Perhaps Formaldehyde

He is an ancient man,
Machined by mangled trends, and ends
Abridged in some other lesson,
Pinned to a board still fluttering,

Held on display for scowls o’ critical faces—
Meticulous cuts and cross-glances,
Glassy smirks, perpetual by his penning—
But, now He does not fit into her bedroom.

It must be a woman who dies second;
For man cannot cry and dry
In loosing such hoary…youth;

Still, I believe I taste the tears
In this chicken just now fried,

Maybe, she left for good;
Maybe,

Or perhaps formaldehyde.

The Battle of Poet’s Tree

I

Bound in ivory, some in gray;

The old in yellowing dress:

They tramped in gaits of paginates,

Imposing grim duress;

It rung us clear, their quiet jeers

Had spoken for our flesh!

With sarcastic wits and wistful whips,

We held back our tears to cry,

For our little Race of scribbling haste

Chose not ourselves to die,

But Time’s little clicks lent closer ticks,

That our grave shall not pass by.

The Pages flipped and stood there crisp

In their ivory clad cloaks,

Staring Blank in an awful shank

That pierced us where it smote,

And the angry stone Medusa shone

Were the Pages’ gaze to note.

Each one bounding, each one counting,

Tempting us to write;

But in each chance we fell entranced,

By their great and perfect light;

For each blank Page had fought with age

To keep us from the Fight.

Irony was on our armor,

In a twist and fancy way

It glints and gleams a crystal sheen,

In a mock of shining Day,

It mocks the Light in leer of Night,

For nighttime’s when We play:

They then advanced with a cold steel lance

To brand Us with our doom,

With acts of fright in clever fight,

My Sabre struck aboon

The end my thought had aimed to fare,

And left the Page to swoon.

Ink black blood dripped from my Spear,

And my scribe upon the Lace,

Beneath my rage, and paraphrase:

A poem there be lain;

On th’blank grotesques I made arabesques

Like old age upon a face!

Within a dark synecdoche,

Found the scattering of Leaves,

That caught the wind of a hurried Sail

Speeding ahead the breeze—

For a Page blanked with faultlessness,

Is Metaphor in disease.

II

We met the Page with fettered doom,

In a bitter, tranquil fit;

We lock’d our grip to shroud with care;

Our lantern’s burning wick—

And like Seraph swords our Pen did bore

Our tongues in mighty writ:

We took the Tree the Poet sows

Splaying pages, spiraling—

Like string quartets of marionettes,

We draped them from the leaves;

We made them dance and watch’d them prance

In a Perfect mangling.

For what we lead a Poet said,

“Was the bitter of the sweet,”

What we had, our Pen had laid

Beneath our Nose and feet,

Some in rhyme and some with lines

No Man would care to read:

But some flashed Hate, and some more Great

Than the living word of Man;

Some had Span, and one held a taste

Of a ripe and tender Orange—

Some were stark and woke the lark

In a rhythmic saraband,

Some alone became as Stone

And fell upon the Grave,

The Epitaph—the Elegy,

Wrote us there before the Knave;

Lo! The Fool did pin Us all

Within a Poet’s Masquerade!

Ethan Grothues (2011)

The Ghost was She

The ghost was she who crossed the Dewpond fain,

Tho’ my New love didst not hear, nor question,

Across the Channel, through mist and rain;

This remembrance spears in recollection—

For it was I who found the gentle Grave—

The fresh dug earth in two hearts lie as one;

I watch’d the last drop of red Passion leave

Like tears the Night doth smear a face alone;

The Smoke is a sad place love doth wander,

For when it rains all Grey buildings weep;

Morose cornices like death drip yonder

To embrace a ghost Mem’ry treks ‘cross th’sea.

I glance a view athwart my chamber-bed,

And t’see her ghost, know I, to Love am dead.

Love is not worth a lifetime for

Love is not worth a lifetime for;

Only Death brews lifelong—

To the lips, coursing drunk, wherefor

Have all the daft lovers gone?

