It’s Happened (by Marcus Bales)

 

It’s Happened
by Marcus Bales

It’s happened once or twice to everyone:
You post a piece of work you hope will burn
If not as brightly as the noonday sun
At least enough that those who read it learn
A little bit, or have a little fun.
And then there’s only silence in return,
As if you’d cussed where no one ought to cuss –
It happens now and then to all of us.
 
It sometimes helps to introduce the thread
Again another time – but sometimes not;
It’s hard to judge if it was what you said
Or how you said it that was such a blot.
How dreadful when your favored topic’s dead
Beside the information highway, caught
And flattened by the dire silence bus —
It happens now and then to all of us.
 
If you are disappointed when you post
Your scintillating topic to the list
Because it seems you, only, were engrossed
By what you had to say, don’t get so pissed
Or hurt or pouty that you’re diagnosed
A solipsist, unmissed if you exist,
A victim of your own concluding “Thus …” —
It happens now and then to all of us.
 
Envoi:
Other posters!  Let me get a witness!
How many times do others not discuss
The topics we’ve presented with such fitness?
How often have they shunned as not a plus
Our posts about the puppyness or kittenness
Of pups or kittens over which we fuss?
It happens now and then to all of us.

* * * * *

Not much is known about Marcus Bales, except he lives in Cleveland, Ohio, and his poems have not been published in The New Yorker or Poetry magazine.

The Reading (by Marcus Bales)

 

The Reading
by Marcus Bales

Her mouth too near the microphone
            She first intoned her title; 
Her voice a buzzing monotone 
She said, I think, our souls would moan
With howls like Allen Ginsberg’s own,
And slurred and blurred her dreary drone,
            In tedious recital.
 
She gripped the podium on stage,
            Her poem never ending —
And only her decrepit age
Assuaged the next three readers’ rage
As, turning yet another page,
She spent our time as if her wage
            Depended on its spending.
 
As moderator, I did not
            Perceive a lot of choice
As murmurs grew: somebody ought,
No, had, to halt her verbal squat
So toad-like in our garden spot,
And find a way to staunch this rot
            By stoppering her voice.
 
So arms out toward, as I’d been taught,
            The middle of the mass,
I aimed, breathed out, and squeezed, and shot
The leather-lunged and doddering blot
Who’d droned along as if she thought
That once she’d seized the mike she’d got
            Some sort of life-time pass.
 
The general approach of Law,
            And many of its minions,
To shooting someone through the craw
For her inane blah blah blah blah,
However last that last last straw,
Is that it is a fatal flaw
            In not a few opinions.
 
The prosecutor even shed
            A manly tear to show it
Had moved him greatly she was dead:
“Her pure poetic spirit fled
Prosaic Death’s pedestrian tread … “
“Wait, wait — “ the jury foreman said
            “You say she was a poet?”
 
The prosecutor said “Indeed!
            And she was published widely —
I’ll use your question to proceed
To show you.” He began to read.
At length, the foreman knelt to plead:
“Stop reading! We have all agreed!
            We can’t abide this idly!
 
“You’ve put us through this punishment
            And made your case absurder;
We find the shooter innocent
Of any criminal intent —
Indeed, we actively lament
Your sly attempt to represent
            This noble act as murder.
 
“We hold free speech must know its place
            If it is to continue:
You must not underbid your ace,
Nor doubt the Holy Spirit’s grace,
Nor sing the tune if you’re a bass,
For decency demands you face
            The moral law within you!
 
“But poets who have read too long
            Must all be superceded —
We urge you when you’re in a throng
While poets thus are in the wrong,
To make your protest very strong
And aim to end such ceaseless song
            With shot and shell as he did!”
 
The prosecutor gave a sigh
            And packed away his pleadings,
Then gave me such a look goodbye
It made me think he meant to try
To mutely say, or just imply,
That maybe I’d be wise if I
            No longer read at readings.

* * * * *

Not much is known about Marcus Bales, except he lives in Cleveland, Ohio, and his poems have not been published in The New Yorker or Poetry magazine.