by James Horner
Why I declutter poetic junk:
it has forced rhymes
it uses clichés
it parades overly sentimental takes
it makes digressions that lead nowhere
it’s too long (stories in verse)
it’s gimmicky (haikus)
it distracts with illustrations
it moralizes
it has dogs in it
it uses elaborate forms– sestinas, villanelles, ghazals
it uses weird arrangements—Fibonacci sequences, mathematical symbols like π and i
it’s political (didactic)
it uses expressions in foreign languages
it overestimates the curiosity of the reader
1
Treacle
My tears should be yours.
Grandchild’s graduation. Cats,
unbearably cute.
2
Figures Don’t Lie
Figures don’t lie
and now the figures will lie
so we can’t figure them out.
Just trust the liar-in-chief.
3
Pop Tart® Poem
and make a poem pop up.
No sweet and silly with A. I.
No “I spy
with my little eye”.
No world’s sexiest private eye,
Magnum, P. I.
No reddening your hair with dye
to appear more fly.
No threats to eat your words like pie.
Instead, write them in Pop Tart® dough,
bake, and sigh:
and when you lose the contest to A.I.
and have to eat your words,
you’ll have no need to cry.
4
You Gotta Believe
You gotta believe
it’s gonna get worse
presidential pardons
because my liars lied for me
and on day one,
would set free the thugs who stormed the Capitol
because I’m above the law
(it doesn’t help that #46 pardoned his son
and lied to us when he said he wouldn’t)
unlimited mercy
absolute immunity
thank you, Supreme Court!
and me?
I’m swinging at spitballs
umped in a huge strike zone
still, even though Da Bums
won the Series
and #45 the Election
(strangely, not rigged)
you gotta believe
this democracy thing
ain’t over till it’s over
5
Man’s Best Friend
At the edge of a cliff
MJ feels no danger.
With one more step, a bark
turns frantic. Her Coco
jumps to her top-rope, flush
with the void. It skips, her heart.
Does her dog act from her heart?
To force MJ from the cliff,
thirty pounds of Coco
leaps on MJ’s back. A bark,
a shove, a whine. Danger
fades, though M J’s face is flush.
6
The Most Beautiful Equation
e
raise it
i times Pi
add 1, equaling
zero. What’s so elegant here?
Five universal constants; exponentiation,
addition, multiplication; two transcendentals;
an imaginary number.
Flight of God’s Spirit
unforeseen
beauty
deep
jolt
