Thinking won’t make me safe
And yet it persists
Being alive but not living
Avoiding mirrors
Sharing my day
Interacting deeply
I’m all in the clouds
Time moves bizarrely.
People look at me weird.
It’s not safe to be me.
When did I become this?
How did I become this?
Is it because of my environment?
Am I simply afraid?
Shame, confusion, pain, fear, disconnection
Am I dead?
How long have I been dead?
I skipped something? Missing something?
Time slows down and fast-fowards.
The stomach grinds to a halt.
The masks way heavy on my face
As the Gods turn their backs.
I open my mouth to scream
nothing comes out.
Poetryfeed
Publish your poetry
Happy Birthday
A dainty table for four
A rah zah zah restaurant
Four chairs
Filled with empty people in an empty room
Here to ‘celebrate’
No music
No smiles
No genuine ones at least
A man with a fresh patchily shaven head
A man with $600 copper spectacles
A woman with a neck brace
with a distaste for garlic
And a woman with a strawberry drink
Isolated
Quiet
Eerie
Held captive by the dinner table
You are that light that never goes out
I thought you’d always be there
in the back
when I go to look for you
Just like, shit, there ain’t words
to describe the half-lit room
in my mind full of things about you
The lines of your eyes
Pearls in your ears
Hair the color of a wine stain
Skinny jeans an inch too short
I look at you, feel like I’m dying
Love you, love you too,
Say it back, she says
You like that?
You say I have the best reactions
to everything you say
You tell me to be safe in the car
but I don’t make any promises
Your fingers are sure of it
around their cigarette
Because I love to suffer, I don’t say goodbye
before I leave I play a song full of religious imagery
and I save my own life if it goes on
like this, I won’t last
You’re like the water that never runs dry,
You’re like the runner who never slows down,
You’re that light that never goes out,
and I’ll never forgive you for that.
Bloom – The Spring 2022 Issue
none
Beautiful Words
Mike Gordon – The Walking Bird
Mike was born in 1947 in Glasgow. His work has been a kaleidoscope of adventure across the globe. He was a roughneck on a rig drilling for water and chainman to a surveyor in the Australian outback. Later, he was part of a seismic exploration team looking for oil in the jungles of Sumatra and Borneo. In between all this, Mike was also a professional actor along with dishwashing, bartending, fruit picking and much more thrown in for good measure. Mike and his wife have lived in London for the last 43 years. He has three stepsons, one daughter-in-law, and one grandson. Michael won a book of poetry at the age of four, from which his father read to him the poems. This, the beginning of a life-long passion.
We are delighted to introduce Mike Gordon’s Poetry Collection “The Walking Bird”. We spoke to Mike, and he shared some of his thoughts on the collection as well as snippets of his fascinating life story.
Anita, Poetry Cooperative: Talk to us about your poetry, please, Mike:
My poetry, when young, consisted mainly of poems, which on reflection, had their meaning obscured by obscurity! The voice that I subsequently discovered, in my mid-forties, was, by contrast, the complete antithesis of this. Short, very brief, and simple. Enough to capture the essence of the world? I believe so.
Our language is limited and at times, seems quite inadequate for our attempts at capturing any given feeling or situation, which in itself, gives reason for poetry. Yet too often I feel that, in this pursuit, we make complex that which is simple. My short poems are my attempt to remedy that.
Anita: What can readers expect from The Walking Bird?
The poems in The Walking Bird are mainly from the last 25/30 years. They can and do reflect only one person’s life. My hope is that the readers will find for themselves, what we share in common.
Two exceptions to the above are the title poem, The Walking Bird which was written when I was sixteen. This poem posed the question, why the need to paint a dot. A question that resonates for me as much today as it did then, irrespective of the fact that, by publishing The Walking Bird, I have done precisely that and painted my dot. The second poem is, All in the hopes of being wise, which is the last poem in the book. I wrote it when I was eleven, and I have included it for sentiment and because it can still make me smile.
Both poems, wordwise, remain as written. Only the line structure has been changed, in keeping with my present-day style.
Truth, perhaps, may very well be a moveable feast. Writing poetry for me, however, demands an honesty that is so often lacking in my day to day life. Poetry demands and allows for such honesty, even if there may be future doubts. This offers an excitement and a balance, to the world around me, that I would be bereft without.
The Walking Bird will take you to where I’ve been; love, loss, youth, old age, happiness, unhappiness, contentment and discontentment. In my poetry, you find attempts to hammer out a philosophy that I can live with and that will live with me. And all the while with a liberal dose of humour. The sugar to coat the pill.”
More about Mike
Today, Mike runs two companies; Alchemy Press, ( publisher of “The Walking Bird” along with Amazon KDP) and Alchemy Music Ltd.
Check out “No money, no honey, cheap Charlie” on YouTube. You may also like to check out Mike on Damien Donnelly’s “Eat the Storms Poetry Podcast”. Look for episode 5 in season 4, and 23 minutes into the podcast, you’ll get to the bit with Mike.
You can order a copy of The Walking Bird by clicking on the image above.
Clearer to See Through – a Poem
I write on sand. It turns to glass. Clearer to see through.
The Walking Bird – a Review
Mike’s view of the world around him is both engaging and thought provoking. Written from when he was eleven years old to the present day, mundane made vibrant, complex made simple – I would recommend this collection of short poems to all and look forward to the second edition!
Courtney Crouch on Amazon
You can follow Mike on Twitter at @IamMike_Gordon
Mike Gordon on Eat the Storms
Listen to Mike speaking to Damien Donnelly on the Eat the Storms poetry podcast.
Pages Matam – Looking for Your Voice
Listen to spoken-word master, Pages Matam, and what he has to say on finding your voice in poetry, the healing and cathartic nature of poetry, and on the power of language.
The Mower – Philip Larkin
The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found A hedgehog jammed up against the blades, Killed. It had been in the long grass. I had seen it before, and even fed it, once. Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world Unmendably. Burial was no help: Next morning I got up and it did not. The first day after a death, the new absence Is always the same; we should be careful Of each other, we should be kind While there is still time.
A Story for Rose on the Midnight Flight to Boston
Anne Sexton
Until tonight they were separate specialties, different stories, the best of their own worst. Riding my warm cabin home, I remember Betsy’s laughter; she laughed as you did, Rose, at the first story. Someday, I promised her, I’ll be someone going somewhere and we plotted it in the humdrum school for proper girls. The next April the plane bucked me like a horse, my elevators turned and fear blew down my throat, that last profane gauge of a stomach coming up. And then returned to land, as unlovely as any seasick sailor, sincerely eighteen; my first story, my funny failure. Maybe Rose, there is always another story, better unsaid, grim or flat or predatory. Half a mile down the lights of the in—between cities turn up their eyes at me. And I remember Betsy’s story, the April night of the civilian air crash and her sudden name misspelled in the evening paper, the interior of shock and the paper gone in the trash ten years now. She used the return ticket I gave her. This was the rude kill of her; two planes cracking in mid—air over Washington, like blind birds. And the picking up afterwards, the morticians tracking bodies in the Potomac and piecing them like boards to make a leg or a face. There is only her miniature photograph left, too long now for fear to remember. Special tonight because I made her into a story that I grew to know and savor. A reason to worry, Rose, when you fix an old death like that, and outliving the impact, to find you’ve pretended. We bank over Boston. I am safe. I put on my hat. I am almost someone going home. The story has ended.
D.H Lawrence – The Enkindled Spring
This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green, Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes, Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes. I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze Of growing, and sparks that puff in wild gyration, Faces of people streaming across my gaze. And I, what fountain of fire am I among This leaping combustion of spring? My spirit is tossed About like a shadow buffeted in the throng Of flames, a shadow that's gone astray, and is lost.
2/14/2022
Wallflowers
Wallflowers,
widely cultivated for their attractive array.
Native to cliffside and meadows.
Naturalized in Great Britain.
From Jacob’s Jacket to Wenlock Beauty.
Each petal crafted for ocular appeal.
Fragrances that dilute the demise and reinstate governance over the nasal senses.
Floral beauty combating astringency within bleak planes.
* * *
Wallflowers,
Intricate observers,
Intoxicated by the Wiles of the sidelines.
Graceful listeners,
Driven by depth
Enticed by the sudden stillness enwrapped in the archaic solstice of quietude that has prevailed since the dawn of time.
Liberation through standing in the dusty parts of the world.
Coveting the corners of rooms and shadows beyond.
Perceptible people emphasized by perplexing perceptions.
Seeking paradigm shifts, defined by the curated efforts found through developing neuroplasticity, a method of logic and effort.
* * *
The cluster.
Outcast, Misfit, Wayward and Weird.
Brain synapses that are uniquely sparking mildly awkward intellect.
Facets of poised thinking clamoring for muttered opportunity.
