Poems

Sushi

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Sushi

Blank walls,
white sheets
on plastic couches,
anonymous faces
naming me
by my first name,
as if they knew me,
as if they were friends.

Moments of silence.

Eyebrows raised,
as if a question
of life and death
could be framed
that way.

“Here are your choices …”

laid out like a menu
in a take out
restaurant.

I don’t speak Japanese.
The occasional photo.
The scrabbled script.
The impossible translation.

The unknown items
you choose
from the specialist’s menu
will label you for life …

… if you survive.

Puppet

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Puppet

Animated earth,
puppet of mud and blood,
my soul within you
feels soiled
by this pitiless sky.

On my back,
in the gutter,
I gaze upwards
at glittering stars.

Do they know
I’m down here?
And if they know,
do they look down
their astral noses
when they write
my horoscope,

my horror-scope
of late.

When daylight loses itself
in night’s dark weave,
what remains,
but souvenirs and dusty
photos of moments
I alone recall?

Memories cling like mud
to my match-stick frame,
and me in the gutter,
a man, right now,
in nothing else
but name.

Columbus Interviewed by Bosch

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Christopher Columbus
Interviewed by Hieronymus Bosch
on His Return from the New World

“Winged creatures came with the dark,
their human faces cast in the features
of people I knew and loved.
Subtly transformed, they seemed reborn.

Their leathery wings
creaked like horse harness
and the “Splat!” of their excrement
was a slow drum beaten to a gibberish
march of dream after dream.

What could they portend?
My sister, nose stretched to beak;
my brother, lost at sea,
his eye teeth now enlarged
to a vampire’s fangs.

Each nightmare drew something
dark from my past, dressed it in fiendish garb,
and flew it with a guide-line:
a kite’s umbilical cord attached to the shadows
shifting above my bed.”

Birthday Poem

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Poem on his 73rd birthday

I won’t sit with my head between my hands
fearing the future or brooding on the past.

Each day is a bonus now, each sunrise a celestial
celebration, each evening a drawing down of blinds.

I welcome each sun with open arms and accept
the gifts it brings. Sunshine fills me with joy. It beams
like a beacon with the warmth of my joyous heart.

Raw Poetry @ Corked

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Raw Poetry @ Corked
Sunday, 15 January, 2017

Poetry readings: some poets are meant to be listened to, while others are meant to be written to. Listening to Nicole Godwin and R. W. Gray, I came up with these two very raw poems; by very raw poems, I mean written and read this afternoon at the poetry readings.

For Nicole

Water, H2O,
brings life,
brings words
tumbling
from unplugged
mouths.

Meurtriers et victimes.

Too much,
too often,
brings to both
a long, dark path
leading to goblins
and hobgoblins
rejoicing
at the garden’s foot:

madness and death.

Comment: Nicole was in Iraq and saw things that have stayed with her ever since. I highly recommend her poetry book, Warcries, from which she read today.

For Rob

My poems are drawn from my life,
not from the lives of others.

I live my words,
drawing them wriggling
through the holes
punched by others in my flesh.

Pot-holes:
so many cars
slithering in the freshet
melt of tarmac
and stilted flesh.

Portholes:
so many ships,
leaving port,
sailing away.

Comment: Rob’s opening words clicked with my own experiences and I joined right in. I highly recommend his book of short stories, Crisp, from which he read today.

Raw Poems: I wrote them down as they came to me. No revision. No second thoughts. As yet, no ‘oh dears’!

Blue Angels

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Blue Angels

Wrapped in johnny coats we sit,
not on clouds, but harp-less, harmless,
on uncomfortable chairs, waiting.

Soon enough someone will come and call
our names, or waggle an inviting finger,
or raise a beckoning eyebrow, or just smile.

The women are naked from the waist up
beneath their coats.
They are red-breasted like robins,
with scars and lines that draw route maps
and contours across their breasts,
highroads for the rays to travel.

The men are naked from the waist down,
legs crossed, teeth gritted, grim-faced
holding on to their gathering waters …
and all of us, sitting here, waiting …

Will it be like this on Judgment Day,
sheep and goats herded together
waiting for the signal that sends us
left or right, to heaven or hell?

Author

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Author

On reading books 2 & 3
of the Buck’s County Series
by
Meg Sorick

She created a family,
boys and girls, siblings,
people I could see and touch,
a family to which I could belong.

She made me recall, years ago,
standing in the snow,
looking through a window,
seeing a friend’s family
gathered inside by the fire.

Shadows danced as the family
decorated their Christmas tree:
laughter and warmth and joy,
and me outside in the snowy street,
walking past, on my way home,
an only child destined
to be alone in my lonely room.

I also recall empty rooms,
cold corridors, stark loss,
and the sorrow of surviving
on my own.

Her Hands

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Her Hands

 Her hands were cold,
her fingers were long:
I hoped she’ll tell me
what was wrong.

She warmed her hands
beneath hot water.
She was young enough
to be my daughter.

“If you were my dad,
here’s what I’d say …”
I liked it when
she talked that way.

But what she said
was not good news.
Tumors and lumps
left little to choose.

“And yet,” she said,
you have some choice.”
I’d have answered, but
I’d lost my voice.

My hands were cold.
My legs were shaking.
I could not speak.
My heart was breaking.

 

Terza Rima

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Terza Rima
 Apologia pro verbum meum
Dear followers of my WordPress Blog: sometimes
I write what I do not mean to write
and say what I do not mean to say. Rhymes
make things clearer, for I puzzle what I might
say, and plan ahead so an awkward word
doesn’t intrude. Words, birds in flight,
bright as postage stamps across the absurd
white snow of a page or a digital screen:
when I think about it, I assume about a third
of what I say, I really mean. Who has seen
the early morning wind drifting our thought cloud
across trees and lawn, shadows cast on green
leaves of grass as we think our thoughts aloud,
each thought a pea in a pod, as some we clasp
between finger and thumb while others crowd,
and the loud, uneasy word slips from our grasp
to wound or injure or otherwise to hurt and maim.
It’s not my aim to do this. My word is not an asp
or a viper or a screw to be driven. I lay no claim
to hurt and yet sometimes a word slips sideways
and does not say what I mean it to say. I aim
to please, to tease, to provoke, in so many ways
and yet I often hurt where no hurt is intended.
If I have done you wrong and my word displays
unintended ends, forgive me: let all rifts be mended.
Comment:
Terza Rima was, for a long time, the chosen verse form for letters and epistles: the epistolary form, in fact. The rhyme scheme is very flexible and easy to maintain and the syllable count is also relatively easy. As for the length of the letter, well, that is entirely up to the writer. The one that I have chosen here has seven tercets and ends in a quatrain. The quatrain is a standard “stitch up” with which to end. I have used the epistolary form on many occasions, especially when sending postcards and letters to friends. Add it to your poetic arsenal. You will not regret doing so.