The Hitherto Uncollected Poems of Beth Parker: A Tribute

I've been thinking about doing this for a few weeks. I discover her ILE output has been quite prolific, but I have collected a fairish number and present them here.

Beth, we all love you and miss your bumptious presence. Be well. Come back if you can.

2006: A Space Odyssey

Will it do to tell the super-
visor I have seen the lightning?
Will he believe the end is near?
And what will be my orders?
Where do we go from here?
"Saharan Sand Dunes Found on Saturn Moon"
Who knew that Yahoo News
could put it so euphonically?
But there you have it.
Saturn's moon is out—
a pretty bunch of rings
does not a marriage make.

There is so little time left now,
the dust already drifting in,
taking only a moment to inter us,
to leave us to await
the archaeologist's shovel
Eureka! There we'll be!
Curled up in the kitchen
like cold kittens,
like Pompeiian house-servants,
like stones.

Plan B, at the back of our mind
the ace up our haz-mat sleeve—
The Exodus. But who?
Not many, since bringing the Bible full-circle
from Genesis to Genocide,
leaving the Earth behind
in our scorched-earth wake.
But where?

There is so little time left now
to finish off this project.
Soon the Saturn-men will arrive
in search of greener pastures,
only to find the Earth a Saturn
of our making and the worlds beyond it, too,
turned to dust by heedless holders,
green receding to the celestial horizon,
like the rainbow's pot of gold, of green,
of grass and leaves and birdsong.

So long, spaceships, fly!
Take your precious cargo far,
your payload of knuckleheads into the stars.
Ships from Saturn, ships from Earth,

Ships from every fouled orb,
Gleaming like ticks in the twinkling light,
passing each other in the night.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Saturday, May 6, 2006 5:59 AM

I dreamt of new kittens,
in Brazil, where I've never been.
I could only take a few
and left the rest, these kittens,
or were they puppies? Or bunnies,
who spoke English, as it happened.
I had received my orders: to care for
the furred and feathered infants.
My own babies were made known to me
by dreams of animals, but awake
I fumble at mothering, animal or otherwise.
The dog wants out, but I'm stuck to my chair,
so he returns to his foot-scrabbling dreams
of endless walks with a better owner.
And the hydrangea outside my window
has a measly physique, despite the Holly-Tone,
the peat, the constant rain.
It just can't get ahead, like me in my dreams,
when the ground holds my feet like a glue-trap,
and the Nazi schoolmaster crashes through the brush
at my paralyzed heels. Sometimes our town's
old Chief of Police appears to save the day.
Which is an odd thing for a would-be outlaw to dream.
But George was a good cop, soft-spoken and slow
as a bear. He once confronted a chainsaw-
wielding madman, with no weapon but arms
opened wide. The guy fell into George,
and George held him, patting him gently
on the back, saying, "It's gonna be okay,
son." A dream cop. But mostly
we're clumsy at nurture, faulty
by nature. All we can do is
curl up in each other and try
to forget about the kittens
we had to leave behind.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Sunday, May 14, 2006 4:34 AM

April Has The Cruelest Poems

I keep writing poems
too mean to put out in the world.
Little girly stabs at people
who love me, who are readily identifiable,
the poems pulled from a field guide
of my resentments, written down
to spare my husband the tedium
of one more spoken version.
Not that I’m not
making him read endless drafts.

You always hurt the ones you love,
bite the hand that feeds you,
tell all.

My victims—
one whose hypochondria sours
every dinner conversation, another
whose slathering greed for goods
is the nation’s soul-rot writ small.

I could keep the poem a secret,
like a love-child of shameful parentage.

Fictionalize—turn dog-trainers
into lace-makers, unfaithful boyfriends
into treasonous atomic scientists.

The subjects would fail to recognize themselves.
After all, why would I do such a thing?

If all else fails, lie. Tell her or him
the poem is about some other person
named “Janice,” or “Dad.”

But what if, despite all this coyness,
the poem became famous? It could happen.
And these very people, my loyal supporters,
would be the first ones I’d tell. What then?

Oh, scabby wretch, festering in grievance,
whose friends and family lack all perfection—
how I made it this far will surely puzzle my biographers.

The experts advise to write what you know.
But what if you can’t? What if your one
quickly-dimming filament of decency
mandates that you hold back?

Even monsters deserve compassion.

― Beth Parker

(The following poems are from the thread: Appalling Poetry III: In It To Win It)

So cold out of doors
I can't take any more.
With rage I am fuming
and nose-drippings spuming.
Winter you bastard!
Why don't you
pass faster?

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Wednesday, February 7, 2007 3:35 PM

When I get like this
the black cats hiss,
and psychic fumes
doom
everyone else
in the room
that I'm in,
to their chagrin.
cue the sad
sad
violin.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Wednesday, February 7, 2007 5:57 PM

It's no sin
to be on pins
and needles
wondering if the Beatles
will end the feud with Apple
so I can ride my dappled
mare
into the fuming
sunset
over there.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Wednesday, February 7, 2007 6:01 PM

Upthread
you said "appalling"
so I see no use in stalling,
fuming as I write more drafts
for an audience this daft.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Wednesday, February 7, 2007 6:02 PM

More moronic lines we need
for the crappy verse stampede,
insult your public!
That's the stuff
take another pinch of snuff
squint down through your monocle
sorry, no perfect rhymes were found
fuck it all, you bassett hound!
Now I'm fuming! Can't be true!
RhymeZone
I will bury you!

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Wednesday, February 7, 2007 6:13 PM

There once was a man called Bloom
Who got in a bit of a fume
when his ex-wife came into the room
dressed in a princess Leia costume
he said "oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit"
was I ever married to such a twit?

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Wednesday, February 7, 2007 6:25 PM

we may be sporty
and we may be slick
we may be nice
or be a dick
but some of us
are downright sick
fuming in fact
needing a slap
upside the head
then sent to bed
to sleep in our own foul smell
for not knowing what the hell
is biBimbap

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Wednesday, February 7, 2007 6:39 PM

whatever it is
this isn't a quiz
woe to the girl
who hurled it
from the pit
of her tummy
at some loathsome rummy
she's dining with
oh! fumes of doom
I summon you
may your aim be deadly true
slay the man
who made her blue
the rotten poo.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Wednesday, February 7, 2007 6:44 PM

Aimless, why did you do this to me?
force me to write bad poetry
I might have made something of myself
notwithstanding a half-century on the shelf
I've shot my wad, I'm feeling gloomy
don't laugh, goddammit, it isn't fumey
this thread has come at too high a cost
syllables here, I'm off to watch L O S T.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Wednesday, February 7, 2007 6:54 PM

All the following poems are from the thread:
A thread where you commission a poem from ILE

Explanantions of the terms of the commission are explained in parentheses.

(A didactic poem in terza rima explaining the rules of association football)

Just keep the ball away from everyone;
you must evade the men who threaten you.
If skills perchance you lack then use a gun,
what e’er it takes to bring the package through.
Go leave a trail of bodies in your wake,
stomp flat the foe beneath your spikéd shoe.

