POEMS -- AUGUST
(Please send suggestions, feedback or commentary to timiimit@mockok.com )
August 25, 2013
STRANGER
It's true that all the men you knew were dealers
Who said they were through with dealing
Every time you gave them shelter
I know that kind of man
It's hard to hold the hand of anyone
Who is reaching for the sky just to surrender.
And then sweeping up the jokers that he left behind
You find he did not leave you very much
Not even laughter
Like any dealer he was watching for the card
That is so high and wild
He'll never need to deal another
He was just some Joseph looking for a manger
He was just some Joseph looking for a manger.
And then leaning on your window sill
He'll say one day you caused his will
To weaken with your love and warmth and shelter
And then taking from his wallet
An old schedule of trains, he'll say
I told you when I came I was a stranger
I told you when I came I was a stranger.
But now another stranger seems to want you to ignore his dreams
As though they were the burden of some other
O you've seen that man before
His golden arm dispatching cards
But now it's rusted from the elbow to the finger
And he wants to trade the game he plays for shelter
Yes he wants to trade the game he knows for shelter.
You hate to watch another tired man
Lay down his hand
Like he was giving up the holy game of poker
And while he talks his dreams to sleep
You notice there's a highway
That is curling up like smoke above his shoulder
It's curling up like smoke above his shoulder.
You tell him to come in sit down
But something makes you turn around
The door is open you can't close you shelter
You try the handle of the road
It opens do not be afraid
It's you my love, you who are the stranger
It is you my love, you who are the stranger.
Well, I've been waiting, I was sure
We'd meet between the trains we're waiting for
I think it's time to board another
Please understand, I never had a secret chart
To get me to the heart of this
Or any other matter
Well he talks like this
You don't know what he's after
When he speaks like this,
You don't know what he's after.
Let's meet tomorrow if you chose
Upon the shore, beneath the bridge
That they are building on some endless river
Then he leaves the platform
For the sleeping car that's warm
You realize, he's only advertising one more shelter
And it comes to you, he never was a stranger
And you say ok the bridge or someplace later.
And then sweeping up the jokers
That he left behind
You find he did not leave you very much
Not even laughter
Like any dealer he was watching for the card
That is so high and wild
He'll never need to deal another
He was just some Joseph looking for a manger
He was just some Joseph looking for a manger.
And leaning on your window sill
He'll say one day you caused his will
To weaken with your love and warmth and shelter
And then taking from his wallet
An old schedule of trains
He'll say I told you when I came I was a stranger
I told you when I came I was a stranger.--Leonard Cohen
August 8, 2013
An Introduction to Some Poems
Look: no one ever promised for sure
that we would sing. We have decided
to moan. In a strange dance that
we don't understand till we do it, we
have to carry on.
Just as in sleep you have to dream
the exact dream to round out your life,
so we have to live that dream into stories
and hold them close at you, close at the
edge we share, to be right.
We find it an awful thing to meet people,
serious or not, who have turned into vacant
effective people, so far lost that they
won't believe their own feelings
enough to follow them out.
The authentic is a line from one thing
along to the next; it interests us.
Strangely, it relates to what works,
but is not quite the same. It never
swerves for revenge,
Or profit, of fame: it holds
together something more than the world,
this line. And we are your wavery
efforts at following it. Are you coming?
Good: now it is time.
--William Stafford
from Someday, Maybe (1973)
August 29, 2012
Good Fortune
Our earth is a par-a-dise
--for those who get rolling.
--First Book of Hai-Choo: little sneezes of dittycism
August 9, 2012
Rick and Sue's Guest House
On the window, partly blocking
images of Oregon's rock rugged
coast, a plastic paste-on cornucopia
proclaims (in July) Happy Thanksgiving
while on the wall to the left
a cute cat tail swings out the clicking
clock seconds--innocent scythe
menacing the plaque placed below it
to announce Christ as the head of this house
AND the unseen guest.
But don't look down at the clear-cut below,
for that's what provides this ocean view.
Turn to the walls around you
and see Sue's photos on the wall.
In the dark of late night man's light
illuminates dung-rimmed rock
still above inky ocean
where clouded sky meets
imagined horizon.
Between me and the windowed wall
stands Rick speaking of his mistakes
which weren't his responsibility
and his accomplishments
which were.
--if you live, your time will come
August 5, 2012
NEAL ARMSTRONG
"I guess we all like to be recognized not for one piece of fireworks,
but for the ledger of our
daily work."
-- Neal Armstrong
I kneel beside my bed
head bowed, back bent
not to send prayer to Him on high
but to see if this is where it went.
Dropping to my knees
I lose two inches more
as I sink into porous loam
to plant what I can buy at the store.
Fever brings me here--
sweaty nightshirt tripping me
as I kneel-walk in my delirium
to the tub's cool water of mercy.
Lifting up from all fours
I ache from toes curled tight
waiting for just the right moment
to pounce on you with all my might.
You bid, "Come down to me."
And I say, "On my knees?"
Knowing pumps through both hearts
I do what it takes to please.
I tell you then and there
my heroes are those blessed to see
beyond the lofty, honking geese
without rising higher than their knees.
If You Live, Your Time Will Come
August 18, 2011
Morning Light
You will creep in silent shadows
Of all those past
Daring not to disturb
The crowd as they chant unknown elegies
For your sons and daughters
Raise your head, unfold your arms
Lift you voice above the crowd
Through your conscience you have come to know
The sound of tomorrow awakening
A lark sang
You were awakened from your slumber
Were not the trees dancing in the wind?
How could you not listen to the roaring sound
Of the eagle soaring effortlessly
Above your eyes?
