Hymn in Las Vegas

In Las Vegas one may picnic on sand and smog

In Las Vegas there are many dead escalators

In Las Vegas garbage cans are always full

Las Vegas has no lack of impetuous drivers

Las Vegas is proud of its radiation

Las Vegas doesn’t know what the speed limit is

Is Las Vegas Paradise on earth?

Is Las Vegas suffering from nostalgia for sin?

Is Las Vegas in love with itself?

Las Vegas struts on stiletto heels

Las Vegas builds billboard Disneyland

Las Vegas looks like a bureaucrat on blackjack

Spring Whim

Buttercups bursting in greeny meadow,

oriole chattering in oak above,

geese squawking and euphorbia prolix

under golden orb setting in the west,

as midges celebrate their most brief lives.

Amid preening buds, frolic Spring has come

to populate damp earth, grass, and night

with trills, songs, and chirping whirls of delight.

Bees buzz, gather on purple lamium

while a woodpecker clatters on a tree.

Even silent twigs and mute lumpy stones

appear to whisper during gentle rain.

Flowering pear and plum evoke laughter

as I and my child trod weed and clover.

No latitude 

 

At the Center of the Earth

there is no hatred or violence.

At the Center an immense blue sky encircles the meridian.

There are no politics here but history

that records the heroic feats of scientists.

At the Center of the Earth there is a monolith

and an avenue of stone-head statues.

At the meridian I saw no birds,

but I hear there are times when clouds pass through.

 

At the Center of the World I had one foot

stepping in the northern hemisphere

and once foot appearing in the southern hemisphere.

Yet, in the end, the Center of the World

functions like any other place in the world:

at the Center there are museums,

cafes, restaurants, and a post office.

For those people who need to boast

and sleep at the Center of the World,

there’s a gigantic hotel under construction

for those who prefer zero latitude

for their recondite dreams.

 

—Kevin T. McEneaney

Elegy for Pete Seeger

 

Sometimes a song can make a difference

when it comes to politics or culture.

Pete Seeger possessed incandescence

on the stage, an aura that could conjure

people to action. Justice and conscience

were in his eyes but a Scripture

to be witnessed by a public movement.

 

His great legacy remains insurgent

in all those who treasure heartfelt music

that is simple, rhythmic, metaphoric.

For Pete, song was the transcendental spark

that could create a vital change of heart.

Although Clearwater Pete no longer plays here,

his songs will re-bloom like flowers each year.

 

—Kevin T. McEneaney

Beneficent exterminator

 

The blue dragonfly with its bulbous eye

is my true ally against mosquitoes

who seek to siphon off my rosy blood.

He will dart and dine in shafts of sunlight,

but will depart when blear darkness descends.

Some people think a dog is their true friend,

but I prefer the bluetail’s roving eye.

This friend makes no demands at all of me—

as a result I’m left entirely free

to garden or lark about my small yard

with a sense of ease in golden sunshine

as I admire the light, hovering flight

of my bright, colorful necromancer

who glides as the air’s brilliant passenger.

The Wine Snob

 

   The wine snob possesses a superhuman nose for aromas and a godlike talent for tasting good wine. Such a person knows how to describe the start, middle, and finish of a wine with remarkable elegance. The palette of such a snob is like a super-fast computer able to crunch enormous quantities of particle physics information in nanoseconds. The nearby hill that grows currents or blackberries can be tasted in the wine or the amateur attempt to produce that illusion through additive syrup can be unmasked. As long as the wine at table is good, there is no better companion. When polite conversation rides the current of good wine, it can inspire and irrigate many fruitful fields of intellectual discourse and result in amusing digression, and so produce that ideal event—the symposium, a legendary event that sometimes happens. When it does, it appears to make life miraculous. The world smiles as intimacy and laughter envelopes the whole table. A glowing aura descends upon the host. The host or hostess has now become a mythic figure in the mind of those who attended the event.

   Yet if the wine’s finish possesses a tang too dry, sweet, or acidic, then a tempest of disgust may erupt and spoil the evening for everyone. The new bottle at a restaurant gets sent back not once but two or three times. If such a person happens to be lounging in a chair at your house, you may not have an acceptable bottle in your cellar. The dinner becomes a surreal, tragic quandary—Sophocles meets Salvatore Dali directed by Jean-Luc Goddard. The party should end as soon as possible. You have run out of wine.

   The best way to handle a wine snob when he (usually a he because men have much larger livers than women and also possess a special hormone that aids in the digestion of alcohol, a trick women don’t have) falls off track is to bombard him with random questions. Although the average wine snob has something like 50,000 bottles rattling around in his head, he cannot locate them all at one go. His central nervous system doesn’t have enough mental waiters to attend his commands. Inevitably, he will be not be able to recall the year of the best grand cru from Chateau de Seguin he ever tasted. He will admit that that it is not his favorite Bordeaux, but will meditate silently on this deep subject.

   Confusion and calm will descend upon the party as the wine snob settles into a narcissistic, senile reverie while his neurons search for the missing file folder. Others will take over leadership of the party. Table talk will be diverted into less obscure topics like the recollection of past lives, etymological ambiguities, the proper way to fall off a horse, how to best arrange clematis on a wall or shed, or the whimsical gaffs of famous philosophers. The wine snob, a narrow specialist, cannot understand such subjects, much less pontificate upon them. Holding his glass at an angle, he will need a refill. Now the only problem for the host is make sure that he does not sit at the driver’s wheel when he departs the house.

 

—Gonzo Lorenzo

 

Gonzo Lorenzo’s columns are inspired by William Thackeray’s humor columns on the gentle art of snobbery that appeared in mid-nineteenth century Punch.