more lectionary revisions

I'm continuing to work on my older series of poems, and it's clear I really needed to work on endings, as I find myself focused on those more than anything else.  It's easy to see in "Ars Poetica" that I was teaching both Wallace Stevens and Rainer Maria Rilke that semester.  Thanks for reading.

Ars Poetica

Though iconoclasts have shattered
our images, we still see

the branch that blooms only when winter comes,
on Christmas Eve,
even in a bottle we keep on the kitchen
table, still see the jar
that sets the wilderness ajar,

becomes the center
of our universe, as we revolve
around it, even see gentians
growing in Germany, always on the slope
of the same mountain. Though the images
are fractured, even though our tongues

are coated with bitterness, and we only smell
the acrid air
we continue to choose to breathe,
we still speak

the unthinkable,
touch what others are unable
to hear, write words in sand
even the earth attempts to erase.

Comedy is Tragedy That Happens to Other People

Like Adam and Eve, I have been tempted,
tasted the red apple--or banana or fig
or whatever it was--but not
by knowledge; no, knowledge is no

temptation today. Instead, cheap
fame, my name on the radio, the illusion
of reality on television, but I don’t need
a laugh track, funny enough
on my own, though some sympathy

oohs and aahs for emotional
moments would help create
character. I want the sitcom
wife, exasperated and frustrated

by my foibles, loves me; everyone
laughs aloud until my moral
message, twenty minutes after opening
credits, as if I were Mr. Keaton or Judge

Philip Banks, deliver wisdom I wish
I had in fifteen-second sound bites
that will live for all eternity

of syndication, save teenagers
from tough times so they will sing my praises
every time they hear the theme song.

The Man Who Was Almost a Man

You went from Tennessee to Texas
to Tacoma, never finding any of them
far enough

from families and friends
you were fleeing, as they did not define you
as you wished; you saw yourself

as a seer, a prophet of philosophy,
speaking as the first to stumble
onto ontology, while we told stories

of a boy trapped in a bathroom at Burger King,
so small you could not open
the door, cried out through the crack

for help, or when you allowed ground ball
after ground ball to pass you
as you drew in the infield dirt, sat

picking your nose. So you tried Taiwan
and Tibet, hoped to reincarnate your
reputation before returning to us

as a missionary for your newfound
maturity, but the boy in the baseball cap
kept tugging at your shirt

tail, saying he was tired
of playing, just wanted
to go home.