Four Thoughts on a Sunday Morning

                       I 

Burnt porridge. Preamble to the rough-bark 

splintering of a beggar’s bowl --

it wasn’t anything particular, this time, 

just bare-back anger coming unstuck, 

hollowing out truth -- the vacant lot

kettle klatch of middle-amerika;

des orateurs skimming pennies off 

the coffin lids of liberty  --

how much became too much

too little too late to placate --

it’s not conjecture when babes learn to crawl

under ill-nourished skies like braised crab-apples. 

                       II 

Shout it out! Loud! This whisper you rescued

from the heap of rusted corn fields, how

the withered stalks of broken backs still have

a currency worth saving. How the nettle rash

of a job, the bone-killing con, is made

to fortify two coasts against the cold 

heart sharding core, itches to be squared 

against the fettered fable, getting swept from 

the stable -- the bedrock bastion being nicked.

For what? The whims of a charlatan 

grifting misery onto the miserable --

a wall to shut you in-out for ever.

                       III 

Rulers. Red-Black squares. Chalk lines 

marking territorial bits of chosen turf 

delineate what lies out of bounds; 

save a few token studs married to the myth --

the unwashed don’t get to play for the kingdom’s stakes.

Instead, we’re meant to pay, score keeping

those bronzed lions. And it’s enough, 

being wide and short, knobby-kneed --

the near-sighted dribbling c***s out for a sun day 

punt. Between pints, and shilling shirts, 

they imagine the game’s a game of rules, 

not rulers -- this blue-blooded petri dish of contentions. 

                       IV 

Somewhere south at dawn, in transit, 

another country tipped from the satchel 

straggled round the globe -- the calculation

of cost-to-benefit brought me up short.

This life, all the blue exit visas 

the heart stamped on the way through 

had almost drained me dry. 

About a third of the women I’d said I’d loved

had loved me back about as much;

the other two I consider to be a wash --

the one I regret, a second regrets me. 

Should I spin the compass again -- which way?

Ken e Bujold