oops. sorry.
shame on me,
one reader, and this is how i treat him.

Tues., Sept. 28

You want to buy some gum?
An empty-calorie hard-boiled private-eye
paperback to help pass the time?

A few extra dollars helps to make ends meet
and compensates us for our pro bono work.
We've got mouths to feed in addition to yours,
our children can't eat art
and, since we don't go anywhere,
can't follow in our footsteps--
so, there's tuition.
And we're about the only group
Obama's healthcare bill ignores.

Listen, I have to go up front and start my shift,
pricking the ears of those who've been so patient.
Good luck to you. Most writers say it's worth the wait,
although a few complain it's all hot air.
You can't predict. It may be short, but it's still shrift.

One of my sisters will grace you soon
with information about protocol—
how to address us when your number's called—
You don't touch us, we touch you—
that sort of thing.
Then: How to Make the Most Out of Your Wisp
of Inspiration.

I'd like to go back to school too
one of these days, but when?
Paid for, with what?
Our tenth of your royalty income, pre-tax,
not only shrinks each year, but buys less and less.
Some call her pleonectic and scorn her,
though if it wasn't for Mary Oliver
we'd be standing on soup lines ourselves.

But I try to believe in the future. You do:
a new Golden Age just around the corner, no?
It might even resuscitate rhyme!
Learn your lesson from Maya Angelou:
Tuesday's heir was Monday's mourner.

So, brother, could you spare a dime?

Brilliant.

Whew! Thought we had lost you there, David, with the Johnny Depp thing.
Seriously, thanks for looking. Tom

No, not lost me, but rather than go from the top and try to catch you up, and I'm going to start here and work backwards. Not that it's work, exactly.

Wed., Sept. 29

May I have your attention please.
Before I explain how things work
here on Mount Helicon, one stern
word about slipshod vocabularies.

According to the oracle Google,
1,650,010 usages of everloving
vie with 1,600,663 of everlovin,' 
without the g;  when you discuss
a woman, you're 65% more likely
to write about epochs of her life
than in it, than when you discuss
a man; after masculine pronouns
came under attack for unknown
genders, he/she, s/he, one, and
he or she  lost to a singular they.

A wild lexeme has to be tracked:
observe it; bait it; sniff its spoor;
discern how it hopes to improve.
If you don't know or care where
your word's sweet spot is, you've
no business putting hands on it.
Don't waste our time and yours.
We're busy women; mercy is not
what we dispense.

Absolutely right.

If there's an opening, I'll put your name forward! Thanks, Tom

Thurs, Sept. 30

I paraphrase
Diarium Actae Fidelis,
your almanac of little tests of faith:

I.   In labrum lava anus antes saeta.
     In the bathtub wash your butt before your hair.
II.  Promove infantum in via tanquam desinant aurigae.
     Push your stroller into the crosswalk as if drivers will stop.

If you believe, you act on the belief;
if not, nothing will cause you to stir.
Here you are
believing you're a true believer,
but waiting in line to be inspired
must strike you as a bit ridiculous.

I'm not supposed to tell you this,
but there is such a thing as self-inspired,
taking the bull by the horns
and shaking its head
until augury or gore rolls out.
Yes, yes, you might get gored yourself,
but even that, yea, even that
is preferable to sitting on your duff.

T. S. Eliot worked as a bank clerk
and Wallace Stevens in insurance
boring year after boring year,
but you could press the juice
from the work they produced
into Emily Dickinson's thimble.
I'm sorry, my dear voluptuary,
but really I'd prefer a symbol.

They waited here, you know:
they passed where you pass now
while in each district of the earth
ravines and chasms swallowed
bolder men who bolder wrote.

Fri., Oct. 1

On this day in history Mao Zedong unveiled his new People's Republic
and Henry Ford his Model T and it was a darn good thing
the Pacific Ocean interposed or World War III
would have gone nuclear

instead of one brigade in blue suits after a long march killing
400 Tiananmen students and one in its plain black coat
after a long drive pummeling a dozen unionists

on the River Rouge Overpass
before a desire for luxury
and options buried them both.

Sat., Oct. 2

Woodrow Wilson has a                                   stroke.
Bob Gibson strikes out 17 to begin the '68     series.
Earl Warren swears in the first black              justice.

The returns to England with Charles      Darwin.

So much happens each day around the Solar System,
a Chinese Zodiac radiating from the       Sun.
 
Stand in a wedge where all that date's occurences occur at    once:

jade-smooth bamboo bones, sugar canes and teenage Japanese     maples
dark shape-shifters masquerade as this or that to get better looks at      us
anchored in the river or diving off and swimming for the oozing           shore

unspooled ourselves, to unravel silk threads,                    snares
pretending to be entities in human history with faces,      emotions
and                                                                   futures.
                                                                                                        
What you don't know is that you're               free

Sun., Oct. 3

There's a poem in everything, I keep hearing. So where are they all, then?
I've nothing against white sheep, but the black ewe with the auburn ringlets
is the one I'll run back for if the mountain trembles or the Medes come.
The sooner you learn that a spark's nothing more than a spark, the better.

