Devils & Islands. Turner Cassity
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am not sure it’s greener grass
Or topiary maze
Or Herod’s cistern I am in,
With Bette Davis soap.
And underscoring Errol Flynn
Needs certain skills to cope
Or one’s own head is on the plate.
Not quite Jokanaan,
Contract renewed and up to date,
I notate on and on,
Who am an exile exiled thrice:
From city, era, tongue.
Of course, Vienna has its price.
I am no bard unsung.
Ex-prodigy I, you ex-star,
For our time left to be
We are in real life what we are.
The hero may be me.
The Last Newsboy
Not all of us grew up to be Irving Berlin.
There is not space to list the prisons we are in.
Pickpockets, hustlers, dealers, we became that news
We sold, if on the inside pages. Poor excuse
For urchin enterprise the vending that replaced.
A coin box is a generation gone to waste
And cannot give out change. Too often vandalized
To turn a profit, it becomes a recognized
Icon of inner city wreck, as in the past
We stood for rising expectations, if, at last
Our cry of “Extra!” covered the laments of lack.
The newsboy as the Chaplin Kid will not be back,
Having become decades ago the Dead End Kids
And then the Chaplin Tramp unfunny on the skids;
As now newspapers are. As AP, UP ebb,
Ex-buyer on my corner, see you on the Web.
Hitting the Silk
The golden parachute we really need
We need for the emotions. Severance
Can be, of course, itself a payoff. Bleed,
Heal, put behind … Still, falling from the chance
Of hurt through gentle letdown to a ground
On which to keep both feet has too a role.
Do not suppose, Fall Guy, there will be found
A second time such fancies of control
As once you had, or so bright element.
Long love, deep air, and if not silk and gold,
Haiku and kamikaze; loss, descent,
Downsizing. Wrap the final scarf, unfold
The chute, and skydive neat: response in kind—
Part suicide, part payout, part rebirth.
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