POEMS -- APRIL
(Please send suggestions, feedback or commentary to timiimit@mockok.com )
April 29, 2012
FORAGING
Sedulous eyes search for what will be
smoothly grabbed by tutored talons,
processed by gut instinct,
the regurgitated consonant and vowel
to keep vigorous
generation of growth.
Tim Van Ert-- "if you live, your time will come"
April 13, 2012
SUNDAY OLYMPICS
Sunday--once the Lord's day, now mine to find Olympic Hot Springs.
Through six years I rummage the map from memory's glovebox:
catch a sharp curve turn-off across from the country store,
pay at the gate, then head straight past the alder grove
until the creek running rounded-stone shallow
leads past the abandoned ranger's house and tower
through oak and pine to a parking lot (fuller this time.)
Curved hiking trail leads me to unwind and anticipate
each sunny mud-slide bank, wash-out and fallen fir.
Still think those crumbling asphalt curbs were put there in the 30s!
Mumble the same 'howdydo' to each hiker passed
and take no false turns--straight to the upper-most pool
the lower ones lured me away from hundreds of Sundays before.
Zinnias and glads smile down their creamy oranges, yellows and pinks
from a shoulder high bank of moss to that first-formed hot pool.
I guessed they weren't placed there by the hippie teens ooohing their delight.
Gnome, stooped to show his white beard nearly as close to his feet
as his stringy white hair, empties a plastic flower bucket,
sits in the tub's corner offering a direct view of the two teens'
kinky blonde hair and thin, tattooed, pierced young bodies.
Undressing and slipping into water they each light up.
They ask if I want some coconut-flavored rum.
"Sure," I say, and ask if they'd camped there.
"Yeah, last night--and people keep it very clean, too!"
Old man says he grew the flowers himself,
"from Sequim--come here every Sunday."
"A nice way to go to church," I offer.
"Yeah, and a nice place to get kisses from young ladies.
And I get lots of them. Don't get nothing if you don't ask."
--if you live, your time will come
April 5, 2012
World Series
Please tell the cook
she will have to rip
tv arms and legs
from broadcast diamonds
as I worship shadow play.
--if you live, your time will come
April 30, 2011
Ohio Underworld
Hillside lights drop mazes
of white poles into a still river.
They seem to hold up the dark.
Another world on those streets
unreels and dissolves under a sky
of water. A man I meet
beneath a bridge asks for change.
Twenty-five years at U.S. Steel,
he says. Above the flood wall,
a small orange stream trickles
from a pipe. I pour some quarters
into his hand. He nods
toward three man in suits:
I'm like the lights in the river
to them people. I leave him
standing in the runoff.
--Peter Blair
(published in LAST HEAT)
April 21, 2011
Blackberries
They left my hands like a printer's
Or thief's before a police blotter
& pulled me into early morning's
Terrestrial sweetness, so thick
The damp ground was consecrated
Where they fell among a garland of thorns.
Although I could smell old lime-covered
History, at ten I'd still hold out my hands
& berries fell into them. Eating from one
& filling a half gallon with the other,
I ate the mythology & dreamt
Of pies & cobbler, almost
Needful as forgiveness. My bird dog Spot
Eyed blue jays & thrashers. The mud frogs
In rich blackness, hid from daylight.
An hour later, beside City Limits Road
I balanced a gleaming can in each hand,
Limboed between worlds, repeating "One dollar."
The big blue car made me sweat.
Wintertime crawled out of the windows.
When I leaned closer I saw the boy
Smirking, & it was then I remembered my fingers
Burning with thorns among berries too ripe to touch.
--Yusef Komunyakaa
(published in NEW AMERICAN POETS OF THE 90s)
April 9, 2011
Her Lips Are Copper Wire
whisper of yellow globes
gleaming on lamp-posts that sway
like bootleg licker drinkers in the fog
and let your breath be moist against me
like bright beads on yellow globes
telephone the power-house
that the main wires are insulate
(her words play softly up and down
dewy corridors of billboards)
then with your tongue remove the tape
and press your lips to mine
till they are incandescent
--Jean Toomer
www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/toomer/toomerpoems.html#anchor2762825
April 2, 2011
Quiet Nights
I go to sleep on one beach,
wake up on another.
Boat all fitted out,
tugging against its rope.
--Raymond Carver
A NEW PATH TO THE WATERFALL
April 30, 2010
New Hampshire
Children's voices in the orchard
Between the blossom- and the fruit-time;
Golden head, crimson head,
Between the green tip and the root,
Black wing, brown wing, hover over;
Twenty years and the spring is over;
To-day grieves, to-morrow grieves,
Cover me over, light-in-leaves;
Golden head, black wing,
Cling, swing,
Spring, sing,
Swing up into the apple-tree.
--T. S. Eliot
(published in THE WASTE LAND & OTHER POEMS)
April 29, 2010
The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls
The tide rises, the tide, falls
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;
Along the sea-sands damp and brown
The traveller hastens toward the town,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.
Darkness settles on roofs and walls,
But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls;
The little waves, with their soft, white hands,
Efface the footprints in the sands,
And the tide rise, the tide falls.
The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls
Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;
The day returns, but nevermore
Returns the traveller to the shore,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
(published in THE PREMIER BOOK OF MAJOR POETS)
April 28, 2010
Blood and Lead
Listen to what they did.
Don't listen to what they said.
What was written in blood
Has been set up in lead.
Lead tears the heart.
Lead tears the brain.
What was written in blood
Has been set up again.