Let your tongue taste the rumble
Of these threatening skies
Thunder and lightning bring tears to my eyes
Shedding no tears you look away
Will you ever know the serenity of peaceful skies?
Let the clouds part
And the morning star will spread its light
On this desperate world
For it takes no more light
To bring hope
Than a whole, minute flash
Let the morning light dance in your eyes
For it may be your destiny
To dance with it
John Henry Van Ert, Jr UNPUBLISHED COLLECTION
August 9, 2011
For Kurt
my sister came to visit
Paul Simon arrived in the mail
and I began to cry
a poem drifting down through consciousness
Kaiser, offer us up
your round bitter wafer:
small mouthful of medical hell.
I admit I bit.
But now I spit Pautzke's red egg --
bait floating by.
The hatchery trout mind
instinctively seizes a moment
innocent of heaven's promises
to those who behave.
Tim Van Ert
IF YOU LIVE YOUR TIME WILL COME
August 6, 2011
Part of Eve's Discussion
It was like the moment when a bird decides not to eat from your hand,
and flies, just before it flies, the moment the rivers seem to still
and stop because a storm is coming, but there is no storm, as when
a hundred starlings lift and bank together before they wheel and drop,
very much like the moment, driving on bad ice, when it occurs to you
your car could spin, just before it slowly begins to spin, like
the moment just before you forgot what it was you were about to say,
it was like that, and after that, it was still like that, only
all the time.
Marie Howe
THE GOOD THIEF
August 1, 2011
The Promise
If you could just lose weight
your blood pressure would go down
your diabetes would clear up
you could get off all those pills you take
your joints wouldn't ache
your could climb the stairs
run after the bus
carry the groceries
pick up the baby
the swelling in your legs would go down
you could reach all the way to your aching feet
you could breathe again
You could find clothes to fit
get out of your slipper and into real shoes
who knows but what your old man would come back
you'd get more respect from your children
a decent job
your son would kick drugs
your daughter wouldn't get pregnant again
you'd live to see your last one grown
Your neighbors wouldn't talk about you
the toilet would flush
the roof wouldn't leak
there'd be food enough at the end of the month
they wouldn't cut off your check
jack up the rent
you'd hit the number
go off for two weeks in Aruba
Jesus would save the world from sin
those who mourn would be comforted
the poor would enter the Kingdom of God
your hunger would be filled.
Venetta Masson
UNCHARTED LINES
August 30, 2010
Out of Danger
Heart be kind and sign the release
As the trees their loss approve.
Learn as leaves must learn to fall
Out of danger, out of love.
What belongs to frost and thaw
Sullen winter will not harm.
What belongs to wind and rain
Is out of danger from the storm.
Jealous passion, cruel need
Betray the heart they feed upon.
But what belongs to earth and death
Is out of danger from the sun.
I was cruel, I was wrong--
Hard to say and hard to know.
You do not belong to me.
You are out of danger now--
Out of danger from the wind,
Out of danger from the wave,
Out of danger from the heart
Falling, falling out of love.
--James Fenton
(published in OUT OF DANGER)
August 29, 2010
A Family Portrait
This is a house the wind blows through
And this is a child
who doesn't speak
as he rocks in a chair
with a wicker seat
but who grunts or shrieks
and can't be reached
who will need years
of costly care
who never leaves
a three-story house
the house the wind blows through
And this is the red
eye of the mother
blurred with love
and rage as she
watches the child
who never speaks
but rocks back
and forth like
a pendulum
or bangs his head
in a rhythmic beat
Here is the father
with bitter mouth
who loves the mother
with reddened eyes
and fears the child
who costs so much
in the house the wind
blows through
This is the drafty heart of the house
an unspeakable room
the child in a chair
rocking and rocking
away from the man
with blood in his eyes
the woman with bitter-
sweet mouth
not knowing
how far their child
will rock or why
as they love and rage
faster and harder
each day they find less
to say to each other
in the house the wind blows through
--Phyllis Janowitz
(published in RITES OF STRANGER)
August 28, 2010
Attitude of Rags
If felt like a story sorry it'd lost all its sentences,
Like a sentence looking for its syntax.
All of the words had homeless, unemployed, orphan
Written all over their faces.
It had that parboiled, simmering, half-baked look
Of curiosity about its mouth like a month of Sundays
Has in the mind of a non-believer, a true back-slider.
One got the impression reluctance was waxing.
One wanted to say passion was taking a beating.
One wanted to say one's prey to one's feelings.
The feathers of their feelings were all scattered.
It was the kind of day were one to see a flock of
Creepy baby angel heads attached at their necks to
Pitch-black aerodynamically preposterous little wings
Clustering at the sum of things, one would rub one's
Eyes, be too faint to respond, much less explain.
It looked the way a fence looks just after the last
Stampede. A big old blood-colored barn collapsed in
Its tracks. Out of hiding came all the hidden cameras.
It looked like streets look after a parade's disbanded.
It was the kind of day in which emotions roaming from
Town to town, free to be themselves, enjoyed their
Rich fantasy lives. This was the kind of day that day
Was. We were rags in the hands of a narcoleptic duster.
--Dara Wier
(published in AMERICAN HYBRID)
August 26, 2010
Beavis' Day Off
He'd been doing a lot of cull-twanging,
he thought, walking back and forth on the deck
of his battleship whoa! correction: loft.
Small fires burned on the outskirts of Soho;
Fanelli's lit up under a stickered sky:
cirrus pitched to the top of its firmament.
How long could he crimp the diesel in the dark?
The bedlam was breathing its own air now;
the parrot shivering in the freezer glared at the hen.
