Thomas Rodes
is a semi-retired and fully burnt-out information management consultant who spends the cold months in the Washington, D.C. suburbs and summers and falls at his farm in rural Maine.
Aside from writing poetry, his short-term objective is to build a new smithy this summer to replace his portable forge. Recent works have appeared in The Panhandler, the American Organist and The Shit Creek Review.
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Plainsongs
A “guzzanelle”
In lifetimes spent chanting those simple plain songs,
our flabby clipped wings mark us birds kept in cages.
Oh, why must we drone on with tired vain songs?
So take up a sword and try out Gawain’s songs
of action and fury. No knighthood engages
in lifetimes spent chanting those simple plain songs.
You’d poison the well and drown out the rain’s songs
or spread a dread plague that’s been proven contagious.
Oh, why must we drone on with tired vain songs?
The great men don’t waste time with scatterbrained songs
when half the world’s happy with minimum wages
in lifetimes spent chanting those simple plain songs.
Mahatma taught Hindi-Islamic-Jain songs
so peacefully mixed on competing soundstages.
Oh, why must we drone on with tired vain songs?
There’s hubris in poems and rhymed arcane songs
as surely as pride lies behind war’s rampages
in lifetimes spent chanting those simple plain songs.
With endless, canonical, boring refrains, songs
of peace are ignored throughout all the dark ages
in lifetimes spent chanting those simple plain songs.
Oh, why do we drone on with tired vain songs?
Decima to Haditha
Damn good jarhead blown to hell,
his second tour in the sandbox, down
and dead. The hadjis in town—
the burkas—they know damn well
who planted this shit. Think they’ll tell?
Fuckin-A, a bag of dicks.
Goddamn cameljocks, same old tricks,
farmer’s armor, friggin’ tin can,
useless brain sponge. Unsat, man.
It’s raghead season, take your licks.
True-Value Billy
You gotta wonder what ol’ Billy read
at bedtime. Probably hardware catalogs
and building codes. A lot of people said
he only changed his clothes to slaughter hogs
and that’s the way he got his trademark smell.
But when it came to lead-and-oakum joints,
the old boy had the dope: Scrape out the bell
and tamp the hemp, he’d say until his points
stayed made. Before you melt your pour you should
have all your parts and tools in place. I doubt
that he prepared for any livelihood
without the store and so he plumb checked out.
Most folks went to Wal-Mart so they’d save
a buck or two on daisies for his grave.
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