INORGANIC

Power

Children feel powerful when they own a whistle.
Kim Jong-un prefers to launch a missile.


Wayfarer

A button sewn on shirt or dress
is brilliant until it disappears
under unknown duress.


Parsimony

Snips of thread, if we save them —
maybe from a fraying hem
or heel of an unraveling sock —
may make a skirt or useful smock.


The Smile

The smile speaks words:
Kindness
Enjoyment
Fondness
Sweetness
Congeniality
Help
A smile is something like a dictionary
but you don't have to look it up.
Just smile.


Correction

Consider the hat.
It lingers in the hall
on a hat rack.
Occasionally someone will pick up the wrong hat
and stroll out with it on his or her head.
All one must do is turn around and put it back
and "All will be well and all will be well and every kind of thing
shall be well,"
said Julian of Norwich.


Résumé

A favorite cup proclaims a person's point of view.
A motto may be printed on the cup
or cup otherwise tarted up.
I have a Princeton cup,
a Rockefeller cup,
a cup reminding me that peace is inner,
a cup that says I am the mother of a dog,
and I want to get a Philosophy cup.
That's my résumé in toto.


The Right to Choose

I mean to celebrate door knobs.
Because of doorknobs,
we can get where we're going,
a movie, say, or a party,
or a way out.
To grip a door knob is to exercise
your right to enter and leave
and what goes on between here and there
is no one's business but your own.


Keeping One's Cool

I speak of fans.
Not Beatle fans,
nor movie fans.
Simply fans,
as in fans that churn the air around
when we are so hot we cannot sleep.
When the air is so humid we can hardly breathe.
We turn the fan on, and soon, the sweat
on our faces is wicked off.
Our underarms are no longer disreputable.
A fan is a blessing, and not
such a minor one.


Symbols

Necklaces are to women
what ties are to men.
They demonstrate a comfortable seriousness,
a certain amount of success,
a kind of class.
Pearls, for example, exude luxury, tidiness, and calm.
A hysterical woman never wears pearls;
she waits until she's un-hysterical.
But diamonds can be crass: don't wear too many.
And though they may not be as dignified as pearls,
necklaces made of glass can be acceptably quirky
and a little to the left.


On Health

Tums will alleviate your heartburn,
aspirin can do almost everything.
We all need a medicine cabinet.
Let's thank it for being dutiful,
Not to mention downright life-saving.


Secretarial

Paperclips and clasps are cousins
as are dribs and drabs,
although the latter are smaller
than clips and clasps.
A clip is a great help
when you want to put pages together
and a clasp binds many more pages.
But sages tell us a drib is less
than a dribble, and a drab — well, a drab
is nothing at all and cannot be found
even at the mall.


Mica

In New York City, mica made the sidewalks shine.
Shine and glitter, like Broadway shows.
There were stars above
and stars below.
Mica could mesmerize,
or it could mesmerize me.
I didn't have to go to L. A. to see
stars on sidewalks. We had them
right at hand. Or should I say
our feet.


Time

A wristwatch helps us catch the bus
and get to work on time.
Somebody's got to work on time!
Nobody knows enough about it.
Maybe you can begin to understand
the first hour and I'll work on the second.
A third party might give us a helping hand,
and perhaps together we'll discover that
time — yes, time — is the law of the land.


Post-Its

Those little pads of paper in various colors
lighten the heart of any poet about to give a reading.
That barely-there adhesive lets us mark
the places where our poems inhabit the book
we recently published. We love that it doesn't mark up
the book. The glue comes off as easily as it goes on.
We can also write notes to ourselves on our Post-Its,
or number them in the order we'll read the poems.
We stick Post-Its in many places, on computers
as well as margins, on a clock or on one's hand.
When we can't, a Post-It can.


Space

Probably you do not think of the sun and the moon as
small,
but from where we live, they are relatively small.
The sun's as big as a balloon
(which isn't very big).
The moon's as big as a dime
(which, you must admit, is small)
but stars are barely specks.
So remind yourself that distance plays tricks on us.
The closer you get to the sun and the moon
the more room they take up.
Fortunately, space is colossal.


Modesty

The zipper, zipped, saves your modesty,
nothing falling out of your pants.
Yet sometimes the person in the pants
forgets to zip himself up, leaving on
the outside what should be entirely inside.
In an age of jeans and slacks, the zipper
may also pose a problem for the man's wife.
Hand in hand, they walk beneath the tulip trees,
unaware their zippers are lower than their knees.


Tin Cans

They make a mile of noise
rolling down a street
and even more when someone's
Just Married. They help food
last longer than it would
without itself.
A tin can is like an elf:
helpful, but given to
making noise when it oughtn't.


Novels

Fine point or bold,
narrow or thick,
the mightier pen
is a Bic.


Careless

We found a beautiful glass book case
and paid a thousand dollars.
Then we forgot the name of the store.
They still have our money
and we don't have our bookcase.
Are we reckless?
No, just feckless.
How feckless?
Fucking feckless, that's how feckless.


The Remote

If you have a television,
you have a remote.
It's called a remote because you can turn it on
from a distance, usually the distance between
the television and the sofa.
But when I think of remote,
I think of someplace in Italy,
or in Bulgaria.
The South Pole is remote,
the television not so much.


Coaster

A coaster may be sweet or silly.
Either way it keeps the table dry.
Some coasters are rather frilly.
I like a coaster that does not lie.


More Fake News

Let's assume fake news is inorganic,
even though it comes from Donald Trump
who is balefully organic.
Organic as French Fries.
Organic as cheeseburgers.
Organic as fat.
But fake news doesn't cause heartburn
(although it may cause a heart attack)
or indigestion. It may cause the government
to chase rabbits into rabbit holes
and we can only guess at what else they'll find there.


Back Channels

Such channels can go anywhere
and everywhere.
They are mysterious in their...