Please it's time said Meg. And each infernal
truism struck a package deal for tin.
What hast thou, O nut job, with paradise?
The sparks O they crested the floor then they floated
and she lay down on fine braids and she cried.
--Susan Wheeler
(published in SMOKES)
August 25, 2010
Antennae
*
The doctor lifted the baby's leg, and the father heard his mother-in-law
whisper, "What is it?"
**
A tiny red, white, and blue flag waves on an antenna--now and again.
***
One notices more bearded ladies these days. To what are they listening?
****
He said the ability to decide to be good. She said we can watch ourselves.
--Stefanie Marlis
(published in CLOUDLIFE)
August 24, 2010
The Old Testament
My twin brother swears that at age thirteen
I'd take on anyone who called me kike
no matter how old or how big he was.
I only wish I'd been that tiny kid
who fought back through his tears, swearing
he would not go quietly. I go quietly
packing bark chips and loam into the rose beds,
while in his memory I remain the constant child
daring him to wrest Detroit from lean gentiles
in LaSalle convertibles and golf clothes
who step slowly into the world we have tainted,
and have their revenge. I remember none of this.
He insists, he names the drug store where I poured
a milkshake over the head of an Episcopalian
with quick fists as tight as croquet balls.
He remembers his license plate, his thin lips,
the exact angle at which this seventeen year old dropped
his shoulder to throw the last punch. He's making
it up. Wasn't I always terrified?
"Of course," he tells me, "that's the miracle,
you were even more scared than me, so scared
you went insane, you became a whirlwind,
an avenging angel."
I remember planting
my first Victory Garden behind the house, hauling
dark loam in a borrowed wagon, and putting in
carrots, corn that never grew, radishes that did.
I remember saving for weeks to buy a tea rose,
a little stick packed in dirt and burlap,
my mother's favorite. I remember the white bud
of my first peony that one morning burst
beside the mock orange that cost me 69 cents.
(Fifty years later the orange is still there,
the only thing left beside a cage for watch dogs,
empty now, in what had become a tiny yard.)
I remember putting myself to sleep dreaming
of the tomatoes coming into fullness, the pansies
laughing in the spring winds, the magical wisteria
climbing along the garage, and dreaming of Hitler,
of firing a single shot from a foot away, one
that would tear his face into a caricature of mine,
tear stained, bloodied, begging for a moment's peace.
--Philip Levine
(published in THE SIMPLE TRUTH)
August 23, 2010
The World is Full of Poets
On days like this I see that the world is full of poets,
Some are lying under a tree, others on a piazza,
Some are riding the subways or streetcars, some
Far away from home, perhaps,
Look for a letter in an empty box.
They are everywhere! No boundaries contain them!
When the laurel wreaths are distributed
They will stand in jostling procession,
Elbowing one another.
When the medals and lovingcups are given out
The line of poets will stretch from here to Brooklyn!
On days like this all the poets of the world
Might soar to the skies, arm in arm with one another
Like glorious brothers and sisters, to astonish
The world, with a single enormous hosanna.
--Candace Urdang
(published in NORTHERN LIGHTS)
August 21, 2010
A Bargain at any Price
Daily I go to the carpet warehouse.
The men think I can't make up my mind.
But the truth is, I have fallen in love
with the young ex-football player
who lights the dingy room with his hair.
Even machines can't help him add,
so we spend hours figuring and refiguring
costs--pad and labor, stairs and tax,
his patient golden head bent over the numbers,
the muscles in his arms reflecting shadows
like water under summer clouds.
Each time he starts the motor on the forklift,
slowly pushing that long steel rod
into the center of a roll, then
lifting in out for me to see, Oh--
it's as if an inner sky were opening,
and all his hazy calculations
fall like stars into my heart.
--Susan Ludvigson
(published in NORTHERN LIGHTS)
August 19, 2010
The Story
Once upon a time the farmer's wife
told it to her children while she scrubbed potatoes.
There were wise ravens in it, and a witch
who flew into such a rage she turned to brass.
The story wandered about the countryside until
adopted by the palace waiting maids
who endowed it with three magic golden rings
and a handsome prince named Felix.
Now it had both strength and style and visited
the household of the jolly merchant
where it was seated by the fire and given
fat gray goose and a comic chambermaid.
One day alas the story got drunk and fell
in with a crowd of dissolute poets.
They drenched it with moonlight and fever and fed it
words from which it never quite recovered.
Then it was old and haggard and disreputable,
carousing late at night with defrocked scholars
and the swaggering sailors in Rattlebone Alley.
That's where the novelists found it.
--Fred Chappell
(published in SOURCE)
August 18, 2010
Black Series
--Then in the scalloped leaves of the plane tree
a series of short, sharp who's:
a little owl had learned to count.
You lay in your bed as usual not existing
because of the bright edges pressing in.
All at once the black thick o's of the owl
were the very diagram you needed.
Where there had been two
kinds of infinity, now there was one.
The smudged circle around the soul
was the one the Gnostics saw around the cosmos,
the mathematical
toy train, the snake eating its tail.
