pole

Christopher Mulrooney

to wake the deaf or sea lions at the Pole

Juvenal

full moon haiku

as bright as the dawn

a dog’s bark says otherwise

only the full moon

a tendentious argument

no matter how spectacularly hard you try

the library remains indivisibly boring

even a makeover in the name of Cinderella

accomplishes nothing still the same battered books

and in the middle a broken Minerva please God

dithyramb

an absolutely unsure proposition

well told that it was time anyways

in the backdoor agreements that were policy

a throwback in them there dark daylight

not frabjous drab daylight not sunken

a peculiar people

come sir it was not nice

that swift my judgment walks its vista

plain to see not a nice thing

nicety of judgment never be forsworn

nor ever forsaken henceforward

another vision

whatever gracious argument can you give me since

well all the old folks have died off haven’t they

here at thy side at the seaside capers the whatsit

sand dabbler on scissor legs the skittering gulls

and earth and sky seem one in calm contemplation

sand dunes

my formerly une de la lune crackpot left my season

in an outburst like a firework in the sky

rocketing upward in an arc to tear apart in coloured sheen

and leave umbrageous smoke behind

so that was something

wallet

fourscore bills and calling cards and credit

letters of as the saying goes and criterion upon

criterion met for membership and entrée

that is the only way to sashay positively through

life without recognisance that passe-partout

fortifications

in a special kind of fury the gentlemen of the jury

ladies present too sustain the arabesques and flights of fancy

pirouetted by counsel on the stage floor before them

this is the argument the thread of grievance tying

all the buttons of circumstantial evidence on firmly