I am a metre-wanker and
my head is full of sums.
I work alone with what’s my own
and tweak it till it comes.

It seldom happens straight away
but I can give it time.
I lubricate and titillate
with assonance and rhyme.

I pander to my passion for
felicity of diction,
which I believe I can achieve
by gentle, rhythmic friction.

At first I feel it firming up,
then it will sigh and soften.
I know each stage from urge to page
because I do it often.

With optimistic tinkering
and educated guess
I take the thing and make it sing
a self-indulgent Yesssss!

.

To be sung, without much trouble, to the tune of The River Driver.

Wet Blanket

I’ve never liked the notion of a muse.
I guess I’ve got a thing about control.
Not for me, the wimpy, passive role:
“Strike me, inspiration! Leave a bruise!
Dominate me any way you choose!
My sheets await your pleasure! Singe my soul!
Excite me!” I won’t grovel to cajole
some dom to fill my fountain pen with ooze.

Why do so many poets seem to think
their creativity’s a femme fatale
whose fickle favor keeps them in her thrall?
How odd that this is such a common kink,
an ages-old creative fountainhead.
Myself, I never bring my work to bed.

Poetry is silly.
There, I have admitted it.
Yet somehow, willy nilly,
at times I have committed it.
Though Shakespeare's reputation
won't suffer by comparison,
my own versification
is weak, but not embarrassin'.

Verses vs. Verses

Every iamb, every trochee, every anapestic joke he
Tries to tell is more annoying than the last one.
With each spondee, with each dactyl, she seems flaky as a fractal.
Are they stoned or drunk or trying to pull a fast one?

When their measures wax erotic, they look weirdly un-exotic.
All those rhymes and rhythms they keep having fun with
May be just benignly strange, or may pose some grave moral danger,
So beware the foolish straw their gold is spun with.

Some are Beat and some Romantic. All their egos are gigantic.
Keep your distance when they try to draw you close.
Their metaphors are snares that will catch you unawares,
And their similes are like a fatal dose.

Some are living, some are dead, some are Sylvia and Ted,
And you wouldn’t want to drink with them or date them.
The way they play with words, like a chef with dead, plucked birds
Makes you wonder why God bothered to create them.

Still Still

Still thinking sounds

still in a poem
still are breaths
unseen or read

still latent breaths
said silently
when lips are still

said aloud
or voice recorded
still though sounded

still leaves me breathless!

To My Lover, After Our Discussion of Poetry

When you came in last night and said, "What's that
you're writing?" and I answered "Poetry",
you told me that I couldn't feed the cat,
much less indulge in truffles and Chablis,
on what I'd earn by that. So now I know:
You need a higher income in your bed,
a lawyer or a lady CEO
whose metaphors are businesslike as bread.
Tomorrow I'll have one last rhyming bout,
pack luggage, do the laundry and my hair.
When you come home you'll find that I've moved out,
taking my unproductive life elsewhere.
We're through, my love. But since you knew no better,
I've left this poem and not a Dear John letter.

Trimeter

If triple-footed rhyme
is droning to-and-fro,
well then, from time to time
arrange a change in flow -
like so.

And here are a couple of really awful ones - never submitted and never published, for obvious reasons - which were among my first attempts at metrical poetry.

From the Tomb of the Unknown Division Manager

When I set forth in industry each day
my thoughts were parsed in sharp execu-tese:
nouns turned to verbs the proper corporate way
by bulleting on focused strategies.
I dreamed in PowerPointed pros and cons:
strengths, weaknesses, advantages and threats -
replaced emotions with comparisons -
this gain, that loss, those assets and these debts.

But now I scribble lines bemusedly
as sonnet, haiku, tanka, dithyramb;
select with pentametric pedant’s glee
each shadowed word; and carefully enjamb
the diverse turns of life and poetry
in one last twist: I think, therefore, iamb!

Well Aged Whine

My name is Michael Cantor and I come
to poetry too late in life to bang
out unaffected verse – I bear the sum
of years in suits and neckties, dreams that sang
of balance sheets and factories and much less
crowd every line – old Yiddish curses,
half-remembered stories, thoughts that mess
and twist my words in visa verses.

My mind retains with seamless care
ten recipes for boneless leg of lamb;
a fourth round draft choice jostles Baudelaire;
all cram together in an anagram
of names, dates, faces, places; poems abound
in corners of my mental Lost and Found.


And I almost forgot this ghazal (I slip my name in on the penultimate line - not the last - not sure that's kosher.)

Puzzle

Forlorn, upset, inclined at times to ramble and romanticize? Recite a ghazal.
Awake and rubbing reddened eyes, temptations to soliloquize invite a ghazal.

Alone, at home, uncertain as to what you are, enraptured
by the kind of lies I think that I should realize, I fight a ghazal.

In internet cafes that hide from dawn, adrift and captured
by the dark, before the the sun begins to rise, the night’s a ghazal.

Bemused and then besieged in turn, bedazzled and befuddled;
unsure of what truth really lies behind an overdone disguise, I spite the ghazal

Aware it’s time to turn from you, resist your call, and start anew;
but backed up by the pact we’ve made, demoralized by compromise, my plight’s a ghazal.

Poor acrobat without a net, poor circus clown whose time is due;
in time, when time at last arrives to twist in air and rhapsodize, delight in ghazal.

I can’t or won’t refuse to fly; the ride defines the answer to my puzzle;
I’ll don a spangled pair of tights and take a breath and close my eyes, and write a ghazal.

Women Only Write About Themselves

Women only write about themselves.
     When they compose,
a therapeutic ooze engulfs and salves
     a woman’s woes.
That self-absorbed confession self-absolves,
     while readers doze.
Women only write about themselves.
     Enough of those.

When men say “I”, their “I” is universal.
     Their strong hearts bleed
for all the tribe. Applaud their verses’ muscle!
     Attend! Give heed!
The female “I” is narcissistic. Facile.
     A feeble reed.
When men say “I”, their “I” is universal.
     It’s all we need.

—from Rattle #51, Spring 2016
Tribute to Feminist Poets

Although I never published in the Shit Creek Review, I was fond of its editor and wrote this poem after he said that he had already heard all the possible jokes about the journal's name. I thought I might have one that had not yet swum into his ken.


On First Looking into the Shit Creek Review

Much have I savored from the Muse’s bowel
Those droppings with their various perfumes
That nourish paean, dithyramb, and howl
As cowpats breed mind-altering mushrooms.
I oft the accolade “good shit” have heard,
Applied sometime to verse, sometime to weed,
Yet never got as high as sacred turd
Permits till I Shit Creek Review did read.
Then felt I as Sir William must have felt
When first into his ken Uranus swam
And his mind’s nostrils flared and glory smelt:
I reeled beneath the heavenly Shazam!
That makes great marvels of the merest stools
And brims each chamber pot with priceless jewels.