The bones of thine own teammates do not break;
you’ll know them by the shirts that look like yours.
Yon brave crusaders crush the evil snake,

and after battle’s won, one quest endures;
some Spice Girls yet unwed, oh wild frontier!
Tabloids yet to litter with your spoor,

a mighty thirst to slake with pints of beer,
and hearts to fill with envy and with fear.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Friday, November 25, 2005 9:15 AM

(A dirty limerick)

A Round-Table knight guy named Lance
Had something inside of his pants
After dining on steak
With the Lass of the Lake
He discovered it wasn't just ants

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Friday, November 25, 2005 2:08 PM

(A dirty limerick)

A gassy young laddie named Sneed
Would fart every time that he peed
If after carousing
Girls found it arousing
Then Sneed need not plead for the deed

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Friday, November 25, 2005 6:15 PM

(a poem about standing in line for a tv taping, and please use the words "hirsute," "almond roca," and "clip art")

Is this my chance? Three hours in line
To say "Nothing says pudding like My-T-Fine"
I'm cornfed America, I'm broke and it's Christmas
I'll work these lines like nobody's business

The girl in front of me's a little too cute
The girl in front of her, a little hirsute.
I got a zit on my nose, fucking Almond Roca
Ben and Jerry's Cookie Dough and Mocha Mocha Mocha

Hell with this, I'm going home
Fuck this Corporate Amerika Pleasure-Dome
Where the rent-a-cop with his can of mace
Knows my socks don't match my clip-art face

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Friday, November 25, 2005 6:55 PM

(Alternative lyrics to "A Horse With No Name".)

A red faced young cowboy named Shane
had a horse from a house of ill fame
Though the desert he rode
with his heart's heavy load
For his horse was a horse with no shame

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Saturday, November 26, 2005 8:04 AM

(A bitter invective against Cabbage Patch dolls.)

Foul Cabbage Patch Dolls
Stupid failed experiment
We still hate uglies.

Beg for costly toy
Ignore the wretched beggar
Greedy little shit

Get it for me now
The other girls all have them
Soon I will be bored

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Saturday, November 26, 2005 8:22 AM

(Dirty Limericks: Subcategory—People on their Deathbed)

A syphlitic all covered with chancres
After the ladies still hankered
when nearing the end
He shucked his Depends
But the nurse still said no so he spanked her

A drunk whose prognosis was grim
Was urged to atone for his sin
Though bedsores were oozing
He kept up the boozing
And pickled inside of his skin

A lecher whose health had grown worse
Was entranced by the night-duty nurse
In his hospital johnny
He reeked of Armani
And offered a ride in his hearse

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Saturday, November 26, 2005 9:08 AM

(A poem titled "Wearing the Corporate Wig", which should include the word 'vermicelli'.)

Wearing the Corporate Wig

Admiring his reflection
in the boardroom table’s sheen
He gave no thought to how his soul
had grown so pinched and mean

Shrivelling as his manhood swelled
inside his pinstripe suit
For like a greedy truffle pig
He’d learned to sniff and root

To elbow competition
and abuse the coffee girl
To crave the corner office
At the center of the world

And through at times his guts would writhe
like crazy vermicelli
He always took it for ambition’s
fire in the belly

Suit-and-tie drag suited him,
He’d always worn it well
And though the flies were swarming round
He kind of liked the smell

Embrace your failure, reader
Never be the Alpha Male
Lest your striving make of you
a cautionary tale

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Saturday, November 26, 2005 12:00 PM

(a spoken-word piece based on the collected literature of the wobblies. please also include a special dedication to dan perry.)

The Wobbliad

Long long ago,
in the same galaxy we’re living in now,
at the end of the century before the last century
three thousand miles from Newport hostess
Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish
and her Dogs’ Dinner party, a three-course meal
for a hundred dogs,
three thousand miles from the Ocean Drive ladies
playing Sifting for Gems,
running their hands through beach-sand
for a sapphire to tuck in the bones of their bodice,
miners blacked their lungs twelve hours a day in the shaft,
this job is your inheritance, son, after I die,
which looks to be soon, especially if I organize—
remember the Chinese railroad laborers
dropping like flies so the last golden spike
could be rammed home on time?
They tried, having come through the Sierras
the winter before and the winter before that,
clawing their way with hand tools
through the Donner Pass which we all know had
killed before and wasn’t shy about repeating,
3,000 of them living and working in
tunnels dug beneath 40-foot snowdrifts,
1,200 dead by the day that East met West,
but it was on the eastern slope,
heading into the high desert,
that they peaceably struck and the bosses
made a counter-offer of starvation.
This railroad’s getting built with you or without you,
and it was,
but put your ear to the rail,
the train’s a comin’,
workers of the world unite,
do The Locomotive with me,
you got to form that line
come on!
The Wobblies opened up their Little Red Songbook
and sang,
and songwriter/spittoon cleaner/organiser/
spuriously convicted murderer Joe Hill
was given a choice of firing squad or a hanging.
‘I’ll take the shooting.
I’ve been shot a couple of times before and
I think I can take it,’
They supplied the Ready, Aim,
and Joe Hill
supplied the Fire.
In 2005 New Solidarity Magazine has disappeared so thoroughly,
even Google can’t find a motheaten copy,
and just last century Aaron Spelling’s minions
walked the beach ahead of young Tori,
scattering store-bought seashells
for her to find in the sand.
My job sucks,
your job sucks,
Dan Perry’s job sucks and he’s bone-tired
on the train going home,
the train built and tended by union men,
dropping dead when, bone-tired
even worse than Dan, they
step on the third rail.
But until that day they’re taking home the overtime
and doin’ The Locomotive on the weekend.
Oh yeah.
You got to move your feet.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Sunday, November 27, 2005 1:10 PM

(a poem entitled: Counting up to a hundred by quarters)

"Counting up to a hundred by quarters"

At twenty-five the fontanelle is firm
and like a hard-boiled egg,
you're done.
The hole in the hull
knits together, and you're seaworthy.
A quarter, unless it's a quarter
of a gazillion, is not much.
Two quarters is fifty cents,
fifty stars, fifty percent of Americans
blue, fifty percent red.
It's the tipping point, the center
of the see-saw,
that the mean kid jumps off of,
and you smash your spine on the
hard ground of the playground.
Three-quarters of the way home
you're still out of luck,
if one quarter of the way
is a gazillion miles,
or if you're snowblind,
or if you divide the distance
between you and home
in half, and step that far,
then divide the remaining distance in half
and step that far,
and so on.
But Xeno got home anyway,
because his feet were just
crude instruments.
What did the Greeks know about math?
They just wanted to chase each other
around amphorae, with their crazy beards and
their enormous erections.
My own home may be
the pot of gold at nine-hundred millionth
of a billionth of the way to the end of the rainbow
But I'll get there, quarter by quarter.
I empty the coins from my pocket each night.
Quarters, nickles, dimes.
The jar on my bedside table
has a hundred of them,
at least.
Someday
I'm gonna be rich.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Monday, November 28, 2005 7:25 PM

(a poem comparing a potato to a lawyer)

A Chip off The Old Block
or How to Avoid a Lawyer Famine

Lacking lawyers, the
Immigrants streamed westward.
How’d they manage to get in
such a fix? Such a hapless
inability to sue?
Most of us have learned
by hard experience to
keep a lawyer or two
planted in the family plot.
What they lack in piquancy
they make up in starchy rectitude.
But rotate your crops! Never
let them twine their twisting
vines too far along the branches
of the family tree.
Let a crop of destitute oil-painters
revitalise the soil,
before the sharky barrister,
his hair all buttered and chived
returns to leave his greasy headprints
on the wall behind his chair.
But of course, you don’t do that
because he holds your leash
And you hold his, and he
married your college
roommate’s sister
and when their son and heir
gets busted selling weed,
he calls his Dad,
who makes it go away,
fixing his green, budding eye
on the kid, and saying
“That deadbeat oil-painter’s
going have to find a
new supplier.
It’s law school for you,
sonny-boy.”

