A Beautiful Lie

A Beautiful Lie

Tom Riley

Acknowledgments

Plains Poetry Journal: “First Poem,” “Sermon on the Mount,” “Teaching Milton;” Light Quarterly: “Plea to an Inaugural Poetess,” “Ding-Dongs of the Bell Curve,” “Love My Enemy;” Light Year: “Classical Clerihew,” “The Battle of Muldoon’s;” The Quadrangle: “The Self-Defense Instructor Replies to W.B. Yeats,” “Senescence;” The Buffalo News: “Pregnant Time.” Tandava: “Cardioporneia;” Art Times: “Take It All Off;? Magic Realism: “Isolated Incident;” The Lyric: “No Reviews,” “Poetry Is a Beautiful Lie.”


© 2003 by Tom Riley


Cover art: The Origin of Kitano Tenjin Shrine by Unknown


Published by The New Formalist Press


XHTML & CSS design by Leo Yankevich

1.    First Poem

It appears as a stranger, O’Grady:
as a grimy-faced, bird-flipping lad,
as a bright and contemptuous lady,
as a man with a little white pad.

It appears and insults expectation
with the words you intended for praise;
like a limerick’s well-trained Alsatian,
it extends its perversions for days.

It arouses unspoken suspicions:
as it makes conversation, you nod,
and pretend, and eschew superstitions—
but it sprang from a B-movie pod.

It has eaten, O’Grady, your brother
and replaced him; it hopes you can’t see
that the next insignificant other
will consume an old friend—maybe me.

What is worse is that, while you’re assuming
that you fashioned it, it holds a view
contradictory: little voice booming,
it’s insisting that it fashioned you.

If the thought of how lightly time slaughters
all our presents disturbs you, then, Tom,
pin your hopes on your beautiful daughters:
do God’s work, and sleep well, and be calm.

If, however, you must go on writing,
then fill pages and volumes and shelves:
snakes, I venture to hope, keep their biting,
when they’re crowded in tight, to themselves.

2.      Plea to an Inaugural Poetess

The world ignores me.  What am I to do?
Lest I drown in poetical regret,
fly to my rescue, Maya Angelou!

You are not quite what I’m aspiring to,
I must admit—but I cannot forget:
the world ignores me.  What am I to do?

You have to know the answer.  You’ve won through
complete ineptitude, and now you’re set.
Fly to my rescue, Maya Angelou!

Oh, be my teacher!  See: I beg on cue.
I’ll be to you a perfect teacher’s pet.
The world ignores me.  What am I to do?

I’m sick of all that’s difficult and true.
How can I be a poseur laureate?
Fly to my rescue, Maya Angelou!

Please, though: don’t say I have to write like you.
Anyone can.  I wouldn’t on a bet.
The world ignores me.  What am I to do?
Fly to my rescue, Maya Angelou!

3.    Classical Clerihew

Zeus
was a goose
to think that Leda would be turned on
by a swan.

4.    Sermon on the Mount

The Scripture scholars do not mind the grass
on which they’re forced to sit—since, as they know,
it’s only for the afternoon, and they
are not the sort who like to make a fuss.
Nor do they mind the company: this day,
they tell themselves, is for the poor—although
the poor might surely profit from a mass
forced bath and from a bit of education.
But now the Master speaks, and, curious,
they listen as his golden voice commands
the open-mouthed attention of the crowd.
Time for some scholarly consideration:
“Is that authentic?” someone asks aloud.
“What do we think?  Let’s have a show of hands.”

5.    Teaching Milton

It’s only you and I here, Roundhead John.
I fear you cannot like me very much.
I am an Irish Papist, and a touch
too frivolous a soul for anyone

who’d justify the ways of God to men.
And then, I don’t much like you, either.  You’re
a humorless savant, a brilliant bore—
and I suspect that you’re an Arian.

But let us set aside our differences.
Here in this ugly, crowded room, so far
from home for you, so far from poetry

for me, I am the only one who sees
the point of all your labor, and you are
the only one who’s listening to me.

6.    Ding-Dongs of the Bell Curve

Here’s the question we all contemplate:
will the bell curve determine man’s fate?
    No!  IQ was defined
    by a second-rate mind
just to prove that it wasn’t third-rate.

7.    The Self-Defense Instructor Replies to W.B. Yeats

Had frightened Leda learned the proper use
of fingers, neither terrified nor vague,
or how to lift a not-yet-loosened leg
sharply into the feathered glory, Zeus
would never have enjoyed her helpless breast
nor fathered that Homeric misery.
If godhood suffers in the flesh, then he,
mere poultry, would have suffered, thus caressed.

Nor need you ladies fear Europa’s fate.
I’ve seen a tiny Chinese fellow slaughter
a charging bull with nothing but a shower
of hand blows rightly placed.  Remember that
next time you’re strolling single by the water
after you’ve practiced to put on your power.

