ALL RESPONSES |
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for this photo
I have been the water,
pure and cold
released from hard stone, high
and flowing
above the valley, where
wind and sun
reside. I love the rush,
being swept
away, so that you may
swallow me.
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Inspired by: this photo
Late summer before 7th grade
skipping down the downtown library's exterior stone steps
I notice three crows in my path
They turn their heads towards me
unafraid of a boy's approach
I cross the street to the park bench
where I wait for mother's after-work ride home
Another couple crows land on either side of me
as I approach the bench
Sitting on the end of the bench
An elderly lady
Striking ancient lavender coat
Along with its matching woolen hat,
a bit out of season
I sit on the bench's other end
and set my books down next to my side
After a moment of silence
spying rendevous of secret office lovers
metermaids writing tickets
teenagers furtively passing a pipe
the woman speaks
"Waiting for your ride?"
An unmistakable eastern european accent asks
Yeah, I reply. Mom's usually late, but I got my books,
so that's okay.
"Ah."
Her eyes scan the titles of my selections for a beat.
"I see you like Science Fiction.
Heinlein-- bit Freudian, in my opinion."
Ya think?
I couldn't stifle a giggle.
"We the Living. Never cared much for Rand--a tedious style, she has,
although that is her best work. One would think, though, that a
political refugee such as her would have a better understanding of the
plight of Native Americans."
Where has she written about them?
I ask.
"Some speech to wealthy warmonger children. Surely a young man such as
yourself can find it in there."
She pointed to the library.
It's my favorite place
I explain
Lots better than the small one close to home
The stacks here go on forever
Her face was still facing towards the street in front of her.
"There are other sources of knowledge.
Wisdom, even."
As she said this,
another couple of crows
perched on planters
opposite each other
across a sidewalk path
nonchalantly switched exact places
mirroring each other
The sun peeked out of a cloud temporarily
What do you mean, other sources?
Turning towards me, she cracked a smile
across her well-lined face
"Old souls, like you."
Old souls?
My voice of logical distrust could not hide itself
"You'll see. When one meets someone one has known previous to this
life,
it's usually for a reason."
What do you mean?
"Lessons come in many forms. You can ignore them
misinterpret them
even misinterpretation can be a lesson in itself,"
she chuckled in a foreign way
Long silence
Mom's called me an old soul more than once,
I finally said,
Do you know her?
I looked straight at her eyes when I asked
"My dear boy, I have never met her, I am sure of that."
She smiled again
this time with the warmth of a grandmother
Mom pulled up the street just then
Gotta go, there she is, I said
As I stood up, the old woman said
with greater lilt to her voice,
"You should remember that teachers...
...also learn from their pupils.
Good evening."
I waved goodbye as I climbed in the car
Mom didn't notice
"Have a good day?" she asked
Interesting,
I replied
As we drove off
three crows crossed our car's path
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for Trees
I count my failures daily
wonder if I can tally them as sins too
for surely slough & envy
want & omission deserve to be both
10 a.m. and I need more coffee
or I’ll commit another sin
take the lord god’s name in vain
& in vain again
I think about Saint Francis and know
animals are easy to love, that talking
with one is enlightening but still
I wonder how he chose
sainthood over the steep hills of Asissi.
I have seen its vistas, the sky
a Renaissance blue, felt its rain,
cool and clean, know it washes
all dirt away, that it has hidden archways
built of primeval stone, tucked away and dry,
a perfect place to play, to pursue, to linger
in a storm, and in a courtyard lush and fertile
I have plucked an olive (wet with rain)
eaten its flesh, sucked the hard pit,
knowing it was not mine to have, knowing
that temptation always gets the best of me.
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for the photo: Clock
as most people live in color,
my father lives in black & white
our day together passes not
as hours light but as falling minutes
of green gold on the burnishing September
trees of Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin
and just as a sundial sees colored angles
of time, father's face changes from afternoon
pink to an older man’s midnight
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He'll be back. Just stepped out
into a parallel universe, where
the so-called work goes on.
This desk is only for work
he loves. Photographs and haiku
for the benefit of all
sentient beings. Which reminded him
to go for cat food, let the dog out,
send out three to five poems and no
stamps, empty cartridge. Out—
leaving his prints on everything,
his DNA on the mouthpiece.
That light, that outdoor
spangle on the flat grey panel
will turn his feet around.
