ARCHIVES - C.B. Anderson EPO Poems Prior to 2023
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A FRAGILE TRUCE

The world dispenses sudden stillnesses
As cold as frost and dry as Melba toast,
But what this noise-arresting illness is
Has never been precisely diagnosed.

We're used to waves of feverish commotion
That tend to overload an open mind
And challenge any rational devotion
To silent nights drummed up for humankind.

The urban world we live in is a mire,
A labyrinth informed by fallen states
Of quasi-intellectual desire
That loves the endless processes, but hates

Itself. And that is where the battle ends:
Contested realms neck-deep in indecision,
With no one brave enough to buck the trends
Or to ameliorate the next collision

Between established norms and novel notions.
The quietude occurring now and then,
Supported by repose-inducing potions,
Enjoins us to refill our cup: Say when!

NOT FAR FROM GARDINER, MAINE

                           1.
          I studied them near half my life
Before I dared to put them in a poem,
         Though when I sauntered with my wife
Through town, I acted like I didn't know 'em.

         I hoped they'd never realize
What I had written while their backs were turned
        And force me to apologize
Profusely as my manuscripts were burned.

                           2.
        The town librarian discovered
There was a rising poet in their midst.
        When I returned some books, she hovered
Until I borrowed more; and I was blitzed

        With phone calls from her lettered friends,
Who gathered every other Wednesday night
        To slam new literary trends,
Till I agreed to join them, and recite.

       After the reading and the thank-you
She cornered me, her eyes all too adoring:
       She said strong lines were what she drank to --
Compared to me, Ed Robinson was boring.

FREEWHEELING

The preservation of the central radix
From which profound philosophies arise
Requires much more than ordinary hay-ricks
To guarantee a store of opened eyes

Come spring. It's in our nature to obsess
About the details of the fluid world
In which we've all been swimming. Nonetheless,
The wall against which our complaints are hurled

Is solid as Gibraltar. It resists
Assaults more easily than mortal flesh
Can fend disease or rid itself of cysts,
And howsoever gladly we refresh

Ourselves in salutary mineral springs,
Magnesium can only go so far
To reinvigorate our flagging wings
Or reconfigure what we truly are.

Although it's laudable to think before we act,
Deliberation's not our strongest suit,
And caution's just a moldy artifact
Of stuffy rule books long considered moot.

GRAY SABBATH
 

Today is yesterday, and roses stink.
Paved roads get in the way. The sky is pink,

And no one has a point of view. Cold facts
Are served on platters of unnatural acts.

Thanksgiving is a habitude that reeks
Of corn and death, of Brussels sprouts and leeks

That spent all summer growing. In a word,
Redemptive institutions are absurd

And offer nothing for the misanthrope
Who'd rather spend the winter smoking dope

Alone, at home among the memories
Of coconuts and airbrushed lemon trees.

The married life is not for everyone,
Especially when the root of having fun

Is undermined by hungry gnawing species
That know no better than to spread their feces

Across a dormant lawn. The land is fertile,
But landlords fear the wormy beds which girdle

A sinking house. Their handsome sons are gay.
There's no tomorrow. Happy Holiday.

A PRAYER FOR DELIVERANCE

            O Lord,

Protect us from religious nuts
Who want to commandeer our souls
So they might feed us only what's
Inside their musty cubbyholes.

Let them believe what they believe --
But if consistent with Your will,
Then grant us now a brief reprieve
And make their harping tongues be still.

Lest all our hearts begin to harden
And we become like Pharisees,
Prepare for them a separate garden
Where they may proselytize the trees:

Of preaching we have had enough.
Your word is money in the bank,
Much better than inflated stuff
Evangelists purvey. We thank

       You, Lord.

                             ____________________

DAMAGES

Her Mona Lisa smile and upright carriage
Belied the fact that she was victim of
A life gone wrong: a pickle-sour mismarriage
That bit the bitter dust. So much for love.

When starting fresh, she set her sights upon
The type whose values overrode his lust,
A person made of stuff a marathon
Is won with, someone who would earn her trust.

It's not a crime to wish, but for a fact,
A man is only what he is -- no more,
No less -- pursuing every carnal act
With all due haste, a sprinter to the core.

A round of sex ensures no lifelong bond,
And might not even make the heart grow fond.

HOME INVASIONS

Just as the weatherman was blathering
About a hurricane off Yucatan,
The storm clouds here at home were gathering
Above our heads. We didn't have a plan

For flooding streams that likely would ensue,
Nor had we stocked our pantries with the food
That we would need to see us safely through
Calamitous events that might intrude

Upon our normative complacency.
In Mexico, all hatches had been battened
By heartless drug lords who, to some degree,
Were conscious of the folks on whom they fattened.

This story doesn't really have an ending,
Because it all depends on who will rush
The gates and who will staunchly be defending
The breach from which marauding legions gush.