8.    The Battle of Muldoon’s

What are you lily-livered rascals at?
Just because Casey’s down you’re running off?
You cannot be such little girls as that.

Too bad if one guy’s got a baseball bat.
It’s when fists fail that bellies must be tough.
What are you lily-livered rascals at?

This isn’t just some private household spat.
Our Casey’s down.  Now isn’t that enough?
You cannot be such little girls as that,

to leave him on the floor alone.  You sat
with him tonight and drank his drinking stuff.
What are you lily-livered rascals at,

thinking that you can quick put on your hat
and take your leave with just a nervous cough?
You cannot be such little girls as that.

Hell swallow every damn ungrateful rat
that scurries off when things start getting rough.
What are you lily-livered rascals at?
You cannot be such little girls as that.

9.    Senescence

    (for Barbara Porter)

Let us speak of the aging of trees:
how they steadily creep up toward death
without worrying whom it will please;

how they lose their inaudible breath
as the years, who pretend to be slow,
smile and steadily lead them toward death;

how they let the predictable snow
whisper slumber and hinder them from
seeing years who pretend to be slow;

how they think that the birds have grown dumb
when in truth they themselves have gone deaf,
deep in dreams nothing hinders them from;

how they gather their height up and laugh
at how mere beasts grow pale, hearing ghosts,
when in truth they themselves are stone deaf;

how they boom their lame vegetable boasts,
making sad beasts grow paler than ghosts.
Let us speak of the aging of trees
without worrying whom it will please.

10.    Pregnant Time

Time, who makes us forget, never forgets.
The past swells in her belly like a child
who must be born.  Time always pays her debts.

Though some of us neglect our just regrets,
thinking her patience means she is beguiled,
Time, who makes us forget, never forgets

what we have done and dreamed.  She simply lets
her mind become a baby, fierce and wild,
who must be born.  Time always pays her debts

and never pays them late.  Time always sets
the date when debts are due, when suits are filed.
Time, who makes us forget, never forgets

that we have fathered something.  She upsets
composures by announcing, silver-smiled,
who must be born.  Time always pays her debts

to all her irresponsible intimates.
She still knows every number that she’s dialed.
Time, who makes us forget, never forgets
who must be born.  Time always pays her debts

11.    Love My Enemy

Some enemies one learns a liking for.
Tom Disch, who hates the Church, is one of these,
for, though his anti-Catholic fantasies
offend my soul, they very rarely bore
my eye, my ear, my wits, my taste.  The more
I read of his, the more he tends to please
all my discriminating faculties.
He sinks low, but he earns a damn high score.
And after all, I don’t need to get pissed
when the prick goes and pisses in the well
of living water, don’t need to insist
on summary castration.  Truth to tell,
I need not even shake my Irish fist.
I’m confident that he will go to Hell.

12.    Cardioporneia

Pontifex minimus,
Greeley the Celibate
writes about humping with
consummate glee:

condoms cannot protect
cardioporneious
lads such as Greeley from
virgin VD.

13.    Take It All Off

There once was a pious old prude
who, well swaddled in sheer zeal, eschewed
    any mention of skin
    as a hideous sin.
He appeared before God in the nude.

14.    Isolated Incident

After August heat
kills Mrs. Wilson, her fan
runs till October.

15.    No Reviews

From you, of course, I receive no reviews.
I fret that you’re impossible to reach.
I’m faced with the necessity to choose
between your silence and another’s speech.
Some choice!  Even if, mum, you meant to teach
your teacher that he ought to take his verse
elsewhere, he’d grab for air and cling to each
non-syllable, lest your sweet peace disperse.
Your silence is a blessing or a curse
or both or neither: I don’t dare to say.
But it is yours, and it would be far worse
to do without it.  I shall love the way
you turn away from me: it’s part of you.
It’s all I have.  And what else can I do?

16.    Poetry Is a Beautiful Lie

My house walked down the street and sang a song.
Roused from its sleep, it seized my waking eye.
The other houses danced and sang along.

Inside, my wife knew something had gone wrong.
I heard, despite the din, her frightened cry.
My house walked down the street and sang a song.

What could I do?  I chased it for as long
as any husband could—then waved good-bye.
The other houses danced and sang along.

Where did you find her, officers?  Among
the litter in the river?  Oh, my, my....
My house walked down the street and sang a song,

I swear!  And when that musical King Kong
returned, incanting softly, “Sorry, guy,”
the other houses danced and sang along,

compelling me, my will not being strong,
to grant forgiveness.  That’s my alibi:
my house walked down the street and sang a song;
the other houses danced and sang along,

About the Author

Tom Riley was born in 1958 and grew up in Western New York. He was educated at Hartwick College and at the University of Notre Dame. He teaches English literature and Classical languages in Napa, California, where he lives with his wife, Mary, a stepdaughter, three small children, his in-laws, and a timid Belgian shepherd. He exercises way too much for a man his age and enjoys the potation of whiskey, cursing his enemies, and shooting the bow. He is not well practiced in the art of smiling.