The heart is a drum.
The drum has a snare.
The snare is in the blood.
The blood is in the air.
Listen to what they did.
Listen to what's to come.
Listen to the blood.
Listen to the drum.
--James Fenton
(published in OUT OF DANGER)
April 27, 2010
The World Book Salesman
He holds conversation sacred
though a dying art. Smiling,
by turns he is part toady,
part Oberfuhrer. Knowing when
is the secret.
Out of the slim briefcase come
maps of all the world;
deserts, oceans,
photographs, artwork--
it is all there, all there
for the asking
as the doors swing open, crack
or slam.
In the empty
rooms each evening, he eats
alone, watches television, reads
the newspaper with a lust
that begins and ends in the fingertips.
There is no God,
and conversation is a dying art.
--Raymond Carver
(published in A NEW PATH TO THE WATERFALL)
April 26, 2010
The Rescue
When the future seems bleak
And the way is long
And you can't see the end
Cause somehow it'll all turn out wrong
When doubt covers hope
And threatens to take hold
And extinguish the light
That wasn't that bright
When courage fails
And weakness comes
Until all you want
Is to hide somewhere safe
The suddenly You come
And show the way
Like a brilliant star
You shine as the day
"Take courage, do not fear!
I will always be with you,
Stand and be brave,
And your life I will save!"
--Esther Steiner
(published in NORTHWEST PASSAGE)
April 25, 2010
Track Gang
Our shovel blades scrape the gravel
between rails. Under steady clanks,
grunts, and thuds of dirt, we dig
to expose a rotted tie. Chug grabs
a new one off the cart. Yelling, Macho
gandydancer, he carries it on his back
and drops it in the stones. Its black grain
oozes creosote. Jack, the track boss,
cusses him, Do that again, you're off
the gang. Ruin your back on your own time.
Chug's sheepish, his face sun-cracked
and square as the eight-by-eight of wood
that we crowbar, slide and sledge
into place under the stainless rails.
Their cool silver gleams like the coins
we slide into machines, across bars
and under cages of bank tellers. All day
we bury new ties in the humble dirt
of an hourly wage where they stay
for twenty years. Together they lead
to every town in America, and end
on the blast furnace trestle.
We're paid to keep it that way.
--Peter Blair
(published in LAST HEAT)
April 24, 2010
On Aging
When you see me sitting quietly,
Like a sack left on the shelf,
Don't think I need your chattering.
I'm listening to myself.
Hold! Stop! Don't pity me!
Hold! Stop your sympathy!
Understanding if you got it,
Otherwise I'll do without it!
When my bones are stiff and aching
And my feet won't climb the stair,
I will only ask one favor:
Don't bring me no rocking chair.
When you see me walking, stumbling,
Don't study and get it wrong.
'Cause tired don't mean lazy
And every goodbye ain't gone.
I'm the same person I was back then,
A little less hair, a little less chin,
A lot less lungs and much less wind.
But ain't I lucky I can still breathe in.
--Maya Angelou
(published in AND STILL I RISE)
April 21, 2010
The Raven
The raven
is stealing your corn
old mother.
The raven
with his shifty black
eyes,
with his shiny black
beak.
The raven, old mother
is stealing your corn.
--Winston Mason
(published in COME TO POWER)
April 20, 2010
Going Home Madly
I walked the two blocks from the subway down
the hill toward the mosque beside the new
Islamic school to my tumble-down
tenement just off Second Avenue.
The moon was new, a sliver rising over
Queens. The sky was plush as crushed velvet--
a midnight-blue wedding lapel purpling over
the East River like the inside of a clamshell.
The scythe-like moon atop the minaret
was silhouetted black against the sky
and I, going home madly
in love with you, in debt up to my eyes
and needing succor badly, and repair,
and almost lost, almost broken,
with nothing but my ragged heart to offer--
a warm and bloody token beating there
in my outstretched palm like some Edgar Allan Poe prize--
saw the crescent of the real moon rise
up over the solid dark dome of the mosque
with its mirror-image sickle moon on top.
Behind, the East River (oily, black as a bassoon)
boiled up in its banks like a Cubop tune,
and in the air, suspended, a double strand
of lights going over, and Queens, darkly beyond.
Sometimes this city chokes me up with all
her jagged beauty, and sometimes, I am made new,
like tonight, when I walked back up the hill
and 'round the block again because of you.
--Brooke Wiese
(published in AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD)
April 19, 2010
A.M.
Breaking eggs to scramble
I think of rainbows
And the good of promises.
And how it would be nice to go back to bed.
I see a yolk suspended
Through a hole in my hand,
And I wonder if this is how it feels to die.
A fork clatters to the linoleum.
flecks of pepper dive through the air;
A fish flies over the violet moon--
Or was it a goat?
Sadness is very beautiful in the rain.
Coffee, at last, with wisps of steam,
But I wonder if anyone knows what love is,
Or how a flying bird feels,
Or where I put the sugar.
--Sara Zurstad-Abel
(published in POET SPEAK)
April 18, 2010
Committal Service
The preacher reads from his black leather Bible
while wind blows clouds across the Florida sky
and my step mother stands stiff and dry eyed.
After praying he takes
his plastic bag, two hirds full
of ash and bits of sharp white bone
and walks back and forth,
chanting scriptures, pouring
ash clumps at the base of shrubs.
Daddy gray-suedes the preacher's
shiny black shoes.
Wind-swirled, he dusts my arms, my cheek
and I hold my breath
to keep from breathing him in.