Relieved by the thought that the owl's o's
had changed but not you, that something
could change but not be lost in you,
you asked the voice for more
existence and the voice said
yes but you must understand
I loved you not despite your great emptiness
but because of your great emptiness--
--Brenda Hillman
(published in BRIGHT EXISTENCE)
August 17, 2010
Malediction
You who dump the beer cans in the lake;
Who in the strict woods sow
The bulbous polyethylene retorts;
Who from your farting car
With spiffy rear suspension toss
Your tissues, mustard-streaked, upon
The generating moss; who drop
The squamules of your reckless play,
Grease-wrappers, unspare parts, lie-labeled
Cultures even flies would scorn
To spawn on--total Zed, my kinsman
Ass-on-wheels, my blare-bred bray
And burden,
may the nice crabs thread
Your private wilds with turnpikes; weasels'
Condoms squish between your toes,
And plastic-coated toads squat plop
Upon your morning eggs--may gars
Come nudge you from your inner tube,
Perch hiss you to the bottom, junked,
A discard, your dense self your last
Enormity.
--Barry Spacks
(published in IMAGINING A UNICORN)
August 16,2010
Ah, Sunflower
Ah Sunflower, weary of time,
Who countest the steps
of the sun;
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveller's
journey is done;
Where the Youth pined away with desire,
And the pale
virgin shrouded in snow,
Arise from their graves, and aspire
Where my
Sunflower wishes to go!
--William Blake
August 15, 2010
My Sister Is Not a Dollar
I think it is unusual
I even try speaking, I hear steps and doors
where there is nothing but a medicinal smell,
the person crossing near me crosses on.
At the far end of a country lane
the burned like shores,
the moon was dead, the moon
was okay.
The peace be and the peace
falleth, the garden is white
with my sister, and one dollar.
My sister is not a dollar,
I am not a man.
Not before the task,
when the burning afternoon rises
across the sky, not before
the angry residue of possession,
not before my teeth bleed
with greed for water...
Not before. Here is the parting of nails,
frames, the parting of empty footsteps.
--Michael Burkard
(published in RUBY FOR GRIEF)
August 12, 2010
Absence
I have scarcely left you
When you go in me, crystalline,
Or trembling,
Or uneasy, wounded by me
Or overwhelmed with love, as
when your eyes
Close upon the gift of life
That without cease I give you.
My love,
We have found each other
Thirsty and we have
Drunk up all the water and the
Blood,
We found each other
Hungry
And we bit each other
As fire bites,
Leaving wounds in us.
But wait for me,
Keep for me your sweetness.
I will give you too
A rose.
--Pablo Neruda
(http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/absence-56/)
August 11, 2010
The Intruder
He broke in, picking the lock, or having stolen
a key, and he knew the code to disarm the alarm,
some homeless guy, a crazy street-person, harmless
you’d think, but you’re wrong: he likes it here, and he stays.
He rummages through my closets and dresser drawers
and tries on my clothing, which happens, of course, to fit him.
He runs my comb through his hair. He uses my toothbrush.
He lies down on my side of the bed for a nap.
He has settled in. In the mornings, he sits at my place
and has his coffee and toast, reading my paper.
He borrows my car and drives to meet my classes;
during my office hours he meets with my students.
We don’t look at all alike, but he’s living my life.
I try to signal my friends with whom he dines
or my wife with whom he is sleeping: "This isn’t me.
He’s an impostor. How can you not have noticed?
He’s old! He’s nasty. Also, he’s clearly crazy!
How can he fool you this way? And how can you stand him?"
They pay me no mind, pretending not to have noticed.
Could they somehow be in on this together?
But what is his purpose? Was he also displaced
from apartment, job, and wife? Did that turn him desperate?
And must I go out now myself to find a victim,
break into his house, and begin living his life?
--David R. Slavitt
(http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16917)
August 10, 2010
Egyptian Sonnets (11)
Night, dispassionate scholar of our fears
Opens its portfolio, and unwraps
Our bracelets of tears again
How ghostly this train
Quiet as a forest
Hung about in smoke
And a poet
In a sudden fit
Falls weeping
A monstrous serenity
Rainbow salts, smooth lipped
The sculpture frozen in oratory
Lunar horns spreading
From its silver forehead
--John Yau
(from AMERICAN HYBRID
a Norton Anthology of new poetry
ed. by Cole Swensen & David St. John)
August 7, 2010
Eczema
Tearing at my package like a child
eager for its present, I scratch my back
between the shoulder blades, my arms, my chest,
my face, and bloody myself, like one of those wild
self-flagellating enthusiasts. The attack
subsides eventually. Exhausted, i rest
but know another episode is waiting,
another battle in this civil war
my body wages with itself. My skin
erupts periodically; it's something hating
itself, the spirit revolting at the poor
flesh it must inhabit, is trapped within.
Doctors call it a psychogenic condition,
like asthma or colitis; it is an ill
in which the skin's itch is the soul's fret,
and scratching is the body's act of contrition.
I try to absolve with an antihistamine pill
and not to get excited, not to sweat,
but there is a rage inside me, a prophet's deep
revulsion at the flesh. When it gets bad,
I scratch as in a dream of purity,
of bare-boned whiteness, clean enough to keep
the soul that's mired there now, driving me mad,
desperate, righteous, clawing to be free.
--David R Slavitt
(published in ROUNDING THE HORN)
August 5, 2010
The Fisherman's Wife
The fisherman said I was his third wish.
He washed off the salt, taught me to breathe,
kick my scissory legs & doze
trembling in the sharp straw beside him.
Now he had boots, a boat, a wife with gill-
silver skin who peered at the sky for fish.
I couldn't speak: The nets in my throat
trapped the shiny movements of words;
the new hands, glimmering in the dark,
only stuttered like ice across his back
while I gulped for the water! the water!
needing the density of his mouth.
When I mended sails, the needle pricked
seawater from my veins; the other wives
scurried out of their clogs for the priest
who rubbed me with garlic against the devil.
A pelican dipped & angled for my eyes--
yet I couldn't drown: the angry water
shoved me into the light, I washed inland,
shellfish clamped in my streaming hair.
