The Coming of the Toads

A Notebook – Since 2007

Category: Poetry

  • Melancholy

    I don’t know if kids are still made
    to take them, the Iowa Tests,
    of course I could look it up,
    not beyond googling, but Wiki
    has no memory of this echo.

    I was in the 8th grade, yellow
    #2 black bile pencil at the ready,
    desk cleared, humors silent.
    This one was a vocabulary test,
    and one word from it sticks

    in memory still: melancholy.
    Four choices, and I pick
    happy, reasoning based
    solely on sound – I thought
    the tinkling mellow, jolly

    joyful
    and cock-a-hooped
    filled the circle C and
    moved to the next word.
    Later, I happened to ask

    Sister Mary what it meant,
    melancholy, and whadayaknow,
    I was veracious
    and ran out to recess
    happy as a clam at high tide.

  • Drowning Amid Waves

    That swimmer Stevie Smith mentioned
    the one “not waving but drowning”
    off Muscle Beach that cold morning
    still the iron ones sweating
    considered neither waving nor drowning
    men but lifting they carried one another.

    He was too far out for his cries
    to be heard and from under their
    umbrellas they waved back at him,
    but he wasn’t waving, Stevie said,
    he was drowning, but how did Stevie
    know – ah! the lifeguard poet

    who drowning waves not to be
    saved but to say here I am
    and goodbye, goodbye
    my loves goodbye
    I am too far out for you to hear this
    this wave to all along the shoreline.

  • Poem Quick Start Guide

    Relax. You can do this
    anywhere, any time
    on a bus, in line
    in church, in a lurch
    alone, in a crowd
    or in the clear.

    Make a list of things
    you see and hear
    & from all the sounds
    isolate one
    give it a name
    & write it down.

    What do you smell?
    Fill in the blank:
    smells like _______.

    Lick the back
    of your hand,
    what do you taste?
    Give it a name
    & write it down.

    Keep in mind
    you’re making a list,
    don’t write
    sentences,
    use punctuation
    only if you feel the itch.

    Reach out
    & touch
    something:
    wood, plastic
    paper, glass
    a blade of grass
    your wife’s sitzfleisch
    (it might help
    to keep a dictionary
    handy – but don’t
    get lost in it).

    Add a bit of word
    picture to your list
    not too much
    just a pinch
    pebbled, smooth
    cold, humid
    sweat –
    that’s enough
    for now.

    Then answer
    the only questions
    you know
    about one of the things
    you just named:
    what does it look like?
    what sounds is it making?
    what does it feel like?
    what does your mouth
    do when you taste it?
    & does its odor cause you
    to shrink or come closer?

  • He’s No Good

    He can’t deal with a spider
    permits it to crawl away
    and he won’t listen
    to the talk of the day.

    He’s no good at fixing things
    and can’t swing a hammer
    but makes up more rules
    than the Code of Hammurabi.

    He’s moody as the moon
    and his back goes out
    monthly when it’s time
    to take out the compost.

    His idea of sport
    is TV from a couch
    but he’s too busy
    to empty the litter box.

    He smokes drinks
    goes out with the guys
    never fires up the barbecue
    and doesn’t like poems –

    well, I guess that’s good.
    He’s not much under the hood
    dribbles on the floor and can’t
    get up to answer the door.

    His name is Bromide
    he’s a politician
    a judge and legislator
    blames it all on the exec

    who tricks the will
    of the people
    into thinking just
    like him.


  • After the Rodeo

    One who behaves bears
    want and likes we hear
    called a good neighbor

    not so with old friends
    whose schisms gone
    seeded of bickernesses

    the aplomb the plums
    you ate so cool and self
    defining the sad clown

    you know well long
    after the greasepaint
    has worn to raw down

    and now we can laugh
    at the one who slipped
    and fell unexpectedly

    but it’s canned laughter
    the harmful joy
    of this rodeo

    where the cowboy
    limps away to lick
    his wounds

    in the trailer
    behind the tavern
    plays a country song:

    “I don’t know why
    I married you.
    I like you, but
    I don’t love you.