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Wednesday, November 30, 2005 8:02 AM

(an abecedary based around the topic of sex)

A is for the animal we say we want in bed
B, the Bed itself, where we are often tired instead.

C is for Capriciousness of sexual response
D is for Desire so often masked by nonchalance

E for Eye the roving spy that guides them to my door
F the Funk, the whiff of skunk that makes them beg for more

G for Groundhog day. More winter! Let’s go back to bed
H for Horseback riding, rubbing young girls raw and red

I for indoor sports, when girls outgrow the horsey phase
J for Jealousy! Or Jelly! Friction starts a blaze!

K for K.Y. that’s the brand that doctors recommend
L for Lesions, sores and boils, from these you must defend

M for Men! Long may they lust, beneath polite veneers
N for Nipples, nibbles, naughty, nice to see you, dear

O for Oh! and Oh! and Oh! and Oh! and Oh! and Oh!
P, the Pleasure that is better when you move just so

Q: how Quickly it is over though we’ve just begun
R: Return to duty—where’s my wallet? Gotta run

S is for the Sex of course, so slippery and sly
T is for the Troubles that will come to make you cry

U is for the Upside-Down this lust will make of life
V is for the Vow you make to save it for your wife

W is for the Wedding, though you chafe and gripe
X-rated thrills will follow if you wed a lusty type

Y for Years of wedded bliss, has boredom found you yet?
Z for Zipper, down it comes! Who are you? I forget.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Thursday, December 1, 2005 10:17 AM

(a poem in couplets that discusses mass transit.)

There’s no worse-off situation
Than the public transportation
Babies howl because the plane
Gives their tiny ears a pain
Pity’s running short, alas
They’re a pain in all our ass
Children play on railroad tracks
Walk to school and don't come back
Should have done what they were told
There’s a price for being bold
Subway cars are much afeared
Riders sinister and weird
Talking to themselves and shouting
What a lovely Sunday outing
Those who sit at back of bus
Fill me with a staunch disgust
Hoodlums sit with legs all splayed
Geezers with their hearing aids
But the ride I find most scary
Is the ocean-going ferry
Pitching through the salty waves
Stuffed with SUV’s and knaves
East to West then West to East
In the belly of the beast

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Thursday, December 1, 2005 7:41 PM

(a Ginsburgian (sort of, not really) chant on the war in Iraq)

Georgie porgie,
look at him,
one minute he’s drawing
dirty pictures in his math book,
the next he’s teacher’s pet,
drawing right on the blackboard!
His dry-drunk face
stuck forever in the moment
when things turn bad,
when back-slapping spills over
into mean,
that split second when party boy
finds out the girl’s going home
with the other guy.
Like fruit that goes from green
to rotten overnight,
suddenly he’s bad,
calling you nicknames and
poking your chest to make his point.
Mum and Dad suck air
through clenched teeth & keep polite distance
from their boys-will-be-boys
boy, as,
ringed by Christian scoutmasters
in Jamboree drag,
he raises his finger, still gin-scented after
years of born-again sobriety,
and sends the troops,
the kids kicked out by their folks,
young guys mortgaged up to their
quivering adam’s apples,
saddled with perpetually pregnant wives
in pastel tracksuits, gangbangers
shipped off for the good of the ghetto,
the nation’s baby lab monkeys,
strapped to a TV dressed up like their mama,
weaned on the blazing bullets romance
of Tupac and Biggie, nuzzling
the silicone swell
of the milkless breast,
empty-calorie olestra moviesex,
no matter how much they eat and buy and
fuck and forget they can’t be satisfied,
and they puke it back out
through the barrel of a gun,
bulimic attack-dog America,
America, land of freedom to
see titties any damn time you want
and drive a big-ass car
and drink scorpion bowls and mudslides and
Jaeger bombs and raspberry martinis, hey!
beach blanket beer-bong babe—
I forget your name,
but you and me are motherfucking FREE.
From all the poor points of the compass
they come, from every
underfunded dog pound, malnourished,
ribs showing, dangerous when cornered.
Learning disabled, ADHD, PTSD,
anger-management challenged,
medicated medicated medicated,
they file onboard with their
diagnoses tucked under their arm,
ready to be all that they can be,
ready to piss in the cradle
of civilization, where crazy
Nebuchadnezzar
and his swarthy henchmen are
running amok again.
Time for a Babylon beat-down,
time to bring it on,
democracy delivery-boys,
straight to these piece o’ shits’ door,
and if you choke on that, you can
take it from the other end,
we’ll shove a freedom suppository
up your ass,
we’re gonna beat you with the
freedom stick, beat you
red white and blue,
and we’ll keep on
beating,
steady as our big
bloodfilled
American heart
until you say
Uncle Sam,
even if it takes
forever.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Sunday, December 4, 2005 11:47 AM

(I want a long lamentation from Beth about how sad she is that she missed the party last night!)

I missed the party!
What a fool,
Not worth my pillow
soaked with drool.
The reason I
was so unstrong—
The night had promised
to be long.
Two, not one, bands
playing later
So I played
the nightlife hater,
traitor to good times
and fun,
disappointer
of your son.
Separate cars we
could have brought
and I an early
exit sought,
after cake and
birthday song—
but between our homes
is long
if you’re tired and
weak at heart,
if you’re worthless
as a fart.
So Donald left and
I stayed home,
vegetating
all alone.
He drove out
into the night,
I turned in and
dimmed the light
What a wretch!
I own it now.
I missed the party!
holy cow.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Tuesday, December 6, 2005 6:30 PM

(3 haiku about holiday despair)

Long-lost relatives—
How should I know what they like?
Everyone needs soap.
The wolf’s at the door.
No, the wolf’s on the roof—
jaws wide for reindeer

Santa, I swear, I’m
sorry about the fire.
There’s some stuff I want

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Thursday, December 8, 2005 6:41 PM

(a Shakespearean sonnet to your favorite cashier)

My Favorite Cashier

Fatima was my favorite.
Weekday morning shift, delighted
as a kid on Christmas by each transaction,
her new English a toy she'd wanted all her life.
Her name pronounced Fahtch-ma, in the
Brazilian way, a cha-cha on your tongue.
A gray-haired grandma in a My Little Pony
sweatshirt, barely five feet tall.

We customers her raw material—“Hello!
How are you today?” She?d say,
her r's so rolled they almost got away
from her, somersaulting down a grassy hill
to a spot where language becomes laughter.
She noticed my dirty hands. “You
are gardener! I love garden!”
And when the store manager
complained about a vet bill for her dog,
Fatima just laughed, “I like dog!
Dog is good friend!” growling the “r”
in friend like a pup tugging a stick.

She would often mistake me for
another customer, my twin, apparently—
a woman with a daughter and a horse.
“I have two sons and no horse!” I'd say,
and we would laugh, and laugh more
when it happened again, the confusion
like a 3-D tic tac toe game
of new country, new people, new job,
but no matter—she forged ahead
in giddy baby steps of language.
She knew that I knew—the important
thing—that with your handful of words,
you find the joke.

