Like Taxes: Marching Through Gaul (eBook)

Table of Contents 10
Preface 14
List of titles of poems Sun 16
New York in Broad Daylight 17
Young Monk 18
...the praise which is 19
Where the Houses Lean to Greet You 20
Speaking Dog 21
Taxi 2 22
Parked Taxi 23
33rd Brithday Poem 24
Sealed Days 26
Cleveland 30
Persecution 32
Second Coming 33
Repentance 34
Hide and Seek 35
Our Father 36
Hyperbole 37
Once 38
Versailles 39
Moon 40
Psalm #42 41
Winter 42
Christmas Night Cab Stand 44
Marion Sector 45
OUT OF AFRICA 50
Room 51
Joseph in the Dungeon 52
Gethsemani 53
Litany 54
"Christ Bearing the Cross" by El Greco 55
Pastoral 57
Mulberry Leaves 61
Poem Begun While Listening to Beethoven's EROICA 62
Downtown Steubenville 67
Linda 68
For Paige 69
After FRAGMENTS OF My LIFE 71
A Sick Man's Hands 73
Nursing Home, 3rd Shift 76
For McVey, in the Wake of Her Murderer Lover 78
Photograph 80
The Dance 81
The Apprentice 83
Becoming Apprentice 84
Inviting Winter 85
Christmas with Ed and the Remote Control 86
The Apprentice is Amazed 87
The Apprentice Rejoices 88
The Apprentice Wavers 89
Apprentice as Columbo 90
The Apprentice Eats Glass 91
The Apprentice Sees Himself in the Sunset 92
Graceful Exit 93
The Apprentice Considers Fleas 95
Stop the Murder 96
New Age 97
A Capella 98
The Apprentice in His Groove 99
An Apprentice Goes to a Prayer Meeting 100
The Apprentice Prophecies 101
The Apprentice Considers his Addiction 102
The Apprentice Muses Matrimonial 103
The Fire on the Mountain 104
The Apprentice Counsels a Not-so-Young Rilke 105
The Apprentice Speaks of Retirement 106
About the Author 107
Howard McCord on LIKE TAXES 108

New York in Broad Daylight (p. 4)

(for Jack)

In sunny Central Park

I see Him,

a Child flying a Japanese kite,

the kite itself. Pot-bellied,

He plays a hot corner.

He waves beneath His chin,

jogs uphill with the horde and I feel

all the grass growing inside me.

Great grey buildings

become mice. Blind, they crawl, new-born,

squeaking. Paintings along the sidewalk

learn French, drink coffee.

A Julliard student plays viola

to my violin:

the careful crunch of cheesecake,

Village cafe. And later,

all the small people inside me bop,

the Flintstone theme on sax, Washington Park.

I see Him, with brush and can,

face streaked,

as billowing orange letters,

noisy cars, zip past.

Young Monk (Denver)

Wine, water,

like the red patch, yellow body of a peach

in a bowl, sit

behind layers of fine lacquer,

two millenia of pews

in the bowels of the dark Catholic

Church.

And on the cross up front,

on the wall behind the gold,

the altar, I feel the body, the wound,

in new water, draw,

feel the corresponding motion

without noise.

Mass and, after, outside,

capped clothespins hold the flapping

bedsheet canvass, day: yellow sun head

tucked in a coat of trailing,

above-the-trees, wrap-around blue.

Garrulous birds and the sweet

smell of pine needle.

A calling. Fine as my stride,

elevated as the caps of waves,

spray and shingle, celibate air.

This life for Life

and a walk through the trees.

...the praise which is

a thousand mosquitoes, their silver droppings

to the river, the ripples,

is assembly lines on the banks under trees,

the clanking, seeds twirling down,

small dimes shining in the mud, or the

faces of thin, French nuns in procession,

fortune tellers with the Infant of Prague

in store front windows,

it is the clear apprehension

of a rotten, flagging fencepost, and the strung wire

which binds the sky on measured knots, small wrists.

Wrens gambol in the woodbine,

in the mouthings of syllables which, just now,

it seemed, we had spoken as if with our own mouths,

are honey, down through the tall trees,

lolling on the flowers, or Roman

boots marching through Gaul, a beachball

in the sand.