Thoughts that dive deeper than the rest.
Jarring offenses towards monotonous cadence and mundane philosophy.
Experiencing vibrant views that splash our horizon with a syndicate of wild and genuine intricacies.
Boisterous pastel fitted upon rugged blank canvas plateaus.
Common dialogue rarely entertains.
Weathered whispers, vulnerable vocabulary, deep discussion dynamically outspoken.
Such things pique the abrasive longing of our dialectical thirst.
Misunderstood is an epidemic and trying to understand requires lengthy walks along the longest of channels.
Knowledgeable vagrants wandering in the wilderness of enticement.
Searching for gaudy and lyrical ways to live life in tune to the auspicious and jubilant path between the mind and the heart.
Ancient souls that explode with emotion, bursting forth into a ricochet of manic allure and gloomy melancholia.
Teeming with the ravishing curious attitude, reluctantly breathing the same air yet transposing each breath into a gale of clandestine imagination, constantly quivering due to excitement kept within a frame.
Molds that are deemed to be broken, being shaped by irregular contours found in the dim lit corners of the fallacies perceived as connotations of truthful regard.
Dust that never settles, requiring extra attentiveness to surroundings beyond, deserting all order for originality, committing to abolish the whirlwind that succumbs and entices the frail and the empty.
Introspective idealists, living in between here and there, solace-driven beings constantly challenging their growth with audacity, experiencing the ramifications of striving for a curated charisma that siphons the residual corruption found deep within.
This is a populace that is rich with ingenuity, Huddled together into interwoven cradles of fire, booming to the sound of the storm.
Sounding the gong, waves of euphonic perplexity being soothed by the direct portrayal of calming stillness.
An oration of rest bellowed as a remedy to the aching persona.
We are the silent fighters who battle within.
Sharpening the wretched parts of us into wholly entombed forgetfulness, remembering dreary sunrises that captivated our gilded spirits.
Rejuvenation achieved through trial, singed by the mental apocalyptic fervor, diverging from the norm.
Make no mistake, we are not lost.
We are just found in alternate perceptions than the common integrate
The child I lost
Tragedy instigating the misery that eviscerated a connection.
Like falling in a wrong direction, without a sense of navigation, devoid of discretion.
Evolving into a perplexing situation.
The same room became a fugue of a spiraling doom,
Silence filled the space where time could not erase, the fact that there now a literal space, loss makes tumors out of tulips, with a bottle to catch misplaced tears, just in case.
Control lost it’s cadence as it spun so wild, hollow child,
Free to dwell in light abundant, day one, reconciled.
As the weight dropped down, fell without a sound.
Tumbling upwards, held by no bound.
Arriving on Holy Ground, no death be found.
As shadows fight, grasping for cradle.
None can touch, what Hades cannot handle.
Janky Odd.
Boldly awkward, I can be.
As much of my prominence lays in the head, less so my mouth.
I’ve always been more of a writer than a talker.
I don’t talk really great, but writing I do.
The separation between the two, like a vast chasm with no bridged point.
Most of my recent moments, fraught with feeling outcast but also intuitively seeing similarities between individuals, as if being common brought sanity to all.
Commonality in high composure and astute speech.
From the outside, it’s all there, but inside, hardly think it’s anywhere at all.
You can see it in the eyes, the solemn bravado lay waste in pupils and irises.
Gazes aren’t straight, words are quick, witted and wispy.
All waiting for a turn to speak, rather than listen to the speaking.
For in that specific silence, most will meet the subjugation of innermost traumas.
Has a whole world gone mad, on insolence or veiled reasonings..
Aside from the chatter.
When a mind breaks open, to all the fragrant possibilities,
It is those who remain shut, who wield the torch and pitchfork.
Consistently spinning the same gear against the same mechanism that brought forth a hollow sound that rang in all ears.
But never stopped ringing..
Every thought I speak,
Met with dismissal or wandering murmurs..
A fish born on land, a wasp making nest in the sea.
Such a tragedy, like a ghost wafting in the air,
So I am
More
I shouldn’t have to beg for affection.
I love you but I wish you were different.
You don’t show emotion like I need from a partner.
Do you know how exhausting it is to have enough love for the both of us?
I give you my everything, but have nothing left over for myself.
You never fill my cup but yours is overflowing- wincing as I watch you lick your greedy lips; drenched in the sweetness I poured into you.
The same sweetness I will NEVER taste in return.
I’m always left with the bitter taste of the rind as you squeeze out the last of me down your insatiable throat.
When is it my turn?
When will my fucking cup runneth over?
Why can no one give me the love I fucking deserve.
” You just have to learn to love yourself”
I’m tired of being the only fucking person who does.
Two years with you; I saw fatherhood glisten in your eyes. But those are the same eyes that give me a blank stare when I say “MORE”.
Give me just a fucking morsal of love and attention.
I am so famished and starved for affection that doesn’t follow up with your hand on the back of my head.
Why can’t you just love me like you mean it?
What if I gave it back to you?
What if I treated you the way you treat me?
You would instantly know something was wrong.
“She didn’t call me handsome today. She didn’t cover my face in kisses. Why didn’t she say anything about my haircut?”
You would lose your goddamn mind.
But I can’t.
And you know I can’t.
My heart is so full with this stupid fucking love that you don’t deserve. I wish I could turn it off.
Just so you could hurt like I hurt.
And it makes me fucking sick that I can’t stop loving you.
Even when we fight, I wipe my tears just enough to see if you read my text.
My breathing is labored and I’m screaming into my pillow just thinking about you thinking about ending things.
But when I push you away ; and you hold me closer.
I can breathe.
That small moment when you think I’m really leaving this time, you hold onto me and love me and kiss me and feed me until I’m full with promises and soft whispers from your lying lips.
Only then do I feel needed.
Only then do I feel like I don’t need to beg you to love me.
Submission Call
We are open for submissions for the Spring Issue of the Poetry Cooperative. Please submit up to three bloom-themed poems of 24 lines or less before the end of February. Please send your poems to submissions@poetrycooperative.org.
Here’s something to inspire you.
Shaun Hill Poem
that night, I saw god under a traffic light
Then
We are born into a world naked
Becoming someone after the warm wet voyage from nowhere
Into the light and the noise of
a new world of wonder and mystery
A world without form or sense
With a mind searching for order and comfort
And then, and then: if all is as it should be
We find order in the eyes of our creator
And comfort at her breast
Winter’s End Blossoming
Meadows are like frameless paintings sprawling nude and thousands of tulips blossoming. Yellow and red cups crowning chlorophyll and figments. A trillion cells sistering, and I won’t shred a field of grain, but I will mill it, cast salt for blooming crusts. Gutting a bolted door is like hiring a plumber and millions of glimmers brothering. Silver and golden drops dredging tar and rule books. A billion fires clotting, and I won’t tread on the ocean, but I will steal it, dry seaweed for kindling. Sometimes, fence posts grow limbs into the ground and arms, sky-bound. The wind moors a swing, and we sway.
Happy Little Christmas!
The 12 Days of Christmas Issue
Poetry Cooperative Christmas Sale
Join as a gold member and reap all the benefits:
- Promote Your Website
- Feature as a poet on your own Poetry Cooperative webpage
- Get paid for poems submitted to the magazine
- Enjoy exclusive content and tips on how to promote your poetry
For a limited time only, we are offering a 30% discount. To avail of this fantastic offer click on the image below:
Do Not Go Gentle Into that Night – Read by Dylan Thomas
Retribution
If there is a god,
when I die
he will have to beg for my forgiveness.
I will rip him from his throne,
and show him what it means to be afraid.
He will fall to his knees
and pray for my mercy.
He will confess his sins,
and I will not absolve him.
He will learn it is too late to repent.
If he dares act altruistic
when we meet,
he will learn I do not forget so easily.
I will drag him through the pains of Earth,
and show him what it means to grieve.
He will plead with me to end it,
and wonder what he did so wrong.
He will cry to me for answers
and I will not give him one.
