POEMS -- JUNE
(Please send suggestions, feedback or commentary to timiimit@mockok.com )
June 15, 2014
Looking at My Father
I do not think I am deceived about him.
I know about the drinking, I know he's a tease,
obsessive, rigid, selfish, sentimental,
but I could look at my father all day
and not get enough: the large creased
ball of his forehead, slightly aglitter like the
sheen on a well-oiled baseball glove;
his eyebrows, the hairs two inches long,
black and silver, reaching out in
continual hope and curtailment; and most of
all I could look forever at his eyes,
they way they bulge out as if eager to see and
yet are glazed as if blind, the whites
hard and stained as boiled eggs
boiled in sulphur water, the irises
muddy as the lip of a live volcano, the
pupils glittering pure black,
magician black. Then there is his nose
rounded and pocked and comfy as the bulb of a
horn a clown would toot, and his lips
solid and springy. I even like to
look in his mouth, stained brown with
cigars and bourbon, my eyes sliding down the
long amber roots of his teeth,
right in there where Mother hated, and
up the scorched satin of the sides and
vault, even the knobs on the back of his
tongue. I know he is not perfect but my
body thinks his body is perfect, the
fine stretched coarse pink
skin, the big size of him, the
sour-ball mass, darkness, hair,
sex, legs even longer than mine,
lovely feet. What I know I know, what my
body knows it knows, it likes to
slip the leash of my mind and go and
look at him, like an animal
looking at water, then going to it and
drinking until it has had its fill and can
lie down and sleep.
--Sharon Olds
June 23, 2012
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!
--if you live, your time will come
June 11, 2012
Toward The Heart of Priscilla Jean
Gee, Mom, I guess God
packed a lot of surprises
into your small but sturdy body:
a womb fearless enough to deliver
eight vibrant souls into this
challenging world,
and a heart big enough
to love them, and their own,
through storm after storm.
A heart this strong keeps making room
for the defects borne of the womb:
desertion and return,
failure and rebound,
loss of the innocent and
discovery of the eternal,
the proud coming out
and the humility of rebirth,
strength through persistence,
vulnerability to love and
wandering—yet never too far.
No wonder such a heart,
welcoming so many
so often
and so much,
has pulled a part of you
into its sphere!
Now, let all those hearts
that beat with your rhythm
return to you
the steady strength
needed to bear this trespass
and forgive all past trespasses.
Please allow us our small
jealousy that it’s your gut,
not one of your loving eight,
poised to smother you
with such visceral intimacy.
--if you live, your time will come
June 3, 2012
Ritual for the Heart Land
Clouds blacken the sky and pelt my garden--
as ugly a day as I've seen in a lifetime.
Yet in company of fine music and good books
I warm my feet on the hearth,
and smile to myself enough to forget
past and future.
--if you live, your time will come
June 24, 2011
O Waters
wash us, me,
under the sprinkled granite
straight-up slab,
and sitting by camp in the pine shade
Nanao sleeping,
mountains humming and crumbling
snowfields melting
soil
building on tiny ledges
for wild onions and flowers
Blue
Polemonium
great
earth
sangha
--Gary Snyder
(Turtle Island)
June 12, 2011
Retaining Wall
Will it hold--
the terrace wall and willows--
when the planet melts
just in time
for our retirement?
Is it enough to back-fill
with crossword puzzles,
contract bridge and Chinese for Beginners?
If the sky blackens and pours,
and the hill slides
mud, toys and matted pets,
lawn furniture, garbage cans,
and that neat shed
where I keep the mower and a few ideas,
can we hang on? Anti-oxidants, fish oil, yoga.
Is it enough? Sentences tangling
such a soft mound of mind.
What will it take, my dear, to stay off the slope
where nobody remembers? That spotted yellow bed
and washed-out gully
where we always see the bones
of something.
--Henry Hughes
(published in MOIST MERIDIAN)
June 4, 2011
Adam's Complaint
Some people,
no matter what you give them,
still want the moon.
The bread,
the salt,
white meat and dark,
still hungry.
The marriage bed
and the cradle,
still empty arms.
You give them land,
their own earth under their feet,
still they take to the roads
And water: dig them the deepest well,
still it’s not deep enough
to drink the moon from.
--Denise Levertov
June 30, 2010
Waking After Dickinson
And then a Plank in reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down—#280
E.D.
I slept then waked into the same film gris,
every edge eroded, dull and blunt,
mornings of mist and afternoons of drizzle,
in an any-season drone.
After the dial tone, Jovial,
a voice promised "bright clouds."
It was the best that he could offer.
I understood, accepted, almost glad.
Tomorrow's trash day,
Thursday's neurosurg.
On the back porch,
that one damp board still sags
beneath the weight of one wife and two trash bags.
It jolts my dream back—black silk quatrains
pulled like a drawstring through my brain—
while above me, behind a crazy weft of trees,
one cloud glares a cold insistent white
like a birthday flare.
The porch creaks just once more, then holds,
as I balance there.
--Paula Tatarunis, MD, Waltham, Mass
(published in JAMA. 1998;279:1168)
June 29, 2010
Rain
A teacher asked Paul
what he would remember
from third grade, and he sat
a long time before writing
"this year sumbody tutched me
on the sholder"
and turned his paper in.
Later she showed it to me
as an example of her wasted life.
The words he wrote were large
as houses in a landscape.
He wanted to go inside them
and live, he could fill in
the windows of "o" and "d"
and be safe while outside
birds building nests in drainpipes
knew nothing of the coming rain.
