Four Poems at Bat, Bean, Beam

For the first time since I began contributing to Giovanni’s site, I have struggled to make my contributions.  To the owner himself, I gave this account:

I am learning grim things about from where my writerly inspiration comes. Four or five weeks of quiet times and really busy work was like being in the writer’s desert. Then today one of my dogs had an emergency trip to the vet and suddenly I’m 2010′s Philip Sydney. Fear and loathing, it seems, fear and loathing.

The first in response to this post.

Out of the scourge of metaphors
comes a different kind of falling:
a knife through Babel as through butter,
for hearts that dropped, a newer order.

I’ll see you your imagination
and raise you waste upon a wasteland:
the blow that fell upon your neck
steered by another hand, out back.

The second in response to this post.

You did not die at Brighton,
nor your young son at Picton,
nor your husband at Sydenham,
nor his children, in time.

The trace of you’s not seen on me
so we might say, you never lived
by definition: here we are,
another place where you are not.

I could take my lies to Linwood
where monumental masonry
for now, at least, says otherwise
in trickster’s thin air.

The third in response to this post.

Almighty and most merciful Father;
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We have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep.
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We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts.
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We have offended against thy holy laws.
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We have left undone those things which we ought to have done;
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And we have done those things which we ought not to have done;
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And there is no health in us.
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But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders.
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Spare thou them, O God, who confess their faults.
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Restore thou them that are penitent;
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According to thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesu our Lord.
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And grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake;
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That we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life,
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To the glory of thy holy Name.
Now stop worrying and enjoy your life. Amen.

The fourth in response to this post.

I hold out my arms to 2027
the original falling due of my first mortgage
which, by force of will and fixed-term payments,
I draw daily ever closer to me.

2014 is the most recent date
to which I’ve tied its timely death.
Though the front porch sags with a rotten post
My debt-free house wouldn’t dare fall down.

My new husband duly takes his place
with interest behind the magic dates.
What dares obscure the shining path?
I cast it aside, as knight to knave.