Love (or something like it)

By Stan Rogal

comes a point when the hourglass figures
            a sign that reads: danger, heavier when naked
                        the body as commodity as currency that
loses value over time
 
blue the teeth of love & blue the rage
            I mean, don’t you feel a certain “chemistry”
                        exists between us? ah, the romance of
sophisticated fiction, ain’t it a scream
 
a woman smokes a cigarette
            in the banal pose of the femme fatale
                        a situation not what you suspected
but for flash & click & suddenness
           
“pretend I am kissing the lips I am missing”
            head hung out the window waiting in vain
                        for love’s sirocco, that breeze from Wyoming
said to contain erotic properties
 
soft sell of the libidinal nightmare
            the waterfall of resplendent coppery hair
                        concealing the breasts & suggesting
modesty, is (in & of itself) suggestive, no?
 
that says enough though not all
            we could (say) be that couple from Paradise
                        — me Tarzan, you Jane — buried beneath
blue sky, bright sunlight (if, only…)

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Love, inc.​

By Stan Rogal

so say we inhabit a drowsy movie
            theatre-type darkness full of American
                        bullet holes : a monkey on its back
 — this is the state of the empire, yes? — 
 
who can afford to eat orchids for lunch
            & smash the crystal : blest with power to discern
                        relations between disparate phenomena, instead,
breed a culture lost in sin tax
 
what makes “intent” intense
            (he puts his thing in her thing & etcetera…)
                        I mean, who hasn’t pushed the envelope
to get made, to get laid?
 
young girls, keep from the dance halls
            & shadowy sides of the road : humdrum
                        has a stammer : it hovers on the lips of
allegory : the rose in the whiskey glass
 
they don’t know what they don’t know —   
            so what? a science that claims to be unbiased
                        deceives itself : a bat ladders the black air as
(taking aim) a mob prepares to shoot out the stars

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Ou Li Po Haiku U

By Stan Rogal

Lesson I:
a haiku evokes
a season, say, winter, &
nature, say, a frog
 
                                               
                                            Lesson II:
                                                            one two three four five
                                                            one two three four five seven
                                                            one two three four five
 
 
            Lesson III:
                        poor, Ou Li Po, you
                        fail to grasp winter’s drift, The
                        Frogs is Greek to you

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​Stan Rogal lives and writes in Toronto along with his artist partner Jacquie Jacobs. Work has appeared in magazines and anthologies in Canada, the US, Europe and Asia. The author of 28 books: 8 novels, 7 short story, 13 poetry (most recent, more songs the radio won't play, 2025, ECW), as well as several produced plays. An autodidactic intellectual classicist [reformed]. Speaks semi-fluent English and controversial French.