Two Poems

The Quiet Child

is very

telling.

A worldly

chrysalis.

Sits on the stoop

of a Tennessee Williams home

waiting out bore, uproar

and equinox.

Stops.

And an ounce

of humanity

wants with it.

Pistachio-nosed.

Doesn’t choose.

Does. As the magpie.

Lifts the lids of pots,

without purpose.

Completes

an audience.

Clouds

a courtroom.

Both hawk and mouse

along the yellow,

lackadaisical field.

Steers unsinkable ships

across sea beds

in cheery servitude.

But when it begins to cry –

how its bare chest heaves.

The bulge and billow

of a white sheet

hung at frost-bit morn.

Hippopotamus

They say

we all have

a place here.

But yours

escapes me.

What in god’s name

are you?

Broad-nosed, eyed,

shouldered, hipped

and with all that

river-bed wallowing.

You can’t possibly

have a sex life.

Perhaps you were

a cursed-at paper-weight,

gone missing

beneath God’s

buttressed cubical.

While getting it on

with a woman

whose legs were laced

in string-theory -

he plain forgot you.

Then you turned

iconoclast amputee.

Post whatever holy war

I haven’t heard of.

There have been so many.

Tell me,

pachyderm.

Was it

worth it?