Dean J. Baker

Eternal Struggle

What smashes into my attention:
first, your impatience
to get on with it; while, I’m
the instrument of doom or salvation

I cannot accept such grace;
nor discover beneath that gentleness
a veneer of calm, no fraud
this singular woman’s charm

Who meant to find a man wise enough
to appreciate her loveliness; yet
dumb as the summer oxen:
stung, unbelieving into song

©Dean J. Baker

©Dean J. Baker and deanjbaker.wordpress.com, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material that appears here or has appeared here without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Dean J. Baker and deanjbaker.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

November 10, 2009 Posted by deanjbaker | Canadian Literature, Canadian Poets, Dean J. Baker, Literary, Ontario, Poetry, Romantic poetry, Toronto | Canadian Poetry, Literature, Poetry | 3 Comments

Drinking Hemlock

I shall not grow old,
into decrepit loneliness; nor
the thousand
plagues upon the way.

I shall not become
the bed-ridden ghost; of
hopes and wishes, now
no more than sediment.

Boredom will not be
given the chance to tick
my life from between the seconds:
I would rather vanish.

Because I know what I want
I shall not become a puppeteer;
dangling like a jock,
amid the gossip of compromise.

My self-respect, consists
in getting what I want;
no more than this:
I shall die one death.

©Dean J. Baker

November 9, 2009 Posted by deanjbaker | Canadian Poets, Dean J. Baker, Desire, Literary, Ontario, Passion, Toronto | Age, Canadian Poetry, Literature, Poetry | 4 Comments

Fat Albert’s Outpatient Folk Clinic – The Initiates

Boris wandered lost in the crowd, stifling yet another belch;
knuckles sliding along the ground, shuffling towards his seat in
an overcoated slouch, a ham-fisted grab-bag of 2 large bottles of
Coca Cola, chips, and a stale cigar appeared from the executive
briefcase, clenched in the other hand.
A Maestro preparing to judge the participants.

Corncob was mounting the stage, the first and last object he’d
even come close to mounting in the last decade.

These were among the real Bloor St. underground denizens:
cave-dwellers, morons, and the intellectually quadriplegic.

Each of these unmentionables has participated in a simultaneous
and mutual evacuation that had completely polluted several
layers of whatever atmosphere existed only moments ago.

I sit back here, scribbling these words; praying that nobody will
notice me, or bring attention to the fact that I am being what they
please themselves to call cynical.
Though I believe it is simply relief that someone else has taken
on the task of description they would not be able to contain once begun.

I guess it doesn’t help that our peerless leaders are themselves
in dire need of such therapy as this cast of village idiots provides.

Let the fun begin.
Both were kings of long sustained bursts of silent thought.

©Dean J. Baker

November 7, 2009 Posted by deanjbaker | Canadian Poets, Culture, Dean J. Baker, Fat Albert's Outpatient Folk Clinic, Folk Singers, Literary, Ontario, Prose Poems, Satire, Toronto | Canadian Poetry, Fat Albert's Outpatient Folk Clinic, Literature, Poetry, Toronto | 5 Comments