First Metric Musings:

Frank De Canio

Description

Frank’s poems are presented to the reader like a bouquet of flowers of various hues and breeds. Some exude the fragrance of roses, and others conjure up thistles. They were planted in the soil of youth and watered with the trials of early adulthood, where they were plucked out of the pages of the earth after enduring storm and stress. Some are as prickly as cacti, others as gay and playful as dandelions. They touch on his early probes into psychology, philosophy, pop culture and his burgeoning awareness of those primordial drives that inform us all with their rude awakening. All of them seem anchored to some sort of conceit that make them entertaining formally as well as textually. They emerge as fallible as human nature despite their at times didactic appearance. So enjoy this big bouquet of poesies.

Sujets

• Thought
• Poetry
• Frank

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 28 février 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669868958
• Langue: English

Extrait

FIRST METRIC MUSINGS:
from bad to verse
Frank De Canio

Copyright © 2023 by Frank De Canio.
 
Library of Congress Control Number:
2023903733
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6698-6894-1

Softcover
978-1-6698-6893-4

eBook
978-1-6698-6895-8
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
 
 
Rev. date: 02/28/2023
 
 
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
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CONTENTS
Bristling Lament
A Winter’s Day
Shadows
The Dethroning of Ali
To Michele
To Miriam
Samson Unbound
A Crazy Sonnet
Xenia
The Flying, Love-Sick Physician
Nuptials
In Defense of Boxing
Poetries
20 Caprices
Third Elegy
Salutary Constraint
Ode To The Working Poor
Judgement Day
Daddy Dearest
Credo
Sex
A Pilgrim’s Progress
Dear God
The Masochist’s Plea to His Love Goddess
Passages
News From the Home Front
Les Parapluies de Cherbourg
Making My Way
For His Unfair Mistress
Leeward Leanings
America
More News From the Home Front
At the Crossroads
Places in the Heart
Birthday Greetings
A Lover’s Lament
Beautiful Bertha
Homeless
A Valentine Rag
The Banker’s Trust
Another Elegy
Inspiration
Amorous Footfalls
Ode to the Muse
Triolet with Nosegay
After the Fall
First Lesson in Ophthalmology
Mother Love
Footfalls
Bowling For 300
Glad Tidings
Reviewing Kieslowski
Dancing with Heather
Prelude to Der Rosenkavalier
A Modest Proposal
New Year Resolution
For the End of Time
For the Impertinent Critic
XXXanta
Serenade in Seeing Sharp
The Masochist’s Triumph
Foraging
A Woman’s Right
How to Sell a Fascist Cake
Salome
For the Mother of 7 year old Jessica
Compulsion
Delinquent
Sounding People Out
The Coda of Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony
The Closing Fugue Of Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony
The Great Poet Poses with the Snow Princess
Love’s Labors Lost
The Sleep of Reason
Sonata in A Flat
Felix Culpa
Elegy for the Murdered Child
Peking Opera Blues
Aphrodite’s Wards
Flirting with My Muse
Passenger
Rebuffed Enough
Madonna and Child
Attitude
Headline
Knight of Love
Symphonic Elegy
Enroute on a Train from Frankfurt
Requiem
Opus 20
In the Bonds of Death
Spawn
Modern Perils
Dies Irae
Pour Jacqueline
Canned Violence
Desiree
Becoming
Baptism by Fire
Vanquished
Terms of Peace
Trinket
Hunter
Bane
Hell’s Angel
Child’s Play
My Dear Amanda
Answering Machine
Sparing the Rod
Seizure
Grudge Match
Postpartum
Mariner
Seductive Hold
Horsemanship
The Don Undone
Orpheo in the Buff
Feeding Frenzy
Topless Hostess
Topless Bar “Hostess”
Table Dance
Suburban Transport
Waitress
Benediction
Horsewoman
Post Rosenkavalier
Fish Story
Cello Concerto
Free Wheeling Determinism
Salesgrrrl
Singsong
Please Don’t Return My Call!
Michael’s Mop
Baleful Harvest
At the French Open
Tristan
Girl With Younger Brother
Brandi Does the World Cup
Sharecropper
Outskirts
Night of Doleful Countenance
Women in Love
“Day Two” Dames
Hot Rod
Y’all
Sports Car
Witchcraft
Seizing Control
Bar Grrrls
December 3 1st
Cashier Chick
Armed
Bachelor’s Lament
Girl with Tseng in Southern China
Punch
Please, No Apologies
My Spunky Valentine
Moonstruck
Epiphany
Rocking Ramona
Scylla
Hydra
Fast Food
Midnight Thoughts
Border Crossings
Fore Play
Henpecked
State of Siege
Criminal
Safecracker
Morticians of the World
Howl!
Fetish
Sex Wars
Venus Flytrap
Breast Assured
She Dressed Me Down
Female Knockouts
Reader
Donna Quixote
Fighting Femme
Star Struck
Role Play
Beach Balls
Thief
Fear
Miss Metamorphosis
Transport
Storming Borders
Wedlock
Hip Hop
Tomb at Uhm el-Marra
Time Warp
Usurping New Year
Footboy
Stepwise
My God
Morass
Mug
The Milk of Human Kindness
After Seeing Valerie Solanis’ “Up Your Ass”
After “Leaving Las Vegas”
Bounty Huntresses
Telephone Service
Yo Mama
Sound Attire
Confectioner
Pastor
Shake and Bake
Salubrious Nightmare
Jamaican Mother
Cell Phone
Bust Service
Lacing Up
Beset
Human Harvest
Masquerade
Diaphanous Veil
Ye Gads!
Palm
La Chica Dorada
Shave
Chicks!
Whew!
Onward Christian Soldiers!
Borne Again
Efflorescence
Last Laugh
September 11, 2001
Dancing at Twilight
World Trade Center
Pray Tell, Queen of Swords
He Prayeth Best
Unadorned
Viva Selena!
Taliban: The Movie
Diphthong
Opera Comique
Parried
Date Scrape
That Nasty Chick
Snow Show
Book Piracy
En Garde
Roadblocks
Ciao Mayor!
Fiscal Sex
Milling for Mills
Mime Over Matter
Top Hat
Plenty Twenty
Smiling, She Said
Rapes of Wrath
Benighted Bliss
Security Clerk
Beseech God
It’s Just Not Fair
The Ring of the Nibelungen
Basic Training
Suicide Bombing in Tel Aviv
Misconceiving Eve
Sentenced
Judith Flies American
Cell Phone Blues
The Last Straw
Borne Again
Casts
Leave-Taking
The Ninth Hour
Nasty Salesclerk Rap
Lincoln Center Out of Drawers
Rag Liege
Chairman of the Broad
Riding Passion
BRISTLING LAMENT
Who will love you when I am gone
when all the curtains have been drawn
and love remains a mystery?
When your frenetic ecstasy
lies settled on a wrinkled brow,
now, who will harmonize your vow,
when yet unwritten songs are sung,
and rusty churchyard bells have rung
to toll the fading reverie
that festers in your memory,
and drowns the din that echoes near
to sound the death knell in your ear
when death is left to dwell upon,
who will love you when I am gone?
 