Just wait. Don't touch
a thing. Out, but really
an indoorsman. He'll be back. |
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Raking walnuts in tall grass,
taking showers to scrub away yesterday's sin.
Balls scribble black blood on blue lines,
lawnmowers complain about thick grass
and the price of gas, machines made
to manicure manmade footnotes to homes,
sturdy structures securing things within.
They react to sounds of light,
bright music bleeds through skin.
Asleep since inception,
things await, coiled,
grinning at prospects of procreation,
the host, flush with endorphin,
ignorant of who they are.
Mortal minds, so susceptible to invasion,
tired, malnourished, thinking
they lack something they call love,
accept solutions blown in with the wind.
November wind blows harvest dust away
and brings the things within to light of day.
You've invited neighbors to your picnic,
where napkins blow away. Black birds
peck at the cake you baked.
You watch them from your kitchen window.
Your friends will never come,
but there will be enough for you and things within. |
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What passed through my hands would
have made a junk-heaped bonfire
if we followed the old ways instead
of stuffing landfills.
A man’s life: glasses whose prescriptions
he had out-lived, boots with gaping
soles, a Roman solider tarnished on its
strings waving a tinsel sword. Motorcycle
helmets, two, for a ride with someone
hanging on while he iced the curve
of slick streets, the thick leather jacket
still curled to the shape of his arms, that one I sold.
Our life distilled into boxes, slung to the
truck bed, up-handed to become a stalagmite
inside the impersonal cave of a storage unit.
We survivors got to chose which part of him
to keep. I didn’t need the boots, I remember the
way he danced in them. I kept the French beret
that was his father’s for the grandchild already
growing like an arrow shot to the future.
His sister rolled up the Persian rug, his son
plucked the Buddha and the eagle some artisan
had carved on a Mexican beach, his brother
packed with care the antique Italian amphora
that had been in the family for years, acting as
curator of a museum for the blind. His best
friend hauled away the Chinese chest
that kept his secrets, his I Ching,
his tobacco, his pipe, his addictions.
The helmets were given away to
strangers, the album of photos
all mine to take along.
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Fine Line has a glass front
I look thru before entering
Gig bag nudges the glass
And merch girl waves at me
pass the line out front
not too cool to enter like a normie
But I dig the lack of pretense
and here from a bud:
"Yo G-hard, where's my comp?"
Standing at the bar is a former bassist
from my shadowed past
I used to match his beer intake
with iced vodka
He still smiles at me
even though I have a new source for my cheshire grin
Cyndi adjusts her halter
drawing glances from the crew
Anne rolls her eyes
and smirks at the predictability of men
My effect loop tube has blown
so I have no delay
I decide on the spot to change my tactics
speed takes over from wash
Karl grins at me after an echo number
New approach, eh?
Indeed
After the show I is charged
And recording goes well
44?
Hell I could be 88 and more alive
than I was ten years ago
Encased in glass
looking thru the wall of liquid
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in response to the photo Bride
She sat waiting and watching
as the day wore on thinking he
would eventually appear
like an apparition
or a man of his word.
The tux he’d rented was charged to her visa.
The veil she’d got in Italy, another debit on the card.
And to think that during her visit
in Italy where she handpicked
the Orvieto lace to accent her gown
she walked by a wall of mirrors
and thought she looked like death warmed over.
Am I fat? She asked, then
found herself waiting once again
for an answer to reign and thunder.
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my heart has been cluttered
these many years
without you
but each picture
that I stole with my lens
like a look
voyeuristically
did not have full meaning
or even a title
until you were grasped
by my photograph
then companion pieces fit
like atoms aligning
spelling out a name
your moniker
that had already
found its way
into my soul
before I even knew
that there was
such a thing;
and the pattern is woven
translucent
and i am lucky
to have such an idol
to have chanced upon you
life finally realized
timbre and tone perfect
little tenders pre-spelled out
in the blue of lichen
ancient and hallowed |
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I wish I saw colors instead
of this black & white
flat expression of life.
You bleached away the differences
taking away from me the opportunity
to understand your preference,
your personality,
to see if you categorize your folders
by color or not.
Time is set at ten twenty-five,
maybe this is coffee break for you.
I see many things and nothing in particular
and perhaps,
this is how you intended for us
to see your life, just in part,
as in the partial view of your desk
as for the chopped photographs
the unreadable notes
and the folded papers
of which content we'll never know.
The images don't tell what the day was like
when the photo was taken
as if it rained in every one
and clouds turned everything gray.