Between molecules of air he disappears.
--Nancy G. Lammers
(published in MAIN STREET RAG)
April 17, 2010
Twelve
That the sum sanity might add to naught
And words fall crippled from slaving lips,
Girls take to broomsticks when the thief of night
Has stolen the starved babies from their laps,
I would enforce the black apparelled cries,
Speak like a hungry parson of the manna,
Add one more nail of praise on the cross,
And talk of light to a mad miner,
I would be woven a religious shape;
As fleeced as they bow lowly with the sheep,
My house would fall like bread about my homage;
And I would choke the heavens with my hymn
That men might see the devil in the crumb
And the death in a starving image.
--Dylan Thomas
(published in THE POEMS OF DYLAN THOMAS)
April 16, 2010
Moving
I closed a drawer tonight,
and it echoed.
This place is empty,
with no couch to recline on
or bed to lie on;
only an
unfinished stack of blankets
that makes up as both.
Where did things go wrong?
When did we three move on,
so that your redundant babbling
and your abrasive snores
found other ears,
other homes?
I wasn’t ready to stop listening.
I left a mess on the counter tonight,
and nobody cared but me,
which wasn’t all that
different from before.
Goodbye to you;
throw these sisterly affectionate paper hearts
into the recycling box—
give this green Valentine’s teddy bear
to a kid who needs something huggy.
If I ever come to this place again,
I’m thinking of slowing down my rate of acquisition,
so that I won’t have to
get rid of so much,
and shove the rest into already-straining spaces,
when the thirty days’ notice is up.
Tonight, I turn off the light switch for
no one but myself.
--Kayla Rau
(published in NORTHWEST PASSAGE)
April 15, 2010
Security
Tomorrow will have an island. Before night
I always find it. Then on to the next island.
These places hidden in the day separate
and come forward if you beckon.
But you have to know they are there before they exist.
Some time there will be a tomorrow without any island.
So far, I haven't let that happen, but after
I'm gone others may become faithless and careless.
Before them will tumble the wide unbroken sea,
and without any hope they will stare at the horizon.
So to you, Friend, I confide my secret:
to be a discoverer you hold close whatever
you find, and after a while you decide
what it is. Then secure in where you have been,
you turn to the open sea and let
go.
--William Stafford
(published in THE WAY IT IS)
April 14, 2010
Cold Mountain Poem 23
My home was at Cold Mountain from the start.
Rambling among the hills, far from trouble.
Gone, and a million things leave no trace
Loosed, and it flows through the galaxies
A fountain of light, into the very mind--
Not a thing, and yet it appears before me:
Now I know the pearl of the Buddha-nature
Know its use: a boundless perfect sphere.
--Gary Snyder
(published in RIP RAP, & COLD MOUNTAIN POEMS)
April 13, 2010
Kokoschka in Love, 1914
It does not matter how a mountain found
its way into these waves. Perhaps the wind,
perhaps the war. He turns in predawn light
to find Alma's pale arms held as though bound
to the bedposts. Her eyes are giving back
their horde of pure darkness as though the night
were hers for good. He knows those eyes will rend
his flesh unless he paints them closed, the black
buried in swirling seas along with blood
and the morning's first full blue as the ship
their bare bed has become shatters. The lip
of the whirlpool will be gushing with gold
flecks of foam and silver will mark the clouds.
It is the tempest and she is the bride
of the wind fitted now against his side.
He will do it right if he can just hold
himself together long enough, if he
can disentangle himself before she
feels his absence or a chill in the air,
if he can leave her there without a sound.
--Floyd Skloot
(published in BITTERSWEET NIGHTSHADE)
April 12, 2010
My Back Yard
Nature's bitch-vicious ways
aren't welcome in my back yard--
sending her orphan hornets from their
thawed, broken combs to savage my dog's eyes.
That was his shitting corner
in my overgrown yard.
That tree-fallen nest is trespassed,
and not her place to defend.
My dog was born to sturdy his turf,
his right of way.
Now with his eyes drowning
in swollen pits,
his face brings revenge to my blood.
I've got my little red gas can
and an itchy box of matches--
strike anywhere.
--Matthew Stalter
(published in NORTHWEST PASSAGE)
April 11, 2010
I Was Stolen by the Gypsies
I was stolen by the gypsies. My parents stole
me right back. The the gypsies stole me again.
This went on for some time. One minute I was
in the caravan suckling the dark teat of my new
mother, the next I sat at the long dining room table
eating my breakfast with a silver spoon.
It was the first day of spring. One of my
fathers was singing in the bathtub; the other one
was painting a live sparrow the colors of a tropical
bird.
--Charles Simic
(published in THE WORLD DOESN'T END)
April 10, 2010
Sonnet 108
What's in the brain that ink may character
Which hat not figured to thee my true spirit?
What's new to speak, what now to register,
That may express my love or thy dear merit?
Nothing, sweet boy, but yet, like prayers divine,
I must each day say o'er the very same;
Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,
Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name.
So that eternal love in love's fresh case
Weighs not the dust and injury of age,
Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,
But makes antiquity for aye his page,
Finding the first conceit of love there bred
Where time and outward form would show it dead.
--William Shakespeare
(published in WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: THE SONNETS, POEMS OF LOVE)
April 9, 2010
Someone Digging in the Ground
An eye is meant to see things.
The soul is here for its own joy.
A head has one use: For loving a true love.
Legs: To run after.
Love is for vanishing into the sky. The mind,
for learning what men have done and tried to do.
Mysteries are not to be solved. The eye goes blind
when it only wants to see why.
