John Milbury-Steen

The Miser

Many, some, a few wooed me and failed.
With them I got to be tall, proud and cold.
Three women wanted me. A childless uncle
wanted to be my father, but I’d killed
the first. Why kill another? Old, in sum,
I count my specie, speciously fulfilled

not with myself given, but withheld,
a lonely miser wearing away thin gold.

No miser will allow that closure click
of closing chest conclude his keeping book
on those accounts that by the clock have lapsed
unreceivable, but will make do
making counted count as paid. He only
regrets that his rejected were so few.

At the Fosse

They threaten me that death is very fine,
total meditation, action done,
brilliant recusal, with all conflict gone,
the book all closed, to balance line by line,
down in the dessication of the bone,
down in the accountancy of stone,

but if that’s true, remind me of the rub,
that Homo mortus semper stultus boob,
having escaped the hubbub and the tube,
action past, to dream him back in robe,
is now so sapped of energy and verb
he must imbibe a round at Blood Ditch Pub.

That desperate fueling on the telling day
tells me more than what he’s fueled to say.