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The Best Poem Ever – Brian Doyle
What if, says a small child to me this afternoon,
We made a poem without using any words at all?
Wouldn’t that be cool? You could use long twigs,
And feathers, or spider strands, and arrange them
So that people imagine what words could be there.
Wouldn’t that be cool? So there’s a different poem
For each reader. That would be the best poem ever.
The poem wouldn’t be on the page, right? It would
Be in the air, sort of. It would be between the twigs
And the person’s eyes, or behind the person’s eyes,
After the person saw whatever poem he or she saw.
Maybe there are a lot of poems that you can’t write
Down. Couldn’t that be? But they’re still there even
If no one can write them down, right? Poems in
Books are only a little bit of all the poems there are.
Those are only the poems someone found words for.
Poetry
The Visit
I visit with a good friend today
And find him crying.
My impulse is to lift his spirit
From whatever darkness has overtaken him.
“Would you like a hug,” I ask
And he nodded yes.
Holding my friend in my arms
I feel his shaking,
His heart beating,
The expansion and release of his ribs
With each inhale and exhale.
I see the air that comes into his nostrils
Watch as it journeys into his lungs
As his heart pumps
As oxygen molecules attach themselves
To the riverboats
Riding on arterial rivers
That travel north and south
Coast to coast
Deposited at cellular transfer depots
Like baggage being transferred
From ship to dock
Each atom of oxygen
Picked up and greeted on its arrival
The contents of the molecules
Sorted from their shipping crates
And instantly put to use
Enlivening the recipient
Who then gives back
What was not of use
Along with a small gift
As together they rejoin the river boats
On the mighty rivers
Flowing further into the interior
And then back into the lungs
Where again the boats take on new passengers
New suitcases
Brought to recipients in need.
I noticed my friend had stopped sobbing
His feet rooted more firmly on the earth
Whose energy helped him stand upright.
We looked at each other.
No words were spoken,
And we smiled.
POETRY
Where “it” all came from – my ultimate view.
We can never find “the cause” of where all this immense amount of matter, energy, light, atoms, and mass we call reality came from because any cause must itself have a cause … ad infinitum. That leaves the possibility the universe could have emerged from “nothing” – no space, time, or matter – by some fluctuation, movement, or other quality that is inherent in nothingness. The problem with this is that there must be something for there to be nothing, because separately nothing cannot be distinguished unless there is something. This suggests to me that we can’t determine the origin of mass and matter, inasmuch as our concept of “reality” may not /does not reflect actual reality … even nothing requires a cause. And to me, this represents as profound a distortion as when humans believed that the sun rotated around a flat earth. It was incontestable and yet a totally wrong view of reality. So to our current notions.
JOURNAL ENTRIES
fathers await their sons
fathers await their sons
and sons await their fathers.
who is it they hope shows up?
someone honorable
someone loving
smart and athletic
is good
courageous perhaps
respectful
loyal
fathers and sons
adoring each other
in a love unrivalled
fathers also crush their sons
they lie and spit
and scratch their asses in public
they talk a great game
and sometimes live it
but often not
they await each other
father and son
in utero
at the threshold
in the schoolyard
from the battlefields
in their hearts
some times they harden
as they must
they accept limitations
they break
like porcelain
leaving sharp edges
and tiny shards
they break like chains
of bondage
they break like bone
first the blood vessels constrict
then the cells die
then if fortunate
they bridge the fracture gap
and find one another
right inside themselves
hoping to remodel
in love
not rage
accepting
toiling
bonding
terrified of their needs
admiring
seeking a relationship
and guidance
poor telemachus
a man among men
brtaub
© 05/07
POETRY
The Blood Test
Watching in awe and wonder
As a well-trained woman
Named Light
Who makes her living
Washing her hands
And putting on thin blue gloves
To pierce veins leading back to the heart
Asking people to repeat their birthdates
To prove they know who they are.
My blood is rich
I am rich
Still, like my blood
The challenge of moving
From where I was
To where I must go is real.
And the ventricles must beat
To take the steps needed
To reach the bank, the grocer’s,
The transfer station oasis
Where I separate garbage from fact
And am then ready
To journey on.
POETRY
The World is Both Burning and Blooming – Karen Salmansohn
You get the bad news
and the sunrise in the same day.
You cry over the headlines,
then you laugh at a baby
wearing a hat shaped like a bear.
This is the dual citizenship
of being alive.
Rage and reverence,
Grief and grace.
You are allowed to feel both.
You are allowed to scream,
& still notice how good the soup is.
You don’t have to choose.
Let it all in.
*******
Editor’s note – In a world that breeds despair joy is defiance.
Poetry
The 80 Year Old Virgin
The 80 year old virgin
Needed quite the shove
Though it’s true that she had known of men
This time it seemed like love.