The day before Fatima went back
to Brazil (homesick, a
new grandchild) I ran into her
in the hardware store. We hugged,
tearful. “Thank you for the smile
every day,” she said, and I thought
for a second that I would like to slug
anyone who did not smile at Fatima.
“I will miss you,” I said, measuring
my words. “You are my favorite.”
The next day the store manager
worked the register for Fatima's shift.
I said “You're going to miss her,”
and she said, “Yes. It's been
terrible around here.”

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Tuesday, December 13, 2005 3:40 PM

CRONIG’S MARKET, A TRAGEDY IN ASSORTED POEMS

This damn store.
Just when I was
deep in the routine
of grabbing two small
free-range chickens
to roast for dinner,
they have to change
distributors.
Just when I’d grown
dependent on the
availability of Spike,
where is it?
And my favorite
cashier, gone.
Houses are bought
and sold,
governments
overthrown,
innocents are
put to death.
All of this I can
cope with by
not reading the paper.
But is it too much to ask
that the small things
remain the same?
I guess that’s an
old lady’s complaint.
So sue me,
I’m getting on.
But before I get
much older, they better
bring back
the good kind
of frozen birthday cake.
The kind with
the whipped cream
and the strawberries.
Those bastards.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Tuesday, December 13, 2005 4:18 PM

A Bad Day’s Shopping

The mesclun is wilting in the bin
And we are not allowed to take
extra virgin olive oil from the shelves
in order to dress our salad-bar salads.
Somebody put up a sign. We have to
use the thin yellow frying oil from the
cruet supplied by management.
This is Martha’s fucking Vineyard, I say,
and there is going to be blood flowing
in the aisles if they
keep this up.

Children released from SUV carseats run
amok, spewing snot and screaming, and once
I saw a codger clipping his nails in the
produce aisle. That really takes the cake.

A plastic Santa perched atop the cut-flower cooler
plays piercing electronic Christmas
carols, which clash with some girl singer
mewling on the store-wide speakers,
piped into every lucky aisle, even over the
toilet paper and diapers and ibuprofen,
which I’ll need before long. Throw a couple bottles
into the basket, one for the car, one for the house.
Fifty tablets for god knows how many bucks,
I'm paying for the ambience. I'll use my
Cronig’s card and get ten percent off.
That card has already paid for itself.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Tuesday, December 13, 2005 5:05 PM

THE WRECK OF THE POLAR EXPRESS

What’s this
Come crawling from
Beneath the glittering tree?
A present or a project?
Assembly required? For me?
Nobody told me this
Would involve math,
Let alone a fucking
Allen wrench. My wrath
Pours forth a curseword stream.
And the sweetmeats!
A sad bulimic’s dream,
Just look and see—
The yellow brick road
To prediabetic epiphany!
Where’s the wizard
When you need him
To make it go away?
Crestfallen at the crinkle
Of the wrapping,
I mean it when I say
You shouldn’t have.

Rabid rebel
Gone to ground
My gratitude, it
Knows all bounds.
Feeding the animals
Is frowned upon
When all they’ve had to do
All the already-long
Off-season in this joint
Is file their teeth
To tiny points.
Offer a handout,
Summon all your
Lion-tamer charm,
I warn you, mister,
You might lose an arm.

Surrounded by more gewgaws
Than dead king Tut,
Whatever can rid me of
This awful glut?
We opened all those packages,
Lost every shred of Calvinist control—
Peeled back the shiny paper to reveal
The tiny time-bomb ticking in our soul.
It gnaws at my peace, my sleep it deprives
It festers like cookies from Sony
Hidden in my hard drive.
Spyware spyware everywhere
Entering the system! Buyer beware!

Yet hark! Like lutes of
Distant angels on the breeze,
The landfill sings! Calls out—for
Fudge and port-wine cheese!
The earth receives our potlatch curse.
Oh beneficent bastards! Though
To give may quench your moral thirst,
In this case the rule’s reversed,
Each truck-load makes
Our world the worse.

Just walk away! Stand tall!
Wouldn’t that be the most
Blessed thing of all?
Now, I can only speak for myself,
But this shopworn Messiah
Should be put on the shelf.
A poisonous cure pushed
by industry crooks
Like a wrong blood-type
kidney, this one
Never took.
And tell me again,
As I bitch and I yelp—
How is all this
Peanut brittle
Supposed
To help?

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Wednesday, December 28, 2005 9:14 PM

(an exhortation to lose weight that does not use the words: pounds, inches, fat, or cow)

Adiposity
Got the best of me
I'd better fast
Til I can see past
This inner tube
Where are my pubes?
Try as I might
They're out of sight
Have they gone white?
I'd never know
But oh! What an angel
I make in the snow!

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Saturday, December 31, 2005 2:18 PM

(think about rope, lots and lots of rope)

Enough Rope

In the high-tide wrack line
on this rockiest point of the island
there’s more than the the usual driftwood
and seashells, dried-up seaweed
hopping with sand fleas, splintered palettes
wedged in the rocks, fishnets
and rope. Way more than the usual amount
of rope: multicolored lobstermans’ line
winding so deep in the sand you can’t pull it
loose, snaking through the dune
of man-made storm litter, through the smashed
remains of someone’s staircase to the beach,
through brittle bungee cords, bait buckets,
mop buckets, 5-gallon buckets, single boots and
and single flipflops and the occasional huge tire
that would take me an hour to dig up, and what then?
Walk atop it like a circus dog, to the applause
of my drunken friends? Too much trouble
when the car is a good mile from where I scramble
rock-to rock like a mountain goat,
this beach where no one ever goes,
not even caretakers from the estates
up above. No one else to catalog this bounty:
Tampon applicators by the thousands,
ribbon, too, in delicate pastels—
remnants of a shipboard birthday.
Anchor-line thick as your thigh,
dish soap bottles, clorox bottles,
detergent bottles—someone keeps a clean ship.
Motor-oil bottles, and here’s more rope, purple
with strands of green. Bottles of those drinks
that come in different colors, depending
on the artificial fruit flavoring, still sealed tight,
half-finished. Lobster pots, floats and buoys,
dairy crates and fishboxes, an entire dune
of bleached wood and plastic, and rope and
rope and rope, flotsam and jetsam tied and tangled
at every turn by rope, a different color for
every boat, the better to avoid mistakes. Rope
washed up by storms, fibers stiff
and prickly as a Yankee at a tea party,
wrapping his rope-tough fingers
around a bone-china cup.
It’s no wonder men take to the sea.
As their wives have always known,
you’ve got to give them enough rope.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Thursday, December 29, 2005 9:37 AM

(a meditation (or maceration) on the face of George W. Bush)

Squinting down the fence-line to where the sun sets
at the edge of his spread, his brow furled
in befuddlement, like a beagle
wondering which hand holds the biscuit,
or if there even is a biscuit.

His face the rodeo clown’s,
precisely designed by the fair and balanced god
of the Right to distract the mighty
but distractable bull of the people.

Even if the beast throws off his tormenter
he’s unable to finish the job. The crowd laughs
and prays, drinks another paper cup of beer
and goes home to beget baby cowboys
with baby spurs.

It doesn’t take long, staring at the clownface,
before you see the mean float to the surface
like fat on a stew.