The fisherman plucked leeches from my neck,
crying, "You're the last wish!" I saw torn
boots, the boat shattered on a rock.
I dreamed I was out at sea, but the shapes
went blue, blurred, I wasn't anything,
a chill, a wish, his wife stirring in sleep.
--Maura Stanton
(published in SNOW ON SNOW)
August 3, 2010
Hush
The way a tired Chippewa woman
Who's lost a child gathers up black feathers,
Black quills & leaves
That she wraps & swaddles in a little bale, a shag
Cocoon she carries with her & speaks to always
As if it were the child,
Until she knows the soul has grown fat & clever,
That the child can find its own way at last;
Well, I go everywhere
Picking the dust out of the dust, scraping the breezes
Up off the floor, & gather them into a doll
Of you, to touch at the nape of the neck, to slip
Under my shirt like a rag--the way
Another man's wallet rides above his heart. As you
Cry out, as if calling to a father you conjure
In the paling light, the voice rises, instead, in me.
Nothing stops it, the crying. Not the clove of moon,
Not the woman raking my back with her words. Our letters
Close. Sometimes, you ask
About the world; sometimes, I answer back. Nights
Return to to me for a while, as sleep returns sleep
To a landscape ravaged
& familiar. The dark watermark of your absence, a hush.
--David St. John
(published in THE NEW YORKER)
August 2, 2010
You Can't Eat Poetry
This poem will cost you.
It will not register Black voters in Georgia.
It will not wash oil from ducks.
This poem will starve the big-bellied babies
in Angola, if they send it.
It...will...not...get...off...the...page
to convince the president
that loaded guns are dangerous
and should be kept out of the hands
of infants and senile demagogues.
This poem will not feel around under your dress
down by the lake. It will not be generous
with its time, nor forgive. It can't be
warmed up at midnight after the skating
nor charm the miser out of his hole
nor proclaim amnesty. It's words,
God damn it, it's words.
--John Woods
(published in STRIKING THE EARTH)
August 1, 2010
Old Family Recipe
He lies awake for hours some nights,
imagining recipes too difficult to prepare
or simply beyond his will to manifest
on the plate, like the concept of a
painting without a canvas, his
tongue rolling make-believe morsels,
savoring anticipated flavors, his fingers
mimicking the necessary motions,
stirring possibilities, folding thin
layers of pastry or slicing green apples
still in their tender skins, blending
dashes and pinches of this or that
perfect ingredient, including the
aromas of strangers, reminders of
what can be pungent and good,
mysterious to the palate, surprising,
caramelizing small sweet onions,
seeding bright red tomatoes, whipping
egg whites to firm peaks in a
copper bowl and selecting a creamy
cheese that bites gently, making a
totem of the taste and scent of garlic.
He lies to himself about bringing it
to the table, open faces turned to
him when he says, "Bon appetit!"
imaging the music of knives,
laden tines, the first magical
spoonful disappearing between
eager lips. He imagines their eyes
widening at the first held mouthful,
and himself saying, "I love you."
--Scott Lubbock
(published in ON THE WAY TO WATER)
August 31, 2009
Run-in on Bellfountain Road
Xibalba came knocking
Xibalba came up short
DAS FLEISCH
the meat
eyes meet
mine do not slow
the brain does
though
some feat
to see hers through fear widen
uninvited
she jumps right in
THUMPCRUNCHAAGGGHH!
we meet
restrained only
by a wink
a pane
a door--
"No more!"
back on her feet
her mate stands on straight legs
vulnerable
momentarily
deceptively
looking more frightened
than I am to feel
--Tim Van Ert
(from CREATE THAT LOVE THAT LOVE CREATES)
August 30, 2009
Into My Own
One of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as 'twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom.
I should not be withheld but that some day
Into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.
I do not see why I should e'er turn back,
Or those should not set forth upon my track
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if still I held them dear.
They would not find me changed from him
they knew--
Only more sure of all I thought was true.
--Robert Frost
(published in A BOY'S WILL)
August 29, 2009
I Make Ye an Offer
I make ye an offer,
Ye gods, hear the scoffer,
The scheme will not hurt you,
If ye will find goodness, I will find virtue.
Though I am your creature,
And child of your nature,
I have pride still unbended,
And blood undescended,
Some free independence,
And my own descendants.
I cannot toil blindly,
Though ye behave kindly,
And I swear by the rood,
I'll be slave to no God.
If ye will deal plainly,
I will strive mainly,
If ye will discover,
Great plans to your lover,
And give him a sphere
Somewhat larger than here.
--Henry David Thoreau
(published in THE WINGED LIFE
edited by Robert Bly)
August 28, 2009
Rhapsody
Beat it with a shoe
because it can't talk, because it won't shut up,
because it makes those noises about its loneliness
endlessly. Beat it with a shoe
over and over, beside the door, on the balcony;
beat it because it's yours,
because you've had enough. Beat that shoe
your foot's orphan, like a leather club
against its side, around its head, with short sharp blows.
Beat it to make it stop crying.
Show you mean business.
Because it's dumb, because you told it once
or a thousand times; beat it because it ought to know
better by now. Beat it with a shoe
because it feels good--
beat it until it feels good.
Beat the crap out of it. Beat it senseless. Beat it
within an inch. Because it's worthless and dumb,
shitty, and loud, and dirty.
Beat it because there is pain in the world.
Beat it because it's yours.
--Cynthia Huntington
(published in NEW AMERICAN POETS OF THE 90s)
August 27, 2009
Day's Dance
When a day begins as dance
sweat rivers overflow, driving
the loose-knee rubber-hip trance.