Love lost Her grapple for;

For the grope and the throng—

For the Great Lamb in Paramour

Hast raped the muddy Swan!

Why not lust one life evermore,

Than allow dust t’prolong?

Till Nature’s thrust comes nevermore

In Love’s blinding singsong—

Man’s propensity t’score;

To steal and have a proclaimed Prong,

To flaunt hither and thither for

Coiling Women’s diphthong—

They do lie well in double-score;

By speech, divides the tongue—

Emotion purged in loss and lore:

Love’s tale doth best Her song.

Love is not worth a lifetime, for

Life’s but a world furlong—

For living passion is cocksure

T’surpass in gobs among

The maid and the maiden’s door—

Through in and out, along

Slinky moans and a silk contour

It’s Lust in love’s sarong!

What is love that was not lust before?

Mayhaps a word, or a strong

Odor exuded from the Core;

Or A-night stand oblong?

The misconception lies, therefore,

‘Tween Love and Lust’s erelong

State is not a hair-splitting roar,

But the placement of Tongue.

Silence

Silence is more, or less, superior

To three thousand thundering horses;

Three thousand ages vividly depressing

Gold, metallic life to just know another—

Wanton of poetry’s frugal Coursers,

Three thousand SCREAMED!

And were Silent.

Dead Men

Dead are the sleeping men,

Dead by their marching drone.

Awakened bare by a bare word--

As a bare Fruit of a seasonal branch

Bare of it's yellow leaves--

Bare is the shrilling word

Of Death, frozen silent on the wind;

(Lucid men sing of dreams,

Sleepers dream of singing;

Lo, Dead Men do not dream at all,

Nor sing within dreams for it cuts their tongue.)

Wild-eyed, bare sabres, land

On bosoms made from Lust,

Glint Silver in a wistful hand:

"Make ready the cannon!"

Cries the Noblest of Muck,

Scrounge to face'em when rest'him dies:

A trial gun and the saving crumbs pluck,

And the naked ape sighs

On the World's crank, "Yo! Ho!"

As the call of Death wakes the cock.

Economic cannons

Blast brigades of Dead Men,

As a sabre splays reddened mead

From a grayish globe spurting steam, laying

Dreamers beneath as seed;

Scythed weeds for a crooning plot,

Though, Dead Mean sing no Songs:

…And the dead men are the lost men;

The working men of Nature's slumber;

These irate men with pirate gin

Grow cold in their waste and plunder.

But with a wistful grin and wishful eye

They throe and take for Pride,

And the wistful cringe is a fleeting Sin

Upon the beggar who's ready to die...

But dead are the sleeping

Men; heaving more debt for bread.

Their scaly yearns as sorrow's clash

Dismay; lost by lows of a deeper rung,

And with a croaking lung

On an awkward bier,

They speak, "Silence," and no one hears.

With a dying tongue they speak their greatest word;

Of Dead Men dying, no one's ever heard.

Sometimes a red-garden grows

Sometimes the moment lies

And sometimes with lament' eyes;

Sometimes a wolf bears its teeth

And a fire’s like a romance be.

Sometimes these moments cast away

That time so catches life to say,

Sometimes love's rosebuds do not grow

For lovely rose seedlings grew too slow.

For love like growing roses rest,

In chlorine and sometimes zest,

These reddened shapes seduced and sexed

As morphine and most-times vexed!

Oh, my love by sweet garden’s light,

Thou but hold this stem e’en by fright,

That livened stamens rise to treat,

Thy inner pistil as thighs unmeet.

And dost thou gentle fires burn,

Alas! Fresh that sponge red-fluids churn,

‘gainst ravish, that thou may not begat,

Permit this throb betwixt our love’s contract.

Sometimes the moment truthful dies,

And sometimes with whitened lies,

Sometimes a leopard rears a beast,

And through the mud for one at least.

Sometimes a red-garden grows,

But youth passes too swiftly too denote

Thy beauty’s spring-shape into autumn,

For love grows sometimes in the bottom.