Kids cringe behind their mama’s skirts
when the clown approaches,
his half-sneer smile the rictus
of a low-rank chimp who’s had to make do
with green bananas his whole life.
A bottom-feeder somehow stumbled to the top,
sore winner written across his forehead.

Just under the happy greasepaint
of the big-shoe buffoon
festers the surly dump-the-chump carny,
mocking the little kid who aims the baseball.

Looking at his face on the front page,
we can’t understand why our other half
can’t recognize their mistake.
We ourselves can’t tear our eyes away,
as if therein lies the key to forcing a mass apology,
as if filling our eyes will make the horror leak out
like dye in the wash, and redden the minds of the willfully blind.

The face is a red herring. So red it would madden
the most placid, meadowgrass-fat bull.
Turn away, before we grow so bewildered
that only a blind man could set us free.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Monday, January 2, 2006 5:45 PM

"I've never liked my nose"

My curséd Parker family nose
Is not as lovely as a rose
And o'er the years, I swear, it grows!

My grandmother bequeathed it
My mouth in shadows moves beneath it
And ruddiness oft-times does wreath it.

My husband doesn't seem to mind—
The dog as well likes me just fine
Is it possible they're blind?

More bulbous than it's long—
No one sings its praise in song
Yet to change it would be wrong.

To take that step I'm disinclined
For the price to sculpt it fine
Is better-spent on food and wine.

Drink my schnozzy blues away
Imperfection's here to stay
Big or little, all decay.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Wednesday, January 4, 2006 8:49 AM

Puny mortals flee the mighty nose
Sailors cry in terror "Thar she blows!"
But in my nostrils, dimly lit and warm
Little birds find shelter from the storm.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Wednesday, January 4, 2006 10:08 AM

The bar still has their Christmas lights up,
and the band has packed the place—
middle of winter, middle of nowhere,
everyone’s here.
You should be here, too.
Notes whip my face like sapling twigs
as I ride hard through the forest, blood
to my cheeks, and in between songs
the crazy popcorn machine of people
could lift you, if you would let it, if you
would only spread your arms to make wings.

I’ve cleared a space on the table, amid
the peanut shells, amid the dinner leftovers
packed up to go, amid empty and half-full
glasses. A space just big enough for a
deposit slip from my checkbook,
the only paper I’ve got on me—
bar napkins only rip when you
write fast with this kind of pen,
my drawing pen—like a junkie’s
hypodermic.
All this to write
a poem for Luna.
Happy Saturday.
So far, it’s been
a good day.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Friday, January 6, 2006 10:11 PM

(a poem about childhood illness)

An afterthought of a child
Born to parents pushing middle-age
Two-headed sperm meets an egg that’s slightly off
Nine months then me!
Their precious bundle of frailty—
A catalog of subtle malady
Not audible by stethoscope
Or visible inside the tunnel of the ear
Or in the barium glow of the looping gut
But nonetheless, something convulsed
In the middle of me when the horrid yellow
Schoolbus hove into view, with the usual mix
Of predators and prey.

Like a poster child for hypersensitivity
Who’d been in the mailing tube too long,
My body had a memory of curling into itself,
And forever tried to return to that position,
Arms folded over the belly, knees folded up to the chin
Like an armadillo, with my bony back to the wind.
What you can’t see can’t bewilder you with its
Unbreakable code.

The principal gave me Pepto Bismol.
I sat in a soft armchair in her office
and waited for my mother to pick me up.
Dr. Salomon, with his German accent
And numbers tattooed on his wrist,
Must have known how his hypodermic needles
And rubbing-alcohol swabs terrified me.
Fear is part of the pediatric package. The fear
Of the illness, the fear that is the illness.

I think of how it must been for him
To subject a dying child to the tortures
Of a failing cure, as surely must have happened.
There was that girl I saw, whose wig fell off
When someone shoved her in the schoolyard.
Maybe she never lived to stop fearing him.

Evil has a mirror-good, each act a perversion
of another. There’s only so much in the repertoire.
Doctoring a corrective to the camps—
Cruel procedures in the service of life,
Cancelling out the shadow-twin. Or not.

For me this time there was no shot.
I spun on the stool in Dr. Salomon’s office,
Around and around and around, and when I stopped
He applied a perfect band of white adhesive tape
Around my belly. One length, meeting itself in the middle.
To support the abdominal muscles, he said.
Somehow it helped, and I went back to school,
To learn to write this down, to be shoved and to
Learn to do some shoving of my own. An education.
But I never learned that girl’s name. The wig
Was red, to match her lost, true color.
She wasn’t in my grade.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Sunday, January 8, 2006 11:20 AM

Rude Boyz Have No Fear In Shantytown

They have no fear in Shantytown
All comers must be shouted down
They’ll smash your glasses, hapless piggy
Kill you dead as Kurt and Biggie

Those who tell their latest picks
Are told to eat a bag of dicks
What’s the secret handshake here?
Who knew I was such a queer?

Yet I long to join their club
At the counterculture hub
Nerve center of the disenchanted
Amnesty is rarely granted

I could pass the test I swear!
Shave off all my graying hair
Practice my derisive snort
Gain admittance to their fort.

There they dance around the pyre
Who’s that writhing in the fire?
David Gray? No! Even worse!
Conor “bambi-eyes” Oberst!

Rude Boyz circle round the flames
Burning Man! Their favorite game!
They’re the super-duper winners!
Till their mom calls them to dinner.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Wednesday, January 11, 2006 6:56 AM

(a pantoum)

The waitress pursed her ruby lips
The lonely sailor rubbed his eyes
She brushed against him with her hips
He asked her for a steak and fries

The lonely sailor rubbed his eyes
Was she really standing there?
He asked her for a steak and fries
The neon danced upon her hair

Was she really standing there?
He’d had a lot to drink last night
The neon danced upon her hair
Like confetti made of light

He’d had a lot to drink last night
Her face was looking kind of weird
Like confetti made of light
Sweet illusion disappeared

Her face was looking kind of weird
She brushed against him with her hips
Such big hands, and look! A beard!
The waitress pursed her ruby lips

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Thursday, January 12, 2006 10:51 AM

(a poem describing the most horrid person on earth today, real or imagined)

Sports Mom

Boys need a mentor to stop all confusion
Presidents, athletes, astronauts, men!
Consistency, role models, manhood transfusion
No walkabout wonders or bookwormy friends

If you were a good mom you'd line it all up
Little League, hockey, Pop Warner and track
Hell Week and hazings to toughen the pup
Victory! victory! Never look back!

Believe in the dollar, the muscle, the creed
Supremacy bought at the outlet, reduced
Prenatally steeped in the gravy of greed
Load it up, lock it down, give it some juice

Her womb an industrial washing machine
Churning out infantry, quarterbacks, stars
Breeding the godly, the hard and the clean
Born with their eyes covered over with scars

Launder the uniform, pack up the snacks
Banish all thinking and conquer all fears
Volunteer cheerfully, plaster the cracks
Hurt him good! Hurt him good! Good mother cheers

Shampooed and shoe-shined and blindingly bright
Biggest and shiniest car in the lot
Elbows all sharpened and itching to fight
Everything buyable's already bought

Blood-crazed and chipper she leaps from her seat
Ripping her lungs out and pumping her fists
Knocking the teeth down the throat of defeat
If it takes rigor mortis she'll stiffen his wrist.