--Naomi Shihab Nye
(published in NEW AMERICAN POETS OF THE '90s)
June 28, 2010
Home Place
It is not hard to imagine arriving after so many years
to find yourself in the place and watch the road
that brought you going on without you, and the swale
beside it like a green finger pointing back
the way you came. It is not hard to imagine
a sunken pasture between the road and the house
with a few cows grazing, one now looking up
to stare at you for a moment, then lowering its head
to the grass, and to hear a meadowlark's sudden
aria again, never forgotten note for note. It is not
hard to imagine finding the house set far back
from the road beneath poplars, the narrow lane
leading to it, the barn and chicken house and weeping
willows and outhouse, exactly as you remember them
more than 65 years ago, although all of it is gone now.
At night no one lowers the blinds--there is no one
to look in--and amber light flows from the windows
and remains on the grass as if painted there, and those
inside, when they pass the windows, create shadows
passing through the lights painted on the grass.
The windows will be open and we can hear night noises:
the pounding of insects against the screen, giant
hummingbird moths and beetles, a bullfrog
down at the creek, the sudden question of an owl,
a cowbell, a huge horse snuffling in the barn.
In spite of all this racket, it is not hard to imagine
that if we listen when we go outside to empty
our bladders before going to bed, we can hear
the stars singing, they are that near.
--Richard Shelton
(published in THE LAST PERSON TO HEAR YOUR VOICE)
June 27, 2010
Chest X-Ray
She adjusts my hip, spine, shoulder
against the roentgen plate. Note
my waxy flexibility
is so perfect
it might have been borrowed
from a catatonic!
I am so well behaved and chaste
in my lead apron
and Cerenkov-blue gown:
there are medical gods to propitiate
with lumberjack appetites--
meat and potato men,
trenchermen, gourmands--
so when she tells me to take a deep breath
and hold it without swaying
I clasp my hands on my head
as if praying
for a schooldesk
and inkpot to descend.
And I wait.
This is how prisoners of war stand,
obedient, afraid, elbows forward,
ready to cast
their gamma shadow anywhere,
just as I am standing here
in this little August entre-deux-guerres
holding my crouched heart
in its slatted cage,
bird and refugee,
right between the eyes
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
--Paula Tatarunis
(published in BLOOD & BONE, POEMS BY PHYSICIANS)
June 26, 2010
The Fossil Imprint
The impress of a whelk
in hard brown rock,
fluted as a plinth.
Its life gone utterly,
throb, wet and chalk,
left this shape-transmission,
a kin boat of fine brick.
Just off center is a chip
healed before its death.
Before some credit help
this glazed biographee
beat surf-smash, stone rap,
maybe even saurid bite
in a swamp Antarctic.
Here, and where you are
have been Antarctic.
--Les Murray
(published in SUBHUMAN REDNECK POEMS)
June 25, 2010
I Don't Wanna Get Drafted
Special delivery ... registered mail ...
you're gonna hafta sign for this buddy ...
come on out ... I know you're in there !
I don't wanna get drafted
I don't wanna go
I don't wanna get drafted ... phooey !
I don't wanna get drafted
I don't wanna go
I don't wanna get drafted.
Roller skates in disco is a lot of fun.
I'm too young'n stupid to operate a gun.
I don't wanna get drafted
I don't wanna get drafted
I don't wanna get drafted
I don't wanna get drafted.
My sister don't wanna get drafted
she don't wanna go ... sister don't wanna get drafted
my sister don't wanna get drafted
she don't wanna go ... sister don't wanna get drafted.
Wars are really ugly
they're dirty an' they're cold
I don't want nobody
to shoot her in the fox hole
fox hole.
--Frank Zappa
http://www.elyrics.net/read/f/frank-zappa-lyrics/i-don_t-wanna-get-drafted-lyrics.htmla
June 24, 2010
A Kind of Glory
years after the neighbors
started using machines
Grandpa still did the milking
with his small-boned
delicate hands
but his cows gave better milk
than any herd in the valley
at night he danced the schottische
with Grandma and always
put his little foot right there
more gracefully than she could manage
he smelled of cow manure
and Prince Albert pipe tobacco
women found him irresistible
we knew we would never be famous
or anything out of the ordinary
but for awhile after Grandpa
dropped his flashlight
into the outhouse hole we had
a kind of glory
it continued to shine
straight up from down there
and our most private moments
were illuminated
--Richard Shelton
(published in SELECTED POEMS [1982])
June 23, 2010
Your Laughter
Take bread away from me, if you wish,
take air away, but
do not take from me your laughter.
Do not take away the rose,
the lanceflower that you pluck,
the water that suddenly
bursts forth in your joy,
the sudden wave
of silver born in you.
My struggle is harsh and I come back
with eyes tired
at times from having seen
the unchanging earth,
but when your laughter enters
it rises to the sky seeking me
and it opens for me all
the doors of life.
My love, in the darkest
hour your laughter
opens, and if suddenly
you see my blood staining
the stones of the street,
laugh, because your laughter
will be for my hands
like a fresh sword.
Next to the sea in the autumn,
your laughter must raise
its foamy cascade,
and in the spring, love,
I want your laughter like
the flower I was waiting for,
the blue flower, the rose
of my echoing country.
Laugh at the night,
at the day, at the moon,
laugh at the twisted
streets of the island,
laugh at this clumsy
boy who loves you,
but when I open
my eyes and close them,
when my steps go,
when my steps return,
deny me bread, air,
light, spring,
but never your laughter
for I would die.
