The Book of Counted Sorrows (6 page)

                   I was also aware that everyone who read every poem in the book met an explosive, buttery, or strange end, and that everyone who read all but one poem managed to escape violent death but nevertheless went insane. You will recall our esteemed and adored former employee, Thelma Kickmule, who now lives in a chicken coop in Iowa and is known by her coopmates as the "Featherless Hen." With this in mind, and with good reason to believe that I would not have the social skills to be easily accepted in chicken society, I promised myself that I would read the entire collection of verse except for two poems, thus escaping both head explosion and insanity - though, sadly, this meant that I would fail to achieve the glorious enlightenment that had come to those who read the work complete. But, hey, I take solace from that old, wise saying: Glorious enlightenment and two dollars will buy you a latte at Starbucks.

                   (One more parenthetical aside, infuriating as it may be: Much thought has been given, by me and by other scholars, as to why women are able to read the entire book, achieve enlightenment, and suffer no negative consequences. [Excepting, of course, our Miss Kickmule, who, let's face it, did have an unusually high testosterone level for a woman. She used to wrestle grizzly bears for relaxation and never cried when she saw The English Patient.] Is it because women have a greater capacity for truth and enlightenment than do mere men? Many scholars believe this is the answer - although these are primarily female scholars. Is it because men, while possessing a capacity for truth and enlightenment the equal of that possessed by women, simply have a devastating allergic reaction to the chemicals used in the ink or paper in this particular volume, which produces such distressing symptoms as head explosions, emulsification, metamorphosis into butter, and self-swallowing? Other scholars are convinced that this is the explanation - and although these are primarily males and may be biased, I have always read the book while wearing both latex gloves and quilted oven mittens.)

                   In any event, the verses that follow are the complete text of The Book of Counted Sorrows, except that we have withheld two poems in an attempt to spare male readers from the likelihood of madness and messy violent death. No need for any of you men to thank me for that. It is the least I can do.

                   Finally, a word about the verses themselves. Actually, here are more than a word; here are forty-three words about the verses themselves. But I felt it would sound peculiar to say "here are forty-three words about the verses themselves," though now, through the mechanism of this clarification, I've gone ahead and said it anyway, so I might just as well have said it in the first place. Well, live and learn. So here are those forty-three words: Some of these poems are nothing but doggerel; some are doggerel with a touch of wisdom; others are of a more ambitious nature, and the level of success varies from piece to piece; and a few are perhaps emotionally and intellectually engaging.

                   You know, however, what my opinion is worth: My opinion and two dollars will buy you a latte at Starbucks.

                   The thought of that latte was so appetizing, so fully realized with my free and supple imagination, that even though I did not, in fact, consume the beverage, I am now required to floss and proceed to the carriage master's cottage.

                   Be not afraid for me. The robotic monkeys have been repaired.

And Now the Text of the Cursed Book...

THE BOOK OF COUNTED SORROWS

An Inevitable Doom Press Publication

All rights vigorously reserved and viciously defended.

© 1928 by "   "

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means

without permission in writing, in blood, from the publisher. Any

violation of this copyright will result in the violator being tracked

down by packs of spectacularly well-trained and utterly savage pigs

that will find you as easily as they would locate truffles if that

happened to be what they were trained to find.

These pigs will bite you on the ankles, kneecaps, and genitals until

you have been subdued, whereupon you will be conveyed to the proper

 authorities to be executed, convicted, and put on trial, in that order.

PUBLISHER'S DISCLAIMER:

Inevitable Doom Press hereby warns all readers of the possibility of

insanity or violent death resulting from the reading of these verses.

You may also suffer headaches, halitosis, hoof-and-mouth disease,

dizziness, failure to achieve dizziness when dizziness is desired,

bleeding from hair follicles, the unexplained cancellation of

subscriptions that are dear to you, hives, rashes, boils, inflamed

earlobes, the sudden growth of a second head, bad weather, colossal

flatulence, the compulsion to insist that your name is Igor when you

know perfectly well this isn't true, the unwanted romantic attention

of cats, blisters, and the growth of eye hair.