Mind has no chance now to ask
questions of the night's dream show,
queries about today--or
What's important here to know?
Body spins wobbly orbits--
arms and legs have come alive
with the juice that makes all fit.
Self floats free from its snug mask,
called by child's lost playground
where each pebble rubs senses,
warm body cheer for each sound.
Brain tumbles into body
which stows a dream into day
like precious, guarded booty.
Pleasure easily steals limbs;
freed snakes belly through bowels
now the center of being
laughter-driven joy howls.
Way before that first mocha
is asked to kick-start your day
gulp down hip-hop or polka!
Make your living room a gym
that charges next-to-nothing:
just billions of cells hungry
to flat transform everything.
--Tim Van Ert
(from IF YOU LIVE, YOUR TIME WILL COME)
August 26, 2009
Walking on Water
There is a good friend whom I know
Who likes to fly above the snow
And walk with grace upon the water.
He has no desire to show
That he knows how to go
The way people think he oughter.
--Tim Van Ert
(from A FIRST EDITION OF HAI-CHOO: LITTLE SNEEZES
OF PROFOUND DITTY-CISM)
August 25, 2009
Dance Troupe Meets the Regulars
at the Esalen Baths
White-breasted body weight shifting
nervously between lower limbs,
the chorus of visiting dancers shuffles
like a colony of lost penguins--
slowly enough to be constantly touching.
Toweled torsos deny distinctive form
until, shook loose by giggles, they are molted.
Down moist, wooden steps they enter our room
lit orange-red by human skin in candlelight.
From sulfurous spring-fed tubs
soft gasps and short groans blend
with ocean's cyclic boulder crashing
as older skin relaxes into crinkles.
Here, fat shows itself in haphazard bulges--
like straw stuffed to make bedding,
quick, before the hearth coals dim.
And aging breasts settle to rest
closer, now, to the earth's center.
--Tim Van Ert
(published in SEEDS ON A WIND RIDE)
August 24, 2009
Planetary Motion
I've held love's spark
In my heart for you;
Half light and half dark,
As I thought you knew.
I'll hold it, though,
To my grave, unless
It's enticed to glow
And your form caress.
I'm asking true
Come down, face the flame:
Let it engulf you
With love without shame.
I love a poem's song--
I hope you do too!
The above is strong
As well as it's true.
Don't be intimidated
If, like me, you are feeling
Slightly intoxicated
With head, heart and soul reeling.
Respond as you like,
Respond as you will.
But drive down the pike
And visit me still!
--Tim Van Ert
(from COLLECTED WORDS)
August 23, 2009
Two Suffering Men
I sat across, behind my desk,
and told him I thought
he might be alcoholic.
"I never been drunk," he said.
I made a note on the medical chart.
I could see him getting irked.
His liver sick;
his wife gone with the kids!
I made a note on the chart.
I saw him gaining rage.
He clenched his fists,
leaned forward,
his arms on the desk.
He held his breath
until he turned red,
then, sighing, fell back
in his chair and cried.
Breaking a long pause,
he asked, "You're telling me
I'm alcoholic? How in hell
would you know, in your
'pretty' white picturebook
middle-class hospital coat?"
His face suddenly tensed.
He pursed his lips
and lifted himself from the chair.
He stood tall, straight up,
bulging with pride
for all the ground-in years
of his laboring trade,
shouting,
"Stay out of my head.
Stay OUT of my head!"
and slammed the door behind him.
I longed to lower my eyes and cry.
But, from the bottom drawer
of my desk, just one small glass
of vodka and a chlorophyll candy
taste so damn good in the morning.
--Edward Hirsch
(published in BLOOD & BONE)
August 22, 2009
The Night We Pitch It
Until the TV sails through wet, black air,
the bowling balls at the Strand
seem heavy, the linoleum floor in the cage
elevator shaved too thin. Until the TV sails
into the valley of railroad tracks, silent
as a fuse, our flat Iron City drafts
at Lasek's bore into our stomachs
and stew. A steel worker; two roofers, and a printer,
our jobs seem dead ends of our youth
that Sunday night in May when Agnole
says at the light, I got a busted black and white
in the trunk to get rid of. The answer
surfaces inevitable as hills, Throw it
off the bridge. Until the TV booms into the empty
coal car, a shower of sparks and glass,
and we hoot and high-five, speeding off in the car
like crack high school commandos,
we aren't sure whose side time is on,
playing tackle in the mud, buttoning our nights
with Space Invaders at the Luna,
considering marriage. But there it is, that sound
filling up the deep beneath us,
and Jim shouting in the car above the rest,
By tomorrow it'll be in Chicago.
--Peter Blair
(published in LAST HEAT)
Aufust 21, 2009
Woman Bathing
Naches River. Just below the falls.
Twenty miles from any town. A day
of dense sunlight
heavy with odors of love.
How long have we?
Already your body, sharpness of Picasso,
is drying in the highland air.
I towel down your back, your hips,
with my undershirt.
Time is a mountain lion.
We laugh at nothing,
And as I touch your breasts
even the ground--
squirrels
are dazzled.
--Raymond Carver
(published in A NEW PATH TO THE WATERFALL)
August 20, 2009
HEART’S PRAYER
My sister whom I was once able to love
and now am
unable to find
hopefully you
will one day
and hopefully
one day soon
be able to
understand how
you turn gold
into straw
how you
scratch those trying
to get close
to you
understand,
relax
let people
hug you again--
I can do
nothing
except pray
and cry
and pray for
the day
you relax
and let
people get close again.
