Dr. Reverend in Ohio

      "Pacing the thin streets made long by thought,
      I jingled metaphysics in my purse, caught
      the lecture circuit and cleaned-up with bunk.
      My brother in the arts, Dr. Blank, got skunked
5     by every whorehouse publisher to come
      down the twisting pike. 'Some
      of my best friends...' he would say, and stop.
      He was forgetting syllables by this time, on top
      of everything else. Fifth in my class
10    at Harvard (seminary) I used to pass
      my historic heirloom polo shirts around like greeting cards
      and prostletized humility. A liberal education's hard
      to come by these days. We would sit and stare.
      If only to live one did not eat the air!
15    Safe on my white soap-box, I did drool
      and gibber liquid like a priest. The fool
      who made me call him mentor did me in.---
      He thought my thesis too encyclopedian
      and useless to the race. Why I'd hold the hand
20    of any povero insensato in the land.
      The blue air cracks against the chimney-smoke
      of this midwestern coal town. These days I have to choke
      the hissing words back down my throat
      to save my shovelling job, the boss' swelling goat.
25    Now lost and dazed beneath the white camellia,
      I meditate at lunch-time on the sacrosanct and familiar."

 

From the collection "Red Bank"

Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]

More information available on gregglory.com.