[Edmund Conti]

The Love Song of J. Billy Collins

You are the diner in sawdust restaurants,
the other woman in one-night cheap hotels.
You are one of those women talking of Michelangelo
and Rembrandt and Picasso and Klee.
You are the woman who dares to eat a peach
or even mangoes and over-ripe bananas.

However, you are not a pair of ragged claws,
And, dear, you never scuttle.
Nor do you shimmy, slither or sashay.
And you are certainly not the confidant of Ezra Pound.
There is no way you could be the confidant of Ezra Pound.

It might interest you to know,
speaking of mandarin oranges and things poetical,
that I am not Prince Hamlet
or any other Great Dane you might know.

But I am the yellow smoke that glides along the street
and the patient etherized upon a table.
But don’t worry, I am not the diner in sawdust restaurants.
You are still the diner in the restaurant.
You will always be the diner in the restaurant.
Not to mention the sawdust on the floor and—somehow-- the cheap wine.

[Edmund Conti]

One more and then I'll quit unless I find my chicken-crossing-the-road poem. But not to worry, I am not looking too hard.

I have to say these were fun to read and a bright beginning for the year. Don't know if I have a favorite yet but I do like the goofy silliness of "Emperor of Birthday Cake."

A Howler
Allen Ginsberg’s take on ”Going to Extremes” by Richard Armour

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by the yearning for ketchup, starving, frustrated,
dragging themselves through suburban kitchens looking for a fix of red,
angry hamburger lovers burning for that old Heinz magic.
I’m with you on the patio where the grill spatters and the hamburger wails for embellishment.
I’m with you on the patio in my dreams I am dripping from a sudden explosion
of that controlled substance that Ronald Reagan called a vegetable.


Going to Extremes

Shake and shake
The catsup bottle.
None’ll come
And then a lot’ll.