<div class="line">You could call me obsessed</div>
<div class="line">or a fool. There&#8217;s no future</div>
<div class="line">turning your insides out</div>
<div class="line">arranging words until they&#8217;re</div>
<div class="line">comfortable with each other.</div>
<div class="line">And the pay! Just this morning</div>
<div class="line">a check arrived in the mail</div>
<div class="line">for fifteen dollars, for a poem</div>
<div class="line">it took forty years to write.</div>
<div class="line">Standing on the corner</div>
<div class="line">looking hungry and tired, the</div>
<div class="line"><em>Veteran of a Thousand Wars</em></div>
<div class="line">does better on a bad day.</div>
<div class="line3">I show you</div>
<div class="line">how I feel inside, how my daughter</div>
<div class="line">whores for drug money, and my son</div>
<div class="line">ransoms his future for a soul.</div>
<div class="line">I tell you how my father</div>
<div class="line">forgot my name, and my mother</div>
<div class="line">went to the electric table</div>
<div class="line">to have her mind rearranged.</div>
<div class="line">I tell you how I prayed for grace</div>
<div class="line">and was given pain, to show</div>
<div class="line">that all prayers are answered.</div>
<div class="line">I&#8217;ve shown you how I died</div>
<div class="line">three times, yet here I am,</div>
<div class="line">Lazarus and Buddha, my</div>
<div class="line">victim and savior. All this</div>
<div class="line">for fifteen dollars and a year&#8217;s</div>
<div class="line">subscription. If I didn&#8217;t have a job</div>
<div class="line">at the factory, sweeping floors</div>
<div class="line">on the graveyard shift …</div>
<div class="line3">And I&#8217;ve shown</div>
<div class="line">where I buried myself, covered</div>
<div class="line">my walls with books and paintings,</div>
<div class="line">how I talk to them and they say</div>
<div class="line"><em>This is what you&#8217;ve always wanted.</em></div>
<div class="line">I am my prisoner and my warden.</div>
<div class="line">I tell you how a passing image</div>
<div class="line">makes me rise, and how love</div>
<div class="line">leaves me cold. I sleep alone</div>
<div class="line">in a king-size bed</div>
<div class="line">and spill myself. I confess</div>
<div class="line">in public. I publish my shame.</div>
<div class="line">I don&#8217;t judge anymore.</div>
<div class="line">I&#8217;ve forgotten how to pray, unless</div>
<div class="line">this is a prayer.</div>
<div class="line">And now I arrange my life</div>
<div class="line">in code, knowing you decipher</div>
<div class="line">more than I show.</div>
<div class="line3">They can keep</div>
<div class="line">their fifteen dollars. They insult me!</div>
<div class="line">All I want from life</div>
<div class="line">is sainthood and some poems</div>
<div class="line">that will last. I lied early:</div>
<div class="line">the future is all there is. My gift</div>
<div class="line">is my present to myself, this day&#8217;s</div>
<div class="line">condensation of memory.</div>
<div class="line">It saves my life.</div>


In Our Line of Duty

The Contrarian’s Advice to Himself

<p style="padding-left: 0px;">I have a friend who has tattoos<br />
of a skull and crossbones on her arms,<br />
and sandpaper scars, and down her spine</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">multicolored butterflies; a tender lady<br />
who talks of redemption, and often<br />
washes my pain away.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 240px;">.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">Sometimes, I am my father,<br />
who thought a laugh worth any price<br />
if paid by someone else,</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">or my mother,<br />
weeping the morning long<br />
for no reason she could think of.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 240px;">.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">All my tattoos are inside my skin,<br />
of Mom and Dad, and caterpillars<br />
down my back. My scars</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">don’t show, but when I speak<br />
you hear my father, and my mother<br />
when I can’t. Sometimes it seems</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">that tender only enters me<br />
when paper words escape<br />
the silence of my pen.</p>


Raising the Roof

STORM CROP

Tattoos

<p style="padding-left: 0px;">When the grandfather dies<br />
there are tears of sadness<br />
from his family. Why is this?</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">If he has led a life<br />
of happiness and smiles,<br />
then be happy and smile.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">If he has had a life<br />
of sadness and unhappiness,<br />
be grateful he is at peace.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">If he has seen both<br />
he has been among the blest,<br />
to whom a full life has been given.</p>


RED FIELDS

Excitement of Getting a Room with a Minibar

On the Death of Grandfather

<p style="padding-left: 0px;">
She asked if I was in line and I said<br />
I’m always in line for something but<br />
I never know what it is and she said</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">nothing for what seemed like seconds<br />
and then replied That’s way too deep<br />
before my coffee and I said Ask me</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">something after we’ve had our coffee<br />
and she said Whatever would I ask<br />
and I said Ask me what my plans are</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">for Saturday night as we inched along<br />
and she said I like movies I saw Unfaithful<br />
last week and it didn’t have</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">a happy ending which made it more<br />
realistic and we got our double lattes<br />
and found two corner seats and I said</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">I saw <em>Y Tu Mama Tambien</em> but the sex<br />
didn’t seem real and she said Movies<br />
never get it right and we had another</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">double latte and talked awhile and<br />
drove to her condo and lived happily<br />
ever after what seemed like weeks</p>


A GUEST IN ALL YOUR HOUSES

On the Flyleaf of C.K.W.’s Selected Poems

A Starbucks Romance

<div class="line">Now that science has discovered that cod</div>
<div class="line">get seasick in a storm, and that halibut</div>
<div class="line">(and probably other fish—they’re waiting</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">on a federal grant of five million</div>
<div class="line">to study the subject) pass gas, perhaps</div>
<div class="line">it’s time to move on. We don’t really know</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">how salmon change sex</div>
<div class="line">when the going gets tough, how the swan</div>
<div class="line">finds a mate for life, or the swallow</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">Capistrano. And there must be more to learn</div>
<div class="line">about the hibernation of bears, and why the Cubs</div>
<div class="line">can’t win a pennant. Let’s find out why</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">the whale beaches itself,</div>
<div class="line">the drinking habits of certain birds,</div>
<div class="line">and how the monarch takes four generations</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">to migrate north, then another four</div>
<div class="line">back south, and how each generation</div>
<div class="line">returns on time to a place they’d never been.</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">How can they remember what they never knew?</div>
<div class="line">when in one generation I can’t remember</div>
<div class="line">where I left my keys. Let’s study that.</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">Let’s study why the long forgotten</div>
<div class="line">flashes into a mind that goes blank</div>
<div class="line">on what he had for breakfast, and mixes</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">the names of his grandchildren. Let’s determine</div>
<div class="line">why an otherwise serious poet doodles</div>
<div class="line">gibberish when he could be creating</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">esoteric balderdash. Or better yet</div>
<div class="line">let’s just study that which retards</div>
<div class="line">the advancement of our civilization,</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">like spending five million on seasick cod</div>
<div class="line">and flatulent halibut, or half a minute</div>
<div class="line">on a bored poet with equally bad habits.</div>


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July 4, 2012On the Death of GrandfatherRobert Funge

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July 4, 2012On the Death of GrandfatherRobert Funge

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