If it takes her last breath, she will offer this shout
If it takes her last decibel she will give cry
Drum out the dreaming and drown out the doubt
She's waiting to see if he'll do, or will die.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Thursday, January 19, 2006 11:29 AM

(some prophetic quatrains in the style of Nostradamus)

1
And at the close of the fifth decade of her reign
The queen of backyard midden-heap will cast about;
Benumbed by numberless days of dumb toil
On the ivy-strewn acres of tightfisted plutocrats.

2
All will convulse themselves with gratitude;
Bear salvers of gifts in trade for her grudging labor;
Yet this swag shall fail to calm her restless army
Rattling their rusty swords at yet unconquered shores.

3
In the Year of the Dog the sun will climb to the roof;
Killing rays like prison searchlights will sweep the yard in vain
For her bowed head, insufficiently veiled; For her scabbed ankles,
Poorly defended against bloodthirsty Ixodes damminii.

4
Fresh armies will come to take her place, and they
Their own scars and pains accumulate, but of this
She will never hear; deafened by songbirds
In the cage of her newfound freedom.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Sunday, January 22, 2006 10:34 AM

(a poem about dogs getting to know each other)

Off-Leash Love

We could take off you and I,
When the sun's low in the sky.
Humans turn their backs, capeesh?
Loosen hands upon the leash.

From yonder forest game-smell drifts
Wrong to turn down such a gift.
Musk of ocean on your flanks—
Seagull corpse! Ah yes! Give thanks!

Snout the leaf-mold, oh so thorough,
Noses shovel through the burrows,
Unearth rodent, snap his spine,
Slake our throats with warm blood wine.

Go back to our separate homes,
Promise nevermore to roam.
Tails between our craven legs,
For table scraps, reduced to beg.

But as I lie before the fire,
Ears all torn from thorny briars,
Coat all filthy, full of burrs,
Your scent lies upon my fur.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Sunday, January 22, 2006 10:36 AM

(a poem [in the voice of] or [observing] a store clerk or a hairdresser at the end of a working day)

Miracle Worker

Where is that lady who wants the hair clippings
To keep deer out of her garden?
I'm gonna throw it away.
She can get it out of the dumpster
If she's so fired up about it.
I myself would just put up a fence,
Having seen the heads from which this hair came,
And listened to them all day long.
"Shorter than last time, okay? I want that pixie look, like
Audrey Hepburn in that movie. You know the one I mean."
Lady, in your dreams! Okay. Tapering to a V
At the nape of your neck. Perfect. Beautiful.
God, tomorrow is already bearing down on me,
Dark as the dye-job on a deluded sixty-year old.
May as well leave all this hair on the floor.
More's just gonna fall. And while we're on the subject
Of pointlessness, what's the point of all these haircuts?
More's just gonna grow. And, My Fair Lady,
No matter how many times you watch the movie,
Your future bulldog face is coming true, pushing
Through the gauze a little more each week.
There's only so much I can do.
But don't worry, sweetheart.
That look works for you.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Sunday, January 22, 2006 11:29 AM

thank you for this

You're welcome. She is a treasure.

thank you for this

― if you see her, say ayo (unregistered), Saturday, 12 June 2010 05:19 (1 minute ago)

She is a treasure.

― Aimless, Saturday, 12 June 2010 05:20 (30 seconds ago)

Some "found" poetry:

Report Of The School Nurse

As we close the year 1941
and look to 1942
one dares not stop long to ponder.
Do you know
that there have been more men
rejected by Selective Service Boards
than have passed?
By the middle of July
a little over 64,000 had been
called in Massachusetts.
Of this number
almost 35,000 were rejected
because they could not meet
the high standards set
by the board.

The school stands ready to help
in every way
but the real job rests
with the parents
in the home.

In these trying times
children must have proper food,
rest,
exercise,
sleep,
and defects remedied.
Let’s all put our shoulder to the wheel
for an all-out victory.
Place the youth of today first,
for they are the citizens of tomorrow!

I wish to express
my appreciation to all
who in any way helped
with our corrective program.

Report of the Police Department

In the year 1969
I would like to stress
the growing increase of Drug Abuse
with our teenagers. This is a problem
that cannot be swept under our rugs,
it must be dealt with right now
before it gets any worse.
In July of this year
I brought to an end
a seven month investigation,
during which time we hired
a payed informer
to work for us.
I must say
that I have very deep
and mixed feelings
about using a payed informer,
this method like others
has good
and bad points.
In the past I have worked
with some of these kids
quietly,
they call
when they need someone
to talk to,
when they need
to take a drug.
I listen to them
and try to help them.
Maybe
this is working
and maybe
it isn’t
but at least
I am trying.
What are you doing?

Respectfully submitted,
C. V. M.
Chief of Police

Shellfish Department, 2001

To the Citizens of Chilmark:

The shellfish have had a good year.
Shellfishing efforts have been
at an all-time low this year.
Again thanks to the trades.
How long can this building boom last?
Not as long as the shellfish
that’s for sure.
- The Quahogs do appear
to be increasing in numbers.
- An extremely abundant,
perpetuating
colony of mussels
are taking over.
- Scallops could have been had,
but were not,
yet will.
- The multiplying,
delicious razor clam
is becoming common.
-Oysters are doing
their oyster thing.

Capt. Herbert Hancock
inspired dreams
of Menemsha ponds full of scallops.
In God’s new world order,
when the dead are resurrected
back to life here on earth,
as God has promised in the bible,
I believe Herbert
will see this happening
and have some good sport
capturing these creatures
in Menemsha Pond again.

Shellfish propagation
has many variables,
but one thing that keeps
my mind occupied
is the tides.
They come and go
with such exact precisions,
they can be predicted
to the minute,
years in advance.
Even every creation
in the heavens and on earth
can be measured in some way.
Accidents?
I don’t think so.

Respectfully submitted,

CAPT. STANLEY L. LARSEN
Chilmark Shellfish Constable

Postscript:
In the early part of last century there was an epidemic of congenital deafness in Chilmark brought on by inbreeding. Everyone in the town knew how to sign. Was this one of the “defects” to be “remedied?”

Captain M. was an enthusiastic pot-smoker. He lost his position when a large number of stolen televisions and other valuables were discovered in his house.

Stanley Larsen, once a large part of the town’s teen Drug Problem, is now clean and sober and a Jehovah’s Witness.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Saturday, January 28, 2006 11:57 AM

(a poem incorporating these word pairings either in adjacent or in alternating lines: famous/squamous, bickerer/stickler, trestle/fascile, lap dog/eggnog. (Note: these words needn't be used as end-rhymes.)

