Gaslight
The gaslight’s trepidatious pomp authors
Uncertain flashes of genius trapped
Like drowned insects in honeyed amber
Or demon out of human flesh unwrapped.

This unhallowed moon that ascends above
These streets mired deep in human ordure
Howling from morning’s unrequited love
And birth-pang born we are the moon’s creature.

Unjudged while bathed beneath this waxen light
With undredged hungers in this place released
No guilt to mar this wretched joy, this rite,
This consecration of man and the beast.

But feast and fete of meat and human bone –
No god of man could ever this condone.

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The Oldtimer’s Lament
Forty autumns lay heavy on this mien,
And trenched deep are those burdens scarce conceived,
By those whelped on naught but backstreet cuisine,
A jogger, or a stray chihuahua thieved.

You pestilent dogs, you haphazard curs!
Who think by moonlight’s bend alone to claim
That feast upon the sidewalks’ blood spatters,
And by that imagine a wolf became.

In days long past to pretend that privilege,
To embrace this aberrant lupine strain,
One would polish off something with cleavage,
While preying past fear and threat of wolfsbane.

So if wolf you truly would be, cast off
Your pomp and eat some meter maid pilaf.