--Pablo Neruda
(published in THE CAPTAIN'S VERSES)
June 22, 2010
The Rural Carrier Discovers That Love is Everywhere
A registered letter for the Jensens. I walk down their drive
Through the gate of their thick-hedged yard, and by God there they are,
On a blanket in the grass, asleep, buck-naked, honeymooners
Not married a month. I smile, turn to leave,
But can't help looking back. Lord, they're a pretty sight,
Both of them, tangled up in each other, easy in their skin--
It's their own front yard, after all, perfectly closed in
By privet hedge and country. Maybe they were here all night.
I'd want to believe they'd do that, not thinking of me
Or anyone but themselves, alone in the world
Of the yard with its clipped grass and fresh-picked fruit trees
Whatever this letter says can wait. To hell with the mail.
I slip through the gate, silent as I came, and leave them
Alone. There's no one they need to hear from.
--T.R. Hummer
(published in THE ANGELIC ORDERS)
June 21, 2010
Beauty, Danger and Dismay
Beauty, danger and dismay
Met me on the public way.
Whichever I chose, I chose dismay.
--James Fenton
(published in OUT OF DANGER)
June 20, 2010
Nothing Ventured
Nothing exists as a block
and cannot be parceled up.
So if nothing's ventured
it's not just talk;
it's the big wager.
Don't you wonder
how people think
the banks of space
and time don't matter?
How they'll drain
the big tanks down to
slime and salamanders
and want thanks?
-- Kay Ryan
June 19, 2010
My Dad
When I was just a tiny kid,
Do you remember when,
The time you kissed my bruises,
Or cleaned by soiled chin?
You scrambled for the balls I hit,
(Short-winded more than not,)
Yet, every time we'd play a game,
You praised the "outs" I caught.
It seems like only yesterday,
You wiped away my tears,
And late at night I called your name,
To chase away my fears.
-- Anonymous
June 18, 2010
The Edges of Time
It is at the edges
that time thins.
Time which had been
dense and viscous
as amber suspending
intentions like bees
unseizes them. A
humming begins,
apparently coming
from stacks of
put-off things or
just in back. A
racket of claims now,
as time flattens. A
glittering fan of things
competing to happen,
brilliant and urgent
as fish when seas
retreat.
--Kay Ryan
(published in THE BEST OF IT)
June 17, 2010
Time Away
Tick-tock
Ticking away
With quick small bites
Of our lives.
All day I forgot
About time
Leaking away
In small mechanical
Bites.
My wrist was bare,
And life flowed
With creeks
And rivers
To the ocean.
With a heartbeat,
Bright and red.
--Kurt Kristensen
(published in POETSPEAK)
June 16, 2010
Poem Against the Rich
Each day I live, each day the sea of light
Rises, I seem to see
The tear inside the stone
As if my eyes were gazing beneath the earth.
The rich man in his red hat
Cannot hear
The weeping in the pueblos of the lily,
Or the dark tears in the shacks of the corn.
Each day the sea of light rises
I hear the sad rustle of the darkened armies,
Where each man weeps, and the plaintive
Orisons of the stones.
The stones bow as the saddened armies pass.
--Robert Bly
(published in VITAL SIGNS, CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN
POETRY FROM THE UNIVERSITY PRESSES ed. Ronald Wallace)
June 15, 2010
Boy and Mom at the Nutcracker Ballet
There's no talking in this movie.
It's not a movie! Just watch the dancers.
They tell the story through their dancing.
Why is the nutcracker mean?
I think because the little boy broke him.
Did the little boy mean to?
Probably not.
Why did the nutcracker stab his sword through the mouse king!
I liked the mouse king.
So did I. I don't know. I wish that part wasn't in it.
You can see the girl's underpants.
No, not underpants. It's a a costume called a "tutu"--same word
as "grandmother" in Hawaiian.
Are those real gems on their costumes?
Do they get to keep them?
Is that really snow coming down?
No, it can't be, it would melt and their feet get wet.
I think it's white paper.
Aren't they beautiful!
They are very beautiful. But what do the dancers do
when we can't see them, when they're off the stage
and they're not dancing!
Do you have any more pistachios in your purse?
--Naomi Shihab Nye
(published in FUEL)
June 14, 2010
so galactic
My new band name
the Macronauts really
captures the largeness
of what it's like
to be in Los Angeles
where often it feels (
such as at the Edendale
on Saturday) as if you
are very floating the
night full of night
also captures the
glamour not grocery
store check out line
but real glitz you
can taste taste taste
God bless me for now
I have dyed pink hair
and I am ready Lord
I have crapped up Vans
and a studded thunder belt
I am the light of the
light at the center of the
thing that's happening
the most important thing
that's happening currently
(published on WWW)
June 13, 2010
Outside the Operating Room of the Sex-Change Doctor
Outside the operating room of the sex-change doctor, a tray
of penises.
There is no blood. This is not Vietnam, Chile, Buchenwald.
They were surgically removed under anaesthetic. They lie there
neatly, each with a small space around it.
The anaesthetic is wearing off now. The chopped-off sexes lie
on the silver tray.
One says I am a weapon thrown down. Let there be no more
killing.
Another says I am a thumb lost in the threshing machine.
Bright straw fills the air. I will never have to work again.
The third says I am a caul removed from his eyes. Now he
can see.
