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Arthur won't be coming home this year
Elsie's meringue weeps more than she'd like today.
She hasn't lost her touch for turning it the perfect golden
nor stacking it a proud four inches deep.
She hopes one of the grandkids will drop by for a slice
of lemon pie on the way home from school.
She sure could use some company.
Rolly is her favorite--he takes the time to admire
her collection of black glass knick-knacks.
She has so little left to her name.
Her kids sold off the farm and most of her possessions
to pay bills when Arthur passed--
then moved her into this tiny shoebox house.
They'd said, It's big enough, Mother. Grandpa won't be
coming home no more.
Arthur won't be coming home this year--or next.
Or next.
Elsie wakes each morning thinking she's been robbed.
What's happened to her coalpail, her pitchfork, her mess
of baling wire for fixing things?
She devotes her time to marking everything she possesses.
She embroiders Elsie on her undergarments, scribbles it
on every card in her Canasta deck, even somehow manages
to scratch it into her kitchen dishes.
Though one might well expect to find the odd lard mark
here or there in anyone's cookbook, in Elsie's
Household Searchlight Recipe Book,
the pages are smothered with her name--
and on one page, she's written,
had one cookbook stolen, want it back.
She smears her name with lipstick on the back screendoor.
She carves it into the arm of Arthur's platform rocker
as she stares dumb-eyed at the snowy TV screen.
Arthur won't be coming home this year--or next.
Or next.
And then she starts another pie.
If one of the grandkids doesn't show up, she will dump it
in the backyard and watch the squirrels make a meringue
circus of themselves.
She whistles Swing Low Sweet Chariot.
And one of these days she needs to get around to finishing
the pages of her bible.
The paper is too skinny to write on.
It rips when she applies pressure with her pencil and when
she uses her blue fountain pen, the ink blobs
and musses her dress.
She wouldn't be in this predicament if Arthur hadn't passed.
She's afraid to ask one of the sons to try to fix the snow
on the TV.
Maybe it's her eyes and she'll be forced to spend money
she doesn't have on new glasses.
She drops her favorite heavy brown ovenware bowl as she beats
the egg whites.
One less bowl--and this was the one that had been the most difficult
to scratch her name into.
Her upper lip rattles--oozes shiny balls of sweat--
then goes hard.
She prays if she ever gets to the other side
she won't bump into Arthur.
© 2003 Spiel
First published by Pudding House Publications in Spiel chapbook, "Human."
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I might’ve told him
Mark Saunders and ten others
made the Honor Roll
on national TV.
All of them Americans
under the age of twenty-seven.
The famous news anchorman said:
“In silence, here are eleven more.”
Like always I started counting
uniform pictures of proud soldiers
and wishing they were not dead.
You don’t expect to see somebody you know.
Then oh my god
there was Mark’s picture.
More like a crummy snapshot.
Him looking kind of high
leaning against the cockpit of a jet.
I had to stare at his hometown name
to believe it was him.
Mark never knew it
but I fell in love with him
after Junior Prom
after we dumped our chicks
after we didn’t get laid
after we jerked each other off
after we hooted it up
till sunrise
after we went for a mess of bacon at Denny’s.
That’s when I fell in love
with Mark Saunders.
I should have but
never got around to
telling him
he had amazing hands.
© 2006 the poet Spiel
From Spiel chapbook, 2006, come here cowboy: poems of war.
©2004 spiel " bad boys"
A 2004 variation on an image originally commissioned as a silk screened Mardi Gras poster in 1992. That poster was signed by Taylor as"Tom Thom" another of his several pen names.
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deceit
we live
our lives
in mirrors
(confident)
our reflections
will not
bleed
© 2004 Spiel
Previously published by: Free Verse, Skidrow Penthouse,
King's Estate Anthology, Pudding House Publications,
Chiron Poetry Review. Also appears in: it breathes on its
own, the Spiel chapbook, available on the Spiel Books page.
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"jar"
© 2007 Spiel
An anguished self-portrait, the first full painting done by the artist after a long period of reticence as a painter which followed the 1996 revelation that he was soon to die from life-threatening illness.
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During the period when the artist lived in Los Angeles (1965-1971) and worked under the name Thoss W. Taylor, he created a minimalist series of pencil drawings (1969) which reflected his lifelong visual obsession with the appearance of clapboard siding.
The venerable Rex Evans Gallery which specialized in American drawings honored this work with his first Los Angeles exhibition in May of '69.
Where I live IBM Pencil on Crescent Illustration Board © Thoss W. Taylor
Henry J. Seldis, art critic for The Los Angeles Times, wrote these words about Taylor's Rex Evans exhibition:
"Intricate pencil compositions by Thoss W. Taylor have a fugal quality to both their thought and form. The delicacy of touch and balance projected by the intriguing drawings does not detract from the seriousness, the spirituality, of this enormously gifted artist's speculations. So light is his touch that some of the most fragile arrangements seem to have been drawn by an invisible hand."
Decades later, the clapboard siding imagery continues to appear in his work as The Poet Spiel. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________
"Everything will turn out O.K." 57"h x 68"w x 13"d
© 1987 Tom Taylor
From "The Quintessential White Bread Exercise," a 1988 solo exhibition
at Pirate, A Contemporary Art Oasis, Denver Colorado. The white bread
theme recurs in his work, decades later, as The Poet Spiel.
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extension
no one dies
we all live on
miserably
beyond our time
the blessed curse
of unscrupulous medicine
and clinging loved ones
whose lives
are merely shadows
of our dreams
© 8/7/03 Spiel
From Chiron Review
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"Grief" © 1999 Spiel
Pencil on Arches paper ________________________________________________________________________________________
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"Starry Night 1890/1990"
52" h x 36" w x 10" d, Drawn with expansion foam
© 1990 Tom Taylor
Taylor's tribute to the 100th year anniversary of the suicide of Vincent van Gogh with whom Taylor shares the fate of mental illness. This turbulent piece is skillfully drawn with unpredictable expansion foam. It includes bared teeth in the stars, a bulging moon and a pistol in the visceral area where van Gogh originally painted dark and weathered cypress trees.
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Try these links for online samples of Spiel's poems and stories:
"falsetto" http://www.zafusy.com/spiel.htm
"Mounting Meat" http://newversenews.blogspot.com /2007/03/mounting-meat.html (also at this site) "Returnee/ 5 Fingers" http://newversenews.blogspot.com/2006/09/returnee-5-fingers.html and other Spiel poems (use 'seek')
"no curbing" and "Searching Thunder" here:
http://www.thundersandwich.com/ts26/page57.html
Find Spiel short stories at these online links:
"Slim Light"
http://www.ascentaspirations.ca/slimlight.htm (also at this site)
"Split Ends" http://www.ascentaspirations.ca/splitends.htm
"Couch Thing"
http://www.bcsupernet.com/users/ascent/Couch%20Thing.htm
"Biting Auntie Gin"
http://www.unlikelystories.org/spiel10606.shtml
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"Artifact" acrylic on single board ©1985 Tom Taylor aka Spiel
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Many sizes of Spiel's Giclee prints, on fine art paper or canvas, starting as low as $43, are available online. Go to the Saatchi Online website, then search The Poet Spiel.