February 23, 2021 by wlm3

Canto 6 of Wesley’s Inferno

Three months before my wife died of Lymphoma, I began as a sort of mental escape exercise to write a parody of Dante’s Inferno in terza rima, a verse form very inimical to rhyme-starved English. In fact, even though Dante used terza rima in his Commedia, I know of no English translation of that great work that employs it.

My plan was to write nine cantos, each consisting of nine stanzas, to render an abbreviated trip through the nine circles of hell, having as my guide the Roman poet Catullus, rather than Virgil, who led Dante through the nether regions.

Alas, my poem, now two thirds completed with this latest canto, is a failure because – guess what – writing terza rima in English is nearly impossible unless you’re a master like Shelley (see his “Ode to the West Wind”). Some of it comes off as silly, for which I apologize.

Nevertheless, I’m determined to finish it, even though I myself don’t pretend to know what it means, and cast it out into the ones and zeroes of the Internet.

Canto 6

As the rutted road like a corkscrew twisted downward
through darkness, the cries of lamentation
abated, and a more martial clash we heard

as we entered the circle of anger, an infestation,
of spiteful wretches screaming, biting, gouging,
their wounds never-healing, a damnation

deserved, according to Catullus, slouching
behind the wheel of the hell cab. “Violence
is the bane of humanity. See that man crouching

behind the rock there, sliced and bleeding?
That’s none other than Pee Wee Gaskins,
podunk mass murderer, receiving

forevermore the very same tortures he wrought
upon his brethren, and over there Joseph Goebbels,
leper-like, oozing sores, with agony forever fraught.

We were in the small intestines of hell,
as it were, the stench overpowering,
the horrors too horrible to tell

with words, the previous circles towering
above us, the worst still yet to come.
I closed my stinging eyes, myself cowering

in the backseat of the cab. “Oh, for a drop of rum,”
I sighed, and Catullus smiled, pulled out a flask,
“Here,” he said, reaching back, “please have some.

It’s not much to ask
after what you’ve been through,
donning the sackcloth with a mouthful of ash.

February 19, 2021 by wlm3

All the News That’s Fit to Spit

All the News That’s Fit to Spit

Rush Limbaugh has succumbed to cancer,
He who often spoke ill of the dead.
Will our comedians do him justice
Or bite their satiric tongues instead?

Deep in the heart of frigid Texas,
the unregulated grid is on the fritz.
So, Ted Cruz packed his bags for Mexico,
And booked a suite at the Cancun Ritz.

In other news:

US Covid cases are on the wane,
The Reaper taking a bit of a breather,
Which, of course, is very good news
For maskless frat boys and grizzled geezers.

So that’s it for this episode of the All News That’s Fit to Spit,
brought to you, as always, in doggerel.
See you next week, same time, same blog site.
Have a wonderful weekend, y’all.

^[1] The day after Kurt Cobain committed suicide, Limbaugh said, “Kurt Cobain was, ladies and gentleman, a worthless shred of human debris.” After Jerry Garcia’s death, Limbaugh called him, “just another dead doper. and a dirt bag”

February 10, 2021 by wlm3

Stuck Inside of Peoria’s Suburbs with the Arden Forest Blues Again

Dear Abby, 
 
My girlfriend disses me 
when I put “thee” 
in my confessional poetry. 
 
“So Seventeenth Century,” 
she says, “the antithesis of hip, old-fashioned, out of time.”
 
which triggers 
            Bill Wyman’s bass line
                        in the juke box of my mind.
 
You’re out of touch my baby,
My poor old-fashioned baby,
I said baby, baby, baby, you’re out of time.
 
“No way you can publish this rubbish,”
she says, “too loosey goosey, sugar britches.
 
“Try not rhyming every other word. 
The syllables should interlock
like a choo-choo train,
and go chug-chug-chug-chugging,
in a straight line,
 
not go staggering 
               all over the page, 
like a sentimental drunk 
                smashed on Toostie Roll wine.”
 
Otherwise, she’s sweet as pie, my girlfriend,
and treats me nice. 
 
Any advice?
 
 
Signed,
 
Stuck Inside of Peoria’s Suburbs with the Arden Forest Blues Again
 
Dear Stuck,
 
A wise man once wrote:
 
A poem should be palpable and mute   
As a globed fruit,

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

A poem should be wordless   
As the flight of birds.
 
So, yeah, your GF has a point.

February 3, 2021 by wlm3

Ah-One, Ah-Two

Ah-One, Ah-Two

How can we know the dancer from the dance?

WB Yeats, “Among School Children”

What is it, this incessant need,
to dribble ink upon a page
in musty old forms best abandoned,
better suited to an earlier age?

Yet – [sigh] – here I am once again,
cranking up the old gramophone,
herding trochees two by two,
like a cotillion chaperone

attempting to teach the Cha Cha Cha
to kids who think they know it all,
who vamp in front of mirrors at home
pretending brooms are microphones.

