a sour snob in pince nez!
But the fates of femmes monocled,
Have never been chronocled.

[Note: My riff on Dorothy Parker's lines about men not making passes at girls who wear glasses. "Pince nez" is French for "pinch the nose." These are glasses held over the eyes by pinching the nose -- no support from the ears. In French, it's pronounced more like "pance nay" but one of the English pronunciations is "pince nay." I figured if "nez" can be "nay," "sez" can be "say." The next line ("En-may end-tay oo-tay ince-way" is, of course, Pig Latin for "Men tend to wince").
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A Familiar Spirit

He realized that he was not flesh, but spirit,
So sought, among his family, kindred spirits.
His parents, brothers, sisters wouldn't hear it.
They looked askance at him, for kin dread spirits.
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It's hard to talk
with my tongue in your mouth.
Odd – it's easy to talk
with my tongue in MY mouth.
________________________

Last night, as I was eating popcorn,
a filling popped out. My tongue
discovered this. My tongue
is so proud!
______________________

If I sit very still,
the world fills up
with motion.
_________________

A distant airplane
paints itself onto tiny nerves
deep in my ear.
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Pout

Her ruby lips
rue the bee
that stung them.

[Written as a game: I wanted to show someone how to combine two cliches into something that was not a cliche. In this case, the two cliches are "ruby lips" and "bee-stung lips."]
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The Artist Imagines Himself Mortal, His Work Immortal

Immortal lies:
"I'm mortal. Lies
Immortalize."

[Note: Art has been defined by many as a kind of lie, a fabrication of life. So the poet who expects to be immortalized by his art is arguing that lies immortalize.]
______________________

Freed, the mouse quivers on the toe of my shoe,
hanging on, though I shake my shoe gently.
Finally, as if just realizing where he is,
he tumbles off, at first unsteady, then darts
into the woods where last night
a fox barked.
_____________________

Ageing Ricola cough drop – honey lemon in its rumpled
yellow wrapping – someone left it in a bowl
of pennies, paper clips, a rubber band and a box
of Trident chewing gum on a table near the front door.
The cat noses over it, paws at it like a golfer hitting
out of a sand trap, pops the cough drop over the edge
of the bowl AND the table, leaps after it
to play hockey with it on the floor...briefly,
gets bored (for it doesn't try to run away),
leaves it. I pick it up, put it on the bowl,
and, a few hours later notice it
on the floor, put it in the bowl...no rest
for the cough drop..

[Note: What a game. She's talking to me by leaving messages in cough drops. Every time I see that cough drop somewhere on the floor, I crack up.]

Dean Blehert
WWW.BLEHERT.COM