about my Pluto problems

which come hard on the heels of my

Neptune and Uranus problems –

they lasted a number of years,

after a respite of several following

Jupiter’s return to its natal eighth-house

position, raising intense but inflated (characteristic

of Jupiter) expectations –

which arose in the wake of my Saturn Return,

but you’re not, I can tell;

you think it’s all bullshit, all this

astrology and palmistry and I Ching.

You’ve read the papers,

the Horoscope section that says that one-

twelfth of humanity will make a killing

on the Stock Market today if they invest,

and another twelfth will meet a mysterious stranger

and another will embark on an exotic journey

that will bring them in touch with their Soul-Mate,

resulting in a life-long marriage leading to bourgeois boredom

or a missed chance leading to lifelong regret.

I know, you have no evidence

that concern for possible astral fallout is justified

by statistically valid correspondences established

by dispassionate demographers

scrutinizing scores – nay, hundreds –

of those lives of quiet desperation

that form the foundation of all our knowledge

(in the truly wissenschaftlich sense)

of anything that can be said to be sociopsychopathologically valid.

Fine.

Proceed in your normative skeptical bell-curve trajectory;

Me, I’ve got a date with Persephone.

                                                                        (late 1990s)

Previously published in Uncommonplaces: Poems of the Fantastic ed. Judith Kerman & Don Riggs (Mayapple Press 0-932412-17-3, Mar 2000, $15.00, 138pp, tp, cover by Judith Clute); Anthology of 57 poems, 27 reprint, by authors who have read at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, including Brian Aldiss, Jane Yolen, and David Lunde. This appears to be an on-demand edition, available online at www.mayapplepress.com, or from Mayapple Press, PO Box 5743, Saginaw MI 48603-0473; add $1.00 postage.