Poems for One Person

The Iterated Tiger: Line Crostic
(The Tiger is a famous poem, here ill used, by William Blake.  Each line of the original first stanza heads a new stanza.)

Tyger!  Tyger!  Burning Bright
In the arson-torched museum.
Thy stuffing warms, with steady light,
The taxodermic mausoleum.

In the forest of the night
The scoundrel runs with smoking stick.
From burning crime he's taken flight -
Remorse now makes his stomach sick.

What immortal hand or eye
Survives amid the glowing ash?
A mummy's members lift and fly
Up to the window, through the sash!

'Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?'
The hand and eye scream at the thief.
Their mystic powers cause him to die
In fits of manual/ocular grief.
 
 

Between A Poet

Tingle here,
Flutter there,
Drive the vision from its lair
With blackened bamboo spear.
Trapped in ghastly form at last,
(Rude revision just begun)
Sew the skin and snap the bones,
Mix plaster for the cast.
Paper, now pigment-tickled,
Restrains the dying beast --
Rising doughish, smooth surface creased,
At last, comprehensively pickled.
Poor thought!
Caught between a poet
And a hard spot!
 
 

Musery...

I fall. Nearby, wet, cold,
Wood and rust, shells and weeds
Bits of dead things, antique pedigree.

Though I return, again I flee.
Fight the call of ancient needs
Drawn to my ancestral folds.

All is kept in sediment holds.
The latest of the wayward breeds
Returns to the enveloping sea.
 
 

Things and Effects

The bulb is different from the light,
The earth is different from the ground,
Direction different from the vane.

The soil different from the stain,
The bell is different from the sound,
The cliff is different from the height.

The monster different from the fright,
The rope is different from the bind,
The knife is different from the pain.

The brain is different from the mind.
 
 
 
 

All poems © Joseph J. Anthony 1999