Just so he knows how it feels
to be Human.
congaree haiku
congaree haiku
moonlight, spanish moss
jarfly buzz their dying song
congaree river
saw mill, working late
foreman there decapitates
his wife’s rich lover
reckoning tonight
on the congaree river
yes a reckoning
body parts been found
foreman’s wife tells all downtown
reckoning tonight
lawman in those parts
nick named “number one bird dog”
Tom Byrd gets his man
tonight we will see
if the birddog is for real
foreman waits, shotgun
reckoning tonight
on the congaree river
yes a reckoning
body parts been found
foreman’s wife tells all downtown
reckoning tonight
sneaking up, Byrd smiles
got the drop on this foreman
then from behind, “click”
reckoning tonight
on the congaree river
yes a reckoning
then three shots ring out
bodies crash into the floor
bodies in a pile
guns strewn cross the floor
blood and brain on ceiling tiles
yes, a reckoning
the foreman lays dead
his wife has blown off his head
wife dead too, Byrd true
what of sherff bird dog
did old bird dog get a pass
no no no no no
“number one bird dog”
took a load of number one
buckshot up his…
snout
Light It Up Santa
Light It Up Santa
Verse 1
It tickles me to see
The kids marching down the street
Mouth and eyes open wide
Heading to the lighting of the Christmas tree
Verse 2
And when the brass band plays
Santa glides in on his sleigh
And when that fine fellow flips the switch
The kids all cheer and say
Chorus
Light it up, Santa
Won’t you light it up, Santa Claus
We won’t stop making jolly
Till all the girl’s hair is filled with sprigs of holly
Light it up, Dear Santa
Won’t you light it up, Santa Claus
Ain’t no rockin’ round this tree
Till you flip that E-LEC-TRIC-ITY
Verse 3
Yes, it’s true, the youngest hearts
May find an easy spark
Of Christmas cheer and spirit
When the pine tree lighting starts
Verse 4
But oldsters, don’t you fret
You’ ll find your own joy, yet
When you hear the kids fa-la-la’n
You’ll cheer right along and say
Chorus
Light it up, Santa
Won’t you light it up Santa Claus
We won’t stop making jolly
Till all the girl’s hair is filled with sprigs of holly
Light it up, Dear Santa
Won’t you light it up, Santa Claus
Ain’t no rockin round this tree
Till you flip that E-LEC-TRIC-I-TY
Poetry Cooperative Autumn Magazine Submission Window Now Open
As the leaves are leaving, we are raking up poems to shorten the stretching evening. Send us your best story poem of no more than 25 lines. Make it spooky, make it warm, write and tell us a story like only a poem can, short, sweet, and surprising.
The Wild Swans at Coole by W.B. Yeats
The trees are in their autumn beauty, The woodland paths are dry, Under the October twilight the water Mirrors a still sky; Upon the brimming water among the stones Are nine and fifty swans. The nineteenth Autumn has come upon me Since I first made my count; I saw, before I had well finished, All suddenly mount And scatter wheeling in great broken rings Upon their clamorous wings. I have looked upon those brilliant creatures, And now my heart is sore. All's changed since I, hearing at twilight, The first time on this shore, The bell-beat of their wings above my head, Trod with a lighter tread. Unwearied still, lover by lover, They paddle in the cold, Companionable streams or climb the air; Their hearts have not grown old; Passion or conquest, wander where they will, Attend upon them still. But now they drift on the still water Mysterious, beautiful; Among what rushes will they build, By what lake's edge or pool Delight men's eyes, when I awake some day To find they have flown away?
This poem is in the public domain
Charles Bukowski Reads ‘Style’
‘Style is the answer to everything–
a fresh way to approach a dull or a
dangerous thing.
to do a dull thing with style
is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without it.
For a Limited Time Only, Gold Membership is Now Open
The darkness
he darkness that has caused so much aggravation
Has never felt so clear
I look in the mirror and see nothing but abomination
The time is near
All I seek is acclamation
But what I see in those eyes is nothing but fear
The darkness is closing in as my mind shifts
These emotions I feel come and go
It’s like a roller coaster that seem to drift
I fly up above as you see below
It has now caused a rift
All I want in life are things that are aglow
The darkness has swallowed me whole
When will my time come to an end
Take my feelings and console
The angels have heard me and have ascend
Come high above as it’s out of my control
It’s time to contend
Now that the darkness is in full cycle
And the angels are near
My emotions have become an aberration
I can’t see past this fear
My mind is acidification
It’s nothing more than austere
The time has come that the darkness has lifted
Angels come to take me out of this misery
Those clouds have shifted
As my mind is not so blurry
Thank god for the angels that have gifted
Time has settled its now been a century
Summer Days
William Butler Yeats -‘When You Are Old’
Recited by Colin Farrell
Poetry Submission Call
We are looking for submission for the summer issues of the Poetry Cooperative Magazine. The topic is UNITY. Please send us up to three poems, preferably no longer than two pages, in any form or style. Let’s celebrate what binds us all together.
Email to submissions@poetrycooperative.org, Our submission window is open until the end of July.
Thoughts
Subtle as a feather
Yet, profound as the sea
Oh, how I long to submerge in it
As quietly as it seems.
Visions in all colors
Such resplendent lights
Although, a sudden shadow
That casts out its light.
Like a dream, it appears
But sometimes a nightmare it seems
Lost in deep thought as I blend in
Yet outside, still a mystery to me.
one of the thoughts
One of seven billion plus, no? Perhaps this is not so any longer
can it be? After this last year? 2020, 20/20?
Eyes wide open
what did we see?
So much death. So much so many in place of decision
even now thru decision and not making decision adding to the incredible numbers of deaths. Numbers hard to encompass their reality. Still in the context of our supposed numbers overall,
the question necessarily surfaces
within at least this mind always attempting seeing clearly,
what impact pandemics’ happenstance(?) on world population?
It, for those concerned for us of the future resources available and to so many, central to their calculation. Necessarily true, then to a mind of this kind comes question of pandemic and even possibly vaccine in some other fashions’ part in providing solution to this question. The capitalist, governmental mind from my study clearly historically able
to see the positive side
to all the common man
finds horrific.
There is to the finally coming to clearsighted awareness
thru, for some, individual significant persons and intimate situation
and for others clear understanding of the history
of mankinds’ relation to itself,
that the retreat into the depths of themselves
sure of their inability to be a self
reflective
or one protective enough
has its reason.
Not biochemical misfirings of different component parts of the brain
and/or
inabilty to control emotion.
Can’t find it conspiratorial fantasy
to recognize in supposed coincidence
and lifes’ just being life, the continuing
over especially the last 20 years
occurrences that have as part of their every happening
the profiting of those occupying
the upper tiers
of the pyramid that is humanity. Or find it mental illness,
the truth
of sight
of those occupyings’
willingness to do those things of profit to them
and horrific
to the minds of those unable to accept it as human.
Seems to be no thought given to the sensitivities of those empathetic to the suffering of others
as reason
for the manifestations of differences in behavior
defined as mental illness. In too many personal lives thru to what’s there to be seen on the world stage,
mans’ understanding of himself as predator.
So many of the educated
sure of mans’ animalistic beginnings
seemingly ignorant
of the possible, probable inner worlds
of those
recognizing themselves
as prey.
Words
Like a new leaf in spring turning over the tide
I learnt my first words barely a cry
But as I grew up, so did my words,
They bloomed like the flowers, giving me life.
Then came the summer, where my words grew afresh,
I was eager to face a challenge and even lost some bets,
Never gave up did I, to fight for my way,
My words gave me strength and the courage to be brave.
Autumn came by in a dazzle of gold and red
And thus my heart began to beat in blushes of red
Your sweet words gave me hope and lightened my life
Eager to be with you, I gave you my word for you to be mine.
Years later, on a bleak wintery night,
My words came out cold and uttered a cry
Your words were a whip that lashed me out
Words never to be forgotten and kept me out of your sight.
Funny as it seems, how these words shaped my life
I learned to be strong and carried on my light.
Spring 2021 Magazine
home, in time
stepped out of time as the day to day
and stand in the moment continuing, that one, mine, behind time
where I am just…, and contemplate life surrounding, coalesced, and am amazed, despite the darkness
part of the journey
made up of my ignorance of knowing how and fear of being, that I live, loved, and home means peace
I stand there, that self I am always, since…, behind, knowing I am not times’, time, somehow having made it’s way to reflecting my always’ need
she rises to go inside and Spike he follows, I tell her, “I’m coming”, and am thankful continuing to Him for the one allowing my always
a home, in time
and I close the door, behind me
The Poetry Cooperative Interview Series
To educate and inspire, we speak to poets who stand out in today’s competitive poetry market.
Any budding poet who wants to go from writing poetry as a past-time to seeing his/her poems in literary publications wants to know what it takes to get published. Most poets receive countless rejections before finally seeing their work recognized and printed by renowned magazines or websites. In the Poetry Cooperative Interview Series, we speak to award-winning, well-known poets to find out just exactly what makes a publishable poem.
With this series, we hope to inspire and encourage our members and anyone who’s trying to get published. All our guest are honourary Poetry Cooperative members. With each interview, they each get a dedicated page on our website.
We’re proud to announce that prize-winning UK poet Jenny Mitchell was the first to make time to answer our questions. Watch out for the first edition of the Poetry Cooperative Interview Series here next week.
Submission Call – Poetry Cooperative Spring Magazine 2020
Daniel Tysdal on everything needed to write a poem and potentially save a life
Anyone who writes poetry wants to know what makes a poem a poem rather than embarrassing ramblings. I’m posting Daniel Tysdal’s Ted talk here. In simple terms, he describes how to write a great poem as opposed to an average one. Enjoy!
