PHIL CRIPPEN
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Mr. Creeley’s Pigmy Pouter

It’s dry, so I depart
to the wetter virtues
of my nature,
to the floating iceberg
where champion pigeons
are poured from eggs,
for only a moment—
a true measure of time,
immeasurable.
I climb everywhere
and climb, and climb,
and climb; leaving my
lungs on some
San Francisco hill.
Then, coffee and MOMA,
where the hydraulics
in my testes function
in conjunction
with crossing the catwalk…

          Dear Sir,

          I am writing to inform you of the potentially epizootic situation that exists
          in the Richard Tuttle exhibit.  There is a large rusted nail that protrudes
          dangerously out from the work entitled, “Beethoven Stop on the Way to
          Egypt.”  I am concerned that should a patron become momentarily
          disoriented, or misguided by an angry docent, they could easily become
          impaled upon the nail, creating a religious object of which one would then
          regrettably have to leave word of explanation on Mr. Tuttle’s answering
          machine.

          Thankfully, I was navigated ably out of harm’s way by my tour guide,
          Dolores, thereby avoiding entirely any such religious experience, and
          removed to the safety of the museum book store.
 

This is exactly where
the pigeons come in—
right at that very moment
when nothing else
matters except the blue ribbon,
and tomorrow she’s done;
all the recessive traits
in the world won’t save us,
and won’t matter by Monday.
But when the moment
is right now, and they are
in that moment, it is poetry.
Like the lusty young bierfrau
with blonde braids,
a chronic smile,
trussed in a woman’s body,
in a city that I am leaving
in an hour.
Can anything be purer
than the subordinance of poetry,
when the echo still calls,
the hydraulics kick in,
when the Bavarian
voluptuously pours?
No matter really—
the trick is keeping stock,
and taking stock,
so the next grand champion
has a place and a time,
and preferably a moment
to remember him by.

 

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The Poultry Put the Pieces of the Abduction Puzzle Together

Barring the necessity
to castrate the bull,
the fence mender’s
ineptitude,
the cows wooing mooing—
an altogether staid day
begins on the ranch.

The smoking chickens
share a toke and a scratch
wearing clam digger feathers.
A bantam Red
was robbed last night.
Two foxes—unregistered
sex offenders.

Below, the souls of urchins
ruined by time and masters.
Subterranean red riverbed dried
springs amaranthine crops,
spirals and keys—
a dance of foreign semaphore.

 

Click to hear the author read this poem