Only $5

To protect against harm

to purse or person

purchase a dictionary

of the canting crew

Then inoculate yourself

against voices and jargon

that aim only to part

your money and you

Vendors and Mountebanks

While to certain modifiers

vendors modestly confined

themselves as they identified 

their goods

  "Fine oranges fine lemons"

  "New flounders new"

Mountebanks extravagantly advertised

  "That excellent and by all physicians approved drink"

  "A balsam that cures all that ails you"

Transforming through superlatives 

and promises their goods

not so good

Try Holding On

How is a blade of grass

growing from its middle

like or unlike a ladder

if that ladder is balanced

on the soles of the feet

of a Japanese acrobat

Musicologist's Prayer

Kleio, Send me your fire

That I may recount the eras

and make their musics famous

And lead me not into fiction

But deliver me from error

That I may dispel myths 

and pedal only truths

Translation Dictionary for an Eighteenth-century Fair-goer

dudeldumdei - stop thinking and look

hahiha - don't miss out on the fun

ipso - believe me for I am learned

trallala - I promise pleasure

Tight-Rope Dancer

with feats of equilibristic skill, 

the funambulist treats and thrills

his audience,

who exclaim of the

lofty tumbler: 

Oh, what a marvelous machine

He has made

The pair

He always arrives punctually

but rarely stays long

She often doesn't show

but never turns her back

He repeats himself compulsively

She can't stop borrowing

But they have one thing in common:

the moon and the cuckoo

are crazy

"Present!"

"Present!" the word

repeats the voice 

unless called into a transmitter

passed over twisted wires 

or imperceptible waves

and reconstituted as sound

at a distant place

in which case

it contradicts.

The Eye of Reason

not 

to be accused 

of observing

without interpreting

Hershel 

turned his telescope 

to the moon 

and 

seeing craters 

luminescing

christened them

volcanos

"how far

we have been authorized

to use

the mental eye"

he enjoined 

the reader

to decide

Whispering

Air forced through throat and teeth,

imploded by lips and licked by tongue,

bypassing the so-called vocal chords 

(named after the ability to produce tones

not any structural resemblance to strings -

folds is more accurate),

to push the cooler air outside some ways

before coming to rest.

Philosophy may become poetry,

but the whisper - from a distance - is silence.

Our cups runneth over with joy

Our cups runneth over with joy -

But "cup" sounds too dixie,

too much the toothbrush's companion

Joy's cup is a goblet 

opaque, not crystal

and weightless in one's hand while stolid on the table

But "goblet" sounds too regal, too Renaissance Faire 

"Glass" is out of the question, being glass

And "mug" would only do for a shot, while joy must be gulped

So we are back to cups - 

Cups of joy which we raise

Because joy wishes to return to whence it came - 

from above the starry canopy

Beyond where our telescopes can reach.

And it will return there,

As our drinks turn into songs

And we lift our voices to be heard,

slurrring, across the vastness of space.

We communicate through tubes

We communicate through tubes: 

he has his, and I have mine.

And oriented properly - 

so that the ends would be touching

if only they weren't so far apart - 

we can not only see

but hear each other:

he in his world, me in mine.

And if I want to give him something,

I need only pass it through the tubes.

And similarly I can receive:

something from him as he from me.

And all this works through glass so clear

it is as if we're both right here;

but if our tubes come misaligned

I flee from his world, he from mine.