Seamus Heaney Recites ‘Scaffolding’
Happy Christmas!
Special Offer
To end the year on a high note, we are offering poets Annual Gold Membership at a special price. You will get the same support and perks only now, the membership is less expensive.
POETRY COOPERATIVE Christmas Magazine – Submit Your Poem Now
I found you Again
The long awaited morning has come .
It has come to pass.
I have seen you again.
My dead dread has resurrected
And moved to the seventh heaven,
My tears have ended.
I know I will no longer go tired
Wiping the over flowing tears
From my tiny spherical eyes.
My visage is happy to cry happily.
The long awaited afternoon has come
It has come to pass.
I have seen you again.
I have come out of
The coffin of loneliness
And death will never again
Storm my demanding heart
My friends are good
And indeed very good
But you are best and excellent
Please, my lost one
Clap hands for yourself.
The long awaited e evening has come
It has come to pass
I have seen you again
The dimpled piggy cheeks,
The shiny well created eyes,
The gorgeous happy face-
A face never gloomy and sad.
The warm gifted bosom,
The soft palms of your arms,
And the succulent lips.
I will kiss again
Because you’re the chosen Mary
Among the virgins.
You are homely welcome
And the rest I don’t know.
…………EMMA CHIPUKIZI…….
0787050916-0750122685
THE NABENDE WRITING FAMILY
“Education made our eyes sprout”
Email:thenabendewritingfamily@gmail.com
UGANDA CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY
will you then
when comes the mistaken taking of life/Christian one/believing man/that one who’s right as far as you’re concerned/when comes the mistaken taking of life/led, step by step/for reason/all to do now/the asking of forgiveness…/ of the Father…/will you then/…will you then/ decide on His understanding/of love the other/ as yourself
After The Trapping
In the dead of night the little Goths come out-
their startlingly masked, chiaroscuro visage
with fluorescent yellow disc eyes when light finds them,
shining like luciferin and luciferase reacting in the firefly-
and their cautious, staccato, and slinking movements
obvious against the freshly painted white picket fence,
like splashed gentian violet on a wedding dress.
In wistful November
these few straggler raccoons, huge,
come out,
in preparation for their seasonal sleep.
One enters the garden through
the square framed hole we cut for
all God’s creatures through the fence-
tabby, tuxedo, and calico kittens, ‘coon kits,
an opossum jill and her joeys, garden snakes,
squirrels, railroad-line field mice,
Mourning and Rock Doves.
He barely pulls himself though,
then arches high and stretches into his fullness,
looking like a small bear,
before he cases the yard,
before he plans his zigzag, concrete and dirt-sniffing
approach to the freshly filled plates and bowls.
This humongous, ticked raccoon
finds Sassie, a one-eyed tortoise shell cat,
left behind by a moving family
and forever having kittens,
already at the plates;
they eat in peace,
while a shy, grey-faced opossum jack
darts under an elevated outdoor fire pit-
too many critters to feel safe-
until all is quiet again.
Who blessed me with the care and
companionship of these creatures?
My little burghal, backyard zoo.
Bellied Sassie saunters slowly to the right,
to her between-houses escape route,
the masked ‘coon face keeps
checking me for friendliness,
then pins the plate with his wide, star-fish paw,
to get the outer halo of pate on the plate,
while his mate peeks her curious head
out of the fence hole, to watch
these nocturnal goings-on,
or, more accurately,
to fill those autumnal pangs in her belly.
He stares me down, grabs the Oreo I left,
then treads along the cement line to the fence,
makes a short stop to sniff
the calico cat’s grave stone,
takes a step up upon it,
then tries to heave his
exploding November girth
through the fence hole,
this foray for food coming to a close.
Small yellow leaves pepper the place-
I tediously pick them out of the food
every day this time of year-
the rows of wind-gathered, golden confetti
following the lines of concrete squares,
with gentle curves framing
the feeding and lounging areas,
and the goodness of God in the still night air.
–Fenna Thomas
On The Transformation Of The Forgetable Ms. Applesauce
I mean, this stuff happens in the deep,
deep homesteading Midwest,
where 10 year old sons routinely
work butcher knives, prepping
pumpkin squash, ham hocks,
for eating or freezing.
I’ve seen pictures of them unshod
in barns smiling,
no safeties on anything.
Once there were Chestnut trees
foresting the American East Coast.
But that Japanese Parasite killed them.
The people of Appalachia
got an economic kick in the nuts,
and the foraging fauna felt it, too.
Johhny Appleseed,
horticulturalist minister
and sleeper in corn cribs,
would put Quakers and hip-hop fashionista
both in their place
with his saucepan cap-turned-backwards.
He traipsed around like that,
then cooked meals in his hat.
No one thought much about it,
or that he might be a nut case.
On the Savannah, Ohio lawn of Amy Sheaffer,
the last, extant, gnarled and knotted
original Appleseed tree still grows
just outside her kitchen door.
It still rains apples. When fall comes,
it just rains apples.
So the kids get tricked-
she makes her applesauce
with star anise, cloves, cinnamon sticks,
and vanilla from Madagascar,
a rich, thick chutney.
They imbibe in grateful near-gluttony.
Once served
in the 1920’s boardinghouse-
cheap filler-
and still is, tepid,
from US Government surplus,
over-sized jars
in public school lunchrooms.
As It Is – A Greg Downing Poetry Recital
Romanesco
Fractal vegetable- self-similar, edible flower-
pyramidal chartreuse curds
or lime in color,
this brassica.
Wonder-inducing Fibonacci sequence,
its piquance a hit for North Brooklyn hipsters,
or still-growing, not-knowing bridesmaids
ringing thrice, even quadrice marked-up bottles
of bottom-of-the barrel Crane Lake chardonnay,
snug in ice buckets on outdoor tables.
All in masks,
They don’t mind paying for the experience.
I made up the word “quadrice” for this poem. I hope I don’t go to poetry or linguistics purgatory for this! The inspiration for this poem came from my getting my first box of “Misfits Market” produce delivered, and the fractal beauty of the Romanesco cauliflower inside the box blew me away.
The Cursing Stones
Ariana, adopted the old Greek ways,
when Nikos died diving for sponges.
She encased her curses into two lead stones:
smuggling one into his coffin,
dropping the other into Naxos deepest well.
She made sure Nikos soul would
carry her curse to the underworld
before it ascended to heaven,
or activated fully on the river of forgetfulness
for Death to see, read, feel her grief.
She had hired the local poet who still
remembered all the magical phrases
and could reverse the flow of words.
She wanted Death
to throw himself to the crows,
split like she was divided inside,
perish the same way Nikos drowned,
damned Death’s eyes to drunkenness
till he became a burden to the earth,
a useless sack of spoiled wine.
As she turned back and
started to look away
she heard Nikos voice echo to her.
She turned around and In
the mist that crawled away to the Aegean
was revealed three Cretan hounds snarling
behind the gate of the rich shipbuilder’s house.
The sea, the earth the sky collapsed in her.
The sound of tides, the swirling dust, the rain were
mocking this girl who knew only ordinary curses,
this widow doomed to live a long, grieving life
listening for Nikos sounds until her very end.
Pieta
Perfection can only be seen in the descent,
the glow of spotlights colliding to true whiteness,
the realization that grief touches the ground.
Mary, they say, you never experienced birth pains,
but the linen folded eternally beneath your son
shows that his final blessing transferred all to you.
Your tears wash his feet, and I imagine,
you wiping them dry with your hair,
a doting act of love he passed to his disciples.
Your grief remains in your soul.
Only the pain is collected in
the last descent of angels.
I feel the slow bump when
the descent must hit the earth,
the slight stumble to awkward reality.
I wash my feet everyday to honor
the perfect glory I’ve been blessed to see.
Note:
This is a memory of the 1964 World’s Fair where I saw the Pieta in the descent of an escalator. it lasted all of fifteen seconds, roughly the time it takes to read the poem.
The Red Bicycle
(In homage to William Carlos William)
Outside was my red bicycle
leaning against the wall
next to a red wheelbarrow
on which nothing depended on.
I was the kind of child who
was always daydreaming
himself to victory and today
I would win the Tour de France.
So the plan was to practice
beyond my own wobbling peddling,
like the unbalanced red wheelbarrow
my father pushed among the chickens.
I felt the heat, the flame of potential speed
where so much could happen
and depended on my straight control
in a world zooming by in flame
until the wind was red wings,
only my own red thoughts ablaze
in the warp and the things I hated
of the world were longer in myself.
until I flew over the handlebars
hitting my forehead on a
sky blue Cadillac door handle,
the scar following me to the future.
