Poet's Corner

[FRIKSHUN]

To Kill an American

You probably missed it in the rush of news last week, but there was
actually a report that someone in Pakistan had published in a newspaper
an offer of a reward to anyone who killed an American, any American.

So an Australian dentist wrote an editorial the following day to let
everyone know what an American is so they would know when they found
one. (Good one, mate!!!!)

"An American is English, or French, or Italian, Irish, German, Spanish,
Polish, Russian or Greek. An American may also be Canadian, Mexican,
African, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Australian, Iranian, Asian,
or Arab, or Pakistani or Afghan.

An American may also be a Comanche, Cherokee, Osage, Blackfoot, Navaho,
Apache, Seminole or one of the many other tribes known as native
Americans.

An American is Christian, or he could be Jewish, or Buddhist, or Muslim.

In fact, there are more Muslims in America than in Afghanistan. The only difference is! that in America they are free to worship as each of them chooses.

An American is also free to believe in no religion. For that he will
answer only to God, not to the government, or to armed thugs claiming to speak for the government and for God.

An American lives in the most prosperous land in the history of the
world.

The root of that prosperity can be found in the Declaration of
Independence, which recognizes the God given right of each person to the pursuit of happiness.

An American is generous. Americans have helped out just about every
other nation in the world in their time of need, never asking a thing in return.

When Afghanistan was over-run by the Soviet army 20 years ago, Americans
came with arms and supplies to enable the people to win back their
country!

As of the morning of September 11, Americans had given more than any
other nation to the poor in Afghanistan. Americans welcome the best of
everything...the best products, the best books, the best music, the best food, the best services. But they also welcome the least.

The national symbol of America, The Statue of Liberty, welcomes your
tired and your poor, the wretched refuse of your teeming shores, the
homeless, tempest tossed. These in fact are the people who built
America.

Some of them were working in the Twin Towers the morning of September
11, 2001 earning a better life for their families. It's been told that
the World Trade Center victims were from at least 30 different
countries, cultures, and first languages, including those that aided and abetted the terrorists.

So you can try to kill an American if you must. Hitler did. So did
General Tojo, and Stalin, and Mao Tse-Tung, and other blood-thirsty
tyrants in the world. But, in doing so you would just be killing
yourself. Because Americans are not a particular people from a
particular place. They are the embodiment of the human spirit of
freedom. Everyone who holds to that spirit, everywhere, is an American.

http://www.snopes.com/rumors/america2.asp

 

[midcan5]

'Mysterious Neighbors'

"Country people rise early
as their distant lights testify.
They don’t hold water in common. Each house
has a personal source, like a bank account,
a stone vault. Some share eggs,
some share expertise,
and some won’t even wave.
A walk for the mail elevates the heart rate.
Last November I saw a woman down the road
walk out to her mailbox dressed in blaze orange
cap to boot, a cautious soul.
Bullets can’t read her No Trespassing sign.
Strange to think they’re in the air
like lead bees with a fatal sting.
Our neighbor across the road sits in his kitchen
with his rifle handy and the window open.
You never know when. Once
he shot a trophy with his barrel resting on the sill.
He’s in his seventies, born here, joined the Navy,
came back. Hard work never hurt a man
until suddenly he was another broken tool.
His silhouette against the dawn
droops as though drought-stricken, each step
deliberate, down the driveway to his black mailbox,
prying it open. Checking a trap."

Connie Wanek

 

[maatsmom843]

the gods. . . .

mourning.
i thank the gods for a new chance at life
but i'm lying
cause my spirit is broken
i'm constantly crying
for this world is theirs and we're falling like flies
in their webs in our heads
slay our souls from inside out
thus we cannot evade their omniscient designs
but if we would only meekly follow they gladly would guide us
to bliss--Paradis, to drink Heaven's sweet mists
where we'll nevermore see a world evil as this. . . .
they promise us pleasures which delight our senses
and swaddled therein, we divert our attentions
without, are devout, and we live for their glory
penning a most sublime end to their story
to reap the reward for our pious decorum
or
roast in the
eternal flames
of their Hell. . . . . .