A lover is always accused of something.
But when he finds his love, whatever was lost
in the looking comes back completely changed.
On the way to Mecca, many dangers. Thieves,
the blowing sand, only camel's milk to drink.
Still, each pilgrim kisses the black stone there
with pure longing, feeling in the surface
the taste of the lips he wants.
This talk is like stamping new coins. They pile up,
while the real work is done outside
by someone digging in the ground.
--Rumi
(published in OPEN SECRET
versions of Rumi by John Moyne and Coleman Barks)
April 8, 2010
Jawbone Flats
Three miles in.
Three miles of pine trees,
cedar trees, ferns and mist.
The hike alone is worth the trip.
Breathing in the fresh mountain air,
lungs filling with cool moisture.
The fresh scent a medication for the soul.
Squirrels scurry across the path
up a tree to their nest.
A bird calls out to her mate.
The old mine shaft is on our left,
to our right a steep drop to the snow-melt river.
The rusty metal tracks lead into the mines.
Icy air hits me as I stare in, afraid.
Higher and higher up we go,
the sound of the river getting louder.
An abandoned miner's cabin, a barn.
Rusting farm equipment, a plow and a yoke.
Through the trees the cabins appear.
Oregon's ghost town.
Alone in this forest,
alone but for the trees, the wildlife.
Opal pool is there.
Over a foot bridge, worn with age.
Deep, clear, cold.
Jumping in the water stabs my skin.
Painfully, therapeutically cold.
Ten, twenty feet deep.
You can see the bottom.
The smooth stones sanded with flow
The mossy rocks protect the pureness, the tranquility.
Hidden from sight, the town sleeps.
--Christina Tilicki
(published in NORTHWEST PASSAGE)
April 7, 2010
Strawberries
There were never strawberries
like the one we had
that sultry afternoon
sitting on the step
of the open french window
facing each other
your knees held in mine
the blue plates in our laps
the strawberries glistening
in the hot sunlight
we dipped them in sugar
looking at each other
not hurrying the feast
for one to come
the empty plates
laid on the stone together
with the two forks crossed
and I bent towards you
sweet in that air
in my arms
abandoned like a child
from your eager mouth
the taste of strawberries
in my memory
lean back again
let me love you
let the sun beat
on our forgetfulness
one hour of all
the heat intense
and summer lightning
on the Kilpatrick hills
let the storm wash the plates
--Edwin Morgan
(published in A BOOK OF LOVE POETRY)
April 6, 2010
The Swan
This clumsy living that moves lumbering
as if in ropes through what is not done
reminds us of the awkward way the swan walks.
And to die, which is a letting go
of the ground we stand on and cling to every day,
is like the swan when he nervously lets himself down
into the water, which receives him gaily
and which flows joyfully under
and after him, wave after wave,
while the swan, unmoving and marvelously calm,
is pleased to be carried, each minute more fully grown,
more like a king, composed, farther and farther on.
--Rainer Maria Rilke
(published in SELECTED POEMS OF RAINER MARIA RILKE
Commentary and Translation by Robert Bly)
April 5, 2010
The Sun
Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful
than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon
and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone--
and how it slides again
out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower
streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance--
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love--
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure
that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you
as you stand there,
empty-handed--
or have you too
turned from this world--
or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?
--Mary Oliver
(published in NEW AND SELECTED POEMS)
April 4, 2010
The Old Man With Stars Inside of Him
I look at the X-ray,
a shadow of pneumonia
deep in this old man's chest,
and watch Antonio shake
with a cough that traveled here
from the beginning of life.
As he pulls my hand to his lips
and kisses my hand,
Antonio tell me, for a man
whose death is gnawing at his spine,
pneumonia is a welcome friend
who reaches in between his ribs
without a sound and puff!
a cloud begins to squeeze
so delicately
the great white image of his heart.
The shadow advances
every time Antonio moves--
when a nurse positions his body,
when he takes a sip of ice,
when he shakes with a cough,
moist and diminished.
I see in that delicate shadow
a cloud of gas
at the galaxy's center,
a cloud of cold stunned nuclei
beginning to spin,
spinning and shooting
a hundred thousand
embryos of stars.
I listen to Antonio's chest
where stars crackle from the past
and hear the boom
of blue giants newly caught.
I hear the snap
of white dwarves coughing, shooting.
The second time Antonio
kisses my hand
I feel his dusky lips
reach out from everywhere in space.
I look at the place
his body was
and see inside Antonio, the stars.
--Jack Coulehan
(published in VITAL SIGNS: THE UCLA
COLLECTION OF PHYSICIANS' POETRY)
April 3, 2010
True Love
In the middle of the night, when we get up
after making love, we look at each other in
complete friendship, we know so fully
what the other has been doing. Bound to each other
like mountaineers coming down from a mountain,
bound with the tie of the delivery-room,
we wander down the hall to the bathroom, I can
hardly walk, I wobble through the granular
shadowless air, I know where you are
with my eyes closed, we are bound to each other
with huge invisible threads, our sexes
muted, exhausted, crushed, the whole
body a sex--surely this
is the most blessed time of my life,
our children asleep in their beds, each fate
like a vein of abiding mineral
not discovered yet. I sit
on the toilet in the night, you are somewhere in the room,
I open the window and snow has fallen in a
steep drift, against the pane, I
look up, into it,
a wall of cold crystals, silent
and glistening, I quietly call to you
and you come and hold my hand and I say
I cannot see beyond it. I cannot see beyond it.
