"final note to clark"1

they had it wrong,
the old comics.
you are only clark kent
after all. oh,
mild mannered mister,
why did i think you could fix it?
how you must have wondered
to see me taking chances,
dancing on the edge of words,
pointing out the bad guys,
dreaming your x-ray vision
could see the beauty in me.
what did i expect? what
did i hope for? we are who we are,
two faithful readers,
not wonder woman and not superman.

1: By Lucille Clifton (1993)

"The Widow Lester"1

I was too old to be married,
but nobody told me.
I guess they didn't care enough.
How it had hurt, though, catching bouquets
all those years!
Then I met Ivan, and kept him,
and never knew love.
How his feet stunk in the bed sheets!
I could have told him to wash,
but I wanted to hold that stink against him.
The day he dropped dead in the field,
I was watching.
I was hanging up sheets in the yard,
and I finished.

1: By Ted Kooser (1985?)

John Hodgman on the cultural difference between jocks and nerds

A brief argument for secularism

1. Weak anthropic principle
2. Occam's razor
3. Pragmatism

Poem 33

laissez-faire,  &c
dissimilitude     parts and partitions
pierced in the cold     clouded morning
   below vaulted ceilings
spread out like tall evening
sky;

  the inside and out, covered and
painted like       the face
  the lips    the mouth     the brow
that lingers in the white
of the eye     smiling at things
    loitering           behind

closed    doors and doorframes,
the parts    and clay pieces
curtailed by     convention—
   a gait            dust-trodden  
wildly   cocksurely
& perhaps predictable;

outside,     the colonnade
   wide  standing       serif,
the lines       and gilt freckles
with carvings    & date engravings. . .

and as the façade perspired
and newspapers decayed out of bins,

a homeless/harmless resident        glared
lazily into a familiar face
he had grown     to distrust.

Deprogramming

Not a lot of posts lately, but I've been contributing to another blog that finally got up and going. Just four days since its inception and over 100 posts. Check it out at de-program.blogspot.com.