 

[maatsmom843]

part II. . . .

sleep now, and take your rest
pay no attention to The Man
behind the curtain
stringing your limbs like a puppet to his whims
as you dance to the bitter melody of his song
make no haste as you wander, secure in your slumber
meandering through the intricate labyrinth
whose ultimate end is your complete consumption
by those powers that be only slightly above
but you would never dare to look about
or lift your gaze to the heavens. . . .

no, submit to this dream world
created for Us
yield to its intoxicating influence
like the sweetest narcotic
displacing our blood and dulling our vision
lulling our souls to slumber, to bed
like so many infants, soothed by their mother's
gentle rocking, calming us
so that we will never rock the boat
and instead remain safely on board
indifferent to the tortured souls drowing beneath us
sentenced to a liquid tomb for
the crimes of refusing to drink the sleeping draught
an attempting to rouse us from the abyss of our abysmal slumber

 

[midcan5]

'Reductive'

"In days of caves and communal songs, in days of old,
There was no morphine. The humans’ brains
Were just as quick and big as in 2010,
But there were no bookstores or even any libraries,
So when a situation came up which seemed new
There was little guidance, only the oral history bullshit.
In unendurable pain from just about anything,
Cancer, diabetes, eye infections, gangrene, hunting bites,
Severed limbs, a widespread deadly arthritis to die from
That hurt more than our arthritis now,
A decayed tooth, all the forms of cancer I should have
Mentioned specifically instead of it generically, since there was no morphine
And no books, they thought about the beginning, the very
Beginning, the person who was in unendurable pain and those bedside
Thought and thought and suspected that if they came up
With the answer, how it all began, they could have a say
In how it was turning out or how it was structured,
And get at the pain that way. They thought (remember,
Their brains were as capable as ours) of the
Big bang and of the it-was-always-here idea
And once thought of the it-would-always-be-here idea
Applying the latter as the non-end of the bang and the non-never-end
Of the always here. None of that helped of
Course. What, did you think I’d tell you it helped? Or
That they found out by thinking what the correct answer was?
So they invented morphine and books, took a while. These have solved
A lot of problems, but not the big ones.
I know you suspect they must have had their
Albert Einstein and their Stephen Hawking. Hawking
Has just said yesterday that we are doomed
Unless we go into space far and often. Their Hawking in days of old?
Said the same thing, don’t ask me how I know, I know.
Our Einstein said six decades ago that the bees
Better not disappear or we will disappear four years from then. He
Maintained it was his most important discovery (ok,
So he didn’t think it was the most important, so what) and now
Half of the bees disappeared last year, no shit. Their Einstein
In days of old said the same thing about the bees, but
He studied nothing else, was not a mathematician or physicist, just
The bees, which were all around him, as were the plants. (Do
You really want to ask me how I know, come on, use
Your common sense, it’s not in the books and it is in the books.) Also
The artist is the main figure in the landscape
No matter the year and that’s me. Think of it
That way and see if it doesn’t make you feel better."

Arthur Vogelsang

 

[midcan5]

'The Aunts'

"I like it when they get together
and talk in voices that sound
like apple trees and grape vines,

and some of them wear hats
and go to Arizona in the winter,
and they all like to play cards.

They will always be the ones
who say “It is time to go now,”
even as we linger at the door,

or stand by the waiting cars, they
remember someone—an uncle we
never knew—and sigh, all

of them together, like wind
in the oak trees behind the farm
where they grew up—a place

I remember—especially
the hen house and the soft
clucking that filled the sunlit yard."

Joyce Sutphen

 

[midcan5]

Not exactly a poem, something I wrote long ago, must have been reading Beckett at the time.

Time

Did you say something? Yes, I was talking to you, didn't you hear me? No, what was it you said? Nothing important, actually I think I'll start now. Huh? Start talking now, what I said is in the past, don't you agree? That is true, go on. Yes, go on, that is true too, we always go on, there is no stopping the thing is there? What thing? Life, it goes on and on, we grow old, my bones, how they ache. Is that what you wanted to talk about? No, not at all, funny isn't it, time has moved this whole time we have been talking. Yes, how true, once again you have caught on to something, go on. Yes, there's no stopping it, do you remember when you were a child? Vaguely, I remember wanting to grow up, that's my only memory of that time. Up, yes, isn't it funny how words stand in for time? Up, our future. Yes, you're right, but now we are up as you put it so well, what is left? Or right. Oh right, direction again, but time you can't move in time can we? It has control. Yes, most certainly time is all there is. An odd thought, what do you mean? Mean, meaning has nothing to do with it, we are caught, you and I, caught by our birth to exist in time, no way to get around it, no way to deceive it. Suppose we break all clocks to revenge this fate? No, that would hardly do, clocks only stand in for time, time itself is nowhere or maybe everywhere. It is god then. Yes, one could say that. Shouldn't we then worship it? What good would that do, like all gods it never listens. I will shout then 'time'...'time'... Listens. No answer. See, I told you so. Maybe we should offer some sacrifice? No, that would not do either. Does time ever listen? No, never. You are certain of that, huh? Yes, certain. Why? I have watched man try for ages to get his attention, but never a word or sign he hears. A he huh? Who knows. Never a word? Yes, never, but don't you see this is all imaginary, we have made it up, you and I, only to occupy time. That is true, go on. Yes, I will, isn't this enjoyable, this passing of time? But is that all there is? Starts singing, 'is that all there is'... funny, but look it is getting dark, night is coming, see it is working. What is working? This passing of time. I am growing tired. Not up? No, only tired. Me too, it is fun this passing of time. Isn't it, good night. Good night. Tomorrow's another day. Another time. Another day to pass time. I am beginning to enjoy time. See you tomorrow. I can hardly wait. Maybe then we will get a chance to talk. Will it be like today? Yes, of course, just like today.