--Sharon Olds
(published in THE WELLSPRING)
April 2, 2010
The Quest
The day my girl is lost for an hour,
the day I think she is gone forever and then I find her,
I sit with her awhile and then I
go to the corner store for orange juice for her
lips, tongue, palate, throat,
stomach, blood, every gold cell of her body.
I joke around with the guy behind the counter, I
walk out into the winter air and
weep. I know he would never hurt her,
never take her body in his hands to
crack it or crush it, would keep her safe and
bring her home to me. Yet there are
those who would. I pass the huge
cockeyed buildings massive as prisons,
charged, loaded, cocked with people,
some who would love to take my girl, to un-
do her, fine strand by fine
strand. These are buildings full of rope,
ironing boards, sash, wire,
iron cords woven in black-and blue spirals like
umbilici, apartments supplied with
razor blades and lye. This is my
quest, to know where it is, the evil in the
human heart. As I walk home I
look in face after face for it, I
see the dark beauty, the rage, the
grown-up children of the city she walks as a
child, a raw target. I cannot
see a soul who would do it, I clutch the
jar of juice like a cold heart,
remembering the time my parents tied me to a chair and
would not feed me and I looked up
into their beautiful faces, my stomach a
bright mace, my wrists like birds the
shrike has hung by the throat from barbed wire, I
gazed as deep as I could into their eyes
and all I saw was goodness, I could not get past it.
I rush home with the blood of oranges
pressed to my breast, I cannot get it to her fast enough.
--Sharon Olds
(published in NEW AMERICAN POETS OF THE 90s)
April 1, 2010
Depression
On good days
he could sift through limestone,
a quarry of tombstones,
and parse out soil with his pen
fertilizing poems with verbs
like rise and soar, gliding
on the wings of a whooping crane
in air so pure the wind burned
flames across his face,
or walk through copper mines
in heat-furnace summer days
scraping off patina,
turning everything he touched
into a bright, shiny penny.
But on bad days,
when he would relapse
into addiction to old memories,
when the calligraphy of her signature
signed away from him,
nouns like pronouncements
waked over his body.
It was enough just
to take a shower and put on new clothes,
resisting the urge
of even this simple task,
when all he wanted
was to follow that crane into the sky
for as long as his wings could carry him.
--Joseph Geskey, DO
(published in UNCHARTED LINES)
April 30, 2009
TASTE OF AN ORANGE UNEATEN
With limbs green as the alders around
two girls possess a spring wood's coolness.
Sue switches leaves of a disjointed branch.
Anne rocks slowly in a woody lap above.
Ten falls later fingers gallop over metal keys
scattering timbre of Smith-Corolla,
while Sue's troupe chases runs of rhythm
through the house from taut piano wires.
On twenty digits the two dance
to passion's divergent choreographs--
as Anne types stories of anticipation,
her room-mate divulges melodies of love tasted.
How much can one expect
after sampling so much?
Sue's piano opus drifts by fresh,
familiar as whiffs of baking loaves.
Anne's mind tangos not with memories
but imaginings--wary
that fantasies born of experience
might narrow her range.
"When did you last make love?"
Cutting through the middle then squeezing,
Anne extracts sticky juice from her Valencia,
"Haven't--will it stay exciting even then?"
--Tim Van Ert
(published in Seeds On a Wind Ride)
April 29, 2009
NON-STICK
It's trying for me
to believe God
meant to create man
to invent Teflon.
Easier for me to imagine the man:
driving his Lincoln to the lab
carefully through the museum of suburbia,
then tensely through city circuits
(lap belt and shoulder harness hugging securely)
still chewing uncharred French toast.
I would like him to pull up a chair,
raise ruby port with me
(through blue-grey smoke) to loosening lips,
and talk about feelings
that chase after the inventor
of a space-age totem.
Does his wife kiss more passionately now
that food slides freely from the pan
(each time marveling how
they ever lived without it)?
Or curse him for dismissing
one more sticky process
fundamental to the intercourse
of man and woman?
--Tim Van Ert
(published in Seeds On a Wind Ride)
April 28, 2009
SEARCH MY SOUL
Writing need not be a trial.
There's no reason to take stock.
Heck, I ignore growing piles
of crumpled sheets, sure I will lock
on the scent of words in a while--
at least my soul's not yet in hock!
I see with the surety of the hawk
the small, darting prize in my trial-
and-error starts--the game I stalk
as the self-criticisms pile.
I wish I could at these times lock
up parts of my mind for a while...
Young life feels so easy to while
away: I cough, I scratch, I hock
lugees at a past on trial
for providing only the stock
answers to my questions that pile--
sogged driftwood barred from river lock.
You of life-as-combination-lock,
incredulous, all ask why'll
you not come down from those high hawk
gyrations to give life a trial?
Before you lead me to your stock-
yards--just throw my soul in the trash pile!
I will sit long, risking piles
and the greying of curly locks.
I must be still, ready while
the muse delivers her shocks.
Any less a steadfast try'll
land me in writers' laughing stocks.
Rather climb like Jack his beanstalk--
cloud-head purpose higher than piles
of natal drafts with their death-lock;
Faust whispering all the while
his vow to soar me above the hawk
if I quit this error-filled trial!
Please excuse me while I grab a beer to take stock.
We'd agree it's a lock that no drafts will pile
those days I watch the trials of those damned Seahawks!
