Selected Poems & Writings by Robert Sward
Please enjoy the following selections. If you would like to know more about the work, click the (learn more...) links or see Robert's Bookshelf.
Poetry
Uncle Dog: The Poet at 9 from The Collected Poems
Barbecue from The Collected Poems
For
Gloria on her 60th Birthday, or
Looking for Love in Merriam-Webster from Four Incarnations
A Man Needs a Place to Stand from Heavenly Sex
One-Stop Foot Shop from Rosicrucian in the Basement
Earthquake Collage, electronic chapbook
Essays
All at Sea with T.S.E.*
an essay about T.S. Eliot's Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Why I Publish in Ezines
In answer to the question: why I have chosen to publish in e-zines.
Eucalyptus Roulette
About my fight over this public hazard.
Interviews
click to hear audio reading
I did not want to be old Mr.
Garbage man, but uncle dog
who rode sitting beside him.
Uncle dog had always looked
to me to be truck-strong
wise-eyed, a cur-like Ford
Of a dog. I did not want
to be Mr. Garbage man
because
all he had was cans to do.
Uncle dog sat there me-beside-him
emptying nothing. Barely even
looking from garbage side to side:
Like rich people in the backseats
of chauffeur-cars, only shaggy
in an unwagging tall-scrawny way.
Uncle dog belonged any just where
he sat, but old Mr. Garbage man
had to stop at every single can.
I thought. I did not want to be Mr.
Everybody calls them that first.
A dog is said, Dog! Or by name.
I would rather be called Rover
than Mr. And sit like a tough
smart mongrel beside a garbage man.
Uncle dog always went to places
unconcerned, without no hurry.
Independent like some leashless
Toot. Honorable among scavenger
can-picking dogs. And with a bitch
at every other can. And meat:
His for the barking. Oh, I wanted
to be uncle dog—sharp, high fox-
eared, cur-Ford truck-faced
With his pick of the bones.
A doing, truckman’s dog
and not a simple child-dog
Nor friend to man, but an uncle
traveling, and to himself—
and a bitch at every second can.
—For William Dickey
I
They were spraying Pepsi and moth-juice
on the fire. The mosquitoes, lawn flies
and moths dove, flashed and were painlessly
consumed. There was applause
...we entered.
And while my wife was kissed, they clapped
me on the back. They wanted to know
that I was there. And then I kissed them
down their throats, choked and knew that they were there.
And after I had kissed those who had
kissed my wife, and after they kissed me,
we sprayed one another, scratched and dove
after the moths. We flashed, painlessly,
and emerged to munch the ashes, coals
to sip moth juice, lemon juice and gin.
And (again) we clapped one another
laughed, kissed, sipped, puffed and swallowed cigarettes.
II
The cat-girl would not believe in it
and crouched there pained, purring with the pups;
(their tails were remarkably alike
and neither pronounced upon events
with them.) From time to time they'd lick one
another, or the cream dip, but otherwise
were still
...though
one of the pups had tried
the fire, and the cat-girl
sleekly
swallowed gin.
III
Someone found Lil, the wife of no one,
buried beside the spit. She wanted
a martini; we obliged, and then
reburied her.
Bernie dove in after the moths
only to be buried, topped, beside the spit.
IV
The sky was rainbow strips of chrome, clouds
and the sun, the great, archetypal
Ford: pork-sauced and on the suburban
spit of heaven.
And
Lil's angel waved
free, fulfilled and married now, to chrome
...sipping gin and tonic.
We
all stared,
climbed upon our spit, and then dove
in after the moths.
—The
fire attained to Lil.
The fire was a Ford, without chrome, pure
as gin, as cream dip, moths or spray, death
and we sang to it: its attaining
to heaven, to Lil, to space, ourselves
and the archetypal Ford.
In the other distance, in the space
the consuming that is east, the night
beyond where the moths take form, beyond
what we flash for when we die,
we
sense
the white-walled dawn, time and tomorrow's
Ford.
There
was Mars,
the suburban star of barbecue.
V
The party had somehow failed. The cards—
and there was Rummy, large as Lil, four'd
the evening star. It was time for gin
and time for light!
No
one would admit
that he was there; we hid in front of
one another's wife. The women hid
beside the flames, the way they flickered
through their eyes. I kept trying to put my tongue
into their cards, into their eyes, ears
throats, between their teeth; but theirs were there
between mine. I bit them. And they cried
with half their tongues
munching
diamonds and spades.
And the bushes had begun the moon,
ending "gin," martinis and marriage.
Suddenly the women screamed. The moon
burst through, revealing their husbands, the pup-girl
themselves. The bushes became the lawn;
the night, the earth; and the moths, the sun.
The men became their wives; and the wives
became the men, for the most part
re-marrying themselves. The men were asleep
beside their wives, smiling, spitted, still
illicit. —Morning. My wife and I
sipped gin. I was Bernie, and she the moths.
- from The Collected Poems, 1957-2004 (learn
more...)
For Gloria on her 60th Birthday, or Looking for Love in Merriam Webster- from Four Incarnations (learn more...)
"Beautiful, splendid, magnificent, delightful, charming, appealing," says the dictionary. And that's how I start... But I hear her say, "Make it less glorious and more Gloria." Imperious, composed, skeptical, serene, lustrous, irreverent, she's marked by glory, she attracts glory "Glory," I say, "Glory, Glory." "Is there a hallelujah in there?" she asks, when I read her lines one and two. "Not yet," I say, looking up from my books. She protests, "Writing a poem isn't the same "As really attending to me." "But it's for your birthday," I say. Pouting, playfully cross, "That's the price you pay when your love's a poet." She has chestnut-colored hair, old fashioned Clara Bow lips, moist brown eyes... arms outstretched, head thrown back she glides toward me and into her seventh decade. Her name means "to adore," "to rejoice, to be jubilant, to magnify and honor as in worship, to give or ascribe glory--" my love, O Gloria, I do, I do.
A Man Needs a Place to Stand
- from Heavenly Sex (learn more...)
“We
walk with angels
and they are our feet."
“‘Vibrating energy packets,’” he calls them. “‘Bundles
of soul
in a world of meat.’ Early warning system--
dry
skin and brittle nails;
feelings of numbness and cold;
these are symptoms; they mean something.
I see things physicians miss.
“All you have to do is open your eyes, just open your eyes,
and you’ll see: seven-eighths of everything is invisible, a spirit
inside the spirit.
The soul is rooted in the foot.
As your friend Bly says, ‘The soul longs to go down’;
feet know the way to the other world,
that world where people are awake.
So do me a favor: dream me no dreams.
A dreamer is someone who’s asleep.
“You know, the material world is infinite,
but boring infinite,” he says, cigarette in hand,
little wings fluttering at his ankles.
“And women,” he says, smacking his head,
“four times as many foot problems as men.
High heels are the culprit.
“I may be a podiatrist, but I know what I’m about:
feet. Feet
don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t kiss ass. Truth is,
peoples’ feet are too good for them.
- from Rosicrucian in the Basement (learn more...)