The fourth says I want to be painted by Gericault, a still life
with a bust of Apollo, a drape of purple velvet, and a vine of ivy
leaves.
The fifth says I was a dirty little dog, I knew he'd have me
put to sleep.
The sixth says I am safe. Now no one can hurt me.
Only one is unhappy. He lies there weeping in terrible grief,
crying out Father, Father!
--Sharon Olds
(published in THE GOLD CELL)
June 12, 2010
Night in the House of Cards
A lot of dust has settled today,
The Evening News said.
The walls still shook from time to time
As if the night was a truck
Loaded with gravel rumbling by.
Then it was quiet.
The builder of the house of cards
Had rushed off
Holding her masked children by the hand.
I didn't dare light another match
And look at the walls.
There were pictures everywhere of bearded men
And their bearded wives.
The match flame made them dance
So that afterwards
I lay sleepless in the dark.
In the night, the wind
That chills the stars to a squint
Blew a card off the roof
Up one of its dark sleeves.
The dawn sky was like a torn red dress
The girl on the back of the card wore.
--Charles Simic
(published in WALKING THE BLACK CAT)
June 11, 2010
Earthmoving Malediction
Bulldoze the bed where we made love,
bulldoze the goddamn room.
Let rubble be our evidence
and wreck our home.
I can't give touching up
by inches, can't give beating
up by heart. So set the comforter
on fire, and turn the dirt
to some advantage--palaces of pigweed,
treasuries of turd. The fist
will vindicate the hand,
and tooth and nail
refuse to burn, and I
must not look back, as Mrs. Lot
was named for such a little--
something in a cemetery,
or a man. Bulldoze the coupled
ploys away, the cute exclusives
in the social mall. We dwell
on earth, where beds
are brown, where swoops
are fell. Bulldoze
the pearly gates:
if paradise comes down
there is no hell.
--Heather McHugh
(published in NEW AMERICAN POETS OF THE 90s)
June 9, 2010
Train Trip to Horsens
--Denmark
Today is simple, a bike against a brick wall.
Near Grena a longfish net hangs on a stump.
Forty swans glide the flooded pastures near Kolind.
At Ryomgarrd, we stop for one woman with a child
and pram then float over the thack thack thack,
absorb the dimples of track until Hornsleths
where twenty school kids crowd the car chattering
words a syllable long. Out my window, twin ponies,
a row of white houses, and east, a freshly plowed field.
One hawk stands true as a fence post. Herning,
the school kids' stop, and twenty miles to sit
while silence fills the space children owned.
--Kevin Miller
(published in LIGHT THAT WHISPERS MORNING)
June 8, 2010
Nipple Piercing Monkey Screams
a review
Call me old-fashioned, but I find them
exhilarating, not just their
mindless, driving rhythms or
the painfully inarticulate lyrics,
but their irrepressible sexual charm,
the suggestive desire to fuck
whoever is in the front row,
the playful push and pull of
safety and danger
between audience and musicians,
punctuated by
pelvic thrusts and stretching arms.
I find myself
drawn to the primitive
forces of creativity, the urgency of
Bach facing a Sunday deadline,
the agony or ecstasy of
Michelangelo squatting on scaffolding
fifty feet above the cold stone
floor of the Sistine Chapel, thinking,
"How can I make this look like God?"
--Scott Lubbock
(published in ON THE WAY TO WATER)
June 7, 2010
Wallis Lake Estuary
for Valerie
A long street of all blue windows,
the estuary bridge is double-humped
like a bullock yoke. The north tide
teems through to four arriving rivers,
the south tide works the sinus channel
to the big heart-shaped real estate lake.
Both flood oyster farms like burnt floor joists
that islands sleep out among like dogs.
Glorious on a brass day the boiling up
from the south, of a storm above those paddocks
shoal-creamed wake-dolphined water.
Equally at dusk, when lamps and pelicans
are posted, the persistence of dark lands
out there on the anodised light void.
--Les Murray
(published in SUBHUMAN REDNECK POEMS)
June 6, 2010
The New Feeling
Lately I've had this permanent feeling of falling.
Concentrating on this takes all my time,
so I've become an expert at the istant getaway,
the one-liner: "Excuse me," I say, "I'm falling."
I'm not falling because something had once happened
and I'm not disappointed or bitter.
As naturally as blood rains down in me
I fall like a closed umbrella.
No one notices this in me and no one ever said, "Look,
this strange thing will happen one day." So it must be
everyone's falling, only no one's saying a word.
Once I saw this movie about a woman obsessed
with dancing who wore these great red shoes.
Whenever she put them on, she leaped and lurched and
twirled and finally got crushed by a train.
That meant something to and for thirty years I thought
it was my own queer dream. Then I discovered everyone
had seen the movie, only no one was saying a word.
Well, this time I'm saying it first.
I'm calling it as I feel it.
It isn't love and it isn't death.
I'm talking about falling.
--Jack Myers
(published in AS LONG AS YOU'RE HAPPY)
June 5, 2010
Some Herons
A blue preacher
flew toward the swamp,
in slow motion.
On the leafy banks,
an old Chinese poet,
hunched in the
white gown of his wings,
was waiting.
The water
was the kind of dark silk
that has silver lines
shot through it
when it is touched
by the wind
or is splashed upward,
in a small, quick flower,
by the
life beneath it.
The preacher
made his difficult landing,
his skirts up
around his knees.
The poet's eyes
flared, just as a poet's eyes
are said
to do
when the poet is awakened
from the forest of meditation.
It was summer.