--Tim Van Ert
(from If You Live, Your Time Will Come)
April 27, 2009
EMPTY NEST
Against glowing galaxies robins fly
Undisturbed by compressed knowledge of star
Formation. They settle to sing us wake-
Up tunes from a low but alluring limb.
While you dream you have heard I have read
Of dying greed in which ashes are borne
By winds witnessing, "a goddess is born
To ride trains coughed into these days and fly
Past plump fruits blurring to breasts just as red."
You are wondering if you will star
In your own show, when in chorus each limb
Sings with piercing notes that one must not wake
Sleepy members defenseless in the wake
Of a goddess shadow faithfully borne
By our mother earth who suckles the limbs
Of fruit-bearers. Those bones prefer to fly
Past the arms of ornamental cherry, star
Of that fruitless place that makes you see red.
Sterile blossoms remand your monthly red,
Which will not cease and let another wake
To the paradox of one lifeless star
Able to energize each creature born:
Yes, even the denigrated house-fly
We tore with childhood joy limb-from-limb.
With that stretch to reach the fruit-laden limb
(Berries, bobbing birds and dawn's light all red)
Trembling fingers transmit fear all will fly--
Like wild visions of the dead at a wake.
Sore-gut terrors ooze fear of being born
A hapless human--not fierce, fiery star
Giving life unmindful to an all-star
Cast, including one robin off the limb
Fluffing and pecking with pride for new-born
So hungry to gobble squirming worm's red
Tube into its gullet--the just awake
Fledgling gets all it needs to learn to fly.
Dawn's rosy fingers (limbs, like yours, warm and red)
Suggest you be born again and thus wake
Already a star, always ready to fly.
--Tim Van Ert
(from Nothing Else Matters)
April 26, 2009
MY PAPA'S WALTZ
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
--Theodore Roethke
(published in The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke)
April 25, 2009
THIS BREAD I BREAK
This bread I break was once the oat,
This wine upon a foreign tree
Plunged in its fruit;
Man in the day or wind at night
Laid the crops low, broke the grape's joy.
Once in this wine the summer blood
Knocked in the flesh that decked the vine,
Once in this bread
The oat was merry in the wind;
Man broke the sun, pulled the wind down.
This flesh you break, this blood you let
Make desolation in the vein,
Were oat and grape
Born of the sensual root and sap;
My wine you drink, my bread you snap.
--Dylan Thomas
(published in The Poems of Dylan Thomas)
April 24, 2009
YOUNG BUD
To me in my city park pew
the afternoon serves up sermons
in its procession of temperaments --
now a spike-haired teen has the pulpit.
Like petals seen on Discovery
Channel fast-frames, her motions escape time
but release no trembling molecules
to announce flowering essence.
I sense blossoms pressed dry under pounding
insistence of culture's nuclear course.
Rooted angry in Narcissus'
inverse world, she snubs the universe
with innocent offer of thorns.
A pumping pendulum,
my heart swings from desire
to usher mature blooms
to the pulsed urge to hew brambles
of attitude with my own saws of insight.
As my pruning has won
no ribbons emblazoned,
gardener of the human soul
I cup my hands to toast
another hybrid tea.
--Tim Van Ert
(from Nothing Else Matters)
April 23, 2009
WE ARE PERFECT
We are perfect because
We make mistakes.
Life is perfect
Since it's
Perfectly unique
--one time.
Perfect scholars
Who know
Knowledge is imperfect
--most times.
Perfectly willing
To learn
To recognize mistakes
--sometimes.
Perfectly willing
To grant
Imperfection
--at times.
Thoughts perfect even
with doubt;
See one gone astray
--tossed out.
Words perfect, make us
Smile;
Even as we eat them
--once in a while.
Perfecting poets
Writing to see
Illuminated souls
--however imperfectly.
--Tim Van Ert
(from Create That Love That Love Creates)
April 22, 2009
STRUGGLE AT LEAST
Unable to make sense
of existence,
struggle at least
to make some sentences --
without serving too many!
--Tim Van Ert
(from A First Collection of Hai-Choo--Little Sneezes of
Profound
Dittycism)
April 21, 2009
CAGED BIRDS
I watched three caged birds released today:
Like revival-tent feelings--away
Cooing, We were never really yours.
Soon a walk in the woods grew soothing
To a body tired of moving--
Yielding a nap in maple's hard lap.
Rippling a sleepy body with laugh
Thought-freed visions led back to that path
Along the familiar way back home.
Surprise and disbelief--even rage
In finding two birds back in their cage!
Somewhere in me is the flying third.
--Tim Van Ert
(from Collected Words)
April 20, 2009
ARE THE FLICKERS NEXT?
When winged termite lights
salmonberry body
on black tar-papered porch,
two eight week kitties wait
like family at the airport gate
for their capricious click
to cat-and-mouse program.
Kill it? Eat it? Play with it?
Furry, fledgling hawks circle
on tense haunches before
they paw, sniff and rear back
from innocent insect.
Waddle, stop, and spread wings
that catch sunlight to release
silvered blue and shimmering orange--
then beauty gets batted back again.
--Tim Van Ert
(published in Seeds on a Wind Ride)
April 19, 2009
THE FLIRT
I sat frowning into my drink,
playing with the plastic pink
mermaid clinging to the brink.
I sat looking at my shoes,
felt the hot pink perfuse
my face, bloom there like a bruise.
I sat, trying to sound smart
about music, about art;
I sat holding out my heart.
And you, sitting opposite
smoothly smoothing out the slit
of your skirt, skewered it.
--Brooke Wiese
(published in At the Edge of the World)
April 18, 2009
LOSSES
It was not dying: everybody died.
