Disagreeable Things

by John Blair

Too much furniture,
too many pens.  Too many
monks cribbing nickels,

and sleeping in parks.
Kenko in his idleness
squats in the holy

oleander shade,
hair of dog, penitent cramps,
the art of godly

penury shaking
his bowels.  Too many rocks
and too many trees

make trite a garden’s
olive -green and charming ruse.
No beast, no backs, no

love pitched in any
tent except the worms’ warm bog
Kenko, crouched, creates.

Leaves eddy in base
pentimento, repentance blown in,
contrition blown out.

Too many children
in a house, too many words,
and far too many

promises.  And so
Kenko goes, or went whim-blown
and humbled, grieving

for agreeable things:
books in a case, the spare dust
we are in a heap.