Let me say it again,
I really wish there were colors.
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Right now I don’t have a clean surface
to write on, and my neck is bunched up
Right now, my desk looks like this:
In one corner a new book of poems,
its yellow jacket serving both as coaster
for my sweating glass of white wine,
a silver cell phone, a crumpled dollar.
Next to that is a magazine held open
to the reference page by another
book of poems so I can
easily access the website.
The computer takes up
most of the desk with its
word tray, giant head of a monitor,
printer, modem, mouse and
subsequent guts connecting
everything together,
leading to the wall.
Near the printer is a check
written out to the association:
payment for our deck, monthly
I will drop it in the box tomorrow,
provided I don’t leave it in my pocket
and eventually launder it.
Partially obscuring the check is
a green veined receipt still
curled from the spool.
More receipts rest on the
outskirts of the printer,
not rolled, but folded from my wallet.
On the screen is itunes,
quick books,
this poem in progress,
a website that gives the history
of the poet living under my wine
and the ambient
static sonic mind fuck music
seeping from my speakers.
Amidst the tumult and debris
of time,
Amidst the collateral of this life
A marvelous connection is made—
The poet and musician are one.
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Life is so cluttered, little shelf battles,
skirmishes lost, a war we didn’t want,
shattered spines, a tilt at the end.
Impossible to find the book under H
for Happiness. Alphabetical order
is a gift from heaven. I don’t know how
shelves hold up under this weight.
Maybe the calendar knows the present
better than I. Maybe no bad memories
lurk within photos. Maybe the big
book of haiku has a hopeful agenda.
Through it all, the lonely, slanted book.
Oh, to kiss its hands, to bow my head
and tell it, you are the only fool I trust.
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in response to Alex Stolis' Gargoyle
find here airy wind books
free pages
delivered shivering
divested of rainment
sans mythic glory
crows, unfenced,
flap black gargoyle wings
cock wise eyes
eat what they wish
fly where they will
their wisdom sure
aeropagitica
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Half delusional in your hospital bed, you remembered waking one morning
to another Daphne Du Maurier book lying naked & open upon your bed
having lost the page you’d fallen asleep on. Under dawn’s cresting light,
you picked up again where you’d left off despite fatigue of morning-eyes.
You remembered that moment because your mind had been in a good place.
The writer--giver of dreams--afforded that vacation for you.
Later when you’d stop reading novels, your hair would fall out.
And your heart would become the hole in a pow-wow drum
where wind enters to stay.
Even with the children, came loneliness. A distance unbridgeable.
Before you’d met him, your heart was so full of life
it hurt to breathe, so ready for each day that
you’d leap happy from your single bed.
That was the lie you’d tell yourself. But everyone knew.
You’d tell it to your children to pretend that your heart
wasn’t all the time just a deflated old windbag,
a kite caught in a tree, gone limp through seasons of wind’s battery.
It was a way to not have to give them so much.
That’s why you knew books were the only things that never lie
because even your heart lied to you, made you stay for years
in a loveless marriage. And for what?
As you lay dying, you spoke the sorrow, shouted it to anyone
who came near your bed that your husband used to beat you.
Over and over your lips flapped the words as if attempting flight.
No one wanted to hear it. No one ever did.
You husband had been dead twenty-five years
and it was no longer your tale to tell.
Your children--holders of the story--watched by your bedside,
as they were made to all those years ago
condemned like witnesses of Christ’s crucifixion.
Why did you tell the aides, the nurses, the doctor and your priest?
Were they like your books to escape into?
Did you think they might offer absolution for lacking the courage to leave?
At your memorial service, when your priest mentioned the abuse in her eulogy
your children sitting up front with their own families--
the Book of Common Prayer open on their laps--
flushed red and wilted in the pew like begonias thrust under full-sun.
A cheap-pulpit theatric to liven up a dull funeral.
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It is the taste in my mouth when I think of her,
the sound of the pump’s whining, water the color
of rust.
It is the image of her, steely and strong enough
to take a hot skillet in her hands and threaten him
to stay one more minute, a calico apron tied
around her thin waist, covering her corduroy skirt.
It is the smell of steam as she presses each shirt
and tablecloth, the basket of laundry crisp,
the radio on, a host of sparrows at the feeder
outside her window, silver and fleeting like
the fish scales in the sink.
In a forest of birch trees, Fall sunlight flickering
through yellow branches, it is her voice I hear
in the crunch of the leaves and the cracking
of dead limbs as I head in deeper, hoping
this time to find the center.
