Five Poems by Bruce Robinson

                                                   

Tork Is Cheap


Okay, let me explain: it takes less torque
to loosen a threaded fastener than it does
to tighten it. Try it with a couple of lines,


blow them apart. Rhymes
act like inclined planets.
No, sorry, I meant planes.


Think uphill and downhill.
been there done that not there now.
You spend your waking nights dreaming.



Customer Relationships in the Postmodern Era


he did all the talking

-Frost

[3:56:16 PM] Victor > Thank you for contacting Dithyrambic Cable.

My name is Victor; please give me a moment.
At the end of our chat you will be given
the option of taking a brief survey
of the literature; please give me
a moment: I’ll access your account.

[3:59:01 PM] Victor > Hello!

[3:59:41 PM] Victor > Good afternoon.

[4:04:56 PM] Victor > Please provide me with the rhymes you desire.

[4:09:22 PM] Victor > Not to rush you, I am waiting for your stanza.

[4:13:39 PM] Victor > Are we connected to this verse?

[4:23:27 PM] Victor > I am closing this reading due to a semi-

colon of arrhythmatic prose. Nonetheless
if you still need assistance,
please do not hesitate
to delight us in future.

[4:23:33 PM] Victor > You have a blessed day ahead.

[4:23:35 PM] Victor > Bye.



Birds on Parole


When a song comes into their heads,
passerines have the good sense
to just chirp it away, get it out,
be done with it. Henry lies poised
on the windowsill, enraptured, and,
even though he’s just eaten, ravenous.
Could writers wish for more,
faced with the slack-jawed
awe of their audience,
spooling out a villanelle
that’s taken months to build,
their gaze resting on readers
without claws, stomachs filled?

 

4:31


Let's say it's four thirty-one in the morning,

at any rate before breakfast, when reverential
despair meets stolid determination, not at all

or not yet the confrontation of scalding oil

and scrambled egg and yet something far more
disturbing, although the moon shines through it

and the sun doesn't bother to glare.

The dog would empathize if he could,
the cat says screw it, I've got fresher fish

that meets the eye. The uneasy agreement

between verb and cosmos is of little concern
to the cat, oh, and before I forget,

meet Henry, the cat in this picture,

who senses that in a couple of hours
the business news will try to fructify

and he'll have to shelve his aspirations,

save for several parcelled treats,
until the planet delegates him

amanuensis. It's not as though

a clock is a manuscript you can
rely on, a town you can drive right by

you know, it's not a needle, sullenness

in its stop signs, no stoplight's red glare. Henry,
remember him, god love him, chooses not to care.



Caffeine Rondelet


LKF. Now,

I'll have café, macchiato

LKF, the

better to keep a high caffeine
count in the bloodroute, calories
on the autonomous highway:

Little known fact.

Bruce Robinson - Recent work by Bruce Robinson appears or is forthcoming in Tar River Poetry, Spoon River, Rattle, Mantis, Two Hawks Quarterly, Peregrine, Tipton Poetry Journal, North Dakota Quarterly, and Aji.

He has an apartment in Brooklyn that rests complacently above the 2 and 3 subway lines. There are cats involved as well.