ON A CASE OF CHAMPAGNE

Cropping extraneous detail
I use the enlarger to simplify images
Burning them free of the background
To brilliant effect. Gibbon becomes a monkey,

Swift a bird, the 18th Century a contagion.
When I get done you can watch Alexander
Pope having sex with Voltaire on a case
Of champagne. You ask, “Is it a just image, or just

An image?” One way is to put down at once
What you see: Skeptics with wallets in big box stores
Or the lace of ice crystals on window glass.
Twigs blown to the ground will determine

A rake’s progress. Follow the elegance of Nature’s
Cycles, though mouse-colored it surely is.

LAMONTE YOUNG’S FURTHER RULES OF SEVEN

You gave me that zero to sixty in two weeks look
Like an unending stream
Of connotation flowing around boulders
Put there by Fate in a bruising fit

Of pique. What gives? And what is the question
Asked of fog’s receding hairline
Blowing out to sea, leaving Berkeley’s
Generational grid of streets shining bright as chrome?

We don’t need money we need figs and time
To browse Moe’s and share a talking
Sandwich. Self-absorption is only normal to a self.
Whose interests are being advanced by mud season,

Anyway? Cushion me, oh myth of ideology,
From paranoia that mistrusts all cultural givens.