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The microphone feedback squealed
from the tiny phonograph/p.a. speaker
Don't Be Cruel derailed to a halt
Lithe and Cute Terri Traynor giggled
as she scampered back to the girls' line
"Okay, we're gonna break
from the rotation for girls' choice,"
Ms. Gibson ordered into her cheap microphone
"We will now practice the foxtrot."
"Hey Gar, here comes your girlfriend,"
snickered my 10th grade gym pal Ed
I knew there was nothing to do but
grin and bear it
Sally Buckman was easily 11 stone
and Mother Nature had blessed her
with a porcine nose
bad complexion
She frosted her cake with an outspoken nature
that earned her the nickname Spaz
Since I was the tallest in the class
and not known as cruel
She always picked me
Always made a beeline to my side
No matter how much I tried to maintain distance
Her 5 foot-eleven frame surprisingly
light on her feet
not without a sense of rhythm
So I could not really complain out loud
I watched my friends always dancing
with girls I hoped would pick me
at least she let me lead
and did not have bad breath like some others
I just felt guilty the way she smiled at me
Don't think of me like that please
What was a nice boy to do
Worse yet
taunts in the locker room
forcing me to examine all my own
unrequited attractions
physical imperfections
and my sense of kindness
"So when are you two getting married?"
"Betcha your kids would weigh a ton!"
"Think of the bedsprings you'd break!"
It got worse every day of the dance unit
and I prayed the three weeks would pass quickly
She never got mushy though
I think she knew
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Fourth of July, 1997
Standing in a crowd on the Capital Grounds
Pathetic Nostalgia Group is finishing up their set
Their biggest hit echoing off the buildings
"Hey babe, I gots to pee
want me to grab a couple more brews?"
Tracy trotted off to the lineup of green booths
The eyes of every man in her path following her
Some of their women elbowing them in their ribs
She sure could turn heads with her form
innocent eyes bespoke naughty secrets
hidden underneath her cool charm
All my friends were in lust with her
It was growing tiring
Knowing that she could weasel her way
to the front of the beer line
by just practicing her posture
While the p.a. blasted a lame
announcer from classic rock
I felt a tap on my shoulder
Turning around
I faced Sally Buckman
and her man
"Gary?
I can't believe it's you!
How are you doing?"
Introducing me
to her husband of 15 years
Bob
I shook his hand readily
his grip firm and friendly
Sally was quite unchanged
beyond a clearer complexion
I noted a distinct lack of tanning salon victimhood
rare among the class of '81
We exchanged pleasantries
She laughed to her hubby,
"Gary here was always one of the
nicest guys in our class"
Ten years earlier
I would have considered that an insult
"Half my girlfriends were secretly in love with him,"
She went on to Bob
I quickly changed the subject to Bob's line of work
As we wound up the brief catch-up
I noticed over Sally's shoulder
Tracy chatting up our booking agent
and a greasy bar manager I knew
She was laying on her charm pretty thick
Sally and Bob said so long
My girlfriend caught my eye
and walked back to me
"Who was the cow and her herder?"
Some old high school people
I said sipping the beer she gave me
"Man, you musta hung with
the losers."
the half-spilled beer was warm
my thoughts turned cold
I dumped the rest out
we walked to the car
Skipped the fireworks
"We can make our own,
Big Guy"
Tracy laughed
When we pulled up to her place
I left the car running
"Aren't ya comin' in?
My roommates won't be back for a few hours."
She winked at me.
Sorry.
I'll catch you later.
Of course I never did.
Sometimes ugly just can't
be hidden
with a nice wrapper. |
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for photo Bride
when a man beats a woman,
he cannot see his own shame
hidden within his closed fist
when he enters the house,
predetermined,
the front door creaks
like his mother’s faint pleading voice
when the bed springs jangle & he feels compelled
to drag his bride into light, pulling her before
the deep witness of the mirror/the mirror
containing his father’s face, broad as a pig’s head,
smirking hereditary acceptance, confessing
like Thomas what he can’t believe
not even after probing his baffling wound |
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They are books, she and he
They lounge side by side
look stunning together,
have learned how to press
one surface against
the other and
still stay standing.
When all he wants
is for her
to open him up,
tear a page
from his story
and alter him
in every
impossible
way.