Now I nick the tiny flames of memory,
as I push the red wheelbarrow
up the hill as if my life depended on it,
even as it always wobbles down.
Van Gogh Paints His Final Vision
It was the light that told Vincent,
the one which always told him the truth
reflected his soul’s desire,
the glistenings of his mind,
that this mass of gnarled roots
would be his last vision.
He could feel the gun smoke
creeping into his soul,
corrupting his thoughts,
the very rays of his world,
even his beloved
hog hair brushes and pigments
as he walked the Rue Daubigny
pass the Church at Auvers
he needed to canvas in June
when the flint of its history,
death, faith, passion and beauty
impelled him to create,
pass the wheat field absent of crows
which made the world seem more
beautiful with its darkness
hovering over the light of July,
diminished now to ordinary light,
smoke, haze and fog.
He felt his world constricted to
a blue room with a blue bed,
a blue chair wedged in a corner
draped in blue shadows
which could not be mixed
to the perfect colors.
When he saw the gnarled roots
exposed in late afternoon July beams
he knew that he would not live
to see the first dawn of August,
that this would be his last
perfect beautiful, silent spot.
He painted smelling the gun smoke coming,
the smoke turning into a bullet
as he passionately tried to capture
life itself frantically and fervently rooting itself,
as it were, in the earth and yet being
half torn up by the storm.
Washing the Corpses
–After Rainier Maria Rilke
The washers have lived with death
as they have with the lamp,
the flame and the dark,
the nameless rinsing of limbs,
the even more unnameable nameless.
without histories relative to them.
Their sponges dipped the water
then the silent throat,
trickled rivulets on their faces,
waiting for it to absorb,
to convince themselves more than anything
that the body no longer thirsted.
They only stopped their toil
to turn their head to cough.
The older ones unclenched
the hands of the dead
that refused their final repose.
Only their shadows
jerked the quiet walls,
the net of silent life
extinguishing to last existence
that ignored their shrugs
as the last now antiseptic corpse
was finished and the window shut.
Soft Body Memories of our Grief
We exist in
unkeepable bodies
and in the bending over
we decompose
for we are
are but the
memory of grief
that soft bodies
leave when they die.
After the Sun Has Gone
Oh, when the sun yields child
to the soft caress of the night
After the sun has gone.
After the sun has gone.
That lifts the wind
after the sun has gone.
The last of wonder and awe
That turns life
from a beach shell echo
to a cornucopia
after the sun has gone.
Life without a shell must
shake out the shadows
live full to overflowing
less it dry after the sun has gone
leaving the child still, beautiful silent
in the beach tide after the sun has gone.
After the sun has gone.
My Love
My love is like a mysterious wind
Ever changing and always there
Can’t be tamed or controlled
Always waiting to catch me
Leaving as I reach out
And then I catch it
And I fall down
Leaving the earth in a state of euphoria
Where no one can find us
And no one ever will
The Cavern
Cleansing my soul
Reaching down into the depths
Looking for answers
Learning I am complete
Finding my way back with Him
The Way Out
I learned to love myself
I no longer walk alone
I made it through to the other side
I keep fighting
I’ll never give up
Regret
Darkness falling
Words empty
I saw the light in you
I wish I had loved you before you left
All that remains is me
Till we meet again
Sleepless nights and endless days,
Counting for hope that’s once lost,
Thinking about the rheumatic past,
Makes me realize what I have lost.
People come and people go,
For I would not see you,
You who showed me light,
You who I’ve let go.
If only I could turn back time,
Bring back what’s once was mine,
Mend the past for a healing future,
Mend all the regrets and crimes.
If, if only I could see you again,
Once more in this shimmering light,
Standing next to me like in the past days,
Watching over like an angel at night,
Till we meet again.
Footprints In The Dark
In the house made of waterproof canvas
We’ll listen out for the sounds
Expecting big hairy footsteps
Making prints upon the ground
You better make sure the zip of the tent
Is done up nice and tight
And keep one ear, one eye open
Whilst sleeping in the night
You could fall asleep and start dreaming
A nightmare, call it as you will
About the big hairy Sasquatch
Committing the most gruesome a kill
You may just hear him coming at you
A twig snapping in between trees
You’ll be in your sleeping bag
Feeling the shakes in your knees
You’ll reach your hands down
Feeling around with no sight
Looking for torches and axes
To get you through this night
You try stopping your mates from snoring
Only to wake up yourself and see
It was all just a dream that made you sweat
You start you fall back asleep
Then you hear the zip start to move
The seam becoming undone
And before you can let out a scream
Your vocal chords will be gone
Stone in Sand
Pick up the stone as you walk in the sand
pick up as you try to reach the end
the stones are from days of yore
it may be of dinosaurs or life long before
each tells a story of journeys taken
some smooth and some shaken.
I can not tell you which one to choose
hundreds lie along the path of view
some hidden and some calling for you
Feel the wave in your feet
feel the warmth of the sunset
let your shadow grow longer
as you walk to your path a bit longer
wondering why the stones matter.
I gave you two stones long before
when we walked together on the beach
you did not know the journey it had taken
you were too young to think for a second.
you threw one into the ocean
gave me the other to do the same
I told you it will come back w
hen you grow up
all the love contained from yesteryears
I am not walking with you this time
but do pick up a stone from the sand
feel it; let it go back to the ocean again
to come back again with memories.
The stone you gave me long before
reminds me of the path we have taken
I have left it on your desk now
For you to throw back into the ocean.
Oct 2018
The BoyWho Dances in the Light
Shout into the eyes
of sunlight
of the boy who dances in the light.
Every dragon’s death
foretells this child
onto even the smallest realm.
The Phoenix is an ally
to the boy
who forges worlds.
The stars proclaim his shine
this boy who dances in the light.
He is the boy
who flies
into the sun
and does not dissolve.
His chariot with flashing wheels
races with the rainbow.
He is the boy who
sells the golden trinkets
with 1001 truths in the bazaar.
Even the baubles know not all his stories
of pirates, pashas, tigers and kings.
After all has been vended
this boy with the wondrous tongue
will wipe the sweat of his brow
into the most damask bottle
and proclaim it genie’s breath.
Rainy Weather Laughter
The rain chuckles on the rooftop
and the sound carry’s down the house.
The oaks in their amber raincoats
hiss in the water’s tickle.
Their sinuses suckle the drops to veins
then shiver off the excess.
The wild summer streams are
beginning their running joke.
The drought retreats with a frown
to the applause of the scorch grass.
The old man and his grandson watch
the slapstick of nature from the doorway.
They wave to their bemused neighbors
in their rockers watching the show.
The old man hands the child an umbrella
and watches him join the laughter all around.
The child delights in the rain drumming
smiles on the harlequin cloth.
MEDIEVAL
Mace-
it packs
a little punch
to the face,
Hitting parts
like eyes, mouths,
that are open,
moist, round.
Less leveling
brother to
pepper-spray
capsicum,
I concede
this requiem.
But there is
sister Mace.
She is non-violent,
a pacifist,
and wraps herself
around the nutmeg seed,
and when dried,
ground,
can feed and feed.
Subtle.
Floral.
Royal.
Nice on
white fish,
root vegetables.
Intricate webbing-
red as
a baboon’s hinie,
but not as stinkey.
Who burried
this medieval
spice?
I would
think twice
before looking
askance,
and hope our repasts
nurture tolerance.
I read that state police no longer use mace on protesters, because it is not effective on alcoholics, drug addicts, and schizophrenics. Pepper spray is what they use today. As a non-violent Quaker, I just use the culinary spice blade mace in the kitchen, and it’s an upgrade from nutmeg, which can be too heavy in dishes. It’s wonderful in cream soups, too! Let’s do things positively on this planet, homeboys and homegirls!
The Whale
We turned around and she was there
stranded between shore and sea,
beach filled with the oily smell of whale,
her dark tonnage serenading the waves
for the comforting echoes of others,
her great fins offering sand flowers
to the Great Ocean God for her salvation.
We mistook her motion for the final dance,
the soprano voice for a lamentation,
the agitation of her great tail for death gasps
for in our experience we are slippery skin
creatures destined to loneliness,
defined to be Ahabs to her kind.
The incoming tide heard her prayer and
navigated the sand to slowly release her to
re-float with the high tide, the deeper water
where she be well with herself.
And we sat on the beach and watched
her swim out knowing that
the sea can easily swallow a whale.
A Very Hot Afternoon
The heat is a pendejo querida
a street full of melda de vaca, mi amor
steaming, stinking, like a hungry puta
who takes mi dinero and gives me crabs.
Sleep with me chica. Cool me down
in el rio d su chocha. Por favor. Por favor.
Mariposa de su womb. Pajaro en mi boca.
Do not steal my crumbs and fly away.