Unicornucopia

Guess who’s at the door again?
My niece, my chickadee, come to check
the feeder—cheeks pinked by winter
and by seven years—
though it’s not her birthday yet.
Still there should be cake.
Round here she’s famous, and though small,
she towers above the snips and snails and
squamous fascinations of her brother’s
puppydog-tail friends.
Queen of etiquette corrections,
curator of her own collections,
a princess not by birth but by vocation
and popular vote, a landslide.
We’re putty in her chubby hands,
and the conquest makes her beam—
light leaking through the seams
of her fledgling school-taught cool.
She knows the rules, she wrote the book—
selling cookies, telling on the boys.
A stickler for procedure, she brooks
no bickerers or shirkers,
but first things first:
she needs to take a look—
is the jewelry box restocked? To paw
and plunder, stuff her plastic purse.
Ladybird, her woven nest of party streamers, tinsel,
silly string, a silver cloud for dreamers.
Her fortress fine with fancy dresses,
gilt and mirrored vanity where Barbie braids
her lustrous tresses. Baubles, booty—
have it all!
Lay the downy lining thick
to cushion any little falls.
Lavender kittens and rabbit-fur lap-dogs,
Barbie serving Ken some eggnog.
Candy hearts and fairy wings,
things and things and things and things.
Her greed is still a kind of truth—
not yet a curse, and perhaps, with luck
will always soothe
and never segue into
lipstick on a leper.
For now, embrace the gift.
Heap the groaning trestle high
with facile girlish goods.
She’s no sucker, take a look—
she plucked the lure but not the hook.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Thursday, February 16, 2006 7:35 PM

(i want a poem about candy. i want it to tell a story about how candy ruined a man's life.)

Sugar Ruin

Candy was the book
I found in my father's sock drawer.
That and the Bell Jar, given to me
by my eighth grade English teacher,
did the fox-trot in my brain all that year.
Innocent flowers, rotten fruit, sex, death.
What more do you need?
Mr. Blydenburgh used to come to class
reeking of last night's whiskey.
It didn't take much to set him off
on a bellowing, eye-bulging rage.
Sometimes just the look of us—
our rows of lazy faces. One day
He handed me that book.
He didn't expect a paper.
Later that year, after a night of drinking,
he fell off a dock and drowned.
I don't think his trash-fed students
ruined his life,
but we didn't save it, either.

I never got into the poetry of Sylvia Plath.
But I kept my sweet tooth for the dirty treats.
What happens to our parents' pornography?
Does it rot back to the earth after so many moist
page-turnings? Do our mothers shovel it
into the garden? Who wants to think about it?
Now I'm their age, and I sneak looks
at my son's porno while he's off at college.
Shameful, but not ruining anyone's life.

Terry Southern went on to write more books
and screenplays. Candy didn't ruin his life either.
But somewhere in America, in some basement bedroom
there's a pimple-faced kid sitting with his laptop
in a sea of candy wrappers and stroke magazines.
He's impersonating a movie director, heating it up
with some other kid who's impersonating an actress
on the casting couch, giving her all to the role,
Sugar Mama to his Sugar Daddy
until his mom calls him for dinner,
and tells him to wash his sticky hands.
His father wonders why he won't go out for sports,
And the kid can't tell the truth, that it's too late.
Rot starts in the tooth and moves to the nerve.
Candy has already ruined his life.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Saturday, February 25, 2006 3:08 PM

(A poem that rhymes "not whole" with "knot hole")

Paint it Blue

Is that my coffee?
I said skim, not whole.
How many times do you
need to be told?
And while we're on the
subject of fuck-up-itude,
which one of you assholes
forgot to Zinsser the knot holes?
They're ghosting through
the paint like blood
through gauze.
Heads are gonna roll.
I swear, this job
will finish me
before I finish it.

I wasn't supposed to be doing this
at my age. This wasn't
the plan. You kids
think you've got
nothing but time. So did I,
but I turned my back and they
reamed out the neck of my hourglass.
Now the sand falls through like an avalanche;
like your backyard sliding into a sinkhole.
There goes the doghouse, there goes the car.
I forgot plan B.
Never learned programming,
or married well.
And speaking of unspeakable omissions,
who's the asshole who forgot
the anti-gravity boots? Well,
don't let the customer see you
with coffee in your hand.
Steady the ladder.
Tomorrow I'm gonna be sore.
But tomorrow we should be done in time
to make it to the beach. One more coat
and this house will be beautiful.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Sunday, February 26, 2006 5:33 PM

(A poem that references a placenta, a spatula, and a Toyota Camry.)

The Last Martini

Dahlia said "Darling, did you pick up the dry-cleaning?
I hope they didn't chip the gold leaf off my epaulets.
I need that jacket for Joe and Jeannette's party."
Darren could barely hear her over the clinking
of the rocks in his perfect martini, the martini
that took him one entire summer to perfect,
totaling his roommate's Toyota Camry
in the process, walking away without a bruise.
Dahlia lay on the chaise-longue beside the pool,
cucumber slices plastered to the pouches under
her eyes, waging the never-ending holy war
against the inevitable, which she was winning,
lean as a cheetah in her sixth decade.
Was it the gelcaps of placenta
Or the weekly hot-stone massage?
Darren sure didn't know. But
whatever it was, she glowed
like a comet, blazing her icy trail
through empty space,
brilliance like a blade in the eye,
preventing close inspection
of fissures and gaping craters

"Did you hear about Jeannette's accident?
You'll never guess what happened.
Some idiot lay down on the train tracks,
and pieces of him spattered all over
Jenny's new car. They had to scrape him
off her windshield with a spatula."

Darren gazed at the shimmering line
where the swimming pool met the sky.
A leaf was caught on the edge,
spazzing-out like a hooked fish
on the brim of the fake waterfall.
Ordinarily, it would piss him off
and he'd flip his cheesy teak chair over
getting up to get the net, but this afternoon
the sight of it drew him in like a song.
He felt himself teetering on the edge of his life,
one drink away from sweeping into the spillway,
down the drain, leaving no trace, no grief.
By the time the pool guy came to clean out the filters,
no one would even remember his face.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Friday, March 3, 2006 6:11 AM

(an account of a morning which is a strict lipogram in e.)

Sick as a Dog

Six-thirty!
Oh, my throbbing skull.
Too much Rioja last night,
alas.
Raisin toast, burning
to tiny 9/11 ruins
Alarm going nuts, a nazi
drill into my brain
rounding out this
discordant
choir of pain
It's no good to crack a window—
for a foul vapor waits
to waft indoors,
and add its low moan
to morning's sad song
Skunk!
Goddamn dog.
Mama's good boy
in bad trouble again.
Shut all windows,
turn on fans.

Finally
that son of a bitch alarm
shuts up.
Thanks for small favors.
For nano-vacations.
A quick gasp through a straw.
That might pass for air
if I was my coal-mining grand-dad
passing his days in a dark shaft.
But I'm not.
I'm soft. Lazy.
But still, my own kind of grunt-work
robs too many hours
if not light and air.
Too bad.
Punch in, dog,
and suck it up,
or worry will attach
multiplying burrs to your fur
that no paw can scratch.
This day is nothing to drag your tail
in the mud about. Look—
it's sunny out.
Warm, too.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Saturday, March 4, 2006 7:35 AM

(a poem made entirely of recycled words from the W.B. Yeats poem, The Second Coming.)

The word's out—
the hour is indignant,
the centuries vexed.
My desert revelations fall apart,
and the worst stony birds
with second-hand Bethlehem convictions
reel round the second-best sun.

The falconer cannot hear the tide,
gazing at a dimmed image in the shadows,
and now somewhere out of sight.

The falcon, loosed,
drops those Spiritus Mundi nightmare troubles,
and is at the centre of the blood-beast;
the passionate ceremony of
hand upon thighs;
The rocking widening intensity,
rough lion-body surely about to come,
Surely coming!
Coming while turning twenty,
and turning full of the vast world.
The gyre of all things everywhere
is all it knows.

