Epigrams

What Lourdes, France is for global religious tourism, Monument Mountain is for devotees of American literature. A sudden cloudburst brought Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville shoulder to shoulder as they sought refuge under an outcropping en route to a very fancy picnic on the summit of Monument Mountain on August 5, 1850.

Taking the waters at the literary Lourdes of the Berkshires, Monument Mountain, Juky 2021; Mathew Lavalette photo.

Same mountain, earlier poem:

Paean to an Eminence

This geologic oddment in the Berkshires,
our bald uncle, with busted nose, looms

where echo of the penultimate Mohican sounds,
unperturbed by pale poets, disturbers of myth,
who revere the Hawthorne-Melville rain delay.

Snug as it would fit in the hopper of majestic Mount Greylock,
for us with tastes prosaic, Monument Mountain is our pet rock.

– Dave Read
(Paean to an Eminence was published by Trustees of Reservations, 2008, Views of Monument Mountain.)

Souls of gray folk

Since my gig on the edge of the ‘hood,
when the brothers agreed this blue-eyed
devil wasn’t English, I’ve grown aggrieved

As my nation re-Segregates, collecting
in buckets of identity tied to skin, as if
Martin Luther King’s life was but a dream.

Dave Read

After Boomer Era

Age of the inchoates, in thrall to gonads,
which define them, how they come
to terms with what else matters –

Manners, for example, have gone
the way of the whalebone corset,
replaced by lemony spandex fads.

Dave Read

Founding Shyster

Nixon’s boy, Lewis Powell,
is more responsible for our

descent into Trumpian hell

than all the Founding Fathers
you can shake a stick at.

Dave Read

Knew Baltimore Catechism

Who kneed poetry?

Market forces kneed poetry.

Why do market forces kneed poetry?

Because poets don’t need money.

Dave Read

Battle them for the Republic

USA is one busted nation,
Where writers write, typers type,
and suckers take dictation.

Dave Read

Let’s start over

Do women err when they quit
the domestication of men, in favor
of the imitation of them?

Dave Read

Nature’s trombone

All schoolhouse poets, and their tutors,
toot with brand name flutes –

While in the wild, and alone,
the poet plays nature’s trombone.

Dave Read

Schools of Poetry

In order to succeed among any school’s greedy,
naught helps so much as to have been born needy.

Dave Read

Saturday rosary

Shod, my feet wish release, but can not pray.
Instead of beseech, they take matters into
their own hands – they take me to the beach.

Dave Read

Haiku is no sneeze

Each of us, thank god, can sneeze –
but the genius of the haiku is in

Occidental rarities: the Zen monk

Discipline and devotion practiced
by its inventors, the Japanese.

Dave Read

Lament for the Poets of Little England

For those, a thing heaven sent –
for these, a hell, their homes.

Those love sights, love scents –
these feel unwell, and profess poems.

Dave Read

Did Fiona Fail Hill Republicans?

On Capitol Hill the deliberate American
Fiona Hill demonstrates proper behavior
in the face of corruption and resigns

After the department that granted
her wish of American citizenship

Fell prey to temps who work at the behest
of the lone soul to challenge Henry Vlll
for the title of history’s #1 pig, dolt, and liar*.

*Pig, dolt and liar – Martin Luther, in reference to Henry Vlll

Dave Read

Play Skool

As the impressment of American sailors dropped
the British another rung down the ladder of states,
all the way down to Pirate’s Cove,

The impressment of poetry* shall dunk the
American academy lower still – it’ll
be deep-sixed, by Jove.

Dave Read

*Since the 1970 expose´ of the Famous Writer’s School, more than 800 “creative writing” programs have sprung up on American college campuses.