Enter Home Planet News Poetry of Issue #6                        Page 17
                                   
Table of
Contents

PICKPOCKET

Without her compass, pale Jeanne is lost.
I watch her fall down Michel's thinning throat.
Oh, God! I know no worse humiliation than
appetite, or the fate of adjutant compromise.

Outside, on roads damask'd red and white,
tin trucks, forsworn emissaries, outperform
the expectations of their owners as second-
hand misery forgives the sins of owls.

How brash is absence. How crass abscess.
In the face of catastrophe one doesn't know
which scenario not to contemplate, into
which path it is least sensible not to stumble.

Of all there is to know, one reaches for
the raisins of the heart upon which the
sensory reptiles will not feed, upon which
the tactile falcons are reluctant to reciprocate.

What no one wants is paltriness, especially
poverty made grave by singularity. Rather,
an atrial need for artefacts unmercantile.
O, pour aller jusqu'à toi, quel drôle de chemin.

  Bill Yarrow __

WILLIAM ADDIS, INDENTURED GENIUS

William Addis of England
is believed to have produced
the first mass-produced
toothbrush in 1780.

In 1770, he was jailed
for causing a riot.

While in prison he decided
that using a rag with soot and
salt on the teeth was ineffective
and could be improved.

One evening, he saved a
small bone from a meal.

He drilled small holes into the bone
and tied tufts of bristles
(obtained from one of the guards)
into the holes in the bone.

Then he sealed the holes
with glue.

After his release
he started manufacturing
toothbrushes, a business
which made him verifiably wealthy.


  Bill Yarrow__

Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toothbrush
Accessed July 15, 2017.

 THE HOLLOW PRESIDENT
(after Eliot) 
You are the hollow man
You are the stuffed man
Pumpkin head filled with straw. 
Alas!

    The wind whispers: 

           P-u-t-i-n . . . 		
		
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
in death's dream kingdom!
Let me be no nearer!
Not that final meeting
in the twilight kingdom!

    The wind whispers: 

           P-u-t-i-n . . . 		
    . 
This is the dead land (no, not yet)
This is cactus land (no, not yet)
Here the stone images are raised 
(no, no) here they receive
the approbation of a tiny man's 
hand (no, nyet)
   
     The wind whispers: 

           P-u-t-i-n . . . 		
    
The eyes are not here
The sense is not here
The heart is not here
Empty man

There are no eyes here
in this valley of dying stars
in this hollow valley
this broken jaw of our lost kingdom

     The wind whispers: 

           P-u-t-i-n . . . 		
    
In this last of meeting places
you grope--for what? Not hope.

    The wind whispers: 

           P-u-t-i-n . . . 			
                      
Here we go round the politics tree
the politics tree, the politics tree
Here we go round the politics tree
at seven fifteen in the morning
    
    Between the idea
    and the reality
    Between the motion
    and the act
    fall the People
                                   
For Thine is NOT the Kingdom
    
    Between the emotion
    and the response
    Between the essence
    and the descent
    fall the People
                                   
For Thine is NOT the Kingdom
    
    This is the way the world ends
    This is the way the world ends
    This is the way the world ends

NO.

  Bill Yarrow__
DEPRESSION INMATE


Depression inmate: the technical term
for a man arrested for committing
a crime of need.
Steal or starve.
The 1930s in America.

Johnny was a depression inmate
arrested for pilfering coal.
He packed a knapsack.
They came for him at midnight
while his chimney was stuttering smoke.

His wife killed herself for shame.
The six kids were sent
to an orphanage.
Upon release, he tracked them down
but they already had sufficient lives.

Fascism was making a comeback.
He took up a pitchfork
and pitched in.
No one was brave enough to smack a poor man down.
The jails of small towns were shamefully bare.


  Bill Yarrow__