The Gnome’s Advice to Ghosts

There are levels of magic in fables.
Most fables pick a level and stay there.
At the most skeptical layer, they seem

To assume a dubious audience
And proceed by hints, what-ifs, and maybes,
Feints more glamorously called the uncanny.

At the extremes of oral traditions
And children’s fairytales, everything talks
And does magic, wolves to roses to rocks.

It’s rare for a successful narrative
To suddenly change lanes. The rational
Denouement’s a swindle in a fable.

Even among Homer’s gods and heroes,
It’s feels weird when a talking horse appears,
While Tolkien wouldn’t dare trot out God,

Himself, to put his elves and orcs in place.
Control how magical your world can be,
Unless having no readers leaves you pleased.

Small Angry River

Not in flood, not raging at the houses
Along its shores, the way floods in the news
Seem to have it in for handsome houses,

Since large mansions collapsing in brown waves
Are what people want to see, the drama
Of the enviable homes washed away,

But quietly seething, plotting revenge,
Like the Scamander cursing Achilles,
Thin river angered by its helplessness,

The pretty little stream cut to ditches,
Stuck with lengths of straw-like pipes that drained it,
Consciousness swore it would alter the world

Beyond its banks that siphoned it to death
But all it could do was fall where it fell.

Words, Words, Words

The folks who are the best with words

Seem the most prone to use those words

To gripe how words will let you down.

You laugh. You swim through seas of words,

And you know you won’t meet the eyes

Of those who worked to write them down,

Not eye to eye, not face to face,

Not to shake hands or share bear hugs—

Too famed, too far, or else too dead.

What you read are words that blame words

For what the words can’t put in words.

There goes the curse—they were just words,

These words, all these words, are just words,

Made of words, words have all these rules,

These mere words, what words can touch that?

None. Fine. Words, words, words let you down.

You want the flesh? You want the truth?

They’re words. What aren’t, you can’t whine to.

Ebb Tide

He looks sort of sweet, smiling,

Maybe smirking, to himself,

This asemic, visual,

Dada performance poet,

Self-described, standing in front

Of a seated audience

In a clean, warmly lit room,

One window on blue evening,

Coiffeur shop across the street,

The wigs displayed on egg heads

Like a second audience.

His own hair and beard close-cropped,

Dressed in a white peasant smock

Over a floor-length green skirt,

He holds three sheets of paper,

Which it looks like he’s shuffling,

Probably having read one,

About to read another.

It’s all pleasantly tranquil,

The negation of values now,

Across from the brightly lit

Wigs on a street in Milan.

Cue the Right Thing

In a state of grace, socially
Relevant decisions require
No arguments in the cortex.

There’s no stress. You do the right thing.
This would be nirvana, except
Socially correct decisions

Can be bad for you, can come back
To haunt you. Not put abstractly,
Of course—never cheat, never lie,

Never steal. Automatize those
Rules and live in a state of grace.
Along come families fleeing

Genocide, desperate to hide
In your attic. Now, never lie?