The Poetry Of...
Maurice Oliver......................................................
Believing In Fairytales...
for instance
a whole wide world ahead
& Frankenstein, of course
stuck offstage in morning
traffic or shackled by magic
or secured by straps fastened
with buckles or Velcro
or maybe the Wicked Witch
wearing a vacant lot
of fine virgin turf
did she sail so cheap
or BoPeep's sheep
& their thirst for revenge
in a hall of mirrors where
the same play is called
every huddle or could the
dead actually watch over
the living or return as
paper cutouts in a jean ad
then years later grow up
to be a famous movie star
or sultry jazz singer who's
father was a vacuum cleaner
salesman turned guru
but losses his fortune
& ends up cleaning toilets
A Smudged Savage Star...
hiding a vast hairy garden or sighed the spongy floor
with baby's first step or in the ninth grade it rains
for a month or a plastic eardrum on a dented table or
later it might be rubberized in a size 38 with a sexy
mole or try swearing inside an ordinary men's pocket
handkerchief where ivy runs up one side of the brick
wall then changes to manila mailing envelopes or maybe
imagine an unforgivable blue sky as it ebbs in shallow
breathing or picture a clerk who shows no patience
towards the nylon nun sheathed by trees until his
trumpet out loud or why not ask Ophelia if she ever
felt something rise in her cold-cut soul of a scared
syringe in witness protection with a bus ticket to Not
Here or just a cup of black coffee sipping itself.
Hazy In Pink...
to where no one remembers the original story which
is believed to be about these two ladies preparing
to drink tea when one says to the other how do you
like yours & the other replies I'll take mine with
footprints in fallen snow leading to a dream where
I wake up somewhere other than my home & know it
because my coat & hat are still in my hand & because
in one pocket is an invitation to hear Freud speak
in the second of a four-part lecture on how to
appreciate a fine cigar subtitled "the tenacity of
self-indulgence" where half-way through he'll make
a funny little remark & laugh at his own joke just
as if he were a regular guy