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Along the Chao Phyra spires of golden wats, tiny houses
almost tumbling into the water. Night hides dirty apartments
with kitchens hanging off the back. From the shore drift
smells of jasmine, frangipane and garbage while our boat
passes long tail boats, dark ferries, rice barges, couples
who ply the river selling fresh crabs and fish.
Nheng orders for us, the rainy season foods she loves.
We swallow lychees like pearls, eat fish baked whole,
scoop it from the bones. Around us, singing Bangkokians.
When we pass under bridges the young men cheer
the way our children did when we drove under bridges,
the way my brothers and I yelled from the back seat
of my father’s black Chevrolet, honk the horn,
our hands raised to hold up every wooden railroad trestle
in St. Paul. Once our children thought they could push
the sun down with their outstretched hands. The shouts,
the same hooray – one more day, one more bridge
behind us, the rejoicing immediate and axenic.
The symbols for dark and light, sometimes the same.
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(to Bride)
Once and for all
Oh, I know what you all are thinking
how I waited too long
how he made a fool of me
what kind of woman takes a chance
like that, you might think,
buying lace for a dress
destined to be my shroud
but I’m telling you,
it wasn’t like that between us,
no sir, that man was good
as gold to me, caught up in our fancy
dream, you would never have known
he was on the run or how far
he came to make me his own
You would never know how I was
determined to sit here, waiting
like a woman with nothing
left to lose. I ain’t like some
girls, I keep to my bargain
no matter how long it takes
and how many times I have almost
wept myself back into muscle
and blood
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Glancing at this photo, without my glasses on,
It appears a cross between a
Bar code and a Picasso print.
With spectacles replaced, oh my, step back,
The shelves are about to give.
Books representing burdensomeness,
Disregardedly stacked about,
Are nevertheless powerful and kinetic;
Which volume, which page, which word
Will release the energy of its author?
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Among other
possibly unimportant
books
THE ESSENTIAL HAIKU
has found a proper place.
Could it be because
the author,
having translated hundreds,
declares them
untranslatable?
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Late September, perfect for al fresco dining.
On my table, the sun, through vined lattice,
sketches a chiaroscuro grid.
Garlic'd bread sits in shadow. The owner,
a nervous type, glances out the window.
Breezes carry my thoughts down to the great river,
wide and slow between the bluffs,
filled with every drop
rolled down fields and parking lots,
off rooftops, tiles and lichened rocks.
Traffic and flies remind me where I am,
not where I need to be, and the lemon
in the tea needs to be squeezed.
Where's my sandwich? It's almost One
and there is work to do. With this thought,
wind cools my face again,
where midday autumn sun paints patterns
on my skin.
This is a good day not to hurry.
And then I remember,
this is how every day must be. |
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For the Photo CLOCK
Looking into space
through time turned backward,
the frame divides the sky
into fractions of a whole.
The task is not to join them
but to see them each entire,
each a cosmos fully realized
with its own array of stars. |
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in response to the photo Aqueduct
Two months,
sixty days
since we
shared faces.
In Segovia, Spain
I stroll through
castles, kick up
dirt as old as the Bible
on this land, they say
tierra.
You are over the Atlantic
moving east for me.
Hope comes in Segovia
beneath Roman Aqueducts,
too grand to understand
I walk in a mystery
of time, will these days
have changed us?
Or just me?
The aqueducts are firm,
and I know your love
is like all this history,
too solid to have merely crumbled away.
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He tells me about his grandmother
who had dementia and a drawer full
of cheap plastic beads she’d lifted from
J.C. Penny’s. He tells too about
the time the police escorted her out,
how she told him what fine young men
they were, helping her to find him.
He found the bangles after she
died, bracelets and necklaces, violet
crimson, persimmon and orange.
I picture her a bird, small
and quick, hands that flit,
a warbling voice,lining her nest
with her finds, as she waits for the sun
to turn them to gold. I picture her
with wings extended, the whole world
below her, as she glides and lands
on his finger, eats from the cup
of his hand, the seeds he carries
in his pocket, for her.
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changes
six years ago
during emergency surgery
my blood pressure
suddenly dropped
code blue
when i woke
there were pads stuck
to my body
and the uncomfortable
feeling of sweat
on a plastic mattress
the day i returned home
i’ll never forget that sunset
and contemplation
dying changes everything
the following week
i packed away
my doll collection
elephant figurines
and theater masks
sold them at grandpa's auction
now i collect
things that feed my spirit
books
music
photos
and mentors
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