Is that lady behind you
driving you as crazy as
she's driving me?

And that serious young man
furiously pacing up and down
gesticulating and rehearsing,
what is he going to ask of us
if he can raise his eyes
from all that drama?

At least you're quiet.
With so many poets afoot,
that shows you've got
consideration.

It destroys me,
how much majesty is wasted,
people speaking
when they're being spoken to.

I realize I sound cynical. Please excuse me. Look at how much more
the deities with better attitudes have managed to accomplish.
How metalwork has progressed! Grain cultivation! Medicine! War!
Did you read, just today, about motion-capture 3-D imaging or
about Georges Charpak's multi-wire proportional tracking chamber?
But every poll shows large majorities who think that poetry is
in a steep, long, irreversible decline. Eminem's no Gershwin.

I shouldn't take it out on you, though.
Folks don't take the time to see that, in his day, Gershwin was no Gershwin:
they sniped, He reached the limelight clutching Fred and Adele Astaire's coattails.
Even Homer, when he blindly groveled at the campfires of the Greeks,
was poked at with the glowing-hot tips of the warriors' shish-kebob sticks.

Oracles are dropped and lost like nut-less husks
and I'm the only one who knows how many they are,
where they lie moldy and the greatness in them.

Mon., Oct. 4

• Abe Lincoln views a balloon ascension
• Sputnik in space, 184 pounds (your weight)
• Bessie Smith buried in an grave
  with no headstone
  till young Janis Joplin had one made.
• Janis Joplin dies from a heroin overdose.

• A white pine sprouts.
• A white pine dies.
• A white pine sprouts.
• A white pine dies....

• A gray pine sprouts.
• A gray pine dies.
• A gray pine sprouts.
• A gray pine dies....

Queen's coat eats &
Eurotium repens eats.

Now they're back
where they began.

Throw a wrench in the works,
thumb or index or middle finger,
bring the Wheel of Life to a halt
and trudge to the forest's edge
      to give piss to a red fir
and the rest of us a chance
      to catch our breath
      and look around a bit!

The very next bard
to complain

the wait's too long
or their ens insane

gets
nothing but tongue
in their ear.

            • I'm outa here

Tues., Oct. 5

My dear man, how does it feel
to be in line for our 2,780,826th
next sliver of inspiration?
What if it turns out to be a lemon?

What? Have I read Zen and the Art
of Motorcycle Maintenance?

Dude, he was one of mine!
I still remember that guy!
He was a trip!
He waited just like you
and then when he finally got to me
he said, “No thanks, don't want inspiration,
just want to stand in line
where I can have pure boredom,
want to sometimes write
and sometimes not write,
once in a while, have a good day,
once in a while, have a horrible day,
always have some kind of day
and not fuss too much about it.”
         Our father, Zeus, went right after him.
         Zen & the Art of Now Let's See What You Say
         When Your Dear Son's Been Stabbed to Death
         Right Outside Your Groovy Zen Center.
“Do you know Chris didn't like the book? He told me,
'Dad, I had a good time on that trip, it was all false.'”

Results matter.
Sure, do have fun waiting on line here
with all these other muttering nut-jobs
but would you rather walk away
with “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower” in your notebook
or “The Things that Make a Soldier Great”?

Put your ear close.
Both those writers got the same hint—
No. 41, one of the best.
We give them out in order,
so it all comes down to logarithm:
if every poet in front of you sticks it out
and no one cuts in line—
which happens,
Yeats once came barging in
and no one had the balls to stop him—
then, if we don't discard or add
new inspirations on a trial basis,
you'll get...let's see,
2,780,826 divided by 954...remainder is...
you'll get our No. 94,
which is a fine one, tried and true,
the same one Coleridge got
for “The Garden of Boccaccio.”

Enough idle shop talk, though.
You look like a man
who might reap something big
from a new service we're offering,
inspired by Disneyland's Fastpass.
We call it Trashpass:
it lets you riffle through discarded
inspirations while you're waiting.
I think of them as “near-successes”—
Coleridge's “Kubla Khan,” for one.
He couldn't carry it through to completion
but that doesn't mean the inspiration
lacked. It could just be
his opium ran out.

What does it cost?
You do a little job for us.

Wed., Oct. 6

This is a bit like Doctor Faustus, isn't it,
you rummaging the dustbins hereabout
for scraps of inspiration gods threw out—

but cheaper. We don't ask your soul,
only an ounce or so of ink,
a hour of your time now and again,
a snippet of information,

and get to paw the ash
of fires inexplicably gone cold.
Sign here; nobody ever has to know
you got the inside track; ah, good.

Now, go. Go start your work.
Would you like a peak behind Ralph Ellison's
"Three Days Before The Shooting..." first,
or John Keats's “The Fall of Hyperion”?

Feast,
and when your eyes are glutted, announce.

Then I'll return to slice my pound—
no, thin carpaccio—of literary flesh.