This Living Skin

Anonymous Medusa Painting

AFTER READING A FRENCH SYMBOLIST ANTHOLOGY
—Tom Goff, Carmichael, CA

If this world is a living skin, an organ
that membranes all created life immune
by power of green—as even lady Gorgon
went woman-skinned, not serpent-crowned, no moon-
face, yet, to crater humans via stone glance—
if this world is a living skin, it’s old,
it shrugs an asphalt jacket over Romance,
wrinkling, shriveling, shuddering with cold
as only an overheated, fevered one
can shake. Would some vaccine could intervene,
as we inject to forestall the shingles’ sore
red welts, apply strong hypodermic sun.
What needle could irradiate this scene,
so stimulate the green to self-restore?

Late in our span, prevention must dream far
to fend off Martian rifts, canals that scar…  

 Uma Thurman as Medusa

BERKELEY, OR ENVY
—Tom Goff

You’re poised before the arch of the great school
that crowns these forehead hills, veil rilling down
from where the Campanile commands all rule
and realm, blue Bay whose glitter weaves the gown.
Ahead, that wellspring’s mystical renewal
whose taste you need so little where you’re bound:
for lovely you are Youth. And Time’s most cruel
ensorcelment, blighting, wrinkling, has me found
gray-fingered, shrunken, shriveled. Given the gift
of luscious life, you lofty dears get more;
we lesser in luck sense boons removed. What rift
parts us, me inland city, you sweet shore?
I, if I could shut this chasm tight as fate,
might dissolve and sift with you through Sather Gate.

FOR THERESA McCOURT
—Tom Goff

Theresa, when you ran your one last run,
you, being you, must have held to the poet’s
firm gait we mete right out as feet bestow it,
verse by quick verse; yet you could, as John Donne
did always, pattern your patter more to shun
the starkly constricting beat, aiming to show it
fluid as all the pace-changes we go at,
yet hell-bent to consummate—and end?—the fun:

We marathon some by rule and some by feel,
keep contact with the leaders, with our shins.
You’d test your artifice on objects real,
try verse’s finishing kick, when deeds and sins
contend for balance. Later, memory gone,
distracted in crowds, you’d still glide fine, good swan. 

Cleveland Haiku #436

Kids chase away
a family of deer
grazing in the park

* * *

Cleveland Haiku #437

Gas well in the middle
of a park's parking lot—
almost hidden

* * *

Cleveland Haiku #438

Hidden beneath City Hall
and the park, the creek
leaves the park openly

* * *

Cleveland Haiku #440

Man-made mounds hiding
the nothing going on
behind them


—Michael Ceraolo, Willoughby Hills, OH

______________________

Today's LittleNip:

Cleveland Haiku #439
—Michael Ceraolo

Poetry reading—
more ponytails on the men
than the women

______________________

—Medusa, with thanks to Tom Goff and Michael Ceraolo for today’s fine poetry!

 Celebrate poetry! Sacramento Poet Lytton Bell 
will read at the Good Earth Movement Cooperative 
in Placerville tonight, 250 Main St., 6:30pm.
And don’t forget that the 

Gold Rush Writers Conference begins today in 

Mokelumne Hill. See goldrushwriters.com/.

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