It was not dying: we had died before
In the routine crashes--and our fields
Called up the papers, wrote home to our folks,
And the rates rose, all because of us.
We died on the wrong page of the almanac,
Scattered on mountains fifty miles away;
Diving on haystacks, fighting with a friend,
We blazed up on the lines we never saw.
We died like aunts or pets or foreigners.
(When we left high school nothing else had died
For us to figure we had died like.)
In our new planes, with our new crews, we bombed
The ranges by the desert or the shore,
Fired at towed targets, waited for our scores--
And turned into replacements and woke up
One morning, over England, operational.
It wasn't different: but if we died
It was not an accident but a mistake
(But an easy one for anyone to make).
We read our mail and counted up our missions--
In bombers named for girls, we burned
The cities we had learned about in school--
Till our lives wore out; our bodies lay among
The people we had killed and never seen.
When we lasted long enough they gave us medals;
When we died they said, "Our casualties were low."
They said, "Here are the maps"; we burned the cities.
It was not dying--no, not ever dying;
But the night I died I dreamed that I was dead,
And the cities said to me: "Why are you dying?
We are satisfied, if you are; but why did I die?"
--Randall Jarrell [1944]
(published in Selected Poems edited by William H. Pritchard)
April 17, 2009
ENDGAME
Descend like the squabbling starling
into this bowl thick with cacophony of
chants and whooped-up-wants--
fly away, any way, to the ball game.
Land with the waste wrappers on a turf
where sounds launch like line drives.
Ball meets bat (and glove) fickle as rain;
all called with a barking you've come to love.
Sink, though the hardwood bench opposes,
in your seat well above the field of play.
Betray puer's abandon with ill-suited garb:
back and tie straight as thin, white lips.
Search (you know you left them deep inside)
for diamonds dug and pitched in mounds
to touch base with curves, sliders, homers,
or the proud silence of the strike out.
Imagine you've "put it in the deck in a heart beat"
to emerge (like Aaron, doffing cap without modesty)
as the crowd fills you with dense inspiration
before you return to your dug-out habitat.
Struggle, as the thirty year old minor leaguer must,
to live a life where even play needs be vicarious--
like the video sex that pinch hits for
the dull surprises of mediocrity.
Laugh (before you discover no one else
will do it for you--except as snickering
behind your back) as you stand on deck
grimed with the black grease tone of greatness.
Swing--your power is in your arms,
your hope is in your power
just as your life is in hock to your hope
that your Hall of Fame date is a swing away.
Strike (as all creatures must sometime)
not at your wife and kids, but at your life.
Despite its unpaid bills and endless highways,
it awaits your clear, authoritative call.
--Tim Van Ert
(from Nothing Else Matters)
April 16, 2009
WHITE IN BLACK
Magpie's white and black bands
sail away ruddered
by wide tail feathers.
As it lifts up and away
I perceive the power
to level life's shrill flights
with the flaunting pattern
of strife--light in eclipse.
--Tim Van Ert
(from Nothing Else Matters)
April 15, 2009
RECOIL
There's a comfort in days that settle around--
rather than run like railroad track beyond view.
I want time coiled as the mid-day snake,
each part touching each.
Yet, seated below prized Anaconda skin
splayed out longer than the two of us,
I worry over that habitual reach
to pick up and re-read chapters
left lying along familiar footpaths:
repeat performances ready to strike
with some non-linear momentum
deceptively their own.
Like June's rattler-aborted weekend hike,
fear of future's nuisance still propels me
back to re-check yesterday's plans
I thought so carefully laid out.
One gentle hand squeeze reminds me
to wait huddled together with past and future
for either touch or strike of terror
to goad us step by nerve-jangling step.
--Tim Van Ert
(published in Seeds On A Wind Ride)
April 14, 2009
PICK YOUR PEAK
I seek
the peak
experience.
I’m piqued
with meek
experience.
--Tim Van Ert
(from A First Collection of Hai-Choo--Little Sneezes of
Profound
Dittycism)
April 13, 2009
CONTROLLED BURN
A burning ember
Now glows brighter
Fanned by a lover
Flamed by a fighter.
How big's the pit--
Can we another in?
How long'll you play--
Willing to win?
A soft wind blows
The misty rain aslant
As I stand watching, feeling
A breath or a pant?
--Tim Van Ert
(from Collected Words)
April 12, 2009
THE TELEPHONE
"When I was just as far as I could walk
From here today,
There was an hour
All still
When leaning with my head against a flower
I heard you talk.
So don't say I didn't, for I heard you say--
You spoke from the flower on the window sill--
Do you remember what it was you said?"
"First tell me what it was you thought you heard."
"Having found the flower and driven a bee away,
I leaned my head,
And holding by the stalk,
I listened and I thought I caught the word--
What was it? Did you call me by my name?
Or did you say--
Someone said 'Come'--I heard it as I bowed."
"I may have thought as much, but not aloud."
"Well, so I came."
--Robert Frost
(published in Mountain Interval)
April 11, 2009
THE YEARS
The years? A charming lot, I say
Brought presents yesterday, bring presents today,
And so we younger ones maintain
The charming life that's led in Cockayne.
Then all of a sudden the years change their mind,
Are no longer obliging, no longer kind;
Won't give you presents, won't let you borrow,
Dun you today, and rob you tomorrow.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1814)
(published in Selected Poems Ed. Christopher Middleton)
April 10, 2009
GRAVITY
DANCE
Yellow-brown maple leaves shudder
in a Fall field of wild oats
as if tethered to straw stalks.