It’s quite a tender story
I’m not sure of where to start
But if you asked our heroine
She’d say it was her heart
Or if she’d really let you know
She’d make mention of the gate
The one that yielded down below
On occasions that she’d mate
And there were all the offspring
Numbers one, two, three, and four
And physical penetration
Both in and out the door
But still the sense that this was new
Pervaded her whole being
In ways they say that once blind folk
Newly report they’re seeing
It started in a yoga class
The sense that this was new
For even those of 80 years
Can see they’re not quite through.
A tingling I think she’d say
In parts that long lay still
An opening of her heart and thighs
Quite vigorous and shrill
A pounding of the vesicles
An awakening of the senses
I’m sure you know at eighty years
She long since had her menses
She’d said goodbye to thoughts of love
She’d music as her passion
But this was more than notes or wishes
This wakening of her mind and fissures
A quickening to the words and deeds
That spoke of hopes and parted weeds
She said she’d never felt or known
The ways she’d laugh and how she’d moan
It’s all quite new, exciting, fresh
The joys she felt in mind and flesh.
Take me, she said, though surely shy
I’ve left clay soils, I’m flying high
I’m frightened – sure
Of course that’s true
But this is real, these feelings new.
I never felt such passion or urges
Nor sought relief from shrinks or sages
I just accepted this as fate
And I was sure it was too late
To think of love in quite this way
As to her virgin heart she’d say
I love my kin, I’ve let men in
But here I am, it isn’t sin
I’ve throw away all fear and guilt
I lay quite open on his quilt.
POETRY
A Visit to the Cemetery
I visit the local cemetery today
And pick out my gravesite.
I have visited and walked at this cemetery before,
But had never imagined spending eternity there.
I go with my son
Who is visiting from the other side of the continent,
Speaking of other sides.
The cemetery borders conservation lands
And we pick out a spot near a young oak tree.
Not so close as to disturb its roots
But close enough to feed her,
Having chosen what is known as a green burial
In which I become compost
In proximity to the Earth which bore me.
At one point, my legs became numb
And I lost my balance
Reaching instinctively for my son’s hand
As he helped hold me up
Which he’s so often done.
We talked about gravestones
And made light of inevitability and loss
I visualized being brought here at some future date
Laid to rest and covered with the soil I adore
While dozens of crows called out
Welcoming me to the neighborhood.
Just not too soon I hope.
(c) brt 03/26
POETRY
Two poems – Yehuda Amichai
“The Place Where We Are Right”
From the place where we are right
Flowers will never grow
In the spring.
The place where we are right
Is hard and trampled
Like a yard.
But doubts and loves
Dig up the world
Like a mole, a plow.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
Where the ruined
House once stood.
“A Man Doesn’t Have Time in His Life “
A man doesn’t have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn’t have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.
A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,
to laugh and cry with the same eyes,
with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them,
to make love in war and war in love.
And to hate and forgive and remember and forget,
to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest
what history
takes years and years to do.
A man doesn’t have time.
When he loses he seeks, when he finds
he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves
he begins to forget.
And his soul is seasoned, his soul
is very professional.
Only his body remains forever
an amateur. It tries and it misses,
gets muddled, doesn’t learn a thing,
drunk and blind in its pleasures
and its pains.
He will die as figs die in autumn,
Shriveled and full of himself and sweet,
the leaves growing dry on the ground,
the bare branches pointing to the place
where there’s time for everything.
Poetry
Boplicity or Jimmy Throws a Houseparty for Huey Newton – Daniel B. Summerhill
| inertia’s at the front door lobbying for a way into the funk but packed the wrong tools, left blues back where bebop jumped over the hammer. sold God’s imagination short. now we’re here dancing again, Bessie’s song got my hips loose & what goods a revolution without a two-step? beloved, there’s a party tonight & everybody gon’ be there tonight, in Oakland, we carve up maplewood in steel-toe boots, stomp keys into the myth of whiteness. uncle sam’s teeth rattle. Huey clinks the bars with Plato’s Republic between here and LA, conjures the one & three count. american chaos. bass haunts the dichotomy, counterproduces the violence. troubles innocence. tonight in Oakland, the party is everywhere & we cant distinguish one riff from another. black smoke funnels out the attic & the lamp shade’s crooked from the kickdrum beloved, (i said) there’s a party tonight & everybody gon’ be there i’m trading in my gold tooth for a hand grenade at the back door: morning glory, milkweed, poppy. the rest have names too, distinct & communal as sin. would you believe me if i told you miracles were small enough to hold? scorched amber. night blooms. forgive me, sometimes the light blinds me to the light. beloved, it’s a party tonight. everybodys here |
Poetry