Strong winds may augur either good or ill,
Depending on just where they're coming from,
But flaking paint upon a windowsill
Does not imply that households must succumb

To every burglar who would break and enter.
The world is full of fools who hem and haw
About what's right, reviling each dissenter
Who favors full enforcement of the Law.

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SHIFTING SANDS

The moving finger writes, but what it writes
Might be seditious or erroneous,
Enough to keep the lawyers up at nights
Deciding whether acts felonious

Occurred. "Most anything but shouting Fire!
Inside a crowded theater is legal,
And Darwin saw old paradigms expire
While traveling the world aboard the Beagle,

Then dared to publish: What a holocaust!
In just a few short years, established norms
Were overturned, the old religion tossed
By storms based on evolving living forms.

This knotty problem still has not been solved
Completely: Many weighty questions linger.
It's obvious that humans have evolved,
But has there never been a moving finger

That pushed the keys of mankind's destiny?
Perhaps it all comes down to what belief
Exerts its preternatural sovereignty
Within the context of a life too brief.

THE GOSPELS REVISITED

A disciple of Jesus may do as he pleases
Just so long as he honors the Lord,
And the valley of sin is no place to begin,
Unless hoping to meet His swift sword.

The example of Mary should make a girl wary
Of allowing the spirit inside,
For as soon as she did an improbable kid
Was conceived in a working man's bride.

The reaction of Joseph was far from explosive,
Though his helpmate had proven untrue.
With a semblance of joy he looked after the boy,
For what else was a cuckold to do?

Now, the turn of events, more than thirty years thence,
Put a host of misgivings to bed,
For the old rugged cross, the new emblem of loss,
Was established once Jesus was dead.

Whether true resurrection or gross vivisection
Is a question for scholars to ponder,
But as best we can tell, troubling visions of hell
Don't exist in that country up yonder.

STARK PASTORAL

I passed beside a meadow where the kine
Were grazing placidly -- as is their wont --
Lamenting that not one of them was mine
To milk or to make use of as a font

Of grass-fed yearling beef or precious veal.
The workings of a dairy must seem cruel
To vegans who disdain a hearty meal,
But it so happens that a single bull

Can service dozens of receptive cows.
I have no issue with organic farmers
That till the earth with oxen-powered plows,
But I'm averse to strident false-alarmers

Who dare to tell me how I ought to live.
Economy demands that excess males
Be used -- if only in a nutritive
Capacity, which naturally entails

The letting of great quantities of blood.
The lucky bull that grazes with his harem,
A docile herd content to chew their cud,
Stands like a spadix in a glade of arum.

THINKING, FEELING, AND WILLING

The sooner we reject the gut and brain,
The sooner will the feeling heart's domain
Begin to dominate our labile souls,
Consigning will and thought to lesser roles.

No longer shall a rational approach
Inform the actions of a steady coach
Or help him make appropriate decisions
When mediating visceral collisions

Between an oversized offensive line
And monsters rising from the ocean's brine,
Which leads apace to mutual destruction,
Forestalling comity's reintroduction.

The constant practice of freewheeling feeling,
No matter how instinctive and appealing
To liberal souls, is rarely adequate
To calculate the long and short of it.

Unthinking action's vain fellatio,
Devoid of principle and ratio,
As far as anyone can see will tend
To render many an unraveled end.

This lame approach of going with the flow,
As most sure-footed pragmatists well know,
Results in shipwrecks on a swelling tide,
A course that's tantamount to suicide.



                ---------------

BORDER WARS

Not every territory has been mapped
With fixed political geography,
But where our penciled boundaries overlapped
We founded neutral zones of comity.

The fragrant bait with which we set our traps
Turned out to be less needful than we thought
Because no matter how at odds our maps,
We both were more than happy to be caught.

It's not our foremost aim to live in peace
Or hunker down in pleasant comfort zones;
In fact, should strife and conflict ever cease,
We'd miss the chance to gnaw each other's bones.

Our time together left no trace of doubt
That we were destined for a clash of arms,
For neither one of us can do without
The night raids or the sounding of alarms.

Vitality and beauty may not last,
And open doors may someday soon be closed,
But close encounters from the recent past
Have shown no signs of giving up the ghost.

PUBLIC OPINION

What answers are expected from
A man encountered on the street
Whose daily games are zero-sum
And whose exalted gods have feet

Of clay? And who would want to question
A ne'er-do-well in need of food
Who suffers chronic indigestion
With such a fractious attitude?

"It takes all kinds," the adage goes,
But policies the likes of this,
Like voters forced to hold their nose,
Deserve acute analysis.

A more decisive course might be
To overcome our fathers' failures
And institute a legacy
Where sons and daughters cheat their jailers.

Our mothers, too, must share the blame
For crippling children whom they coddled
In Doctor Spock's infernal name,
A plan by which young souls were throttled.

Marketplace

A DESULTORY CRITIQUE OF UNIFORMITARIANISM

END GAME

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