High Coup

O moon, so distant….

I’m not smokin’ in Tokyo,

my poem will not fire.

“Revolution bursts

sunlight on stained stainless steel:

your yolkcolored hair.”

Night’s vaunted Shakespeare:

just flaccid Little Willie,

cold to geisha stars.

“Nestraw hair – egg’s eye

blue – honeyed limbs; trunkhugging

bearcubMe:     climbing.”

Sake enflames verse

(you say), arouses rhythm,

kindles rhymes sublime –

mine (old drunken whore) 

fires up unsuccessfully,

sucks relentlessly,

till we fall asleep.

And Basho a monk remains,

red raw poem limp, still.

--Duane Vorhees