Tijuana Afternoon

My heart, beribboned with banderillas,
plods wearily along.
I take my stance in the curve of the wall;
I know this dusty arena well.

The trumpet shouts, 
the late shadows lengthen
and the crowd's glad cry
is a clamor for my fall.

The pride of my strength 
once ran like a rippling tide 
where red ribbons now trail 
my blood in the dust.

The trumpet's blaring was 
the glory that I breathed,
the and crowd's glad cry
from a thousand encircliong friends
loped me in easy, rolling strides
around the rain fresh turf.

How cool it is to receive me now.

Herman Mueller's Questions:

Questions  Is this type of poetry too old fashioned? The modern poets I read today seem to speak in a different voice.  Is this generational? I'm 77

On Halley's Comet Coming Back

How nice it would be,
this old man thinks,
if one's dust were dumped 
in a programmed intercept, 
to marry our porvincial soil 
with the foreign cargo 
in the comet's tail; 
and then, when it
came roaring back,
those last few people who
carry on down here still--
those poor thin seeds 
of our diluted spoor--
might on some quiet evening's
walk look up at the light 
of our excited atoms, 
whipping out again in their 
long exhilarating curve, 
carouseling endlessly in 
the place that gave us birth 
and thus all unknowing,
join hands with us again.

Herman Mueller's Questions:

Perhaps "sperm" would be better than "spoor" but the latter seemed to gross to me; what thinkest thou? had "roaring back again"; dropped "again" as redundant. No?