Table of Contents

One Door Away From Heaven

Neither Do They Fade Away

In the Fields of Life

The Weight

The Train Leaves the Station

A Delicious Walk

Habit Makes Destiny

Pedal to the Metal

Remembering When We Didn't Expect to Live Forever

A Roundness

Remembered Dreams

Academic and Novelist as Abbott and Costello

The Chain

Short Story

The Modern Age

Wee Wisdom

This Old Honkytonk of Fools

Cold Fire

Whom You Might Trust

1992

Men on White Horses

Crossing Nevada

Melodrama

Busy Humanity

Kiss

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Winter Moon

The Mask

Reality

The Answer Comes After the Funeral

Drummer

Potboiler

Saving Graces Politics

Ten Years Old, Reading in Bed

Fallen Yet Not Lacking in Virtue

February, 1969

We Are All So Modern Here

All Those Snappy Epigrams on the Theme of Night

Anthem

A Thought While Reading Rex Stout

Cry Doom

Dragon Tears

Cold Questions

Mary Shelley, No One Listens

A Job May Not Be Enough

The Root of All Mystery

Haiku

Where God Goes on Vacation

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening with Exploding Heads: A Tribute in Verse to Robert Frost

About The Author

Dedication

To the doomed. To the forgotten. To the misunderstood. To the misbegotten.

To the doomed and forgotten misbegotten who have been frequently

misunderstood. To the melancholy, the lonely, the lost, the weary, the

hopelessly anguished, the bitterly distraught, the terminally

cranky, the ferociously depressed, and the seethingly disinterested.

Also to Uncle Mort and Aunt Clara: Thanks for the homemade muffins.

One Door Away From Heaven

One door away from Heaven,

We live each day and hour.

One door away from Heaven,

But it lies beyond our power

To open the door to Heaven,

And enter when we choose.

One door away from Heaven,

And the key is ours to lose.

One door away from Heaven,

But, oh, the entry dues.

One door away from Heaven,

And yet we sing the blues.

One door away from Heaven,

We live each day and night.

One door away from Heaven

Is such a perilous height,

A long fall from the doorstep,

If we can't tell wrong from right.

Neither Do They Fade Away

Elvis is dead but spotted in Biloxi,

In Nashville, Corpus Christi. He's got moxie

To be dead vet movie-going at the Roxie,

Still sticking to this world as if epoxied.

Glimpsed in a pink Caddy there in Biloxi,

Our ageless King, still smilin' and still foxy.

They say Walt Disney was frozen to live again,

To once more walk his magic land of mice and men.

Al Einstein's brain is rumored floating in a jar.

Until he's got a new body, he won't go far.

This is America, where failure is decried.

This is America, and death must be denied.

In The Fields Of Life

In the fields of life, a harvest

Sometimes comes far out of season,

When we thought the earth was old

And could see no earthly reason

To rise for work at break of dawn,

And put our muscles to the test.

With winter here and autumn gone,

It just seems best to rest, to rest.

But under winter fields so cold,

Wait the dormant seeds of seasons

Unborn, and so the heart does hold

Hope that heals all bitter lesions.

In the fields of life, a harvest.

The Weight

We have a weight to carry

And a distance we must go.

We have a weight to carry,

A destination we can't know.

We have a weight to carry

And can put it down nowhere.

We are the weight we carry

From there to here to there.

The Train Leaves The Station

All of us are travelers lost,

Our tickets arranged at a cost

Unknown but beyond our means.

This odd itinerary of scenes

- Enigmatic, strange, unreal -

Leaves us unsure how to feel.

No postmortem journey is rife

With more mystery than life.

A Delicious Walk

The tired dog lies licking its feet.

Absorbed, quiet, and so discrete.

You would be wrong in assuming

It is engaged in mere grooming.

You can tell by the canine smiles,

It's tasting the mem'ry of miles.

Habit Makes Destiny

On the road that I have taken,

One day, walking, I awaken,

Amazed to see where I have come,

Where I'm going, where I'm from.