--Tim Van Ert
(from IF YOU LIVE, YOUR TIME WILL COME)
August 19, 2009
There's Youth Still
A man has written his feelings--
Can it be done?
Has he found the path from ink to soul?
The truth certainly is:
It burns in my heart.
Can I release it as flame, or only as acid?
As children we embraced;
Loved with a passionate flame pure as Truth's!
No longer feel myself innocent, nor see you child.
An artist, a scholar, a physician, a poet.
A philosopher, a disciple, a scientist, a dreamer.
A selfish brat--ah, there's youth still!
--Tim Van Ert
(from COLLECTED WORDS)
August 18, 2009
Unable to Stand
White body leans against the plate glass
letting sun rays pour hot onto skin
to flush it port red around the breaks
with their spilt lymph like the lava rocks
my bare, roaming feet recall too well.
Seeing blurred blue smoke thread
hills' rifts while weighed down
by summer's inversion,
I recall the drowning
pull of passion's syrups.
Summer sprinklers make sense to me,
shoosh, shoosh, shoosh...splatter-splatter-splatter
because I think I grasp hydraulics.
A tomato plant speaks out by begging,
through its drooping, for relief from drought.
It is strange enough producing
technicolor dreams nightly
from beneath basal ganglia,
but how does my TV know
to grab invisible power
surges and create sensible
images entrancing enough
to reverse the tide of literacy?
In mockery of mind
both knees buckle;
I cannot stand
not understanding.
--Tim Van Ert
(published in NOTHING ELSE MATTERS)
August 17, 2009
Batman
Temptations to gamble keep
nibbling on me
like memories of that bat
(plunging toward my warm-bodied
signal of a head,
exciting two frenzies with each swoop)
gnaw insistently:
catching me in the dark,
naked, unshielded.
I feel the expansion of time
in the compression
of each breath.
Exhaling, I seize
time enough to dream
of metamorphosis:
caterpillar climbing
inch by inch,
day by day,
struggling to budge
to that sheltered safety
where we all long
to hang topsy-turvy
in our changes.
Drawing there pictures found
of the world within,
and then full around;
recording words, images,
rhythms, sounds--drawing
heaven and hell to earth,
their hallowed place of birth.
Now ready to cast off the skin
of sacrificial totem,
I wave past him.
He waves erratically,
unstoppable...
--Tim Van Ert
(from CREATE THAT LOVE THAT LOVE CREATES)
August 16, 2009
Small Haiku Opera
The cat leapt from the
railing to the deck as if
I did not exist.
I watched the cat leap
as if there were nothing else
as real in the world.
A child with cancer
dies in Portland wishing he
had a cat to hold.
His mother, crying,
tries to imagine holding
her son forever.
If I could, I would
hold this stranger until she
cried herself to sleep.
The cat is sleeping
on the blanket I laid out
by a bowl of milk.
--Scott Lubbock
(published in ON THE WAY TO WATER)
August 15, 2009
Vacation Trip
The loudest sound in our car
was Mother being glum:
Little chiding valves
a surge of detergent oil
all that deep chaos
the relentless accurate fire
the drive shaft wild to arrive
And tugging along behind in its great big
balloon,
that looming piece of her mind:
"I wish I hadn't come."
--William Stafford
(published in THE WAY IT IS)
August 14, 2009
Aborderlinosis
Angry? First hurt, now this...
Don't you know
how hurt and anger
neighbor?
When their fence falls
revealed are no fine
neighbors,
but ranging flood waters
fluidly looting each other's
vacancies.
Don't you know
any good
contractors?
--Tim Van Ert
(from CREATE THAT LOVE THAT LOVE CREATES)
August 13, 2009
Slide
Did I hear any of that from you
Or are these just the echoes
From the avalanche I experienced
As I felt my heart sliding
Down from its lofty perch?
--Tim Van Ert
(from CREATE THAT LOVE THAT LOVE CREATES)
August 12, 2009
Wandering Away
Like
a corpse I lay in the waste land,
And I heard God's voice cry out,
"Arise, prophet, and see and hear,
Be charged with my will--
And go out over seas and lands
To fire men's heart with the word."
--Alexander Pushkin
With wisdom too weak to weather
Weight of wanton ego, wander
West--unaware of what to do
When wakened with world-wide water
Washing your way in wind-whitened
Wonderfully overwhelming waves.
--Tim Van Ert
(published in NOTHING ELSE MATTERS)
August 11, 2009
Essays
My lines slur
summer's essays
on human being:
breath blown
too softly.
--Tim Van Ert
(from A FIRST EDITION OF HAI-CHOO: LITTLE SNEEZES
OF PROFOUND DITTY-CISM)
August 10, 2009
Waiting
Soft yet sharp like the junco's call
sunlight knifes between clouds.
Soft, then sharp.
As brigade after brigade of moments,
the hours march through me--
soft ahead of sharp.
Their earth rumble awakens desire:
thirst for soft,
hunger for sharp.
Mosquitoes light on me soft
before sharp.
--Tim Van Ert
(published in SEEDS ON A WIND RIDE)
August 9, 2009
Elsewhere
Sitting at a checkered tablecloth
listening to myself breathe
I feel like the man who invented
the boredom of accordian music.
I would like to compose
an image of my life
whose sheer weight
is quiet enough
to last a lifetime.
But to be alone like this
shakes the blossoms
from the stick trees
again and again.
I think how grief exactly fits
the size of anything living,
how it's infinitely expandable,
but I am no more than a mote
floating through the small blue sky
of someone's mind, darkening
his rights and privileges.
Knowing this, I am lifted up
and then there is a calm, a settlement
of white blossoms,
trees like massive nerves
holding up the sky.
