The Skywriter’s Waggled Old Arm


No one likes Juliet Prowse
or remembers who she is
so if I land my plane on your house
it’s the same to bury your kids

who were certainly not as famous
and probably had cancer
at least had no right to be as orgulous
as a decomposing dancer

and if you want to quibble every time
I can’t pull out of a damned nosedive
and to the adjustor hyperbolize
a little damage as rapine

then I am going to do the same
not try to bank the thing at all
but at your bed shall take aim
and blow through each and every wall

though let’s be frank
it’s clear I have you to thank
that the joke around the office is
let him aim, he’s sure to miss

but a man who now gets paid by the letter
and out of pity for my plight
still keeps his job though they know better
and only give me work at night

because once for Billionaire Milton Kruppt
of Kruppt, Boughman, Short & Tharmes
my irascible Hitch acted up,
I lost for sure my Waggled Arm

and the best calligraphy of my life
scribbled to an indecent twist,
the legible part, about his wife,
and ended in flocculent gibberish

so I know how parlous it all can be
I have my own indignity, too.
The best pilots of the company
each morning go up to strikethrough

the smoke of effort and of pride
the pacing heart and the swoop
the sweet and personal divide
the promise and the loop-de-loop.

So, don’t tell me you’ve nowhere to live,
that you have tremors or otherwise shrink
from loud noises or need sedatives,
screw around or drown in drink

for I’m the one who lives in Hell
and through your doorway hot with wings
in every coil that I fell
I hear how Paradise can sing

and maybe I have the Waggled nerves
only the profligate deserves
Heaven disposes, God is right
but I have descended in a Night
and huddled to a more merciless rain
than the pieces of my plane.
 

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                           © Habley Mouse, a Private Press, 2006.  All rights reserved.  (Poetry by William Frank)
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