This is not the path I thought.

This is not the place I sought.

This is not the dream I bought,

Just a fever of fate I've caught.

I'll change highways in a while,

At the crossroads, one more mile.

My path is lit by my own fire.

I'm going only where I desire.

On the road that I have taken,

One day, walking, I awaken.

One day, walking, I awaken,

On the road that I have taken.

Pedal To The Metal

Hope is the destination that a seek.

Love is the road that leads to hope.

Courage is the motor that drives us.

We travel out of darkness into faith.

Even on this map of infinite complexity,

Only one highway is worth following,

One route worth the time behind the wheel,

One arrival rewarding to the traveler.

No rest stop can offer rest assured

To equal the peace at highway's end,

When you've driven hard and well,

With purpose, in search of meaning.

Remembering When We Didn't Expect To Live Forever

We once ate great half-raw steaks

And washed them down with martinis.

Eggs and bacon for breakfast,

Sweet or sour cream over Minis.

We drove fast and free of belts.

We smoked if we wanted to.

We finished the day with a brandy

And occasionally even two.

 Now we know the folly of those ways,

The dangers of those innocent days.

Salad now, and a glass of iced tea.

We shudder at the mention of Brie.

Seatbelts, airbags, sugarless gum.

Count every calorie, know the sum.

Clogged arteries are not forgiving.

Clogged or not - this isn't living.

A Roundness

Life is a gift that must be given back,

And joy should arise from its possession.

It's too damned short, and that's a fact.

Hard to accept, this earthly procession

To final darkness is a journey done,

Circle completed, work of art sublime,

A sweet melodic rhyme, a battle won.

Remembered Dreams

Your face, as no other face,

Populates remembered dreams.

Your arms, as no other place:

Landscape to remembered dreams.

Your heart, as no other heart.

Your eyes, as no other eyes,

In you each dream must start.

With you the real world dies

And my life thereafter lies

Only in remembered dreams.

Academic And Novelist As Abbott And Costello

You deconstruct. I'll reconstruct.

You analyze. I'll catalyze

New brews from old elixirs.

You mix it up. I'll fix it up.

You break it down. I'll play the clown

At one of your faculty mixers.

You challenge style. I'll smile awhile.

You find the theme. I'll soon redeem

My work from any classroom trickster.

The Chair

Tremulous skeins of destiny

Flutter so ethereally

Around me - but then I feel

Its embrace is that of steel.

Short Story

A gasp of breath,

A sudden death:

The tale begun.

A rustled page

Passes an age:

The tale is done.

The Modern Age

Living in the modern age,

Death for virtue is the wage.

So it seems in darker hours.

Evil wins, kindness cowers.

Ruled by violence and vice.

We all stand upon thin ice.

Are we brave or are we mice,

Here upon such thin, thin ice?

Dare we linger, dare we sate?

Dare we laugh or celebrate?

Knowing we may strain the ice?

Preserve the ice at any price?

Wee Wisdom

When tempest-tossed,

Embrace chaos.

This Old Honkytonk Of Fools

Rush headlong and hard at life

Or just sit at home and wait.

All things right and all the wrong

Will come straight to you: It's fate.

Hear the music, dance if you can.

Dress in rags or wear your jewels.

Drink your choice, nurse your fear

In this old honkytonk of fools.

Cold Fire

Vibrations in a wire.

Ice crystals

In a beating heart.

Cold fire.

A mind's frigidity:

Frozen steel,

Dark rage, morbidity.

Cold fire.

Defense against

A cruel life,

Death and strife:

Cold fire.

Whom You Might Trust

Nowhere can a secret keep

Always secret, dark and deep,

Half so well as in the past,

Buried deep to last, to last.

Keep it in your own dark heart.

Otherwise the rumors start.

After many years have buried

Secrets over which you worried,

No confidant can then betray

All the words you didn't say.

Only you can then exhume

Secrets safe within the tomb

Of memory, of memory,

Within the tomb of memory.

1992

Winter that year was strange and gray.

