Elegy for Killer Kowalski
                 Dead 18 Aug 2008 at 81

I was just a boy
when I first saw you
inside our old Philco.
 
A mass of a man in tights,
and a skullcap which
put a bolt of lightning
on the center of your forehead.
You had a chin like a Buick.
 
I loved to watch you
storm yourself around
the roped ring,
stalking that other man,
then plowing him
face first to the floor.
 
Oh yes, I grimaced, knowing
what was coming.
The dreaded Claw Hold.
Mashing your great fingers
into his doughy gut, twisting
until the contest was finished.
 
There was that day at
The Montreal Forum in ’54,
where you faced down Yukon Eric
and earned your name.
 
Walter, you never killed anyone.
But no one had ever seen
a man’s ear ripped from his head,
and sent flying through the air,
quite like that.

Daniel Thomas Moran

published in Black Cat Poems, 2008

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We Mortals

We long for
the perfection
in these things
of the world,
Life certain in
its bilateral symmetry,
Generations strung
like pearls on
an imagined wire.
We squint at the sun.
We marvel at the
plaintive syllables
of songbirds.
We admire
tallness and clarity.
Feeling the
vibrations of it all
beneath our feet,
We rhapsodize
distances suggested
upon moonless nights
daring to name the ineffable.
We write poems and
chant to the mysteries.
We dance round fires
in clearings we have
made in the forest.
We weep for the
spirits of fallen trees.
Facing death
we avert our eyes.
When great things succumb,
We tell ourselves
they were never there.
Thirsty, we lie on
our backs, allowing
our mouths to fill
with rainwater, and
hope to rise, like blossoms
from the dust.

Daniel Thomas Moran

published in The Seventh Quarry

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Some Kind of Sonnet for a Mayfly

If it be true what learned people say,
The Mayfly lives for but a day.
I’ll not shed even the tiniest tear,
Or wish he’d make it one more year.
Instead I would concentrate on just how grand,
To live without next week’s demand.
 
And among the simple Mayfly facts is,
He never once has to file his taxes,
Or contemplate the waning moon,
Or anticipate any time but soon.
Never repay but only borrow,
Or check the weather for tomorrow.
 
It might be luxury, if I may be bold,
To be unconcerned about growing old.
No time for beddy-by, nor alarms to be set,
No time for longing or for regret.
Not to mention that on his day in May,
He might decide to alight or just fly away.
 
Another thing any Mayfly knows,
He won’t need to shop for Winter clothes.
Never wondering while watching the setting sun
Why living seems over before it’s begun.
The Mayfly is the only one who can truly say
That the Mayfly has so truly had his day.
 
At eight in the morn his youth would flower,
Old age a twenty-fifth or twenty-sixth hour.
Never needing to strain his brain to remember,
Where he was on the twenty-fourth of September.
Oh Mayfly how strangely fortunate,
Is the lifetime brief and immediate.
 
Mayfly whose lifetime is so fleetly fleeting,
It would seem so surely worth repeating.

Daniel Thomas Moran

published in Poetry Salzburgh Review, 2006

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To Debbie After I Had
Already Eaten The Octopusses
                 for Debbie Gustin

Last night, over a pizza,
I told you how, last week
I had eaten a marinated
baby octopus or two
in the Japanese restaurant.
Actually I ate four of them,
all tiny and tender and still,
(except for the one
which was a bit tough).
 
I told you that I
had first hesitated, seeing
them there huddled together
on the square china plate.
But I didn’t want to
embarrass myself
in front of my wife
(who was unsure about
the idea from the start),
or the little Japanese girl
who had served them up.
 
I felt like a crow, or worse,
some kind of viper,
robbing them of their
forever unfulfilled lives.
I left one there, just
to show that I wasn’t
heartless, even in my hunger,
capable of the truest mercies.
 
But then you told me
of the program that you
had just watched, on
The Remarkable Octopus,
how they were so smart,
possessed of true sentiments,
tender creatures, and
almost human you said.
 
I suppose we could have
also wept for the pizza.
 
Instead I thought that, perhaps
those babies might have
one day survived to become the
TERRIBLE GIANTS OF THE DEEP.
Lunging up to grasp a ship of refugees,
or even eco-tourists on holiday.
Dragging them down screaming
into a grave of briny blackness.
 
So, now I prefer to be:
That brave man who had
saved four fine ships, and
the lives of many scores of
old women and babies,
on the high savage seas
fleeing places of hunger and tyrants.
A great man with this one regret:
 
One should not trifle with monsters.
 
I should have eaten the last
of those wicked little bastards,
and asked for a second helping.

Daniel Thomas Moran

published in Opium

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