this is an old one

[rowens]

This is one of the first I sent off and got rejected about 20 years ago. Well, at least 15.


                             Living On the Moon
 
 
People get upset, thinking if we hadn't cut so
            much of the budget for the
space program
we'd have people living on the moon by now.
 
My astrology has been screwed
            since those cretins
stuck a flagpole
and pranced around like fairies on my guiding planet,
 
now I imagine looking into the sky at night
            catching a glimpse of the mystic moon
thinking about some jerk
screwing a beautiful woman in the thirdwheel shadow of this dying
                                                             globe.

---

this is actually wrong.

---

I posted the wrong one. I sent this Living on the Moon after this . . .

---

                                       Subsequent Landings
 
 
Fireflies dance like wiccans at white masses,
millispurts circumspecting the middleground.
—Light like fire; but not quite. Old Dian in her
electricblanket, squeezing pus out of sunspots:
Her grandsons were born in the nineteen-eighties,
 
and she, queen of no ancient crust, goddess last
mentioned in some inconsequential rhyme, turns
over on a bed full of lightning bugs crushed
but for their last flashing breaths. Waning in that
cornerstone-covered cave, she waits to be her
own mother—

---

I sent those two, but the second one first.

[billy]

you've improve a hell of a lot on a serious note the 2nd one was hard reading for me but i'm no intellect. the first one for some reason got a smile from me. i thought "so that's when rowens love life got screwed up"

[rowens]

The second poem is actually close to some actual poetic form. But not quite. I cheated like I always do.

---

I posted these because of the references to my zodiac sign. I thought they might tie in with my Summer poems.

You notice how I sneakily put her name in each of those recent poems. I think I only like her because her name allows me to have a field day with the seasonal metaphors.

[cloud]

writers are like wines, richer with age

On Subsequent Landing: definitely condensed and descriptive enough to make me think it's not arbitrary.  it lacks filling, the appetite must be satisfied, like a perfectly cooked steak. I've not lived long enough to see myself 20 years ago

[rowens]

My writing made no sense to people years ago, so I stripped it down, and then people said it wasn't poetry, just me talking about myself. So I built it back up. Now they're starting to say it makes no sense again. So I started not making sense in my life, so when I write about myself, the writing makes sense, in comparison.