It was only a few moments past the sun's rising,
which
meant that the whole long sweet day
lay before them.
They treated each other,
rumpling their gowns for an
instant,
and then smoothing them.
They entered the water,
and instantly two more herons--
equally as beautiful--
joined them and stood just beneath them
in the black,
polished water
where they fished, all day.
--Mary Oliver
(published in NEW AND SELECTED POEMS)
June 3, 2010
A Brave and Startling Truth
We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth
And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms
When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil
When the rapacious storming of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze
When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse
When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets
Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world
When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe
We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines
When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear
When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.
--Maya Angelou
(presented to United Nations Assembly
at the UN's fiftieth anniversary)
June 2, 2010
The Piano
Sounds drift
through the air, smelling sweet--
salty cigar smoke.
The room dark,
faces blend together;
laughter,
induced fiery
whiskey.
Focus.
The middle of the room.
A grand piano.
Keys glistening,
beckoning light fingers.
Music lilts,
the ivories sing
melodious song.
Rhythm fills me.
Eyes shut, I feel
beat.
Jazz clubs--
my refuge.
--Jessica Talmon
(published in NORTHWEST PASSAGE)
June 1, 2010
The Friend
We sat across the table.
he said, cut off your hands.
they are always poking at things.
they might touch me.
I said yes.
Food grew cold on the table.
he said, burn your body.
it is not clean and smells like sex.
it rubs my mind sore.
I said yes.
I love you, I said.
that's very nice, he said
I like to be loved,
that makes me happy.
Have you cut off your hands yet?
--Marge Piercy
(published in VITAL SIGNS
CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN POETRY FROM THE UNIVERSITY PRESSES)
June 30, 2009
Orchid Island
Let's, honey, moon
on that island
of my heart.
Yes, lover, soon
we'll find our wings
and depart
to a sainted isle
where mysteries'
miracles abound:
brave bloom of the wild
orchid--like you--
startling beauty found.
I delight in you:
just-born-bare body
bright in the moonlight,
then darting right through
the ocean waters
(you harbor inside!)
more gorgeous, too,
than all the snorkel fish
after the long boat ride.
We will marry every year,
and better still,
come together in a heart-beat
on that island
of two hearts made three.
--Tim Van Ert
(from IF YOU LIVE, YOUR TIME WILL COME)
June 29, 2009
Unplanned Parenthood
Perched, stiff, on exam table
black-root chemical blonde
in scuffed Doc Martens
and crisp combat greens
hunches over herself
even when not toking.
Curved thoughts crawl down
to hide between tummy muscles
elastic in rapid breathing--
mindless of latex not placed
(confessed after the exam)
in one trespass of passion.
Uncertainty drips from her--
a warm and sticky liquid
freed of lunar rhythms.
Yeah, it's two weeks late,
but I can't be pregnant....
gotta be my damned period, man!
--Tim Van Ert
(from IF YOU LIVE, YOUR TIME WILL COME)
June 28, 2009
THE FISH
I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of its mouth.
He didn’t fight.
He hadn’t fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
— the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly —
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
— It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
— if you could call it a lip —
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels — until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.
--Elizabeth Bishop
(published in The Complete Poems,1927-1979 by Elizabeth Bishop)
June 27, 2009
HORSES AT DAWN
The horses the horses the wild horses at dawn
as in a watercolor by Ben Shahn
they are alive in the high meaadow
in the high country on the far mesa
you can see them galloping
you can see them snorting
you can hear their thunder distantly
you can hear the small thunder
of their small hooves
insistently
like wooden hammers thrumming
on a distant drum
The sun roars &
throws their shadows
out of the night
--Lawrence Ferlinghetti
(published in Endless Life: Selected Poems)
June 26, 2009
FLOYESCO
Universe manifest
before unveiled eyes
teases eternity
with its luminous trance,
yet suffers no stall there
where fast I realize
surging colors neither
halt nor run as they dance.
Melting measures of time
rhythm hugs me fluid;
without missing a beat
unravels me complete.
Spinning water droplets
charged with sun's cadence
re-embody ballet
as whirling cells commence.
--Tim Van Ert
(from Create That Love That Love Creates)
June 25, 2009
NIGHT MOVES
Cigarette butt flare
flickers as eclipsed moon
thrusts its borrowed glow
from under earth's
shadow cloak.
Ears warm and eyes dip
as I sense I'm watching a body
wanting to disrobe--
to head a chorus line of stars
(Those named long ago are still.
Modern stars move
toward Portland and San Francisco.)
Plane's night-light flashing
(like a late summer firefly)
just threads the needle
between moon and Saturn.
In some full-moon-crazed derby
another's on his tail,
but lower,
and fails to repeat the feat.
--Tim Van Ert
(published in Medicinal Purposes)
June 24, 2009
THE DAILY DEATHS
I
Like her spring-cut roses
mother finally tired--
of being dwarfed in a king-sized
with only radio companions
and fear of silent phones--
her spirit doused, salty,
flowing through tears
I almost cried.
Which is the genetic trait:
she nearly died,
I nearly cried?
As a flashed sneer
(like a mugger's blade
in sodium's dirty light)
I feel the trespass of pain
long held inside--
memories of mother's
attempt at suicide.
II
Long carving knife
with blade burnished as a saber
was one of her tools.
Worn handle of wood
oiled by daily embrace
reminded me of Father McInery's
neck-draped crucifix.
Just four years old
I'd grabbed that knife,
waved it at her
like the wooden swords of my play
to announce, "Mommy I'm going to kill you."