    It was just timing,
    really, and I still
    thought of you and
    your friends as boys,

    not men, the mean
    characters my mom
    went out with, and boys
    could take you away

    from the messiness of home
    at least for a little while –
    it wasn’t until later and
    too late I thought

    maybe I did love him
    but by then I found out
    it doesn’t take long
    for most boys to become

    men and now wonder
    how and who is going to
    take me away from
    this old song again?”

  • The Urge

    To bed, to bed, but quietly said,
    with a quaint taste of ardour
    and a slight touch here and there.

    To wed, to wed, a bug to brush
    away this so called love
    of the troubadour,

    whose quick amour
    one does not miss
    nor that tremendous bliss

    of crushed roses steeped
    in the gooey remains
    of a Holy Grail lost,

    whose love for itching
    broke out in hives
    along the flushed skin.

    Temperature about the same
    as yesterday,
    rhyme outlook low.
    Appears tropical
    depression here to stay.
    10 day forecast
    too far out to say.
    One never knows,
    near or far,
    but no one seems
    in jeopardy tonight
    who sleeps alone
    in a bed of stone.

  • A Swimmer

    When selfishly young
    swimming up the waiting
    tree the melons hung out
    short tongue patient
    and the bird pauses
    in flight the voice unhooked.

    Tongues burned for fun
    and born with a bit of wit
    at last fall off
    into the bottomless pit
    where the seafarer goes
    to taste the fleshy fruit
    and with a lick of luck
    lives on but never
    tells the tale.

    We lived across a dusty tracks
    (to make a quick cliche of this)
    with the others who solely minded
    their own one on one business
    looking the other way
    and waiting the proper time
    to mow the ready hay
    and bale for the coming fall.

    Now older and just aging
    a bit here and there
    watered down and humbled
    in a room in Opportune Pass
    it’s all I can do
    to bite my own inflamed
    tongue when the urge comes
    to untie me undone
    turning and turning
    on the moontide spit.

  • Displacement

    Adrunk
    he becomes
    the drinker
    who drank him.

    Take this cup
    all of you
    and drink
    its whine the engine

    of the cat
    contemplating
    her contempt for her
    need for you.

    Adrift
    on a sea street
    starry eyed
    night
    ears black holes
    no sound
    escapes.

    And the nose tastes
    hours of laundromat fuzz
    falls a third time
    near the blue dumpster
    behind the fishmonger’s
    by the cold chain links
    in a bed of weeds gone to seed
    spreading like a hatch
    of artificial flies.

    One he swallows
    caught
    hooked through the lip
    jumps pulls and runs
    down the path
    to where the deep water
    creeps awake
    in the darkness
    its thick jelled
    mass motions.

  • Out of Season

    Barely visible
    the cat acting
    like a tourist
    out of season.

    Breeze so soft
    blow & rain shifts
    the other way
    out of season.

    In the grass melan
    choly whose happy
    sound the birds
    squirrels

    coyotes laired
    late in the park
    talk in their sleep
    out of season.

    This too out
    all up to snuff
    toffee nosed
    pretension

    a pretend friend
    bends to expose
    truth its own pretense
    out of season.

  • Nothing in its Proper Place

    Nothing is the proper place of poetry
    the nothing that is and the nothing
    that is not, to slightly misquote Wallace
    Stevens, now nothing but a book on a shelf.

    Things seem round, but close reading
    show oblong, egg shaped, ellipsoid,
    particularly in the topological poem,
    where nothing expands and retracts.

    The universe is a closed knot
    the poet tries to unknot
    to pull his shoe on without
    twisting his tongue.

    Think pretzel, which is non-trivial,
    while the poem is a wild knot,
    unable to untie itself,
    non-rational, but linked within.

    What a mess, and I can’t find
    the beginning of the thread,
    nor the ending, for that matter,
    but incomprehensible I am not.

  • Bugged Out

    The war moved on
    as all wars must
    and love came home
    lame with no name.

    He could not see
    the bugs in his brows
    nor hear what, what
    the dogs picked up.

    Pinned to his chest
    a badge of courage
    symbol of his time
    spent as a bug.

    In uniform he was
    one of the bugs
    squashed
    covered with bites.