POETRY BAZAAR

New and unpublished poems, available exclusively to first publisher responding to   AUTHOR

GAIETY GONE
Where did all those fairies go,
they roamed so randomly, you know
hiding out where pansies grow,
with furtive winds which warmly blow,
disrupting prigs who hate them so.
and REPRISE
Secret sprites don't advertise,
while living safe in cloaked disguise,
proffering love as hidden prize.
Much worse are priests who sodomize
altar boys, afraid to criticize.

     I GROW GREAT WEEDS
Each spring I plant expensive seed
    preparing for the garden show.
I fertilize and then proceed
 
   to tend my plot with hose and hoe.
I watch the wild plants quickly breed
   
while my seedlings don't choose to grow.
I have this plan that might succeed;
   
next spring, its weed sperm I will sow.
I'll reap the wild veggies I need,
   
that considered my weeds, their foe.

BEHIND THESE LINES:
   
Gardening is my secret pleasure. I say secret because no one could tell that I have that interest at all, based on the struggling plants begging for survival around my house and lawn. I also have a feeble garden, that denies my farm based childhood. All of my vegetables come from the market's freezer or cans.
   
Despite my horticulturural failures, each year I try again, and give lots of advice to other frustrated gardeners.

If you would keep your Garden green,
plant poop with the seeds and pull all the weeds,
water a lot and don't talk mean.

 A FOUR EYED GOD
A biased pride, lets man believe
that he's the cause for Earth.
And things that grow and sun receive,
for him were given birth.

To serve the ants, could be our goal,
lone cause for man to be.
Food crumbs to drop, our only role,
not larger destiny.

Might God ignore us when we're dead,
unmindful of his toll.
Man decompose to earthworm's bed
divested of its soul.

Concerned might measure charity,
the help we stingy give.
Ignore our gift, to feed one flea
warm blood so fleas may live.

When weighed against the insect horde
man's role could be quite small.
Proud man can't grasp exotic Lord,
just primate, standing tall.

An Insect God, must man defame
because of vanity,
defining deity, they claim,
limns
his own identity.

BEHIND THESE LINES:
    I am comfortable with man's depiction of his God, as part of the religious faith gifted to me by my parents, that comforts and explains my tragedies and flaws. Yet, I must expostulate with church deacons who blithely assume that the world was created solely for their pleasure and comfort. Think of the possibilities of a God and creator blessing the first single cell protozoa with his then image. Or is evolution an ongoing process and we see the Creator's image in the final evolved, completed man.

MIRACLE PALEONTOLOGY
Praise the paleontologists,
learned men who unerringly create
a skeleton which each insists
is reality we can't debate.

Long dead dinosaurs lost their meat,
leaving lots of fossilized bone.
Do guesses make them complete,
no skeleton gaps left unknown?

Does imagination help them know
the animal they would restore
and where each piece of bone should go
to shape their ancient dinosaur.

BEHIND THESE WORDS:
While touring a museum of Natural History in a large metropolis, I compared a finished brontosaurus, inspired and imaginatively created from just a few fossilized bone fragments. Before and after pictures were furnished by the display, to amaze us spectators with how this ancient dinosaur was found and the miraculous recreation was determined with so little remnants left behind.

Their greek name connotes thundering lizard, implying this herbivarous creature had a voice box, or noisily stamped his feet when he walked. Since we have never seen a brontosaurus, we cannot argue with the paleontologists who have not seen a brontosaurus a million times more of them than us neophytes. That could still be a dangerous assumption.

Were a paleontologist to confront a real brontosaurus, would they bravely assume the beast was a vegetarian, as they claim? I know they supposed the fossilized teeth were masticators fit only for plants, but they could have eaten mashed meat mush, their stamping feet could produce, right?

MOMMA SAYS
It's never nice to pick your nose,
You can pick a wife or a rose,
and then  quite sensibly
the right card, your teeth or new clothes,
a guitar, a friend or your foes,
and often, quite privately
that icky stuff between your toes.
Pick garden weed that stubborn grows
and winning numbers I suppose
or your butt when no one knows
but mothers and teachers agree
it's never nice to pick your nose.

 
BEHIND THESE LINES:
    Pick is one of those inexact words, with many shades of meaning,
and I began this verse to demonstrate that vagary.  I try to avoid such confusing words in my poetry, unless I want to broaden my point or message.  With the broad vocabulary English affords, a poet can choose (or pick) words that narrowly define exactly what he means.  My dictionary has fifty meanings for pick, so reading the word pick, one must slow down and study the context to see what meaning of pick the author intended.
    For instance, choose, designate, vote, prefer, finest, appoint and scratch are some of the verb synonyms of pick, and their meanings are vastly different. Like the f word, pick is used as verb, noun, adverb, pronoun,  preposition,  expletive and conjunction.  I propose we always say what we really mean, and that includes poets!