Tu coolo is una ballena. Lo adoro.
It’s as hot as the clouds that stampede
like los cascos de los caballos salvaje.
Your centavo feminino blends with
the eibas y el calor making me want to
comer naranjas amargas contigo en la cama
or a picnic with you a orillas del rio del Paraiso
watching the lotus bloom.
Translation of Spanish:
pendejo querida- male pubic hair, my love
melda de vaca, mi amor- cow shit, my love
puta- whore
mi dinero- my money
chica- girl/woman
el rio de su chocha. Por favor- the river of
your pussy. Please.
Mariposa de- butterfly of
pajaro en mi boca- bird in my mouth
Tu coolo- your ass
una ballena- a whale
Lo adoro- I love it
los cascos de los caballos salvaje- the hooves of
wild horses
centavo feminino- womanly scent
ceibas- kapok tree found in Puerto Rico
el calor- the heat
comer naranjas amargas contigo en la cama- eat bitter oranges with you in bed
a orillas del rio del Paraiso- by the shores of the river of Paradise.
The Art of Dying
The Pandemic has closed
the theaters and cinemas.
On stage a lone actor commits
suicide in the loneliness.
On screen the two lovers run to each
other against the march of soldiers.
The actor’s death is an extravagant fake,
a nod to the art of dying a good stage death.
The lovers perform erotic asphyxiation
until the man seems to fall deeply asleep.
The actor pulls the dagger from his neck,
red silk flowing freely from his throat.
In the light motes coming from the projector
Sada realizes that Kichizo has died.
The red silk now entombs Sensei Omiya
like a gown as he reaches out to Sada’s cry.
Sada kisses Kichizo for the final time
as she removes Kichizo‘s blade.
Sensei Omiya drowns in a swell of red silk.
“Sada, my child, what shame have you brung?”
Sada cuts Kichizo’s penis off cleanly carrying
it inside her as she madly wanders Tokyo.
The projector clicks off, the house lights fade.
The transformation is done.
The performance is over
TO DREAM OF THREE SNAKES
The Nino de Atocha statue
in the front persona of the house
floats on a cloud of marijuana smoke,
the heavenly white base chipped,
pocked grey from neglect.
They murdered the pine trees.
Not even on their property.
Drunk Uncle pruned them,
so the birds wouldn’t crap
on their five non-garaged cars
until they looked like
eight asparagus spears in a row,
branches tragically amputated,
trees leaning like the guest who staggered out
the side of their house once during a party.
That’s how you kill a tree.
Two late winter pines began to keel,
so they hired Mexicans from Jackson Heights,
the cheapest labor they could find,
and cut all eight down.
And left them there,
behind the fence,
a dam, embedded now with barbed wire,
for crepuscular vespertine, and nocturnal
wildlife kin to dodge,
like homo sapien sapien would
with land mines.
They shot the trees.
The landscape has teeth missing.
It’s the back of what looks like
a grey metal airport hangar now.
Property value down by 10 K for everybody,
for yard-turned-car parking garage convenience.
Pocahontas’ Grandmother Willow would tell them
to follow their paths straight to hell.
The smell of skunk herb
wafts into and around my homestead-
aging-out MC Stoner Boy is still in his mother’s attic
mixing, bass boost rattling adjacent houses.
There is no escape. Incessant, deep thuds
marinate brain stems
for years. The quiet neighbor
on the other side
is very old and sick. Says nothing.
Maybe he knows that
when the shadow is ignored
and inflates the group- little neighbor mob-
it’s like trying to talk the finer points of
metaphysical philosophy
to a lobotomized Frances Farmer.
Drunk Uncle once pointed to his
left upper-arm tattoo in passing-
a cartoon-like, third world Christ Child with a halo,
in a deluded and desperate attempt
to proclaim what a good Christian he was.
Yet he and his 50 K-a-year car parking garage
and night-shift security worker acquaintances
grind shit-faced dancing
with Latinas they barely know.
Upon first acquaintance, Stoner Boy
once offered, “Hi! I’m Hispanic.”
I did not offer, “Nice to meet you! I’m Caucasian”,
as I don’t greet in that way. Ever.
I was so thrown.
The pine tree is considered sacred
in most world cultures.
It shelters birds, squirrels, chipmunks,
raccoons, opossums, porcupines-
it gives us pine nuts,
the most coveted and nutritious
evergreen seed in the world.
We decorate our homes, cabins,
baskets, generous with the cones,
hang them glitter-sprayed on Christmas trees,
or just hold them in our hands,
marveling at their sacred geometry,
at the beautiful gift Gaia has given.
I dreamt of three snakes last night.
Each got progressively bigger.
The last was swimming through
a central waterway on my property,
its circumference as big as a sewage pipe
that takes it all outside of your house.
It had little feet-fins in front, like primitive fish,
to help it walk- that’s how huge it was.
I am not called to roll a faux joint and tape it
to the mouth of Nino de Atocha,
or stuff their mailbox with so many packs
of rolling paper rendering it unusable;
I can hire artists from Brooklyn’s Bushwick,
bloody starving for cash in this pandemic,
just to embarrass them-
have them surreptitiously climb up at night
to paint a mural on the exposed hangar surface
of Drunk Uncle knocking back Corona after Corona-
once he left some dead cat on my front stoop
in a Corona beer box with no note in January –
one of his aging, baby-mamma sisters dutifully carries out
his beer bottles in huge blue bags,
slung over her back for recycling,
like a hunchback, labored Santa- that’s her job.
They can paint Stoner Boy, too,
savoring another blunt toke just huffed-
But despite unconsciousness, selfishness,
inconsideration, and lawbreaking in a flailing city-
the dream snakes announce that I am the one
heading for some transformation-
some big-ass transformation.
I need to breathe.
I need to move,
and live where trees lives matter.
EGGTOOTH
Inspired By The Poetry Of Robert Lax
cranial
calcified
pipping
point
chipping
chipping
chipping
chipping
tapping
tapping
tapping
tapping
if
I
stay
here
I
will
die
fissure
split
light
how
lush
the
violet
dusk
Dr. Faustus Thanks the Devil and the Word
The poem rumbles in my brain
and wakes me at three in the morning
as if my devil branded me with his pitchfork
reminding me of our inspired bargain
My nemesis love calls me to the fiery sheet
his impish pride burning praise in me
that swears fealty with bloody words
Oh poetry
how your satanic verses
chum and shudder in me
sharking nightmares to dreams
and my words to the exquisite limbo
doomed to fall short of true divinity
The poem squatters in my mind firmly
fixed in the ninth circle of treachery
offending my soul
crushing my heart
It takes and takes and takes
and never gives not even
granting the guilt of dirty lucre
Words are my blood
Poems damn my veins
My quick-fire brimstone lines
are my epitaph
I am both cursed and blessed
to this addiction
yet I hope this passion never cools
only flames and reflames
Oh Poetry immolate me
burn me to the purest ash
leaving a diamond legacy
The poem is not a song
but the fire inside the song
the sulphur mistaken for honey
Oh dulcet sounds why and thank you for
making me an exile from life and tomorrow
a lonely sad witness to the world
Why and thank you for
fating me to this fiery covenant
Beyond the Dying Cloud
When a cloud dies
doves and eagles
dip their wings
in mournful ‘memberance.
When the sky dies
it rots black
in despairing soot
of ash and pain.
When the moon dies
it’s mourned
by the elliptical kisses
of the planets beyond.
When a planet dies
the universe gently cradles it
and lullaby’s it to the sun
until it falls to sleep.
When the universe dies
the lonely sad earth knows
that all the trees will go dark
when the world dies.
Down Here (For Papa)
They said only the good die young
But I don’t know how true that is.
Guess they had never met you.
Around the table that day
All too numb to feel anything.
Thinking of the times
We can never replace.
Like that deep voice
Of yours singing along to
Amazing Grace
Or the way the room got quiet
As your words filled the space
It’s true that the grief
May never get better
But these are the memories
I’ll hold to forever.
Lookin back on the times
You’re recording out,
Under that old tree.
Taping home videos
of your little babies.
Or the peppermints on Sundays
Jesus loves me all the way to
O Beautiful Star
Hey Papa you remember
All those times you
Caught me with your guitar?
It’s true that the grief
May never get better
But these are the memories
I’ll cling to forever.
Teaching me to climb,
Reminding me to pray,
Soft spoken as you were,
You knew just what to say.
The strongest man I’ve ever known
I’ll always think of you that way.
Yeah and even though it’s hard
With how lost we feel
It’s the pain that reminds me
You gotta hurt to heal.
But we’ll surely miss
you down here.
December 1, 2019
Painfully Clear
I tried to bargain away all
the sickness and death
in my life with the
skies and mountains.
They refused to disperse my
pain in the sunlight and clouds.
