2 Poems

And Drunk the Milk The debtors had been kept at Bay, we thought, and so, like lotus-eaters Dawdled.  She no longer fixated on Orange-trees, and we had come to View this change as awkward, but OK.  The declarations of the time Were perverted.  Some question mark Always inhered.  Are you all right?  We Asked.  It had gotten away from us.  It Had become larger than the sum of its (private) Parts, until there was no higher-in- Command.  All in all, we were fucked, Up shit-creek-without-a-paddle, etc.  But Still some clung while the narrative, already Submerged, got lost, got lost and forgotten In one fell but not really magnificent Swoop. Others complained about the spanking of The monkey, how it had become insufficient, An unworthy investment with no returns, and We, the default mock tribunal, Understood.  Where were the fairer Creatures?  It was a valid question, yet We didn’t have the requisite aplomb to Respond, and giggled. The effulgent leaves became an eyesore, we Exclaimed as edict, and the bulky ones came In large brown trucks to dispose of them, throw Them under the carpet, so to speak.  We were Happy campers, then, for a time. My Vegetable Love Was I not to be included in the games? When they begin, something monumental is said to Happen, though I have been ruled out & marginalized Like a disgruntled postal employee. At any rate, how pliable The 2 x 4’s seemed this summer:  you cut them “like Butter,” but what remained?  We scurried like Keats Listening for the sounds between the sound but Looked like freshly decapitated chickens, frenzied & Empty.  Were we what was lost in the translation somewhere? Somehow the poem wouldn’t become us; heck, we had such High hopes!  I don’t mean to burst your bubble, the bubble-burster kept saying. Was it okay that way?  Or were we dissatisfied, (Green thoughts in a green shade, but the greenness over Yonder, in some unreachable pastoral)?  Did the Kraken stir, Or was it the adjustment of this house to wind?  John Donne, Anne Donne, Undone, I kept muttering, looking at your John Deere hat.  Christ, Was there still time for us?