Three Poems
Chief Executive Swat
October 2002 the U.S. Congress passed a "Joint Resolution to authorize the use of United States Armed Forces . . .” and authorized the President to "use any means necessary."
Houseflies’ exquisitely engineered internal gyroscopes
cope with inertia to twirl, turn and counter turn.
An act of balancing, the envy of every fighter pilot.
For ninety years researchers, as unremitting as talk show hosts
or political analysts, snapped five-thousand images per second
to discover flies' wings beat two hundred beats per second.
Specialists chilled flies into stillness to tether them
to strings and sticks, analyzed wings, tested body temperatures,
poked, probed and ultimately mapped the fly’s twelve thousand genes.
Crouched with poison in one hand and rolled newspaper in the other
I am a determined enemy stalking this jumbo wingbatterer
with a dive bomber buzz. But my housemate cherishes
life. Holds me up to a world court. The crunched New York Times’
10 pt. tells that the court is too distracted to prove I mean to murder
with weapons of mass destruction. My polypragmatic mate
along with a mute public
hypothesize an investigation.
I Keep Promises (Will I Go to Jail)
Coach me on your un-curable
as you chew off your own lips,
contort your neural pathways,
fix your waiting eyes on me.
Secretly I oust the tether
tubing you to gravity.
Now, unshackled
you transmute. I listen.
You are what is left
after a lute is plucked,
you are mist evaporating
in the morning, you are
the fragrance of a red sweet pea.
And I am living proof,
much as I wish or dread
demise, no force
whether it wants to
or not, can legislate one
way or another
we will die even if
we have no right to.
States of Being Cooked
They lived on treacle said the Dormouse, after thinking a minute or two. —Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
Lunch and she was laughing
spicing-up a fillet
of sole sandwich
butter fried left over
from last night
and he melted succulent
cheese between two
rye slices of Russian
in the antique chrome
sandwich grill.
When M. H. came
to dinner
she miscalculated time
cooking a goose, so
laughing, they ate
without it.
It’s September
1998, our president
is the laughing stock
of Europe forced
to tell his intimate
dyed-in-the-wool
sex acts. Any
mother would fillet
and grill the grand
body of government
over its pettiness when
people all around are starving
as we sit
dining at the table
with the Mad Hatter
ala middle-ages
morality play
and it’s no tea party.
(it wasn’t for Alice
either.)
—Carol Levin, Seattle, WA