The damp wind smelled of Apocalypse,

And morning skies had a peculiar way

Of slipping cat-quick into midnight.

Men On White Horses

Those who would banish the sin of greed

Embrace the sin of envy as their creed.

Those who seek to banish envy as well

Only draw elaborate new maps of Hell.

Those with passion to change the world

Look on themselves as saints, as pearls,

And by the launching of noble endeavor,

Flee dreaded introspection forever.

Crossing Nevada

Las Vegas far behind

The highway flat

And straight

The Mojave dark

Where this small town

At 2 a.m.

Holds hot eternity at bay

With service-station lights

And a humming Coke machine

Though neither can lay to rest

The uneasy suspicion

That a power failure

Would release not only

The dammed-up night

But also the ancient sea

Withdrawn eons ago

And waiting to return

In a massive tide

When the cola logo

Blinks off.

Melodrama

A rain of shadow, a squall!

Daylight retreats. Night swallows all!

If good is bright, if evil be gloom,

High evil walls the world entombs.

Now comes the end, the drear, Darkfall.

Busy Humanity

Pestilence, disease, and war

Haunt this sorry place.

And nothing lasts forever.

That's a truth we have to face.

We spend vast energy and time

Plotting death for one anther.

No one, nowhere, is ever safe.

Not father, child - or mother.

Kiss

Night can be sweet as a kiss,

Though not a night like this.

She's traveled on from me,

Across that uncharted sea.

I stand on this dark shore

And of the stars implore.

Give me that same cold kiss.

I'll join her then in bliss.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Where eerie figures caper

To some midnight music

That only they can hear

Winter Moon

Under the winter moon's pale light,

Across the cold and starry night,

From snowy mountains soaring high

To ocean shores echoes the cry.

From barren sands to verdant fields,

From city streets to lonely wealds,

Cries the tortured human heart,

Seeking solace, wisdom, a chart

By which to understand its plight

Under the winter moon's pale light.

Dawn is unable to fade the night.

Must we live ever in the blight

Under the winter moon's cold light,

Lost in loneliness, hate, and fright,

Last night, tonight, tomorrow night,

Under the winter moon's bleak light?

The Mask

Evil is no faceless stranger

Living in a distant neighborhood.

Evil has a wholesome, hometown face

With merry eves and an open smile.

Evil walks among us, wearing a mask

That looks like all our faces.

Reality

In the real world

As in dreams,

Nothing is quite

What it seems.

In the dream world

Or the real,

We can't know what

We can't feel.

The Answer Comas After The Funeral

The sky is deep, the sky is dark.

The light of stars is so damn stark.

When I look up, I fill with fear.

If all we have is what lies here,

This lonely world, this troubled place,

Then cold dead stars and empty space...

Well, I see no reason to persevere,

No reason to laugh or shed a tear,

No reason to sleep or ever to wake,

No promises to keep, and none to make.

And so at night I still raise my eyes

To study the clear but mysterious skies

That arch above us, as cold as stone.

Are you there, God? Are we alone?

Drummer

Darkness devours every shining day.

Darkness demands and always has its way.

Darkness listens, watches, waits.

Darkness claims the day and celebrates.

Sometimes in silence darkness comes.

Sometimes with a gleeful banging of drums.

Potboiler

There's no escape

From Death's embrace,

Though you lead it on

A merry chase.

The dogs of Death

Enjoy the chase.

Just see the smile

On each hound's face.

The chase can't last

The dogs must feed.

It Will come to pass

With terrifying speed.

The hounds, the hounds

Come baying at his heels.

The hounds, the hounds!

The breath of Death he feels.

Saving Graces

Courage, love, friendship,

Compassion, and empathy

Lift us above the simple beasts

And define humanity.

Politics

At the point where hope and reason part,

Lies that spot where madness gets a start.

Hope to make the world kinder and free -

But flowers of hope root in reality.

No peaceful bed exists for lamb or lion,

Unless on some world out beyond Orion.

Do not instruct the owls to spare the mice.

Owls acting as owls must is not a vice.