March 2019
I'm a retired English Professor spending my time writing, taking the occasional photograph, trying to follow the Dharma. For more about me and my musings: http://www.michaelminassian.com
Author's Note: The theme for this month is My Best Poem. While I no longer consider this my best work, at the time it was published it received a lot of attention, (as I managed to invoke both Edgar Allan Poe and W. B. Yeats) first appearing in the Savannah Literary Journal in 1997. Later that year, it was reprinted in City Link magazine (Ft. Lauderdale, FL) along with an interview and photos.
CRAZY JANE TALKS TO ME & I ANSWER BACK
Crazy Jane talks to me every night
in her low husky voice:
she gives good phone sex—
electronic photon optic fiber head.
I’m writing a new Edgar Allan Poe story—
his heroines were always entombed,
never buried, so they could walk again.
Crazy Jane visits me & pounds on the door—
I notice her panties around her ankle
like a thin bracelet of lace,
symbolic and glistening
with the dampness of her madness.
On the Home Shopping Network
they are selling tape recorders and dope—
a man with hard gemlike eyes
and a crooked mustache appears
wearing a black suit and bow tie—
he faces the camera and speaks:
Your name is Edgar Allan Poe.
You didn’t die in Baltimore;
you are alive - your mouth is a road
others travel; your words are a map
of the future and streets of graveyards.
The air is full of moths and butterflies—
Crazy Jane’s brain is aflame,
her body feverish and wet;
the fan above the bed cuts
through the air like two stiff sets of wings.
Crazy Jane says: I had a dream about you;
you were lying in a hospital bed;
tubes and things were coming out of your nose;
a pendulum, gleaming sharp and cold,
swung suspended over your body.
In the tale, the murderer says:
The disease sharpened my senses;
observe how calmly I can tell you the whole story.
CRAZY JANE TALKS TO ME & I ANSWER BACK
Crazy Jane talks to me every night
in her low husky voice:
she gives good phone sex—
electronic photon optic fiber head.
I’m writing a new Edgar Allan Poe story—
his heroines were always entombed,
never buried, so they could walk again.
Crazy Jane visits me & pounds on the door—
I notice her panties around her ankle
like a thin bracelet of lace,
symbolic and glistening
with the dampness of her madness.
On the Home Shopping Network
they are selling tape recorders and dope—
a man with hard gemlike eyes
and a crooked mustache appears
wearing a black suit and bow tie—
he faces the camera and speaks:
Your name is Edgar Allan Poe.
You didn’t die in Baltimore;
you are alive - your mouth is a road
others travel; your words are a map
of the future and streets of graveyards.
The air is full of moths and butterflies—
Crazy Jane’s brain is aflame,
her body feverish and wet;
the fan above the bed cuts
through the air like two stiff sets of wings.
Crazy Jane says: I had a dream about you;
you were lying in a hospital bed;
tubes and things were coming out of your nose;
a pendulum, gleaming sharp and cold,
swung suspended over your body.
In the tale, the murderer says:
The disease sharpened my senses;
observe how calmly I can tell you the whole story.
© 2019 Michael Minassian
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to tell him or her. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is the beginning of community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -FF