Poetry from Harry Bauld

The Invention of Tomorrow

And here I was explaining the use of orange
in Gertrude Stein while sitting on her grave
in Paris, quick take a photo.
Must I think about guns? If I’m running for Congress
must I think at all? That’s an easy one, sorry.
Yesterday is a few blunt crayons and an overtime match
won on penalties. Time must have once been
sharking up a list of lawless resolutes, but now
if I put my glasses on straight I still have retinal
somethingorother or the other one,
the eye docs dunno yet. Something maybe
to do with the age I have (as they say in Spanish)
or don’t have. Oops, there goes language again,
riding shotgun on today’s upsets. Duck and cover,
kiddies. Hope is the thing with stones; if only
the authorities  had any. Still there are Dorian modes
and chocolate bunnies, though hardly enough
to go around when you consider all the anadromous species
fighting their way home. That’s probably why
I’m holding up this book made of paper from one tree
in Canada, though I don’t speak Canadian.
Thank goodness for echolalia and wisteria
and there goes Monet again daubing forward
into the past that became our future, these few colors here
and their complementaries ready to drink.
And what’s all this about Sicily and possible Italian
citizenship? You may well ask.

Further Reflections on What Is Past, Passing, or to Come

A few Cro magnons who snagged fire
and sat around smoking dandelion fluff
must have had questions: After we manage
a few choice orgasms in the darkness, then what?
Though I doubt Cro Magnons spoke this way as they lived
before the invention of the dependent clause or even
the introductory participial phrase. Litotes, anyone?
They fell from the high empty chiasmus of evolution
into varieties of bodily ecstasy that then as now
really reinforce the present. And then they went around
domesticating dogs and cats though even then
not eating them no matter what the lying junta
contends. I don’t blame you if you can’t follow
the physics of today let alone yesterday.
I didn’t know what time or space it was, then I met you.
One of the big problems with tomorrow is locating
it. I had a no-frills Timex as a kid but all that
was in motion and seems to have ended
in rheumatoid arthritis. Structure is destiny.
Likewise, diet and architecture. No one
seems to know where the line forms or ends. […]

Pitchers and Catchers

When typing, if your fingers have been broken,
ignore majusculation and the white lines of control.
these are the imperatives of February although everyone
says FebYOUerry. Everyone also says Florida
looks like a penis, but the king says these words
are not mine. Nor mine, now. You can look it up.
And down. Poets are dying on beaches out of season
and I keep imagining the sun shining. O speak
in other tongues O muse O muesli–try Clingon,
it’s like Sicilian only farther. Vinyl is making a comeback
even while cell phones throb like varicose veins.
Snow falls off the rooves of Vermont garages
chilling the politics of parking. There must be
a way out of this. No thank you, Spring, I’m already stuffed
with harbingers. If I’m too old to see the picture of me young,
can arthritis be elevated into an art form? The screens
and screeds are mesmerizing, the sliders sliding,
the celebrity curves curving, our sinkers sinking. […]

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