 

[midcan5]

'Last Night We Saw South Pacific'

"I wake to see a cardinal in our white
crape myrtle. My eye aches. Bees celebrate
morning come with their dynamo-hum
around a froth of bloom.

Though presently it’s paradise for the bees,
noon will reach ninety-nine degrees.
Le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd’ hui *
will stultify hope in ennui.

I watched Raging Planet on TV.
Earth’s orbit around the sun appears
to alter every hundred thousand years.
Each thirty million years,

mass extinctions attend Earth’s
traverse of the galactic plane.
The asteroid rain that cratered the moon
returns, brings species’ deaths.

In the Hudson Bay region of Quebec,
the Laurentide ice sheet
only a geological eye-blink
ago lay two miles thick.

Disasters preceded us, like violent parents.
Pangaea’s fragmenting land mass
drowned origins like lost Atlantis:
an enigma for consciousness.

These continents will re-collide
in their rock-bending tectonic dance,
as once before Tyrannosaurus died.
So change continues by chance,

as if meaningless—granite to sand,
sand to sandstone, sandstone to sand.
In five billion years, the sun will expand,
to Venus and Mars, then end

planet Earth. The hydrangea blooms
its dry blue, burns a brown lavender.
Earth whirls in space and August comes—
this slanted light my calendar.

As I water the pink phlox, I wonder
what use there is for a world of matter—
why the universe exploding into being invents
night and star-incandesence?

We are the part of it that feels it,
thinks it, seeing this time in its slant
on bloom with our physical brains that
change it as they sense it.

We become. We hum a story as tune,
in sonata form that runes this sphinx-
riddle sequence as notes that the pharynx
fluctuates, to mean.

So “This Nearly Was Mine” assuages,
braced against old loss and war.
Emile de Becque sounds rich with knowledge
of children and love, before."

James Applewhite


* 'The virgin, vivid and beautiful today'
Mallarme's Le vierge

 

[midcan5]

'Home Again, Home Again'

"The children are back, the children are back—
They’ve come to take refuge, exhale and unpack;
The marriage has faltered, the job has gone bad,
Come open the door for them, Mother and Dad.

The city apartment is leaky and cold,
The landlord lascivious, greedy and old—
The mattress is lumpy, the oven’s encrusted,
The freezer, the fan, and the toilet have rusted.

The company caved, the boss went broke,
The job and the love affair, all up in smoke.
The anguish of loneliness comes as a shock—
O heart in the doldrums, O heart in hock.

And so they return with their piles of possessions,
Their terrified cats and their mournful expressions,
Reclaiming the bedrooms they had in their teens,
Clean towels, warm comforter, glass figurines.

Downstairs in the kitchen the father and mother
Don’t say a word, but they look at each other
As down from the hill comes Jill, comes Jack.
The children are back. The children are back."

Marilyn L. Taylor

Poet Laureate of Wisconsin, Oh, the irony!

 

[midcan5]

'In View of the Fact'

"The people of my time are passing away: my
wife is baking for a funeral, a 60-year-old who

died suddenly, when the phone rings, and it's
Ruth we care so much about in intensive care:

it was once weddings that came so thick and
fast, and then, first babies, such a hullabaloo:

now, it's this that and the other and somebody
else gone or on the brink: well, we never

thought we would live forever (although we did)
and now it looks like we won't: some of us

are losing a leg to diabetes, some don't know
what they went downstairs for, some know that

a hired watchful person is around, some like
to touch the cane tip into something steady,

so nice: we have already lost so many,
brushed the loss of ourselves ourselves: our

address books for so long a slow scramble now
are palimpsests, scribbles and scratches: our

index cards for Christmases, birthdays,
Halloweens drop clean away into sympathies:

at the same time we are getting used to so
many leaving, we are hanging on with a grip

to the ones left: we are not giving up on the
congestive heart failure or brain tumors, on

the nice old men left in empty houses or on
the widows who decide to travel a lot: we

think the sun may shine someday when we'll
drink wine together and think of what used to

be: until we die we will remember every
single thing, recall every word, love every

loss: then we will, as we must, leave it to
others to love, love that can grow brighter

and deeper till the very end, gaining strength
and getting more precious all the way. . . ."

