Louis Phillips
Rent This Poem
Why shd any reader
Be burdened by a mortgage
That will be sold & resold
Many times over?
Rent this poem,
Free yourself from dead weight,
Constant upkeep of lines,
Many written in haste,
Then forgotten at leisure.
Recite Poetry’s motto:
Property is theft!
Leave the plumbing to me.
Grievances
Winter hovers over my city,
A grievance
That refuses to be settled,
While old men.
Women too, I imagine,
Regret not being younger. Plenty
Of grievances myself. Mama, why
Was I such a good boy?
Why didn’t I,
Top-heavy with morals,
Upend the universe,
Walking a fine line between hi-
Jinks & a career in crime?
Blunt javelins
To the stomach
Of respectability!
Jesus! I shd have learned
To dance. Why did I bang the drum
Of Reason, doing what I was told,
Earning high grades,
When everyone else
Was upended in free fall,
Freshening pubic hairs,
Getting laid, drunk, soiled
Be experience. Why didn’t I,
Just once, spin
Completely out of control?
Rosary me no rosaries,
Grace me no grace.
End the edge of a blunt sky,
Allow me this one time
To be myself,
Free my imagination,
To kick a large hole
In the stained glass of creation.
Sex Before Breakfast
I am standing in a field
Before breakfast &
Already the sex mad Japanese beetles
Are at it, one on top of the other,
So that I cannot even look
A raspberry bush in the face.
So this is how my day begins.
With me risking life & limb
To bring home a handful
Of raspberries. They sell for
$5.00 a pint in the city, &
I have just wrecked my
$20.00 pair of blue jeans,
My arms are covered with scratches, &
I know I that I am going to be bit
By a copperhead or a Lyme tick
& die. Such heroism!
And all for what? A few berries.
Shall I say it has been worth it?
Why not? Why shd the rich
Have all the good things of life?
Back in the cabin,
An unseen hand has placed
Haydn's Concerto No. l in C Major
For Violin and String Orchestra
On the record player,
But I can't get
The Japanese Beetles out if my mind,
Their opera bouffa of copulation,
Why can't I be more like them?
I drop the raspberries to the table, &
Talk my wife back into bed,
Thinking of "double stops, big skips,
Fast runs, and
Melodies in the higher register."
