Poems by Christopher Mulrooney

 

 

mangle

   We must speak by the card, or equivocation
will undo us.

you with the snake in the grass
lift up your eyes that’s right
come here I want you says Alexander
unto the great deaf of this world
hand cocked at ear bedad
it’s forty mile or two thousand thou
barmaid’s son here wipe these tables
fit for human consumption
lick them clean I bid you
that’s antiseptic now you can have
the banquet feast in there and never be missed
in the treasure troves of academia what’s that
did you say something

 

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the basket weavers

out in the plumb desert
off the hokey old route
no-one takes evermore
we spotted turn left here
something grinning like yucca in bloom
and turned over small capital
to the local threaders and merchants
thereof with a few patterns divisible
in the serried ranks discernible
departing we gave our thanks

 

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old hands

what beckon we this for we that
and come our call at
anything ever
it is like a dream all that
and this our nightmare
ever and anon
we shall be beckoned this and that
and summoned for we know
everything always

 

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soup of old Rome

down the side streets
flee as in a Giorgio de Chirico
rhymes with cocorico nearly
and come as well and truly you are
I bring you the soup you know stile antico