Prospero's Book

Richard Luftig

(Mar/Apr 2016)

It possessed all

his magic to keep

a daughter close.

But one cannot hold

the moon forever

or its rhythms still

and even a sorcerer

must yield to such

first, inevitable facts.

Here, I give you,

the best part of my life,

he told Ferdinand

and yield now to a place

where every third thought

shall be my grave,

and then drowned

his book so deep

in the fathoms

retiring all

he knew to

the alchemy of love.

Pseudonym

Richard Luftig

(Be yourself: Everybody else has already been taken-Oscar Wilde)

Samuel Clemens had problems

you know on choosing his,

tossing this way and that,

betwixt and be-twain

then finally taking aim

on one based on a river sounding.

And Dr. Seuss too. For who would

take serious or consider mysterious

a guy with a moniker like Geisel

who wrote of hats and cats

and good luck, or meisel-tov

with finding anything

which rhymes with that.

Let’s remember Amantine Dupin

who dressed like a man and wrote so much

romantic gush about the Sands of time

if you will, by George,

and had affairs with Chopin,

hopin’ to make her husband jealous

when she had them with lots of other fellas

right up until they day she died.

And then there’s me, whose poetry

is so obscure that I cannot secure

its printing in any book or get the local library

branch to not forget to take a look

and place it in their hometown author stack,

though my lack of fame I can only account

to my name that defies all rhyme and possess

no iambic bounce that one might manage to pronounce.

So pick me a pseudonym Sam:

I Am all ears for a name that grabs

attention. But know that I require one

without pretention: Nancy, Cuthbert,

Harris, Ira, any old name will do.

From Sand’s Paris or Twain’s Elmira

it makes no matter to me just so

it does the trick, sticks in one’s mind,

trips across the tongue among my readers.

But please not one that contains no rests

like trochees, dactyls, anapests

or some still unnamed poetic meters.