Or, fallen on feldspar table,
rise to dance with dust devils.
Those more restless sail off to skate
scooped rainwater basin
abutting boulder and tree.
Energized by hillside decline
rivulets crash the rock to form
sensuously smooth corona--
stone-lipped passage to pool.
Near rock and tree, in a night voice
more willful than maple's forced moan,
coyote warns a full moon.
Wild dog arches on hind legs
toward dark's most luminous stone,
then backs up for a rough rub.
This trinity--dog, boulder, tree--
belies discrete modes of demise.
After granite completes its dance
called by gravity, it will join tree
and animal as the earth we walk,
oblivious to its layered stories.
--Tim Van Ert
(from Create That Love That Love Creates)
April 9, 2009
SPIDER
BITE
Guess a brown spider
Not recluse enough
At quarter-to-three
Got a bare left foot
When my camper's bladder
Goaded me to pee.
The arch stopped throbbing--
And not located
For a quick look-see,
I soon found myself
Seduced by this mantra,
Just temporary...
You've come weeks too late
To cut this poison out.
It's seeped to the heart
Of your pedestal.
Lose a foot to venom,
Pride to surgeon's art?
The irony sears--
It's been my job to
Replace worn-out parts
For cylindered beasts
Which just in my life time
Displaced horse-drawn carts.
Looking at his pair,
I can't save your foot,
Science lacks the clout!
The doc said firmly
With muted baritone
That plain knocked me out.
Now this handicap
A far better man
Might easily flout,
But at least it means
I'm left with one less place
To suffer from gout!
--Tim Van Ert
(from If You Live, Your Time Will Come)
April 8, 2009
JOAN US
Suffering is
in
laBor
soon
to give
Birth
to doing.
--Tim Van Ert
(from Collected Words)
April 7, 2009
CHANGING SOUND
From the buzzing of Charlie's
diesel on-site lumber mill
comes timber to erect
Charisma and Ember's barn.
From the buzzing of summer's
trapped in-doors horse fly
rise caged Dobermans to scratch my gut--
as prisoner-mocking window
flashes June's warm lures.
From the buzzing of neurons
in my summer melt brain--
not barn building, nor trail rides,
but words unable to break out
to nourishing pasture
like the fly head abutting panes.
--Tim Van Ert
(published in Poetry Motel)
April 6, 2009
DON'T FORGET ADA
Ninety year old Ada walks in
alone, drops her weight on the orange chair--
loose skin and wrinkled blouse falling down
and out with her soft, old belly.
Don't want to wear this thing no more!
Sweat-smudged, bubble gum pink
fiberglass cast leaves behind her wrist
with no more thought than last hour's memories.
Just want to get back to my weaving...
Don't remember who put it on,
when or where.
Don't bother my mind with
the day or the President--
just want this off me.
Gotta get back to my weaving.
--Tim Van Ert
(from If You Live, Your Time Will Come)
April 5, 2009
THE SPRINGTIME
The red eyes of rabbits
aren't sad. No one passes
the sad golden village in a barge
any more. The sunset
will leave it alone. If the
curtains hang askew
it is no one's fault.
Around and around and around
everywhere the same sound
of wheels going, and things
growing older, growing
silent. If the dogs
bark to each other
all night, and their eyes
flash red, that's
nobody's business. They have
a great space of dark to
bark across. The rabbits
will bare their teeth at
the spring moon.
--Denise Levertov
(published in Contemporary American Poetry)
April 4, 2009
MY MAGICIAN
Someone pulled me out of a tux sleeve,
Doctor, hanging for my dear life
At the end of a long white scarf.
I fluttered over my magician.
I flew around the hushed theater.
Saturdays, at nine and at midnight,
He sawed me in half,
While I lay in the coffin
Next to my naked bride.
I never got to see his face
Even when the applause started.
We held our breaths under his hat.
Two look-alike dummies, we took
Turns sitting on his knee.
Through a row of wooden teeth
We spoke of God the Father.
Then we vanished in a pack of cards.
We were terrified and happy.
One instant he was swallowing fire,
The next he was spitting it
With the two of us riding the long flame
Like a coach into the sunset.
--Charles Simic
(published in Walking the Black Cat)
April 3, 2009
FACETS
Like taffy, Bob's face--
and sweet, too.
Through this sagging mask
a voice
disturbingly
deep and steady.
But not so his eyes:
roaming,
ravishing,
ready.
Through that voice
could be heard
the crumbling
of granite
sculpted feeling.
A tinkling passion
revealing his marvel
that he'd ever met
his life.
---Tim Van Ert
(from Create That Love That Love Creates)
April 2, 2009
THUMB PRINTS
pulpy flesh ink pads
road maps of lover's body
roaming lips' resting station
first whorls and final twirls
Exploring Rodin in the sculpture garden
my hand absorbs the chill of bronze.
My stomach flares as fingers trace
the swirls his digits formed.
Signature impressions in green metal
spin like swirling tide pools.
These prints are the creator's kisses
blown from pliant wax to permanence
with impassioned pouring of molten bronze.
As my pinches warm and soften formless clay
I see thumb prints and remember
how this special earth takes its shape.
--Tim Van Ert
(from Nothing Else Matters)
April 1, 2009
LIGHT SHOW
Couldn't have been mother's
Encouragement that I,
Join the comet light show--
Flash ice across the sky,
Then blaze head-long toward
Solar system's backstage.
--Tim Van Ert