Him Downstairs


Him downstairs knows everything.
He stalks me.  But when his sandals
rattle the gravel, I don't stay
to canter through old times
or take the "by-the-ways" that bait
his nattertraps. I don't need
doddergenarian advice.
I'm too young a dog
to be taught old tricks
and I've been caught too often
in his thickets of yesteryear.
So I skulk downwind or use
sly footwork to dodge
his monologue lassoos.
If snared I'll haw and hum
and keep a weather-eye
for the venom that stipples his view
of Empire, lawnmowers, schools,
and men who aren't men
if they can't use tools -
till he grumbles off to hunt his wife.
Once she plucked my sleeve and gently
hoped I wasn't bored.  "It's his tongue,"
she said, "his years.  He's so handless.
Stubborn."  I hummed  and hawed,
and we stood there speechless -
I at her loyalty,
she from her life, her tears.

The End of Ambition . .

As Dubai sinks in its sea of debt . . . a reminder from a bygone age!

Ozymandias . . . . by Percy Bysshe Shelley

A thought-provoking poem about language

"The Cool Web" . . .  by Robert Graves

I'll be a fly-by-night who, poised
where gravity forbids a single step
interrogates the breeze, then ventures.
There's a lurch than churns the entrails, till
blind trust in the wing thats vectors
earth and air arrests the chasm plunge
and lifts me, harnessed to the wind's trapeze.
Night is as indigo as dreams.
I might be manta, bat or privateer
with all seven stars to plunder,
a scaly dactyl rattling down the thermals,
spars like grating talons clamped
on a nightmare Icarus.  I swoop
where small lights blink,  where pines conspire
with the wind's edge, indistinct.
I shift my emphasis.
My laugh drifts from the ridge.
A farm dog curls into his own fretful whine.
Perhaps the goodwife, spine chilled, gaze upthrown,
will glimpse my witchcraft split the risen moon.