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FIVE POEMS
BY SHAFER
HALL & ERICA
KAUFMAN (FROM TITLES BY DANIEL
NESTER)
Amateurish in the Best Sense
I wore a suit that was synthetic in the best sense,
when you call it second-hand, I proudly say recompense
the tailor for your insult, his hands are very tired.
I bought a waist coat, felt English, advertised in a flier
for spats and canes and top hats looking for partners
or triceps extended like umbrellas, a shield for the gardener
and his extra effort on the lawn of his madam and monsieur
who by evenings entertain any stranger they manage to lure
with their neophyte numbers in piano and song
with their neologist, adept, agile, abrupt, never wrong.
Regrets of an Impressario
All body bar and parenthesizing, you wait
to turn into something useful, a comma or plate.
You say, "what is the work of the work of the work"
and anyway was it worked with pen or pitchfork?
I am predisposed to lead, it’s point so smear-prone
it is strong so wood, it is rubber so alone.
You want notepads, steno, legal, college ruled
but your muscles want dirt, cornfields, and mules.
I remember life with alpacas, birth in the barn,
and a thousand personal computers made out of yarn.
Sonnet for Satan
I think that we’ll reconcile this sonnet by cutting out the fourth stanza
break.
Thank goodness, this lengthy line will surely keep me awake!
The devil is in my blankets and pillows, my bed my nightcap
here there is no room to spoon, back cold with curtain slap.
Old Scratch wants to fork anyway, the cheeky bastard is a
master schvitzer, an unpleasant comforter, an all around gray
area in the older texts. We’ll thumb through them as we drift
off
to where he used to be savvy, refined, seldom let loose a cough.
Our dreams are a wide country all gray and red and ruled by
algorithms. Only the select few can figure one out on first try.
Focus on Sainty
Easy. I think. Though too early to know for sure.
Blurred as a stained glass window. Smoke from censor.
From centaur. Don’t you believe me? I think
that I’ll translate the life of some old fink
deemed to be fragmented, hyphenated, cold.
To tell the world exactly what the martyr knowed.
But sometimes to know nothing is just fine, a rule in fact
by which my own disorientation can contract,
and so you say, “instead of creating new lines, why
not just listen more carefully to the holy-eyed?”
What I'm Working Into My Memorial Service
I’m currently working on some Motown, downtown, a throwdown,
so I pick up my gloves, do the boxer shuffle, hands high like a crown.
I’ve joined the ranks of those who’ve given up their skins, mind you,
who give up nothing, not even an eyelash, a sentiment, a coup.
But now I can dance around like a clown with the other energies,
so sophisticated and clammy but sturdy enough like the breeze.
So I guess that someone should say something, and someone should
make a demand, stop all this belligerence, remember how he stood
so tall before I left, so fondly before I fell asleep, so that he can
talk me a window pry open this button work into this clan.