January 25, 2021 by wlm3

A Truth of Blood

A Truth of Blood

What harm? Men die — externally —
It is a truth — of Blood —
But we — are dying in Drama —
And Drama — is never dead —
Emily Dickinson

The dream done, my eyes open,
it hurt to be awake.

Outside my bedroom window
faint predawn light seeping
through the dark fabric of the sky.

My late wife had been alive just now,
in the dream her death merely a dream.

I had held her in my arms,
explaining to her that I had dreamed she’d died,
but she hadn’t, no, she was smiling,
warm, lying next to me in bed,

so lifelike, so palpable,
I thought as I lay there afterwards
that her spirit had come to me.

I closed my eyes and fell asleep again,
and, as if in a new episode of the ongoing series of my sleep,
she reappeared, sitting in a chair in an unfamiliar room.

Not smiling now, possessing the wisdom of the dead,
she explained in her soft Georgia accent
that we were out of synch,
that our ages no longer matched,
and it was true, she was young again,
in her twenties, but I was old and stiff.

[poof]

I rose from bed,
and looked down upon sleeping Caroline,
lying there beautiful, a breathing angel,
her hair luxuriant, disheveled, cascading
over the pillow that she embraced,
like a lover in a Leonard Cohen song.

The light strong now,
the sky outside the window bright blue,
my dead wife, like Eurydice,
tumbled back into black oblivion.

I struggled into my corduroys,
puddled on the floor next to the bed,
and tiptoed out, quietly opening
and closing the bedroom door.

Descending the stairs,
I shook my head, waved my arms,
to buck myself back
into the land of the living.

Time to brew a pot of coffee
and retrieve the morning paper,
which lay where flung,
next to a clump of lantana,
the newspaper sheathed in plastic,
protected from the dew,
which had evaporated, had disappeared
into the seeming emptiness of air.

January 19, 2021 by wlm3

Live Reading of “Loose Cadences for Loose Cannons” (a Horatian satire inspired by Alexander Pope)

“chaos of thought and passion all confused” – Alexander Pope, “An Essay on Man”

Here’s me reading my satirical poem on the Capitol Insurrection at Chico Feo’s Singer/Songwriter Soapbox 18 January 2021.

Here’s the text of the poem:

Loose Cadences for Loose Cannons: A Capitol Insurgent Doggerel Taxonomic Commode Ode

The fever swamps of the radical right
Teem with an abundance of exotic wildlife,

A vast array of various species
Thriving on a regimen of bovine feces.

Look! A QAnon Shaman, bare-chested, toting a spear,
Sporting a smile instead of a sneer,

Stomping around the Capitol wreaking havoc
Fueled by a diet that’s 100% organic.

Then there’s the less colorful Klete Keller,
Who looks to be a regular sort of fellow,

Tall, wholesome-looking, clean-cut, strong of jaw,
A gold-medal winner on the wrong side of the law.

Off duty cops, insurance agents, adjunct professors
Among the herd of headweak aggressors,

A motley crew: CEOs, politicians, welders, sailors,
Some dwelling in mansions, others in trailers,

And militia men galore, bearded, cosplaying Rambo,
Their lingua franca crazy batshit mumbo jumbo,

All exhibiting a disdain for natural selection,
Maskless as they swarm to overthrow the election,

Recording their crimes with selfies and live streams
Taking self-incrimination to ridiculous extremes.

Yet when the FBI arrives to initiate their torment,
They whine and say, “I was just caught up in the moment.”

Like I said, the fever swamps of the radical right
Teem with an abundance of exotic wildlife.

January 18, 2021 by wlm3

The S.A.D. Roundel Rag Revisited

Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is a type of depression that’s related to changes in seasons — SAD begins and ends at about the same times every year. If you’re like most people with SAD, your symptoms start in the fall and continue into the winter months, sapping your energy and making you feel moody.

roundel: an eleven-line poem consisting of three stanzas – a quatrain, tercet, quatrain. The opening line becomes a refrain of the fourth and 11th lines. It is an English variation of the roundeau introduced by Algernon Charles Swinburne.*

Rhyme scheme: abaa bab abaa

The S.A.D. Roundel Rag

Snide winter suns don’t heat
on their blustery ride;
flashily indiscrete,
snide winter suns don’t heat.

Winter suns glide,
bold but effete,
expansive as they slide

over the edge into the deep.
No matter how you search for the bright side,
that lackluster light spells defeat –
snide winter suns don’t heat.

*When in his thirty-eighth year, William Butler Yeats’s sister informed him that Swinburne had died, Yeats declared, “Now I am king of the cats.”

January 15, 2021 by wlm3

Loose Cadences for Loose Cannons: The Capitol Insurgent Doggerel Taxonomic Commode Ode