Scorpion Tails

Scorpion Tails

Gail White

Acknowledgments

LIGHT:
“Worker Bees”, “When They Met Again”, “The Rave”, “Ballade of Easy Marks”

THE FORMALIST:
“White Collar Blues”


© 2002 by Gail White


Cover Art: by Hieronymus Bosch


Published by The New Formalist Press


XHTML & CSS design by Leo Yankevich

Worker Bees

Staring at fluorescent screens,
letting life pass by unheeded,
little better than machines
staring at fluorescent screens,
we’ll pass on our altered genes
to generations who’ll be seated
staring at fluorescent screens,
letting life pass by unheeded.

Watching the Magician

It’s all illusion, but I’ll never try
to catch you in the act.  I promise that.
I know the hand is quicker than the eye.
Start pulling doves and rabbits from your hat,
unfurl the endless handkerchiefs, unlink
a hundred rings and join them back again—
I’ll ask no questions.  I’m not paid to think.
Saw me in half, I won’t feel any pain.
The more impossible your deed, the better:
Make elephants disappear, call every cat
in New York State, appear to walk on water,
make solids turn to liquids, levitate.
Tell me I’ll live forever.  Come, deceive
my heart, my brain.  I’m longing to believe.

The Stages of Forgetting

1.  Wanting Him Back

Fantasy:  He returns, carrying roses.
He’s so apologetic, he could weep.
He loves you best.  He begs you to forgive him.
You buy it.  Maybe he’s not SUCH a creep.

2.  Wanting Him Dead

Fantasy:  He goes fishing, falls in, drowns.
A bus runs over him.  It kills her too.
Or maybe you could get away with murder:
Brain him with lamb chops.  Afterwards, make stew.

3.  Transcendence

Reality:  You find that you can cover
The entire bed.  You don’t need him to work
The VCR.  And what a lousy lover
He was!  You smile, and then forget the jerk.

Unfortunately, nothing you can do
Will zap you right past stages One and Two.

When They Met Again

He:  Bound for brand-new teaching job
with newly-minted PhD.
She:  Married to a CPA
and on her second pregnancy.

Once lovers, met by chance, they chat
of lives grown prosperous apart.
Like old unjealous friends, they praise
their new successes of the heart.

Each fancies that the other feels
a lingering flame.  Their smiles are sad,
but both, on going separate ways,
thank God for the escape they had.

Clerihew from Hell

T.S. Eliot
isn’t out of hell yet.
Grimly he paces its nethermost ghetto,
muttering “Famous for a damned cat libretto!”

The Rave

I’ve been to a party at Mitzi’s,
and all the new artists were there.
It started when Fred
cut his nose till it bled,
sang “Dixie” and blowtorched his hair.

You wouldn’t believe the excitement—
it was 12 hours straight without sleep.
And Gustavus and Bunce
did a series of stunts
that excessively startled a sheep.

George licked the electrical outlets,
and that’s all we heard out of HIM.
While Oliver Kraft
played Huck Finn on a raft
with a Siamese cat playing Jim.

Corinna and Jessie were singing
when the cops made an entrance at four.
Those loud sharps and flats
from the opening of “Cats”
were a flop with the people next door.

It’s been a wild evening at Mitzi’s.
When Gregory swallowed a fork,
Tim (who plays an MD
on commercial TV)
took his tonsils out—free:
Aren’t you simply in love with New York?

Ballade of Easy Marks

There’s billions going on power-ball.
Surely, your office mates exhort,
now is the time to stake your all
on 50 tickets—or if you’ve bought
50, then 50 more!  You ought,
at even the worst of odds, to win
a million dollars—and so you’re caught.
We’re all too easily taken in.

When stocks have taken a flailing fall,
try meeting your broker’s clowns in court.
A suit on Peter to pay off Paul
could end your troubles by proof of tort.
But legal counsel’s the costly sort,
and legal actions are hard to win.
To lawyers’ pockets the gains are brought.
We’re all to easily taken in.

A ship sets out for its port of call--
a shipboard passion begins in port.
To love in summer and wed in fall
seems fine enough at a beach resort.
But after lovers have fumed and fought
(she wastes his money, he swills her gin)—
it’s only tinsel, the prize they sought.
We’re all too easily taken in.

L’Envoi

Companions, weary of chase and sport,
at last we’ll come to a silent inn.
Death with a sickle cuts us short.
We’re all to easily taken in.

White Collar Blue

I thought the office jobs were just until
I made it as a writer.  Hoo ha.  Here
I am, 20 years later, no inch nearer
to any goal except the famous hill
I’m almost over.  What the hell.  I still
write in the evenings, and I get to state
that at transcribing doctors I’m first rate—
medical words, a marketable skill.

And if I cast a wry look on my friends
who’ve won the prizes I once hoped to win,
if I’m at odds with literary trends,
well, like my betters, I can wink and grin
at my defeats.  When all ambition ends,
desire of greatness was a godlike sin.

The Wisdom of Solomon

Not always does the strongest win
the battle, nor the swift the race.
Not always does the heroine
prefer a handsome face.

Not always is the lover cruel,
nor passion prelude to regret.
Not always is the boss a fool—
but that’s the way to bet.

My Funeral

There’ll be great music—Purcell, Tallis, Byrd,
some Bach perhaps, like “Sheep May Safely Graze.”
Then Luke 15, the King James Version’s word
(the only Bible I can stand these days).
I keep on tinkering with it as I stretch
the limits of the Book of Common Prayer.
One thing:  there’ll be no eulogy to sketch
my virtues to the friend who won’t be there
since I’m intending to outlive them all.
So let’s forget the incense and the hymns:
inter me in a crypt in a crumbling wall
or better yet, before my memory dims,
just toss the ashes into Bayou Teche.
This is my carnival, and farewell, flesh.

The Heart of Religion is Paradox

My cat Gray likes killing birds,
which makes my heart too sad for words.
I ask him what the good Lord thinks
of all the starlings’ blood he drinks?

“If I’m a predatory cat,
the good Lord wanted me like that.
He sends me starlings every day,
for God is Love,” says my cat Gray.

About the author

Gail White started writing in rhyme and meter when such work was a one-way ticket to obscurity. Fortunately, she has lived to see the revival of formal poetry and rejoice over it. She is a frequent contributor to the formalist magazines. Her latest book is The Price of Everything from Mellen Poetry Press. She also co-edited The Muse Strikes Back (Story Line Press) and edited Landscapes with Women (Singular Speech Press).