Robert F. Gross- Two Poems

Mister Wizard’s Nordsee Experiment

Today there is something impersonal and ruthless

the wiring of catatonic rats in series

Each one of them draped in inkstained cheesecloth

the respiration of innumerable dreamers

Hillock upon hillock reaching into winter

already put on ice and vivisected

He moves the finger of the galvanometer

like a robotic fiddler’s tremolo

The five-watt bulb shudders convulsively

into enfeebled, intermittent transmission

Olivia’s Willow Sampler

The rats furnished her with calling cards;

one would have cried from beginning to end. She

Neither thought of her brother dead nor branches

nor facts in his forehead good as she would ever have:

A root cellar of meditation with a world on the side.

Several days to spare as good a moment as any

Lost connection in the dark near the lake

under the clouds trees lawn down to her very hands.

Robert F. Gross leads a nomadic existence nowadays, writing and directing, meandering across the landscape, and on the lookout for collaborative projects. He is currently involved in the development of Julius Ferraro's Micromania for its premiere in Philadelphia. He has recently published poems in Black Mirror Magazine, The Camel Saloon, Sein und Werden, Philosophy after Dark, and Danse Macabre.