The Scofflaw Poems
Shadows Play
he doesn’t see so well now as he’d like
when the sun’s low, shadows
play him false and things will move
they start and dart
in and out of his perception
pretending both to be there
and to not
he did think for a while that it was children
thought that they came in the store
to hide in the displays
he learned to hold his peace
the day he turned and shouted
scampering little thief!
humiliating both himself
and Sam the baker’s Genevieve,
and her five weeks away from motherhood
and agile as a house.
Muffin’s List
Horace Muffin
was a careful man, precise and thorough.
every morning when he opened the Emporium,
he placed a small and neatly written message
in a pocket in the layers
of the sign set in his window
the things that he intended to accomplish during the day
and the things he would need
to do on his way home.
At the end of every day, when he turned the sign around, so that it read
Closed
to the rest of the world but told Horace Muffin
that the world beyond his window was now
Open
he would remove both lists and stand for a minute,
perusing them and contemplating
what he had accomplished, wondering
how it could be that he had not taken care
of everything.
Then he would close the shades, and see that he had doused all open flames, and let himself out into the night.
Like Honey For Tea
The Boy (born with a blessing) made no fuss,
no bother to his siblings, a good son
he never made a move that might non plus
a soul. Mistakes? Well, only one small one.
He wanted honey for his tea, a sweet
his father said–repeatedly–was spit.
And even worse, the bees wiped dirty feet
in the stuff. Bee feet. Bee spit. Could be Bee shit.
His father was quite adamant, and so
the Boy, who wanted honey for his tea,
set forth on an adventure through the flow
of market day, new smells, strange things to see.
Amazed and dazed by color light and choice
The Boy born with a blessing found his voice.
The port called Kings Town never saw a king
in flesh,
but had great reverence
for any silver sovereign
whose alloy passed assay.
(the rarity of gold reliefs
was such that their mere sight
halted commerce,
and sent the bankers to their brothels
for reliefs in vice,
face and reverse)
.
In Scofflaw Square the trade
was of a copper kind.
Brown coins of twenty countries
mingled in the tills on market days
.
The vehicles of Kings Town
were of varied kinds,
and powered
in as many modes as there were motives for their movements.
flat boards under legless pedlers
selling war wounds, sleds pulled up to the square each day
by small strong boys who lived in packs beneath the walk
exchanging work for sugar cones.
One-wheeled barrows,
carts for pushing,
carts for pulling
goat-drawn,
dog-drawn,
hauled by horses.
Carridges and fine equipages, steaming engines stoked with coal
even auto mobiles
of the well established ladies
in the care of liveried drivers
and requiring constant services
of the new mechanic’s corps
Wanda The Swan waves a brief greeting
to Caper the scrivener passing her window.
soft faded robe
showing less than it seems,
she smiles at her friend and returns to her hair.
Wanda’s not the first Swan
at the place called the Fan
(curved carved wooden feather plume over the door)
years ago there were two,
sisters Alice and Kate,
whose long lovely necks
spawned the monkier
and gave madam’s mister the bright idea
to call all the Fan’s girls
by feathery names.
Dark eyed tall Wanda takes well to the Swan,
long elegant limbs
thick hair soft as down
(and now colored chestnut instead of its blond)
The gentlemen do love her curves and her curls.
Summoned to a Lady’s Rooms
he stepped into a dimness dressed for winters ruled
by kings and queens of bone and dust now memory
a parlor wearing wealth in saturating dyes, dense
to hold an ember’s warmth through nights without
a whispered hope of summer fire, heat wrapped
in velvet and in silk against a life of white, black,
of a cutting blue. steel and ice. venous ravenous.
his mother’s mother’s womenkin lived in such rooms
this seemed to be the memory of one
excised and held inside a globe of glass and oil
outside its time and green sea miles from home
like cedar sandalwood grotesques disguised as rests
for long pens blown of peacock glass and thimbles
hewn from knucklebones of mermen, a curiosity
a sweating waterglass beside an open book
a trace of wet dog odor mixed with lime and rum
a flash flood of profanity from the connecting room
declared this souvenir a living home
Walking Home
Walking home, Horace bit into his market find,
an apple, with the smell of winter somewhere.
It came wrapped in a twist of newsprint
lettered in some language he had never seen,
dealer though he was
in all things strange
from places in the margins of the map.
He enjoyed his wander
through the closing stalls,
aimless as an eight year old
and just as pleased.
His unvarying path beyond the market
ignored the platted streets
and underlying rise and fall of land alike,
and leading him toward home, sliced off a share of Kings Town
from Scofflaw and its alleys
all the way to Shifting Point.
He could look over town and harbor
and that place, intensely guarded, adjacent to the west dock
where bobbing chains of empty barges
signified the source of Kings Town’s fortune.
The dross from fourteen island’s sugaring
was dragged
half rotten, half fermented
leaving trails of slime across the swells inside the shallow harbor.
In a building best described as low and plain,
tons of fodder were converted, by some process Horace only knew
as barely not true alchemy, into a gold as like an ordinary rum
as words are like pure water to the thirsty.
Lucinda could have told him, would have told him
how the process worked, leaning warm against him
in the early evening air.
He could almost imagine her, walking home.
