Month: June 2013

Flight Club in Yellow (Kuck-coo Draft 0) [awkward thing: maybe just outline of something?]

Flight Club in Yellow

Goldfinches were calling
at the flight club

He looked across the sky
and said, “Po-ta-to-chip”

Twitter-twitter warble oh my she sang
and wandered off for sunflower seeds

As the early summer sun turned yellow
he did too, and she would see him again

With a tee-yee he landed, and
soon after mutual
twitter warbles,
there was bliss in a nest

but when there were threats
she reminded the world:
“bay-bee, bay-bee,”
waited.

Soon his yellow in flight drew near the nest
and then in a coloratura soprano voice
she greeted him back in festive color

Yellow Summer sun on the nest
raised up the glory of tee-yee,
raised twitter little tweeties

and raised up the glory of
sunflower seeds in yellow
tee-he he-he, tee-he

— Douglas Gilbert

Dreams (Draft 1)

Dreams

Where has she gone?

I knew her in my dreams, and
she often made appointments
though I awoke before I
could get an address
and I wasn’t sure if
I was kind enough or
just lost in savage lust, but

you know how dreams are wonderful
and I am so perfect there and
so are you

Aren’t we great.
I like to think so, because
when I dream of you
it seems so much like paradise that
I imagine it could be true

Oh but
could no one wake me

Oh let me imagine a sunrise
even if I’m in a cave

Beyond a snore
I am certain I could sing if
I could awaken

— Douglas Gilbert

I’m Really Tired (Draft 1)

I’m Really Tired

I’m really tired of Nature —
there is no nature when I close my eyes

I drift into a quiet spiral
where there are no noisy
birds or circadas or fog horns
or horns of dilemmas or
hysterical noise of impending doom

The crickets and circadas
are inarticulate, and
I have not time
for language courses
or ornithology expositions

I think the spirit has no leaves
nor bark

I’ve known happy blind people
happy deaf people, so

It must be somehow that
happiness doesn’t depend on
flowers or music

But I have never known anyone

So what would I know
except loneliness
and silence.

— Douglas Gilbert

Chicken Feed (Draft 1)

Chicken Feed (Draft 1)

I wonder if songbirds are grateful
for the sacrifice of the chickens that
lets them remain on their pedestal.

I suppose that creatures who
can sing do better than
those who merely peck at the ground.

Most chickens take the train to work
and in the Summer fry

Song birds primp and puff up their feathers
rest on tree branches before their next performance

But mostly they sing the words for their own species
and merely tease the others with a chronic melody

Seems odd that the chickens are martyrs
and the song birds of gibberish are stars

— Douglas Gilbert

By The Rules (Draft 1)

By The Rules (Draft 1)

I knew a young upper class talking cat
who went to a trés chic hospital
with all the most enlightened accommodations:

they had singers and musicians
comics, spiritual healers and
shamans of all kinds
chanters and meditators
prayers

But they had manuals
for what to do for every contingency

Despite all, the cat reported some anxiety

That’s when after consulting the manual,
they brought in the therapy dog

The healers all got bitten and scratched
but they prayed with ferocity

The cat went elsewhere for a face lift
and the the dog did stand-up comedy
in a club that bars all cats

— Douglas Gilbert

Icebergs (Draft x)

OK, this is a little weird.Don’t know if I can use it.

Icebergs

I watch beauty drift away on icebergs
see a doomed survivor last a moment

My thoughts are frozen screams
when my dreams of rescue are futile
and I speak with slow motion cream
like flotsam on foamy white waves

Mostly the chill of my face
is too ugly to observe in person

but in the ice cream of my words
many find cherries and berries, and

I am often delicious by the pint, and
when someone has a “brain freeze”
I giggle a little and think to myself:
if only you knew how slowly I would melt
if you thought I was cool in your arms
and was your precious observant desert
just a little tart, just a little sweet, and
jumping from icebergs onto your ship

— Douglas Gilbert

Lachrymose (Draft 2)

Lachrymose (Draft 2)

Hurrying away from a shiver
she made me feel so cold in insults,
frigid when I rested morose in a sulk

Lying on ice is a chilly bump.

I’m warm when I’m walking
though a storm is stalking, but if
I rest a moment I’ll be cold

Lachrymose skies hover
since she threw me out cold
without my umbrella or razor

A storm is stalking me in her name;
I have no umbrella for shame, no

it’s a shame she never knew me
never knew how poor I was
how rich

I gave her all the grandiose she wanted:
the sunrise, the sunset, the expensive flowers
but she could not embrace a pauper who
might write a frozen poem to be
intentionally defrosted and served
growing lachrymal joy and flowers afield

— Douglas Gilbert

Synonym (Draft 1)

Synonym

Linguists should stand erect, and
learn to dance or something, if
they can’t find a synonym for love

Maybe someone should put
a noise maker in the brain, so
we can hear it throb in joy
and call it endorphove, but

we definitely don’t want
a stroke of genius
just a back stroke of compassion
laid back in satisfaction together

How do I blank thee
don’t make me count the ways

I want a new word for you
because I want to say
more than the L-word
when a fuse of fondness
ignites a fireworks that works
like magic incantations that pop

— Douglas Gilbert

The Lures of Pollen (Draft 2)

The Lures of Pollen (Draft 2)

The distribution of pollen
is a glorious mandate
done through airs and trickery

The nectar and the sticky
no carrots and no sticks, but

there is a new kind of orchid
that doesn’t just
trap insects so they
brush on pollen, but this orchid

catches cats just for the fun of it,
toys with them and then this
orchid eats them for lunch
like a Venus Fly Trap, but it is
much stickier, much bigger — in fact,
some have grown the size of the “corpse flower”.

Yes, I have heard the “Symphony of Sneezes” and
the “Fog of Pollen Is More Yellow Than the Sun,”
but I’ve never heard Puccini’s “Missing Cats”
performed in public alas, so

be grateful that pollen is only up your nose,
and you’re not required to roll in it like
a cat does in catnip

— Douglas Gilbert