--Jack Myers
(published in AS LONG AS YOU'RE HAPPY)
August 8, 2009
Storm Windows
People are putting up storm windows now.
Or were, this morning, until the heavy rain
Drove them indoors. So, coming home at noon,
I saw storm windows lying on the ground,
Frame-full of rain; through the water and glass
I saw the crushed grass, how it seemed to stream
Away in lines like seaweed on the tide
Or blades of wheat leaning under the wind.
The ripple and splash of rain on the blurred glass
Seemed that it briefly said, as I walked by,
Something I should have like to say to you,
Something...the dry grass bent under the pane
Brimful of bouncing water...something of
A swaying clarity which blindly echoes
This lonely afternoon of memories
And missed desires, while the wintry rain
(Unspeakable, the distance in the mind!)
Runs on the standing windows and away.
--Howard Nemerov
(published in THE WINTER LIGHTNING)
August 7, 2009
The Five Year Indian
Frankie was a pony baby,
baptized without food bowls
or ceremony fires in a gold
defaced church near the reservation.
No feathers, no beads nor stains
adorned his head for twenty one years.
Five years ago, he was Mexico race,
so enrollment cards say.
Today with feathers flying,
hair growing, beads banding,
leather fringing and ATM card waving,
he is one of us.
--Lew Blockcolski
(published in COME TO POWER, Ed. Dick Lourie)
August 6, 2009
Post Card
Inert for aeons like magma spills
table's tumbled debris collects topsoil.
Neglected mail, Coke cans askew--
the spent surround the unopened.
Mayo stand once rescued from Wally's Thrift
lies lost between boulders of crushed boxes.
Piles of clothes stripped of hangers
form wrinkle labyrinths without exit.
Lemon-lime cans harnessed in six-pack plastic
bear the dust of nowhere to go.
Silver and orange shears perched at a stabbing angle
menace inhabitants of a warped white box.
Through this you travel nightly
leaving no trace of trail or change.
I worry that when you offered us your room last night
you meant it as a postcard from your deathbed.
--Tim Van Ert
(published in POETRY JOURNAL)
August 5, 2009
Tumbleweed Soul
When my soul tumbles
oh it tumbles.
I guess what I want to know
is when my soul tumbles so
where does it,
where do I,
where do we go?
--Tim Van Ert
(from A FIRST EDITION OF HAI-CHOO: LITTLE SNEEZES
OF PROFOUND DITTY-CISM)
August 4, 2009
Cockroaches
Cockatrice of shields,
having not read Newton or Einstein,
flickers head-first down
the moist pumice wall
pausing, I surmise, to die.
Meet a lit roach waiting,
inflamed with hunger,
in a skirmish only one can survive.
His chocolate syrup smear
on earth stone dais
warns the others.
The phone rings, to be answered
by a mockingbird at play--
or scolding (like June evening wind
shaking the budding birches below)
this hunter his trespass?
--Tim Van Ert
(published in NOTHING ELSE MATTERS)
August 3, 2009
Sharing Your Wealth
You just go ahead,
read those books on the shelves--
I read your bank account
through the windows
while you're both at work.
Money all over the house!
Sure, some's tucked away real cozy.
Small bits sparkle in my flash light.
Necklace over my fingers,
pulling it ever so slowly,
I feel your wealth--
I want your wealth.
We both know I'll never
really get it,
but I'm here today to steal it.
Like your family 'hoods the best,
so easy to get in.
Petty rich folks is what I call you;
all the same:
take this stuff for granted
till it's gone.
But then, you got insurance.
So I buy me another
hungry day of wretched life.
Or borrow it from ya,
if you like.
How many of your days
would you say
are missing now?
--Tim Van Ert
(from IF YOU LIVE, YOUR TIME WILL COME)
August 2, 2009
The Song of the Old Mother
I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow
Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow;
And then I must scrub and bake and sweep
Till stars are beginning to blink and peep
And the young lie long and dream in their bed
Of the matching of ribbons for bosom and head,
And their day goes over in idleness,
And they sigh if the wind but lift a tress:
While I must work because I am old,
And the seed of the fire gets feeble and cold.
--W.B. Yeats
(published in THE POEMS OF W.B. YEATS)
August 1, 2009
Song of the Soul
In the depth of my soul there is
A wordless song--a song that lives
In the seed of my heart.
It refuses to melt with ink on
Parchment; it engulfs my affection
In a transparent cloak and flows,
But not upon my lips.
How can I sigh it? I fear it may
Mingle with earthly ether;
To whom shall I sing it? It dwells
In the house of my soul, in fear of
Harsh ears.
When I look into my inner eyes
I see the shadow of its shadow;
When I touch my fingertips
I feel its vibrations.
The deeds of my hands heed its
Presence as a lake must reflect
The glittering stars; my tears
Reveal it, as bright drops of dew
Reveal the secret of a withering rose.
It is a song composed by contemplation,
And published by silence,
And shunned by clamour,
And folded by truth,
And repeated by dreams,
And understood by love,
And hidden by awakening,
And sung by the soul.
It is the song of love;
What Cain or Esau could sing it?
It is more fragrant than jasmine;
What voice could enslave it?
It is heartbound, as a virgin's secret;
What string could quiver it?
Who dares unite the roar of the sea
And the singing of the nightingale?
Who dares compare the shrieking tempest
To the sigh of an infant?
Who dares speak aloud the words
Intended for the heart to speak?
What human dares sing in voice
The song of God?
--Kahlil Gibran
(published in A TREASURY OF KAHLIL GIBRAN)