Devils & Islands. Turner Cassity

am not sure it’s greener grass

      Or topiary maze

      Or Herod’s cistern I am in,

      With Bette Davis soap.

      And underscoring Errol Flynn

      Needs certain skills to cope

      Or one’s own head is on the plate.

      Not quite Jokanaan,

      Contract renewed and up to date,

      I notate on and on,

      Who am an exile exiled thrice:

      From city, era, tongue.

      Of course, Vienna has its price.

      I am no bard unsung.

      Ex-prodigy I, you ex-star,

      For our time left to be

      We are in real life what we are.

      The hero may be me.

      The Last Newsboy

      Not all of us grew up to be Irving Berlin.

      There is not space to list the prisons we are in.

      Pickpockets, hustlers, dealers, we became that news

      We sold, if on the inside pages. Poor excuse

      For urchin enterprise the vending that replaced.

      A coin box is a generation gone to waste

      And cannot give out change. Too often vandalized

      To turn a profit, it becomes a recognized

      Icon of inner city wreck, as in the past

      We stood for rising expectations, if, at last

      Our cry of “Extra!” covered the laments of lack.

      The newsboy as the Chaplin Kid will not be back,

      Having become decades ago the Dead End Kids

      And then the Chaplin Tramp unfunny on the skids;

      As now newspapers are. As AP, UP ebb,

      Ex-buyer on my corner, see you on the Web.

      Hitting the Silk

      The golden parachute we really need

      We need for the emotions. Severance

      Can be, of course, itself a payoff. Bleed,

      Heal, put behind … Still, falling from the chance

      Of hurt through gentle letdown to a ground

      On which to keep both feet has too a role.

      Do not suppose, Fall Guy, there will be found

      A second time such fancies of control

      As once you had, or so bright element.

      Long love, deep air, and if not silk and gold,

      Haiku and kamikaze; loss, descent,

      Downsizing. Wrap the final scarf, unfold

      The chute, and skydive neat: response in kind—

      Part suicide, part payout, part rebirth.