.
Durus Frater, Alma Mater
Spring forward to where former arch-rivals
Fall back on tall stories of the travels
They enjoyed after two years of college,
Before graduation sealed the knowledge
Of how little there was to learn keeping
Track of credit hours, how hours spent sleeping
Made for better use of limited time.
Years prior, select committees stemmed crime
By coming down hard on the rank cheaters,
Making sure that red-handed repeaters
Were expelled and never even given
A further hearing, but swiftly driven
From plush parietal sanctuary
And sent home in disgrace—thank you, Mary-
Joseph-Jesus, and thank those other good
Saints who stood watch over the neighborhood.
It paid to have a practical system
For keeping students in line; sound custom
Was to see that standards never faltered
Even when illegal nostrums altered
Perceptions in the student-body mind-
Set. Young liberal professors turned a blind
Eyeball to much that was going on then;
Thus it fell to a few upright young men
To take such matters into their own hands
By bringing one or two modest demands
Before a very conservative dean
Close to retirement. Impressed with the clean-
Cut appearance of these quite serious
Petitioners, through no mysterious
Thought process he said some new informants
Would do much to ease his daily torments.
Spring forward to forty-odd years later:
Those gathered prefer an elevator
To long flights of stairs for the most part—if
They’re given a choice. Their joints have gone stiff,
But their hearts flex as one toward the center.
The late spring in their steps as they enter
The reunion tent has much more to do
With May than with kind years charged to renew
Old habit. All but a very few now
Have moderated judgment with know-how
To let past grievances be forgiven.
O Lord, how mightily they have striven.
.
.
From Theanthropism to Apotheosis
To deify
the fountainhead
from which all love
derives is just
to reify
that spirit said
to stand above
the trodden dust.
This spirit may
be God, or not—
what’s crucial is
that love’s the same
whichever way
this love’s begot,
in Jesus’s
Or Mammon’s name.
Regarding whence
implicit claims
that love as such
is not abstract,
the evidence
lies not in names
used overmuch,
but in the act.
As for the source
of everything
that’s counted good:
if heaven-sent,
then in due course
shall voices ring
that understood
the firmament.
Though heads be but
assembled parts
from nature’s store,
it won’t seem odd
when laymen mut-
ter that the heart’s
expansive core
is like a god.
If none can tell
with certainty
the earnest drink-
er from the wine,
then just as well
might all agree
that lofty think-
ing is divine.
.
.
Poor Relations
.
Masoch’s Sister
Utter sadness is a vastly underrated mood,
And it is better finding happiness in being sad
Than it ever could be clinging to the attitude
That Schadenfreude’s bad.
For this alone we should be glad.
.
Melville’s Wife
Her criticism was a blistering
Assault upon his several verbal arts:
She said he should swig quarts of Listerine
To cleanse his breath, and learn to stifle farts.
He offered her a choice of herbal teas
To calm her heart and balm her snooty nose,
But she would swallow naught but ambergris
And bellowed from her tonsils, “Thar she blows!”
.
Pound’s Bastard Son
All poems are found objects lacking worth unless
Obsessive tinkers take the time to write them down.
A verse is none the worse for wear when critics bless
The sterling artistry, yet still bestow a frown
Upon its shameful framer. Poets may confess
Dark sins, but only from some other distant town.
.
Snoop Dogg’s In-laws
A dog is well attuned to guilt and shame.
You’ll know this when you look into his eyes—
Or her eyes, if it happens she’s a bitch.
For humans, most especially if they’re rich
And famous ones, a different rule applies:
Reported crimes will magnify their fame.
.
Saddam’s Mother
His birth entailed both pain and wasted breath;
And later, gazing from the paradise
Reserved for mothers prone to sacrifice,
She watched her little monster meet his death.
.
.
C.B. Anderson was the longtime gardener for the PBS television series, The Victory Garden. Hundreds of his poems have appeared in scores of print and electronic journals out of North America, Great Britain, Ireland, Austria, Australia and India. His collection, Mortal Soup and the Blue Yonder was published in 2013 by White Violet Press.
I suspect you were the star of your reunion with your stories and witty observations of life. It is sad and amazing how your liberal professors infiltrated the ranks of academia. I have written several poems myself on the phenomenon. Becoming an informant took courage. I suspect the pendulum continues to swing to the left as the only goal is the sheepskin now abetted by the use of artificial intelligence that continues to expand. Your additional compendium of poems are trenchant incisive skewers of an exceedingly wide range of individuals. For me the best one is “Snopp Dog’s In-laws” with the spot-on conclusion, “Reported crimes will magnify their fame.”
In fact, Roy, I did not attend my fiftieth due to their insistence that all attendees needed to provide assurance that they had taken the jab. Well, that was something I could not provide, so fuck them. I’m done with those woke assholes, and they need no longer ask me for donations to their Fund. I should commit a crime, just to see what happens.
Good grief!
“From Theanthropism” is my favorite. The craftsmanship is magnificent. Not only do you surmount the challenge of sixains in rhyming dimeter, you make it sound natural while addressing a weighty subject. I read it twice: once to enjoy the sheer musicality and again to grasp the message.
“Poor Relations” is a nice motley assembly of imagined relations that give us little flavors of human life. “Durus Frater” is an insightful reminiscence seen through the wisdom of decades of hindsight – and conveys a satisfying sense of closure.
I won’t deny, Adam, that dimeter is a challenge, but the “weighty subject” is something I wrestle with every day, and I am a bit unsure of what message I really want to convey.
Isn’t closure something that all of us are always looking for?
I see “Durus Frater…” as syllabic verse — each line is ten syllables, but scanning them as iambic is difficult. No matter — the poem tells its story clearly, in rhyming couplets that move the narrative along briskly.
“From Theanthropism…” is indeed a striking piece — concise, provocative, and unexpected all at the same time. The ABCDABCD rhyme scheme of each section provides linkage while avoiding the singsong quality that is a menace in rhyming poems of short lines. The lines about how none can tell the drinker from the wine reminded me of Yeats’s “How can we tell the dancer from the dance?”
“Poor Relations” is really funny, as it depicts obscure relatives with their more famous counterparts. I don’t know if Masoch had a sister, but even if she is fictional this is a nicely imagined glimpse of her, or of someone’s words about her or the family as a whole. As for Melville’s wife, I can’t help imagining that here she is an objective correlative for the great white whale. What a battleaxe!
Pound did have a bastard son (Omar), but it was not from his own siring. His wife had an affair while she was on vacation in Egypt. Apart from its comments on critical reactions to poetry, I wonder if this piece is a sly allusion to that fact. Snoop Dogg was already famous before the revelations of his crimes, but now you could say that he is infamous. As Anderson suggests, it doesn’t seem to matter in terms of celebrity.
As for Saddam’s mom, she’s an icon of all those mothers who have the unspeakable misfortune of seeing their offspring grow up into something bad.
K.A.N.D!
Yes, Joseph. Though you will surely find a good iambic pentameter line here and there, the poem is essentially syllabic. And yes, “the drinker from the wine” was drawn directly from Yeats. I don’t know much about Snoop Dogg, and I don’t much care for Corona beer. Saddam’s greatest sorrow must have been learning of his sons’ deaths, unless he was worse than I thought. I have no idea what is in the heart of an Iraqi mother.
C.B., I have every praise for the work and wisdom that go into the poetic gems you produce – gems that shine ever the brighter the older I get. The comments section has me bristling – “fuck them” indeed. Some will never reap the benefit of those who shimmer in a dim world – I pity their loss.