A. R. Ammons

 

[midcan5]

'Life Cycle of Common Man'

"Roughly figured, this man of moderate habits,
This average consumer of the middle class,
Consumed in the course of his average life span
Just under half a million cigarettes,
Four thousand fifths of gin and about
A quarter as much vermouth; he drank
Maybe a hundred thousand cups of coffee,
And counting his parents' share it cost
Something like half a million dollars
To put him through life. How many beasts
Died to provide him with meat, belt and shoes
Cannot be certainly said.

But anyhow,
It is in this way that a man travels through time,
Leaving behind him a lengthening trail
Of empty bottles and bones, of broken shoes,
Frayed collars and worn out or outgrown
Diapers and dinnerjackets, silk ties and slickers.

Given the energy and security thus achieved,
He did....? What? The usual things, of course,
The eating, dreaming, drinking and begetting,
And he worked for the money which was to pay
For the eating, et cetera, which were necessary
If he were to go on working for the money, et cetera,
But chiefly he talked. As the bottles and bones
Accumulated behind him, the words proceeded
Steadily from the front of his face as he
Advanced into the silence and made it verbal.
who can tally the tale of his words? A lifetime
Would barely suffice for their repetition:
If you merely printed all his commas the result
Would be a very large volume, and the number of times
He said "thank you" or "very little sugar, please,"
Would stagger the imagination. There were also
Witticisms, platitudes, and statements beginning
"It seems to me" or "As I always say."
Consider the courage in all that, and behold the man
Walking into deep silence, with the ectoplastic
Cartoon's balloon of speech proceeding
Steadily out of the front of his face, the words
Borne along on the breath which is his spirit
Telling the numberless tale of his untold Word
Which makes the world his apple, and forces him to eat."

Howard Nemerov

 

[midcan5]

Another change of pace, any Wallace fans out there? He can beat you up with words but they are often poetic.

 

[midcan5]

'A World Without Picasso's Guernica'

"At the United Nations, blue drapes sheath
a tapestry rendition of Guernica, so speakers can paint
other dreams. People need to forget the screams—
sewn and aired—so killing machines can work again.

Who expunged Guernica from the U.N.?
And then, did U.N. walls tremble
down to their foundation in the blood flood
of the colliding twentieth century?

Is a distended Hitler laughing somewhere
as phantom Luftwaffen blitzkrieg
toward a blue-green sunset?

On February 5, 2003, Colin Powell pontificated
from a blue stage
about the rights of man to enforce the law
that triggers war.

Yesterday, today, or tomorrow;
bombs drop and discombobulated body parts
hurl through the air, and brown limbs
burst off horses
and spin past a still-standing bystander,
dumbstruck and still looking,
as infernos smoke and buildings crumble."

Gregg Mosson

 

[midcan5]

'The Romance of Middle Age'

"Now that I’m fifty, let me take my showers
at night, no light, eyes closed. And let me swim
in cover-ups. My skin’s tattooed with hours
and days and decades, head to foot, and slim
is just a faded photograph. It’s strange
how people look away who once would look.
I didn’t know I’d undergo this change
and be the unseen cover of a book
whose plot, though swift, just keeps on getting thicker.
One reaches for the pleasures of the mind
and heart to counteract the loss of quicker
knowledge. One feels old urgencies unwind,
although I still pluck chin hairs with a tweezer,
in case I might attract another geezer."

Mary Meriam

 

[midcan5]

'Brief Eden'

"For part of one strange year we lived
in a small house at the edge of a wood.
No neighbors, which suited us. Nobody
to ask questions. Except
for the one big question we went on
asking ourselves.
That spring
myriads of birds stopped over
briefly. Birds we’d never seen before, drawn
to our leafy quiet and our brook and because,
as we later learned, the place lay beneath
a flyway. Flocks appeared overnight—birds
brilliant or dull, with sharp beaks
or crossed bills, birds small
and enormous, all of them pausing
to gorge at the feeder, to rest their wings,
and disappear. Each flock seemed surer than we
of a destination. By the time we’d watched them
wing north in spring, then make
an anxious autumn return,
we too had pulled it together and we too moved
into what seemed to be our lives."

