St George contemplates retiring & Black Sabbath
by Stan Rogal
[ poetry - february 06 ]
St George contemplates retiring
For loving too much, too well, too long
For all the right/wrong reasons
Slay one dragon.
For constructing too many doors with too few keys
For raising too many questions with too few answers
For sketching too many maps with too few legends
Slay one dragon.
For breaking all rules, for ignoring all laws
For snubbing all gods, for driving a wedge
Through the marriage contract
Slay one dragon.
Oh, we poets are a tough breed of killer
& I gets lonesome Dr.
Blood.
The good fight becomes a bore.
For shouting in a vacuum, for creating in a pismire
For existing in a dung heap, for continuing nonetheless
Slay one dragon.
Tide turns,
'ventually. Dogs glow &
The good moon barks. Your move,
Dr Blood.
Save me.
Black Sabbath
for John Berryman
”There is an eye, there
was a slit.”
Not so much to peer out of but fall into.
As darkness falls with a report upon the heads.
Henry House & myriad other scatterlings
Strangled in fearsome visions, O.
Nurse Ratchet intent toward attending
The tempered mice hushed in slippers 'neath the beds.
Framed within the darkened pane the owl hungers
While the haunt of voices scratch the glass.
My girl, my ghoul, a shade across the branch
Mouths mournful incantations to the wind
Rousing Helter Skelter living dead between the manses
Their arms extended as if to lunch.
Sabbath tolls & uniforms emerge en masse
To heap their weight upon the wards.
With pills for teeth, saws for hands & kerosene for breath they pass
Poised to excavate the skulls of every coloured bird.
The brainpan answers, keening bedlam's catch
& at the gassy heave, sudden, strikes a match.