And she, "Now what would you want to do that for?"
III
Razored blade glinting in her familiar grip
(decades later at my brother's wedding)
seemed to drive her bitter stare
burning into my chest
such that I longed for the protection
of Father McInery's cross.
Seeing her storm flash my father
I prayed for the summer of childhood
to blow through me dry and clear
that I might believe,
"Now what would you want to do that for?"
IV
God, we were all born to die!
Where, oh mother where,
did I learn to attempt it every day:
watching my child's acts flow by unpraised
as I choke in streams of self-immersion;
selfish lies not whispered--
even in confession--
swallowing colors too quickly to taste?
--Tim Van Ert
(published in Archives of Family Medicine)
June 23, 2009
ODE TO A BORN-AGAIN SHED
You watch us peek past the porch door
or though kitchen windows
to lose ourselves in the blizzard
of photons you throw
right back to the sun.
We fit you a jacket,
one I had seen you wear
when my mind's eye would play
inner tricks with physics.
Sprayed your cedar skeleton
luminescent like the oyster shells
scattered as charms to fetch hens' eggs.
Sing us bone songs time-tempered
like the drum-dry cattle skull
hanging on your wall.
Or hum your solid columns
ageless as the four directions.
North's wall's darkened by shadow
while south's beams to flowers.
West side welcomes all birds,
Take a bath, eat for free.
East buffers garden from winds,
transforms light to warmth.
We've given but make-up
in applause for these roles--
performances that sway
our daily lives.
--Tim Van Ert
(from Nothing Else Matters)
June 22, 2009
FOREST FALL
She stands mute and tall,
Bark-dress clutters wooden feet--
Fir stripped by seasons.
--Tim Van Ert
(from A First Collection of Hai-Choo--Little Sneezes of
Profound Dittycism)
June 21, 2009
THE GOOSE FISH
On the long shore, lit by the moon
To show them properly alone,
Two lovers suddenly embraced
So that their shadows were as one.
The ordinary night was graced
For them by the swift tide of blood
That silently they took at flood,
And for a little time they prized
Themselves emparadised.
Then, as if shaken by stage-fright
Beneath the hard moon's bony light,
They stood together on the sand
Embarrassed in each other's sight
But still conspiring hand in hand,
Until they saw, there underfoot,
As though the world had found them out,
The goose fish turning up, though dead,
His hugely grinning head.
There in the china light he lay,
Most ancient and corrupt and grey.
They hesitated at his smile,
Wondering what it seemed to say
To lovers who a little while
Before had thought to understand,
By violence upon the sand,
The only way that could be known
To make a world their own.
It was a wide and moony grin
Together peaceful and obscene;
They knew not what he would express,
So finished a comedian
He might mean failure or success,
But took it for an emblem of
Their sudden, new and guilty love
To be observed by, when they kissed,
That rigid optimist.
So he became their patriarch,
Dreadfully mild in the half-dark.
His throat that the sand seemed to choke,
His picket teeth, these left their mark
But never did explain the joke
That so amused him, lying there
While the moon went down to disappear
Along the still and tilted track
That bears the zodiac.
--Howard Nemerov
(published in The Winter Lightning)
June 20, 2009
CALIFORNIA
I think of the California poets,
how easy it is for them.
They have vast open spaces,
they drive jeeps and live nowhere,
they drift from cabin to cabin
on mountains with beautiful Spanish names
and there are girls in the cabins
who love poetry and sleep with the poets freely,
for in California there is no guilt nor shame
nor hunger, life is as a dream,
lobsters crawl up on the shore to be caught,
they shoot seabirds and fry them in butter on the beach.
There are no seasons in California.
You make your own, you move from
places where the sun shines all the time
to places where it rains or snows forever.
If you want June or October or some cross-country skiing,
you go to that place in your jeep
and the season is there always.
It is a good climate for poetry, since it is full
of images. You pluck them from the trees like breadfruit
with your feet or knock them down like coconuts.
It is good also for religion, as the Three Winds
bring secret doctrines from the East,
sensual and voluptuous names for the emotions,
creeds that make holy your underground desires,
your daily habits and the parts of your body.
In New England we scratch in the soil with sticks,
find scarce turnips among the rocks,
have no religion at all, fence out our neighbors,
wear clothes, work hard, abstain from sex
and write poems, when we do, on the way to the madhouse.
I spent some time in the Midwest, where they
were neither wholly free nor wholly tragic.
They lived, screwed, married, divorced, and died
like regular folk. They grew corn and fed it to
their pigs, then shipped them east and west
for slaughter. It made sense.
When I am finished with this rocky ground,
wet weather and neurotic ocean,
I will become a Baptist in Des Moines,
rise early and drive over to the river
to watch the fall migrations.
I will take photographs and keep
a family album, write no poems, for poems,
Maine or California, drive you crazy.
--William Carpenter
(published in Vital Signs an anthology edited by Ronald Wallace)
June 19, 2009
ODE TO AN ELEVATOR
On rare sun-drenched Seattle mornings
I looked up to the Visitacion Valley
hillside flaunting its gigantic tiara
as I approached our new VA hospital
for daily psychiatry rounds.
More often than not
a granite gargoyle lay waiting
grim with greeting the damp grey
of another Puget Sound day.
Most evenings sent me home licking
invisible wounds over dinner,
saddened by psychic gashes
in people without retreat.
Nights on call simmered over a steady
yearning for release through sleep.
