Erato-cism
My Muse and I
have an erratic relationship.
When the urge comes upon me
and I really need her loving embrace,
sometimes my Muse
lavishes kisses on my straining pen,
but sometimes she leaves me dangling,
no verse at all erected.
No matter how hard I strain,
my desire wilts ungraced
by any climax.
No poetry spurts forth.
Lot’s Wife adrift in the Coronaverse
Agog at the saltwater tears
of politicians and businessmen
who force hungry employees
to work cheek by jowl
in air swarming with viruses,
and beset by media blaring always,
“Accentuate the positive!
Look ahead!
Never ever look back
lest you become
a pointy egghead,”
she watched the powerful abet the virus
to be fruitful and multiply
even as the virus mutated
beyond all control,
until she herself looked back
to learn what might have been,
and seeing behind what lies ahead,
dissolved herself in tears.
Coronaville ya-ya-ya
As we live the life of Coronaville
and the virus harvests
additional lungs,
and lockdown after lockdown
confounds lovers’ hopes
and workday plans,
I watch my workmates
plot vaccines and more appealing
masks
or count the living
and predict the deaths.
And as I too plan research
and I too huddle in a locked-down town,
I wonder about the time when Coronaville is done.
Will we later look back at Coronaville
as the good old days?
As months of innocence
when we did not yet know
of the in-coming kaleidoscope
of further plagues?
And did not yet feel
the methane-laden breath
of global swarming,
when that final flaming dragon
flew near on golden wings of greed?
I stood outside
While classmates partied,
learned to dance,
to hug, to savor perfume
and perspiration, and relished the smooth glide
of another’s thigh against a budding penis,
perhaps even tasted
the mint-gloss of a girlfriend’s lips,
I beat myself
at chess, read sci-fi and history.
At nights, as others snuggled,
I stood outside, erect
near a maple many-hued during Autumn daylight,
but gray as our Maltese cat at night.
I stared aloft at my only friends
as they twirled and twinkled
red, blue, yellow, or white
and danced through their galaxy
also isolated,
also alone.
What’s her name…?
After she awoke,
her skin scaly as a serpent’s
from three millennia of salt,
Lot’s Wife volunteered over many years
with a local Louisville liberation group,
and spoke on national TV
about Breonna Taylor
to explain the importance
of always saying her name.
© CTvM: Jantje and a Grebe with 3 young, pastel drawing