Poems by Louis Phillips

 

I AM WRITING THIS POEM TO FORGET

Cannot remember one thing about her.
Not the tattoo of a tiny boa constrictor

Upon her left thigh. Not the blonde hair
All in tumble; nor her silk underwear,

Nor the  large bed, usually unmade,
Nor seductive musings she said.

So far, so good.

 

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A WINDOW BOX OF ORIENTAL POPPIES
GLIMPSED FROM THE WINDOW OF A
STALLED TRAIN

Spending my days on the high iron dog,
Shuttling my life between New York &
The struggle to make known
Discontent defining who we are,
Sunlight on a red building reveals
A window box of oriental poppies
3 stories up. Rapunzel, I think,
My mind being 3 stories up.
If these hardy perennials cd
Let their own hair down,
I cd, if I had strength enough,
Climb up to them. Lucid recognition.
Like Camus, I too have lived
Amid “poverty & sunlight.”

 

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ANOTHER KIND OF NIGHT

Spiders spin their own universe,
But I wish to make another kind of night,
One in which the moon
Firmly planted underfoot,
Flashes fresh springs,
While overhead,
Fragmented & elusive,
Constellations peal
In the northern sky
The full round of changes,
Then torrents & tidal creeks
With curlews in tight bunches.
Up! Up! Nothing is ordinary
Unless seen with an ordinary eye.

 

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DODGE CITY

How many times has it happened
A love-sick swain
Smitten by a fair young woman
Ends up killing her brother,
Say in Faust, Romeo & Juliet,
& in the western Dodge City
When Errol Flynn shoots a drunken lout
Who has stampeded the cattle.

Killing a brother
With a rapier or with a Colt .45
Engenders a  wound
As deep as any kiss,
One more obstacle
True love must overcome,
Tho when it comes to breaking out
Of a sexless domestic scene
To rush into an erotic clinch

Every sister knows
Brothers can be such a nuisance.

 

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LAST MONTH ALONE

Last month alone,
With its 32 days of rain, whining, & tsuris,
More than 336,732 poems,
As reported by the U.S. Department
Of Ecstatic Transportation,
Were lost, stolen, or mishandled.
2 or 300 were deliberately misread
& many others cold-shouldered
Or ignored by short-sighted editors.
Aren’t you glad
That this poem was not one of those?

 

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LITERARY NOTE 1

I merely want to
Point out that Squanto,
Also called Tisquantum, a Patuxet
Indian, did not have the opportunity to read No Exit.

 

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LITERARY NOTE 2

The poems of To Fu?
Way too few.