The void rejected my life,
eternity denied my love.
The moon stayed its silent course
watching my fate fade away in the night.
Time denied my burden.
The wind swirled to heaven
seeing me coming near.
The waters cascaded away
fearing my touch.
God was on vacation
and not due back until
two days after my passing.
My heart opened wide
and I emptied my pain
on its breakers and shore
until all that was left was words,
these words in the color of clarity.
On this Acre of Unspoiled Comfort
On this acre of unspoiled comfort
the hard winds blow once again now.
Through this acre of unspoiled comfort
the house falls once again now.
This acre of unspoiled comfort
so unlike a broken cry.
This acre of unspoiled comfort
once so sun caressed with smiles.
This acre of unspoiled comfort
once standing on unburied dreams.
This acre of unspoiled comfort
lingering near death.
This acre of unspoiled comfort
praying for its life now.
This acre of unspoiled comfort,
now I pledge my love again.
On this acre of unspoiled comfort.
The Loss of Words
A woman’s beauty is light on the eyes,
best pinned in thoughts, not weighed down
by beautiful lines that cannot halt wrinkles.
The dying frost of dawn does not
feel sorry for the gravity of the nest
knowing the wrens inside can fly.
The ode is limited to its chilling beauty.
The sublime pleasure of discovering
on a stroll the transitory pleasures
of another’s pedestrian secret life
is only weighed down by
future speculations of their destiny.
The gentle grace of a grazing fawn
killed by the hunter’s bullet
is elevated by the photo
caught before the moment.
The moon rises only on a setting sun
yet the calf of a homeless man
is wondrous reflected in the night’s light.
Even the suicide jumping off the bridge
is beautiful in the dark fall.
The butterfly takes flight
in the shout of the
lepidopterist’s child
hoping to catch it in his net.
He goes home sad not
knowing what he has
lost with his heavy words.
How to Read a Difficult Poem
Keep the things
you don’t understand
always near you-
in your pocket
or wallet-
so in idle moments
at the bus stop
or in line at the post office
at the bookstore
or coffeehouse
you’re thinking
until the inkling
of realization comes,
even if it’s
just a mark or two-
even if you have to
look it up in the dictionary
or on Wikipedia
or ask a smarter friend
or maybe even God
until you are certain
that you have
properly applied yourself.
The Other Blessing Before the Curse
Before audaciously
flying
in the strangled gleaming
of the last glory
of extinct clouds
rising
I asked my soul
what is the purpose
of having
the last thought
of mankind
or any
dreams
Oh Jinn
give back
the last of me
stolen and not yours
The Jinn replied
they blessed you
don’t you remember
or dreamed that you remember
it was that memory
of some things
and everything
that started your world
and ended this
and theirs
It started
and finished
just the way
you wished
Shutting DOWN
If I shut the border,
no one will shut their window,
hide in their closet,
lock their door.
They would shake the blinds of moths,
bring the dog in from the doghouse,
let the cat feast after the mouse hole
has been plugged with a door wedge.
In the distance
the train whistle blows
dispersing mist and rain.
No one steps off nor boards.
The bird nest is not abandoned.
The hollow of the tree stays hollow.
Nothing has shut down at all.
My pen scribbles a poem
only to watch the black words
return to the reservoir.
I open the dictionary to the word “hope”,
but the page refuses to settle
until I put all the words in them
face down on the writing table.
My stoma grumbles louder than my stomach.
I shut my cancer in the mother-of-pearl.
My wife’s cancer is placed in the
small valise of all our memories.
I can’t shut down the museum.
It already is.
I can’t shut down the cinemas.
They already are.
Only the pharmacies are open.
I shut down my mouth
on my broken jaw
with five missing teeth
only to feel the maw of death.
I shut down the ash of my childhood
into a golden urn of my own design.
I shut down America, I shut down God,
putting them both between the now
empty covers of the dictionary missing hope.
I shut down my passions, my emotions
in the moldy basement of my despair.
My shut down love is chained in the dungeon.
Shut up, shut down, I repeat to myself,
until those words lose all definition,
until my lips are sealed in pain and
the only thing left is my total shutdown.
Do Not Silence My Words that You Hear
Don’t take away my words
by not repeating my poems inside.
My poetry is revolutionary
as a floating feather.
Close your eyes and catch it
knowing the vision is in its flight
and not where it falls.
Pick it up from the floor
and it becomes a Cobra
spitting, aiming to poison you.
A Very Shaggy Wake
Outside of town a man died
naked beneath a nice tree.
Some said he was old
and that the tree was an elm.
Some said he was young
and that it was an oak.
Others, that he was a child
and that it was a magnolia.
The only thing they agreed on:
that he was naked, dead, under a tree
and they felt sorry for him.
So, the Widow Smith secretly
dressed him in her husband’s best shirt
because she was still mourning
the loss of Tom’s chest.
Mr. Aglet, who owned the shoe store,
privately donated the old Nike’s
Timmy abandoned when he went to Harvard
because Aglet missed Timmy putting them on.
Haberdasher Scye donated his swankiest cufflinks-
the one’s left behind when a newlywed customer
learned that his wife was in labor—
because Scye hated the look of an unadorned shirt.
He then gave his favorite top hat
for no man should be buried with bad hair,
his finest knee-high dress socks
because that’s what funeral’s demand.
He than gifted his finest silk tie,
a nice leather belt of the man’s waist size,
and just to finish the look
a properly somber black jacket and pants.
Optometrist Eyear noticing the man
was squinting rather oddly
crafted a fine pair of designer spectacles
that fitted perfectly on the dead man’s nose.
Everyone in town felt good about their gifts
and the funeral was well-attended.
It wasn’t until he was deep under
did they notice that they forgot the underwear.
They found them, the next day,
the one thing that knew him best,
hanging high in the branches of the tree.
Bearing the Light of Seasons
Winter
The rain sheds precious jewels this winter night,
the oaks untangle their branches in clarity,
musky solidarity, and affirmation of their place,
an unlearned wisdom of existence that
allows them to bear the staggered light of
unhurried clouds spreading their endless laughter to all those fixed below.
Fall
The cold, crisp wind of change kisses and abandons all the oaks of the field.
They shiver off their acorns knowing
they must be naked for the dark days ahead.
The clouds dark smiles are just beginning
to bear their light for winter’s derision.
Summer
The sunshine dances with the wind
and the oaks of the forest sway
in the merriment of unfiltered days.
They embrace a child’s shadow,
generously mixing it with their own,
bearing a tempered light for those
who breathe beneath their branches.
Spring
Diamonds of rain embellish the thirsty oaks
and they drink it in in tangled unity,
not scornful of the others judgement.
Fickle clouds grudgingly bear the light
until the sun forces them to share
its unending generosity with everything below.
Poetry Cooperative Live Chat
For you, the Unnecessary Dead of the American Dream
You were unburied
10 years before I was born,
pulled from the Arie riverbed
the day Nagasaki burned.
You died like a samurai
in your daughter’s arms,
bowels flowing,
head severed cleanly,
falling to the water
amidst the silence
of dead human trees
with their bark skin turned inside out,
among the screams of the living
realizing that not even water
can stop their burning away.
You were unburied
65 years before I was born,
killed by the big guns
with Conestoga wheels in the
ravine near Wounded Knee Creek.
You died running with your nursing infant in your arms trying to touch the flag of truce,
your child still suckling long after
the Great Spirits call— still suckling
as you were piled in the mounds
of mothers with no ghost shirts.
Others children’s children still
Ghost Dance and tell your lore.
You were buried
32 years before I was born,
shot in the back after
you had dug your own grave.
Shot in the back after
you had watched your house
burn in a kerosene blaze.
Shot in the back after
you knew the children
were safe in the swamp.
Shot in the back after
all of Rosewood burned
from the fury of white rage.
Shot in the back
until you were erased
from existence
except in the memory of tears.
What am I meant to do?
It’s summer and the
magnolias are blooming,
the cherry blossoms are ripe,
the black hills spruce
admits its forever mildew stink,
reminding harvesters not to
ever make it a Christmas tree.
I call out not knowing your names,
giving you invisible ones
that will reflect your death and life.
What am I meant to do?
Your unburied ash, spirit,
your buried charred bones
exists in wretched longing,
your names bleed into
the riverbed, the ravine, the clay.
I mourn as I freely travel the spaces
that others had trampled over you.
What am I meant to do?
Everything
Everything’s broken, diseased, sold and resold.
The pandemic’s breath blows on us.
Everything’s is devoured in a hunger never filled.
So why do I see a glistening in the distance?
In the day dream, a forest appears on the border.
The scent of lavender and lilies exhales out.
In the nightmare, the zodiac is sucked into
the black hole of a distant dissolving galaxy.
You wonder the miracle, if it comes,
will arise from darkness or dawn.