"Room two, doctor"
Claire informed a tired intern
coughed from an elevator at 2 a.m.
Couldn't believe his name was Hatch;
that's exactly what he appeared
to search for face on floor--
as if a level lower than this dive
into drink called. As he lay at my feet
in the VA emergency room
beyond a spindly reach,
I wondered what lessons lay here.
A study in shabby clothes,
Mr. Hatch laughed brighter than your
favorite holiday uncle. He spun
golden tales Rumpelstiltskin might envy--
before vanishing A.M.A.,
forgotten as readily
as each of last year's failures.
Left behind until a year later
when in another hospital elevator--
his smile buoying above my hung head--
he sang out, "Hey, what's up doc;
you takin' good care of my friend?"
His presence now like a slap to the face
reminding me how heavily I too fall.
As he left I prayed thanks for lifts
and lessons hard to explain.
--Tim Van Ert
(from Nothing Else Matters)
June 18, 2009
MY LOVE
You give me sunshine,
You bring me rain.
You charge my feelings
With hope again!
--Tim Van Ert
(from Collected Words)
June 17, 2009
WAVES
Some thing has been loosed:
hundreds of light creatures
careen about me,
ant-like explorations
(without panicked desire to brush them off.)
Brush stroke beats
land and lift like breezes
or moon-lit moths'
maiden winging:
the reborn refueling,
the born anew alternately
launching and lighting.
--Tim Van Ert
(from Create That Love That Love Creates)
June 16, 2009
ORGANIC CHEMISTRY LECTURE NOTES
While you are gliding gracefully
Over symbols oft etched hastily
Suspend final judgment, for in sooth
These figures can never capture Truth.
You are hearing wrong if you hear 'don't study',
For even though some mechanisms are muddy
Remember this always as your first step:
The mind must be practiced and flexible kept.
Only then, perhaps, might Truth arise--
Not springing from words before your eyes,
But always coming from deep within
To remind you of the Awe again.
--Tim Van Ert
(from Collected Words)
June 15, 2009
READING YOU REMINDS ME
when bored stuffed with crinkling
carton-peanut thoughts
I may borrow fresh thinking
for just a few bucks.
Brain dark as last year's glads
forgotten beneath the weeds
gets to follow your spade
to a symmetry of color it needs.
Sometimes I forget how we work
for one another.
--Tim Van Ert
(published in FIREWEED)
June 14, 2009
ABRACADABRA
Enter through the door marked "Linac4."
Take the tiny towel, for false
modesty is always better than none. Now
drop your trousers, mount the table,
bring your bony knees
upward to your chest while they
insert the rectal balloon, inflate it,
give it a tug. Let them tie your feet together
and give you the rubber ring to squeeze
what little comfort you can from misdirection.
Let them levitate you and then
apply the ultrasound gel, the prescient probe,
adjusting the planning parameters
with the computer's sleight-of-hand.
Ah, the indignity of it! You
feel like such a rube,
caught with your proverbial pants down
as they vanish from the room.
Let Linac 4 begin to hum
its cool, dispassionate hum, the classic
apparatus with its obligatory patter
moving its mesmeric armature
over your rigid body.
And if finally it all comes down to mathematics--
how the cells divide and multiply--
and the physics of how the trick's done,
who's to say that there could be
no alchemy in the 21st century,
no magic, necromancy?
All you want is just to be
a stage prop in the act of Linac 4,
your cancer but a coin, a card, a key, a rope,
a rabbit in the top hat of the prostate:
Now you see it, now you don't.
--Ronald Wallace (Madison, Wisconsin)
(published in JAMA Jan 5, 2005--Vol 293, No. 1)
June 13, 2009
A REFLECTION
--Thomas Merton
(published in The Hidden Ground of Love)
(thank you, Jerry Braza)
June 12, 2009
MANKIND'S MIND
Marvelous
Meaning-
Making
Machine!
--Tim Van Ert
June 11, 2009
CINDER CONES
Cinder cones cloistered in a glacier (black
Tutus poised aeons after the small spilling)
Insinuate a path for drifting eyes--
Trekkers needing no tools to pick their way
Over tumbled blue-ice boulders whose
Aerosolized edges could razor lungs.
Like the studded blades of olive aloe
Press against my skylight as if to
Brush away snow heaped upon glass,
My fingers stretch, ready to overcome
The cold confusions of frozen fluids.
Brave climbers would secure a hug's hold
To tug you down, far below iced water,
Into the bowels where earth gestates her warmth.
--Tim Van Ert
(from Nothing Else Matters)
June 10, 2009
PETER PETER
Pumpkin come and pumpkin go
And when he come, he steal da show
But for us there is no mo’
Only pumpkin come
and PumpKing go.
--Tim Van Ert
(from A First Collection of Hai-Choo--Little Sneezes of
Profound Dittycism)
June 9, 2009
STARLIGHT ON ICEBERG
Hurry, see baby cow come out!
cries Rio, himself aglow
with the suckling of infancy.
No part of him understands
my planted response
to his tug on my hand.
He still learns through his eyes.
How could I explain
that I see with my mind:
two legs out,
two still in,
eyes wild, nose wet,
mother's bellow reverberating
our hollow guts.
I freeze there as I imagine.
Rio shines with what he saw.
--Tim Van Ert
(published in Seeds On a Wind Ride)
June 8, 2009
SENDS ME NO DANCERS
Nudged from dream's nest
my eyes flitter;
finding the horizon
they glide...
to the invisible palace
where you hide
fully exposed
to inner eyes.
