Sunday, September 19, 2010

Richard D. Houff - Two Poems

Charles Olson

I just finished reading
“The Collected Poems.”
It took 12 years to finish
all 643 pages—excluding,
“The Maximus Poems.”

And I have to ask myself
if there’s enough time left
to read this crucial part
in the Olson canon.

Madame Claypool’s cards
(the neighborhood psychic)
are predicting a miasmic fog
for our highly questionable future.

She say’s the poisonous gas
should linger for at least 20 years
which would take affect
within the next 48 hours.

She said, the noxious fumes
would have no bearing on
the well-being of her cats and dogs,
but the rest of us are pretty well screwed.

She said, the cards never lie.



Post Card from Albuquerque: September,
1983

From the land of enchantment—
it’s on the license plates,
it’s in the air,
it’s in the native heads,
enchantment is everywhere
and casts its spell from the locals
to the visitors; add six more
visages to this card
and you’d have the complete
field of candidates for the Albuquerque
mayoral race!

We will venture further
onto the road of enchantment
when we hit the I-40 to Santa Fe tomorrow,
a place reputed to be
the current residence of the ghost
of Aleister Crowley,
and dubbed by
an airport employee as a “Demented Disneyland”
—should be interesting,
especially with the moon and stars tattoo
I’ve just gotten for my forehead.



Richard D. Houff is the editor of Pariah Press and Heeltap Magazine. His poems have appeared in numerous periodicals, including Aldebaron, Brooklyn Review, Conduit, North American Review, Pearl, and Rattle.

No comments:

Post a Comment