Will it arise from the first
natal nightmare or dream?
Seeing Jaws Again (A Movie Poem)
Her name you may
or may not recall.
It was Chrissie,
the body in the sand dune.
You do remember the shark,
the blood on the water,
death spreading like
a virus in the town of Amity.
You do remember that
the beaches should have been closed
but Amity was a summer town
that lived on summer dollars.
You do remember the shark
doing what it was built to do—
killing Mrs. Kintner’s little boy
on that beautiful July 4th day.
You do remember Mrs. Kintner’s
cold blooded slap
on police chief’s Body
warm blooded face.
“You knew there was a shark out there.
You knew it was dangerous
but you let people go swimming anyway.
You knew all those things
-BUT STILL MY BOY IS DEAD NOW!”
“She’s wrong,”
the mayor says.
“No, she’s not,”
Chief Brody acknowledges.
Suddenly you remember
reading a news piece
that Mrs. Kintner (Lee Fiero)
was a victim of the pandemic.
You realize there is no
police chief, scientist, grizzled old salt
banding together to do the right thing,
uniting to triumph over disease, death,
Only the orange hair President
standing deep in the drowning tide
smiling and waving and
telling everyone the water is fine.
“We are all Mrs. Kintner now.”
Note:
The final line is a quote by Mary McNamara,
the obituary writer for the Los Angeles Times.
Prayer on Walking a Small Part of the Trail of Tears
What is the land
but dust
but mountains
but forrest
but mud
but lost sorrow
What is sorrow
but torn soul
but wounded skin
but a trail of tears.
This day
the Chickasaw
Choctaw
Creek
Seminole
Cherokee
wipe the
white mans dirt
off their right foot
with their left foot
wipe the buffalo’s blood
off their right hand
with their left hand
walk bloody
bare right foot
to wounded left foot
on the dust
of their ancestors
their sacred hills
walk away from
The Great Spirit
to the not greater
white man’s God
slow sad right foot
to slower left foot.
Walk dragging their
dead still right foot
to still left foot
far away from the sun
of their monumental land
to this country
of bullets and blood
marching, running
blue right foot
towards gray left foot
in a frenzy to erect
bronze monuments
to all their dead
And when they cry it’s
the prayer of the white man
buried in Indian pain
May the wind
that is blowing
now and always
the dust of our memory
blow beyond your
fear of us
and all different
colored spirits
May the wind
turn from you
and only return
until you love not
the scars you
put on our backs
May you open your
eyes to unbuilt land
and see finally
The Great Spirit
calling every one
to share the
sacred hills
even the dust
with all that
have always walked
right foot to left foot
Cancer
It’s a fizgig, a gadding
of damp powder
hinting to explode,
assuming your surname
without any legal ceremony.
It flip flops you with trust
burrowing into the one
perfect position,
sleeping ahead of you,
waking you when you fall behind.
Not at all heavy, yet the
heaviest thing you’ll ever have.
Every breath heavy with airy death
that stunts your budding
wings from taking flight.
You measure the weight of
every thought until it always
pulls you down and your soul
takes flight jut to live…
…and you don’t t bother to chase it.
Notes:
a fizgig is both a flirting woman and a
firework of damp powder that fizzes or hisses when it explodes.
gadding is to go around from one place to another, in the pursuit of pleasure or entertainment.
The Logic of Up, Down, Hell and Death
Up
A seed is a forest-to be.
A rock is a mountain-to-be.
A drop is a river-to-be.
A river is an ocean-to-be.
A cloud is a sky-to-be.
Clouds are an aspiring heaven.
An apple is a pie-to-be.
A brick is a house-to-be
A house is a city-to-be.
A city is a state-to-be.
A state is a country-to-be.
Down
A country is a war-to-be.
War is a bullet-to-be.
A bullet is a death-to-be.
Deaths are a city destroyed.
Death is a house fallen.
A house fallen is just bricks,
apples not grown, pies never eaten.
Death
Death is
the hell of war,
the hell of the bullet,
Death is
a city, country fallen to hell,
hell is the fallen house,
bricks tumbled to dust,
rotten apples,
poison pies.
Death is the hell
of a heaven never found,
clouds never made,
rain never falling,
oceans never formed,
rivers never to be,
rivers dry from a dam of bricks,
forests never grown,
seeds never planted.
Defining Moon Glow
The moon was neither
voiced into creation
nor was it defined.
It was just parted
from the dark ink
of God’s voice.
Alphabets don’t
exist on dark vellum
just illuminated papyrus.
God doesn’t have the power
to banish those things
that have always existed.
He can’t create the perfect night
just pull crows out of it,
really, the simplest of magic tricks.
The small orifice below the cheekbones
exists to project the whiteboard
scribblings of the human mind.
Man is sad because he knows
that his words and thoughts
fall short of God’s magnificent language.
The moon witnesses what
is below and above its light
and keeps both their secrets.
Messing With the Sky
The light was so bad I made some clouds—
little cotton balls taped to helium balloons
drifting up to the heavens.
The first were the standard balloon animals:
dogs, sheep, horses, giraffes, lions.
They folded conventionally but
became much more creative creatures
with more cotton piled on.
The orange poodle became a bison,
the sheep a yak, the horse a hippopotamus,
giraffes just puffier and more absurd giraffes,
the lions awesome saber tooth tigers.
I added man, men, woeful enough that they needed a woman to tell them what to do.
Later I made the men sheep and the women lions.
I gave the dogs rabbit ears.
The sheep were now wolves.
I made the sky ark a canopy
to cover it from the dissolving sun,
a fluffy river to slack its thirst,
filled it with cotton candy gold fish
glittering bottle nose dolphins and sperm whales
echo locating each other’s existence,
populated its banks with palm trees and oaks
to shade all the other animals airy heads.
I created and created until the
creation created itself.
Lions became oaks,
sheep became mountains,
dogs became gods
wanting only attention
and belly rubs,
demanding all cloud creatures
know themselves only through
the smelling of each other’s asses.
It rained the last of the rain,
the last bit of piss left in their bowels,
rained until they could only poop.
I was irritated by the smell.
I was irritated by the noise.
I was irritated by how
they didn’t let me play my piano,
or continue creating my house
or not let me go to bed.
I was locked in place
and couldn’t look back.
I wanted to cover my ears
but my hands were gone.
I wanted to cover my nose
but it had broken, fallen off
into a pillar of salt.
I shouted until someone
or something heard me
and covered my mouth
with a primate hand,
stopped my ears
with a canine paw.
Creation
had stopped my creation
knowing that I hadn’t been satisfied
with what I had done
that very first day
and needed a reset.
The Poet’s Gun is a Rose
The poet makes his gun out of any old thing:
sticks of words, bird song, the swish of trees,
the pitter patter of the growing city around him,
The poet’s gun is never just a gun.
His poems are never just words.
Today, the poet’s gun is a rose—
thorns of wounding,
warnings to admire its scent and beauty
from a respectful distance.
He fired it in the air knowing
that a gun that is a gun
is a little brook of death,
but since his gun was a rose,
it was dangerous and beautiful.
His verse exploded
blooming petals
shedding its crimson
like dew on the water.
It felt like rain.
It felt like pulsing veins.
It felt like life being knocked over.
It felt like love bursting through.
The gun was a rose
and the gun was not death.
Out of anything he made it.
Tomorrow, it would be water.
Soul Cleansing
The soul is not a drip-dry thing.
It’s needs constant washing and wringing
to function cleanly.
It needs to tumble on high heat
to wear just right.
Hand wash it and it will shrink in protest.
Line dry it and you might think
it will smell of heaven but
it is the rancid smell of tussle and
toil that will stink the neighborhood.
And, oh, by the way you should never
bleach a thing that is already bleached.
Don’t use stain remover for that’s its job.
No starch, please. Stiffness is not needed.
The same goes for heavy or light ironing.
Follow these directions and
the soul will last your lifetime.
It will protect you from
all the stains of the world.
My Voice Should Die on Land
I am not a sailor.
I am meant to die on land,
ashes spread above sea level,
or in a coddled urn above the hearth.
My voice is paper and
where I choose to exist,
a white world that is not sky—
this voice of mine.
I have no ensign.
My heart beats soft, beautiful words,
a language of stars,
that knows that the twinkle
was once magnificent suns.
Still Lfe
It’s in the shading.
It’s the way the light is written.
It’s the way the observer takes it all in.
It’s the way it convinces one that the world will last.
It’s the way it plants a seed in the mind,
the way it touches one inside, lives inside
the streets of memory, inhabits one’s emotional house,
sunsets, harbors, all the great perfect things
that exists in the brief eternity that loop eternally,
that convinces one that the extraordinary
is the purpose of existing in ordinary time,
that every moment lives for the perfect still life.