Poems/Marty Christensen

LORNA

You are a plum tree moving
towards the mountains.
Liberated, you are a jade flute
used only in the highest
mayan ceremonies. I guess
you are
about the only american
whose tastes are truly French.
you could be a jukebox.
I could be a dime.

PROSE POEM

Scientists, working for Adolph Hitler,
succeeded somehow in transforming 500

pineal glands into one enormous freak, who
to this day lives on, above the Alps, where

he lies bleeding in a thousand languages.
Recently, carried by a southern wind, globs

of his spit dropped onto Texas lawns whose
owners swore the “blobs” were still growing

hours later. Isaac Asimov, scientific expert
called in by the government, was heard on tv

to make this remark…Oh my God, Oh my God. For
nestling in the phlegm was something enigmatic.

THE WRONG PROFESSION

I am tired of being an insane poet.
I want to drive around in a big cigar.

IN THIS POEM

There is an imaginary ocean. Not a
merely magical lake: a vast exhausted ocean
which can barely even undulate
its aches and pains around much anymore.

Overhead the pockmarked corpse of the moon
is starting to shed dandruff. Almost all
these specks of manna will disintegrate
into that unsteady lawn of spindrift tears.

But, some of those flakes may crystallize
and harden into diamonds sparkling like dew.
Only by then they could be a million fathoms down
so even if you did find one you probably would drown.

Marty Christensen (1942-2012)


TS