An Afternoon in Elizabethan England

John Dee looked up from
his alembics to
squint at the failing sun.
In the ochre ball
on his desk a small spirit
danced but Dee
did not see it. He was
thinking about
the problem of God, how
man resembles Him,
how all angels are fallen angels.

- corey mesler

10/2/04

Movies seen: 4,711
Books read: 1,957
Children: 2
Wife: 1
Ex-wife: 1
Parents (extant): 1
Parents (extinct): 2
Siblings: 2
Ex-lovers: too many
Current lovers: 1
Poems written: too many
Stories written: too few
Novels written: too few
Novels published: 1
Optimism/pessimism ration: 2.5 to 1
Politics: never again
Name: Noman

- corey mesler

Spado

She was the kind of woman
who moved with creature grace
and I watched her because it
was all I could do, relegated,
as I was, to my place in the cage.

- corey mesler

American Down to My Pie

I can't finish what I do not start.
I tell the mailman to stop
all that infernal racket and he drops
his tongs on our front lawn.
I run screaming out into the boulevard,
a boulevardier, angry as the
sunrise. I grab up all the babies
and tuck them under the addition
to my new home. I want for
everyone what everyone gets. That's
democracy. But here on
Nematode Avenue the hookers all
have hearts of stone, nobody
makes movies like they use to.
I covet, crave, desire, yearn,
lack, need, ache.
For a better America. For a woman
who understands me. For the freedom to make
mistake after mistake after mistake.
That's democracy. Welcome to the new world,
Pilgrim. Here's a revolver.

- corey mesler

Goddamned Past Full of Sex

I stand in the street
because the rain is crueler
there. I wait
for night like a cricket.
Underneath my reserve
is a need to be the one first
on the field, the one
shagging flies.
I used to love you with a
fierceness pretty much
disappeared from the world.
That was back when
the sky was full of stars, when
on any given afternoon
you could find luck
if you had a good bent stick
or a relative who worked for
the home office.
I loved you. You
couldn’t handle your part.
That was ok, I guess, though in
retrospect, I’m
half a man because of it. You
moved on to
greater discomforts. Bless you,
ultimate spinning box,
windchill factor, satiety bouquet,
goddamned past full of sex.

- corey mesler