John FitzGerald: California Poets Part 11, Three Poems

John FitzGerald

October 20th, 2026

California Poets: Part XI

John FitzGerald

Three Poems

Toast Master

For this I’d re-collect the muses

but who knows where they’re strewn now

given how Counsel misconstrued them,

with the Poet face down

in the corn flakes last we met.

Yet, objections to our loose

confusion of muses reuning

having been overruled

by a quick kick to the jewels,

we shall recommence

the illusion of losing control

as the Poet arises still milk-soaked

to finish the show.

It’s been twenty years.

I’ve since listened to the winds of Mars

and it sounded like wind will.

Seekers of wisdom you took a wrong turn,

but come witness the boilerplate burst.

There are things that I think

when I see what I see,

adjusting goals to conform to the line. 

You would think such a thing must be true,

but it isn’t, an ego disguised as logic

takes over the mind.

How I’ve longed to be mystical

being like you were,

lacking your shinier halves of faces,

with every stinking rule bent

by legitimate replacements.

Preoccupations can’t be understated.

There appear to be ends we fear to be out there,

so maintain afterlife philosophies, but then,

none can explain what that realm’s really like,

except maybe those unafraid to fake it.

No Eden is safe from the snake.

My cells contain plastic,

the oxygen trashed,

and the ocean is burning.

I wound up in a countdown

between two forevers,

now eternity’s broken.

Heaven’s been seen through,

my prophets all mad,

and I’ve no one to pray to.

I only can hope hard to allay my fears

with cold calculation,

though I yearn for earth’s voice

and still can’t help but sing to the sky.

RSVP

Counsel makes a lot of rules about himself.

As a rule, he doesn’t like to make a lot of rules.

Sometimes he forgets that he can change them.

Says I strive to shun nothing the way I do everything

and always the way I do never.

One must be concise to measure time or it takes forever.

His favorite question: How do you know?

Favorite answer: Look it up.

He incorporates by reference his favorite bedtime story.

Has charted the mind’s effects in a parallel verse.

Woos the muses with blues and taboos and booze

and promises of publication.

He’ll make rules about you too.

He doesn’t want to accuse you so would

just as soon remove you from his vocabulary

except to pay a compliment or ask a question.

Circumventing you is impractical, though.

Same with claiming you as mine.

You’re not my muses, technically,

but the specters whose secrets I seek to transcribe.

Feel free to let loose the lines.

I came to write and get high

and so far I’m flying

but nary a tune can be heard.

Pay no attention, little muse.

Ignore that giant rubber band.

This is a genuine ACME photo booth, not a trap.

Alight in the shade and enjoy some free seed.

I’ll not consider your parts, as if quartered.

You don’t even look like food to me

when you’re alive.

Muses! Give it to me!

You’re nothing but a bunch of jive munchkins

and leprechaun losers.

I feel like suing this botched balloonery of words.

In the photos they look like burgers.

Jumble Liar

One best refrain

from entertaining a certain milliner

at the merry muse reunion.

He’s disagreeable in his pedantry.

You say I hope you’re doing well

he says I’m not sure what you mean.

   Hoping is like wishing, isn’t it?

   Is that the best you can do, that I’m well?

   Why not fantastic, or at least great?

   It’s something like saying

   you’re glad I’m not sick,

   and what kind of greeting is that?

That’s pretty picky.

I can’t even wish you

a million dollars by that reasoning,

or why not ten?

Whatever I say will never be enough.

I’m not a genie, you know.

He’ll wave you away like a fly and say

then I’m fine. There’s no one left to pray to

but my own subconscious. It’s not

the animal in me I suffer from, it’s the god.

The animal loves me like a dog.

The god is jealous and psychotic.

For thirty years I wrestled with angels

and got my ass kicked every time.

I’m only now seeing there could be a point

to something other than the moment.

I inhaled quicksilver vapors

now puzzlement’s all I have to show.

I stare at my stew without a spoon, wink into

the eyes of a potato, whisper to the ears of corn, get

into the head of cabbage, break the heart of an artichoke.

The first clock bears the arms of Venus de Milo,

but she makes her point without them.

It just gets me more ticked off as I talk.

The farmer found two bearded herms beside her—

otherwise shapeless sculptures

of a head with a phallus but no torso in between—

like some carrot-dick cauliflower-crotch snowman

with no twig hand to reach his meat and an orgasmic,

unrestrained yearning to satisfy a void he can never feed.

Author Bio:

John FitzGerald is a poet, editor, and attorney for the disabled in Los Angeles. A dual citizen of the U.S. and Ireland, he attended the University of West Los Angeles School of Law, where he was editor of the Law Review. He is the author of four books of poetry, more recently Favorite Bedtime Stories (Salmon Poetry, 2014), finalist for the Julie Suk Book Award, and The Mind (Salmon Poetry, 2011) semifinalist for the Alice James Book Award. His newest manuscript is Karma at the Merry Muse Reunion: A Comic Allegory.