Previously published in Long Story Short, June 2010
A WINTER’S DAY
A winter morning storm’s despoiled
a time-worn city, drab and soiled.
But this antique is now aglow
with soft, white roses, row on row.
And shoppers snug in masquerade
of fluffy clothes, form long parades
of ruby faces, bright and gay,
delighting in its bright display.
Still, winter’s day, enrobed in white,
parades in silence through the night,
beside its gilded silver glow,
embroidered like a bride’s trousseau.
SHADOWS
Are we reflections from a reading light
that flickers with a novelist’s regrets;
appendices that he forgot to write
an expurgated character’s vignettes?
Are we the rough draft of a scribbler’s pen,
the doodling of his hypnogogic brain,
the fantasies of his unconscious yen,
deleted studies for a mise en scene?
Perhaps we’re first draft chapters in a book
that’s still unfolding in an author’s mind.
Our mindsets show the work a writer took
to shape protagonists. We’ll never find
a publisher because his stories plod
despite the fact that he believes he’s God.
THE DETHRONING OF ALI
(at the hands of Leon Spinks)
 
Behold the man,
crowned with the thorns
of tormenting Time;
stripped of his past
galloping stride;
a mounted stallion
in his final ride.
The relic of a panting age
that will not sit still
against the hawking wind
that takes his own away;
in the forlorn flight
of his fighting spirit;
bridled and reined
for the pastured plains
of his tamed dominion.
 
His laboring breath,
in the late spawning
of a second wind,
borne aloft,
then lost again;
the time-worn offering
to the kindling thrust
of the seeds he’d sown,
the coming of an age,
and the passing of his own.
TO MICHELE
If you must leave me,
do so quickly;
not like the fastidious dentist
who fusses with the rotten tooth,
juggling it this way and that
before the patient gets a caveat
that it must be pulled.
 
Do it rapidly, in one fell swoop.
Take the molar, festered
and decayed from too much
sugary affection,
and extract it at the root.
 
Like the storied knight,
go into the mouth
of the serpent’s cave
and, fearless of its fiery fang,
put the restive beast to rest.
 
Donning shiny armor
of compassion, ensure
the maiden virtue
of my love’s devotion
is spared prolonged distress.
TO MIRIAM
Let it be
that I offended yo