But the head cannot hold pitiless anarchy.
mere man, lacking what lasts,
slouches towards the desert
to be blank again,
hardly moving;
a shape of cradlesleep innocence,
born in slow darkness,
drowned in sands.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Tuesday, March 14, 2006 11:17 AM

(A section of the New Testament retold in the style of a Hallmark card)

In Your Time of Trouble

Through the streets you drag your cross,
As bullies jeer to break you,
Heartless Romans nail you up,
And Daddy Dear forsakes you.

Pause a moment in your throes,
Remember all your friends—
Traveling to spread your word,
By oxcart or Mercedes Benz.

Though you're in your agonies,
Your religion's number one.
Ponder all the souls you've saved—
Crucifixion can be fun!

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Monday, March 20, 2006 8:51 AM

Judas Kiss-Off

Jesus turns water into wine—
People think that that's just fine.
Flashy little parlor tricks—
wow the crowd, get all the chicks.
Like a genie granting wishes,
Forking out the loaves and fishes.
Mr. Popularity,
voted most likely to succeed.

But the guy that's treated rudest
is that hapless fellow Judas,
even though he had his orders
from the martyrdom headquarters.
Sealed the deal with kiss on cheek—
His name was mud until last week.
Now he wears his halo bright.
Out of the dog house, into the light.

If you are misunderstood,
kicked aside and called no good,
remember Judas, vindicated,
image rehabilitated.
Those who point and lay the blame
will perish in the cleansing flames.
It may take years or centuries,
but someday they'll be on their knees.
Sanctimonious little turds—
At sword-point they shall eat their words.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Saturday, April 8, 2006 11:18 AM

I wish to revisit the long-ago theme of the badness of Cronig's Market.

Cronig's! I Wish I Could Quit You!

Menu after possible menu
bites the dust in the aisles
of Cronig’s Market.

The entire row of salad greens wilting
as if under a cruel Sudanese sun,
draping their desiccated leaves
over the edge of the shelf
like shamed dogs
flattening themselves to the floor,
awaiting punishment.
The watercress has lost all its water,
and the baby spinach is crying for its mama.
The arugula too would cry
if it wasn’t so dry.

Free range chickens have wandered off again,
so to what avail is the fresh rosemary that
freakishly, is here in good supply?
Why?

Pico de Gallo’s a no-go
with no jalapenos.
Easy enough for them to have stocked up
on a vegetable that has the shelf life of a heavy metal.
But do they? No. This is Cronig's Market!
They don't have to!
They can disappoint us in every way
and still we keep coming back for more!
Or for less.

Who could have bought
all the damned jalapenos?
May they rub their eyes
after dicing them, the pigs,
while here in the kitchen
of default dinners,
the pasta water
comes to a boil.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Wednesday, May 3, 2006 8:54 AM

To The Queen, On Her Birthday

Gentlemen look at their wives and wish they were divorced,
When they spy Her Majesty out riding on her horse.
Dappled-grey and long-of-face (the rider, not the steed),
She's the frumpy figurehead the common people need!

To the Queen raise high your grog
She's our lighthouse in the fog
There in times both sad and happy
Queen since we were in our nappies

Her lipstick is magenta though her countenance is glum,
As if the saddle rubbed a sore upon her royal bum.
Doler-out of charity and patron of the arts,
So rarified her station, no one's ever heard her fart.

To the Queen raise high your grog
She's our lighthouse in the fog
There in times both sad and happy
Queen since we were in our nappies

One year more? we see no change, though Charles grows long in tooth,
"Long Live The Queen's" no idle toast, but sadly muttered truth.
She's pre-embalmed, she's mummified, in sensible attire,
She would not break a sweat, not if her jodhpurs were on fire.

To the Queen raise high your grog
She's our lighthouse in the fog
There in times both sad and happy
Queen since we were in our nappies

So happy birthday Queenie, if you wish for happiness,
Or uneventful birthday if you're satisfied with less.
Re-read a Barbara Cartland novel, listen to the tap
Of rain upon the windowsill, a corgi in your lap.

To the Queen raise high your grog
She's our lighthouse in the fog
There in times both sad and happy
Queen since we were in our nappies

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Saturday, May 13, 2006 7:26 AM

(a poem about the InterHygiene Automated Toilet Seat Protection System)

For Your Own Good

Against my hallowed flesh, no trace
of carbon-based molecular taint,
no stranger's strange DNA tingling
on my nether cheeks, no creatures
creeping into my caverns,
but rather the powder-dry newness of plastic,
slinking and sheeting the world
like the condom of God,
sliding between the clean and unclean
like veils between the bashful bride and her
rough-mannered bridegroom.
My lace-encased purity is a magnet to the soil,
the muck, the many-legged things.
The legions leap to sully me,
vaulting off the seat,
the rim, the pool within.
get behind me, polluters! Defilers!
Befoulers of water-closets,
breeders of vermin,
and rogue inseminators.
Keep your fetid fluids to yourselves,
lest you desiccate from this wanton
broadcasting of invisible spew.
I shall not be the cause
of your self-mummification.
InterHygiene Automated Toilet Seat Protection System
Is for your protection, too.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Saturday, June 10, 2006 6:12 AM

My Runny Valentine

Your careless tires trashed the last
wedding-gown white of yesterday’s
snow, but that’s okay,
it was melting before you arrived,
greasy run-off rivering down the drains.

So maybe it’s an inside day, a day
to close the curtains if we had any,
a day to curl up on the carpet
and lick each others’ wounds,
which are crusty and ugly,
not easy to accessorize, not even
a useful neutral color, the new blue,
no, just common sores, ubiquitous as dirt,
which is one of my true shades,
along with ruddy as a drunken plum,
and pallid as a bleached-out lychee,
or peaches and cream
in your dreams, I hope.

I almost didn’t
make it home
shaking the bones
in my winter-stiff hands
unable to fit the key
in the ignition,
unable to cue the music
of the broken chunks in the
catalytic converter of this
second-hand sedan.

On this island of sour milk and honey,
frozen fat of the land,
you are my only estate,
for the china men
leave their blue-willow fortune
to the china babies, and in the big
gilt-framed picture I am lower
than a Pekinese lap-dog foaming with
undiagnosed rabies, snarling
absent-mindedly to myself,
unable to catch my own scent
in the stale sachet of my bed
or see myself out of the corner of my eyes,
seeping yellow tears into my fur.

But my invisibility doesn't mean
that you with your magic x-ray specs
can’t stumble to me like a
lovestruck zombie,
clad in rotten linen,
the new ecru.

Your outstretched hands
trail ragged wrappings, you climb
the creaky stairs. You find me
in the haunted attic,
you find me in the dark we share.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Monday, January 29, 2007 7:55 P

There are probably several more I have missed. This thread contains almost all those I could find.

Ta.

Beth is a true gem.

A search on "valentine" turned up this thread (for the poem: My Runny Valentine). Reviving it seems like an apt valentine's day missive to our missing Potentate of Yellow Stones.

I came to revive. I stayed for the pie! We miss you, Ms. P.

We surely do! "Beth is a true gem" indeed.

Worth reviving from time to time for any new ilxors who missed out on BP's poetry back when it was newly minted and came rolling down like manna from the poetry goddess.

Pulling up on five years since I bumped this one. Worth perusing for anyone who misses Beth P.

Not unappreciated, A.

In the midst of so much storm and woe, it is good to recall that finer things exist.