Double Poster
I'm calling this a "double-poster" probably as a once-subconscious allusion to the 'Dennison' neckbrace that I wore, but also because I'm going to post two poems from what I've just decided is my sucking period. In the midst of a conversation with my friend Mel, I flashed on a couple of concepts anchored to "mayonnaise jar" and "partners in crime." I thought it was a single poem, but it was two poems probably centered on a park somewhere in Washington, DC (shortly before I died? Too much to explain) Nine days later I wrote another poem that deserves a separate post: It stuns me and should speak to someone.
Illuminated Chimney-Hopper
Bug light
Circumspection
In a mayonnaise jar
Eating at castle walls
On Harpies' toes
And scraping at bits of gut
From the sides of an irritated Psyche
Hanging in a basket
In the marketplace
Conversing with idols
About Union Rules.
Forest Fire
Glimmering
In stolen truths
Consuming locked chambers
On tongues of flame
And licking love letters
From the cherry red desk
Blowing them to the stars
In an ash balloon
Touching the nerves
Of the donated pools.
Easter 1980
Sunlight on the bright torches
Of the fleur-de-lis nobility
In the first flowers rising
To touch the lapping rosiness
Of the cherry-blossom explosion
Over a park fountain,
An old man in the midst of
Public drinking fountains
Irreverently imbibes in the
Water from a concrete pool
Full of dried leaves.
A blue sky bleaches the consciousness
Free from the scarlet lady
And her bowling-bag investment
As she stares in dissatisfaction
At her maple-tea partner
In moral crime.
-- E. Cordell
Washington, DC
6 April 1980
After a constitutional in the area of George Washington University.