Teaming with time
dawn's light pulls firs'
shadows away
while your limbs would draw me
to the solar nexus
where we've re-created
the universe
so many times.
Soaring now I wonder,
are you thinking of our love?
Soundless your soul shimmers
but sends me no dancers.
If my soul sent out dancers
where would they be:
sparrows hopping in Heathrow?
old men soft-shoeing
the muddy Thames?
Such beguiling old men
don't expect tired souls to dance
the way we young men do.
No, if I sent out dancers
they'd find you.
They'd find you
without answers
to remind you
of the Universes
we've yet to create.
--Tim Van Ert
(published in Pointed Circle)
June 7, 2009
FOR MY MOTHER
You were my first child, really.
When my sister moved into the guest room
you started to come to me at night
like a child who cannot sleep, coming to
the mother's bed, so I became a mother
at seven. Like the nurse laying the firstborn
in a mother's arms, you came sometimes
and laid yourself in my arms, you were spongy and felt
almost boneless, sacs of this
and that, wet feathers across your eyes.
Where does it come from, the love of babies--
I took you in my arms without thought, I felt lucky,
your cheek to my hard, ribby chest,
its nipple flat as a stroke of color,
a spot where some god had laid a thumb
for an instant. I was not impatient, I did not
mind the boiled-egg smell you had brought
from his bed--what I wanted was to feed strength up like
heat or color into your body,
to pump life into your life. Where had I learned that?
I had learned it from you, from the months you had held me
to your breast and given me hot, plentiful
milk, it was seven years since then, I had forgotten nothing.
--Sharon Olds
(published in The Wellspring)
June 6, 2009
DEPARTURE'S GIRL-FRIEND
LONELINESS
leapt in the mirrors, but all week
I kept them covered like cages. Then I thought
Of a better thing.
And though it was late night in the city
There I was on my way
To my boat, feeling good to be going, hugging
This big wreath with the words like real
Silver: Bon Voyage.
The night
Was mine but everyone's, like a birthday.
Its fur touched my face in passing. I was going
Down to my boat, my boat,
To see it off, and glad at the thought.
Some leaves of the wreath were holding my hands
And the rest waved good-bye as I walked, as though
They were still alive.
And all went well till I came to the wharf, and no one.
I say no one, but I mean
There was this young man, maybe
Out of the merchant marine,
In some uniform, and I knew who he was; just the same
When he said to me where do you think you're going,
I was happy to tell him.
But he said to me, it isn't your boat,
You don't have one. I said, it's mine, I can prove it:
Look at this wreath, I'm carrying to it,
Bon Voyage. He said, This is the stone wharf, lady,
You don't own anything here.
And as I
Was turning away, the injustice of it
Lit up the buildings, and there I was
In the other and hated city
Where I was born, where nothing is moored, where
The lights crawl over the stone like flies, spelling now,
Now, and the same fat chances roll
Their many eyes; and I step once more
Through a hoop of tears and walk on, holding this
Buoy of flowers in front of my beauty,
Wishing myself the good voyage.
--W. S. Merwin
(published in Contemporary American Poetry
ed. Donald Hall)
June 5, 2009
BLACKBERRY ATTACK
Mute monsters creep through summer heat.
Where soft leaves of lettuce once thrived,
Barb-studded tentacles deny
Passive access to sun and earth.
Brambles of no eye and less heart
Feel only the succor of strength--
Nourish green thorns to grow sharper
On organic scorn for soft flesh.
Claws dig like the feral kitten
Picked up by the gleeful toddler.
Bush born of Satan's seduction
Demands blood from each passerby.
Nothing on earth can match its might.
But there is that helicopter...
Traitorous heart warms to hear it
Whacking June's thick blanket of air.
Poison rain dribbles leaf-to-leaf.
I hide indoors. Herbicidal
Murder is not pleasant to see.
But what on earth deserves it more?
--Tim Van Ert
(published in Seeds On a Wind Ride)
June 4, 2009
CAMBERWELL BEAUTY
A lust
realized
is just
a dream
paralyzed
it seems
to my eyes.
--Tim Van Ert
(from A First Collection of Hai-Choo--Little Sneezes of
Profound Dittycism)
June 3, 2009
WHERE DO I
LIVE?
NPR in the morning
reports
bombs are falling in Baghdad.
My ears late at night
relay
bombs falling from our pear tree.
Through the years
I hear
bums are failing my sister.
All Sunday long
I feel
blisters wailing on my thumb.
I live amidst the bombs, and bums, until
I fall
back into the earth.
--Tim Van Ert
(from If You Live, Your Time Will Come)
June 2, 2009
SWEET FRUITS
We have a love of questions,
you and I--
faithful to those
which pose no certain answers.
To these we return,
like the meetings of old
friends in new cities,
with more to offer
after another season's harvest.
Then, forgetting ourselves,
our urgencies, our pasts--
two kids in an apple orchard--
we chase one another
to separate conclusions.
You will remind me,
next time we meet,
that I've accumulated much
since last we queried:
new ledges to view our questions,
new chairs in which to sit
reflecting answers and--
after a ripe summer--
new questions' sweet fruits
to send you home with.
--Tim Van Ert
(from Nothing Else Matters)
June 1, 2009
WALK THE DOG
Get up,
walk the dog
past death's
panting fog.
--Tim Van Ert
(from A First Collection of Hai-Choo--Little Sneezes of
Profound Dittycism)