Beebe Hayna

 

[midcan5]

'Barking'

"The moon comes up.
The moon goes down.
This is to inform you
that I didn’t die young.
Age swept past me
but I caught up.
Spring has begun here and each day
brings new birds up from Mexico.
Yesterday I got a call from the outside
world but I said no in thunder.
I was a dog on a short chain
and now there’s no chain."

Jim Harrison

(post #330 in this thread, definitely have a Poetry book here. lol)

 

[avos]

Touched by An Angel
by Maya Angelou

We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.

Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love's light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.

 

[midcan5]

'Calmly We Walk through This April’s Day'

"Calmly we walk through this April’s day,
Metropolitan poetry here and there,
In the park sit pauper and rentier,
The screaming children, the motor-car
Fugitive about us, running away,
Between the worker and the millionaire
Number provides all distances,
It is Nineteen Thirty-Seven now,
Many great dears are taken away,
What will become of you and me
(This is the school in which we learn ...)
Besides the photo and the memory?
(... that time is the fire in which we burn.)

(This is the school in which we learn ...)
What is the self amid this blaze?
What am I now that I was then
Which I shall suffer and act again,
The theodicy I wrote in my high school days
Restored all life from infancy,
The children shouting are bright as they run
(This is the school in which they learn ...)
Ravished entirely in their passing play!
(... that time is the fire in which they burn.)

Avid its rush, that reeling blaze!
Where is my father and Eleanor?
Not where are they now, dead seven years,
But what they were then?
No more? No more?
From Nineteen-Fourteen to the present day,
Bert Spira and Rhoda consume, consume
Not where they are now (where are they now?)
But what they were then, both beautiful;

Each minute bursts in the burning room,
The great globe reels in the solar fire,
Spinning the trivial and unique away.
(How all things flash! How all things flare!)
What am I now that I was then?
May memory restore again and again
The smallest color of the smallest day:
Time is the school in which we learn,
Time is the fire in which we burn."

Delmore Schwartz

 

[midcan5]

'Road Report'

"Driving west through sandstone’s
red arenas, a rodeo of slow erosion
cleaves these plains, these ravaged cliffs.
This is cowboy country. Desolate. Dull. Except
on weekends, when cafés bloom like cactus
after drought. My rented Mustang bucks
the wind—I’m strapped up, wide-eyed,
busting speed with both heels, a sure grip
on the wheel. Black clouds maneuver
in the distance, but I don’t care. Mileage
is my obsession. I’m always racing off,
passing through, as though the present
were a dying town I’d rather flee.
What matters is the future, its glittering
Hotel. Clouds loom closer, big as Brahmas
in the heavy air. The radio crackles
like a shattered rib. I’m in the chute.
I check the gas and set my jaw. I’m almost there."

Kurt Brown

 

[midcan5]

'Extenuating Circumstances'

"I don't know how fast I was going
but, even so, that's still
an intriguing question, officer,
and deserves a thoughtful response.
With the radio unfurling
Beethoven's Ode to Joy, you might
consider anything under 80 sacrilege.
Particularly on a parkway as lovely
as the one you're fortunate enough
to patrol and patrol so diligently.
A loveliness that, if observed
at an appropriate rate of speed,
affords the kind of pleasure
which is in itself a reminder
of how civilization depends
on an assurance of order and measure,
and the devotion of someone
like yourself to help maintain it.
Yes, man the measurer!
The incorrigible measurer.
And admirably precise measurements
they are Not, of course, as an end
in themselves but, lest we
forget, a means to propel
us into the immeasurable,
where it would be anybody's guess
how fast the west wind was blowing
when it strummed a rainbow
and gave birth to Eros.
If we accept that a parkway
is a work of art, the faster
we go the greater the tribute
to its power of inspiration,
a lyrical propulsion that approaches
the spiritual and tempts demands
the more intrepid of us
to take it from there.
That sense of the illimitable,
when we feel we are more the glory
than the jest or riddle of the world
that's what kicked in, albeit
briefly, as I approached
the Croton Reservoir Bridge.
And on a night like this, starlight
reignited above a snowfall's last
flurry, cockeyed headlights scanning
the girders overhead, eggshell
snowcrust flying off the hood,
hatching me on the wing,
like a song breaking through prose,
the kind I usually sing
through my nose:

So much to love,
A bit less to scorn
What have I done?
To what end was I born?
To teach and delight.
Delight . . . or offend.
Luck's been no lady,
Truth a sneaky friend.

Got the heater on full blast,
Window jammed down,
Odometer busted,
Speedometer dead wrong:
Can't tell how fast I'm going,
Don't care how far I've gone."

Paul Violi