Poem of the Day
AUGUST 2009
August 31, 2009
Run-in on Bellfountain Road
Xibalba came knocking
Xibalba came up short
DAS FLEISCH
the meat
eyes meet
mine do not slow
the brain does
though
some feat
to see hers through fear widen
uninvited
she jumps right in
THUMPCRUNCHAAGGGHH!
we meet
restrained only
by a wink
a pane
a door--
"No more!"
back on her feet
her mate stands on straight legs
vulnerable
momentarily
deceptively
looking more frightened
than I am to feel
--Tim Van Ert
(from CREATE THAT LOVE THAT LOVE CREATES)
August 30, 2009
Into My Own
One of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as 'twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom.
I should not be withheld but that some day
Into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.
I do not see why I should e'er turn back,
Or those should not set forth upon my track
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if still I held them dear.
They would not find me changed from him
they knew--
Only more sure of all I thought was true.
--Robert Frost
(published in A BOY'S WILL)
August 29, 2009
I Make Ye an Offer
I make ye an offer,
Ye gods, hear the scoffer,
The scheme will not hurt you,
If ye will find goodness, I will find virtue.
Though I am your creature,
And child of your nature,
I have pride still unbended,
And blood undescended,
Some free independence,
And my own descendants.
I cannot toil blindly,
Though ye behave kindly,
And I swear by the rood,
I'll be slave to no God.
If ye will deal plainly,
I will strive mainly,
If ye will discover,
Great plans to your lover,
And give him a sphere
Somewhat larger than here.
--Henry David Thoreau
(published in THE WINGED LIFE
edited by Robert Bly)
August 28, 2009
Rhapsody
Beat it with a shoe
because it can't talk, because it won't shut up,
because it makes those noises about its loneliness
endlessly. Beat it with a shoe
over and over, beside the door, on the balcony;
beat it because it's yours,
because you've had enough. Beat that shoe
your foot's orphan, like a leather club
against its side, around its head, with short sharp blows.
Beat it to make it stop crying.
Show you mean business.
Because it's dumb, because you told it once
or a thousand times; beat it because it ought to know
better by now. Beat it with a shoe
because it feels good--
beat it until it feels good.
Beat the crap out of it. Beat it senseless. Beat it
within an inch. Because it's worthless and dumb,
shitty, and loud, and dirty.
Beat it because there is pain in the world.
Beat it because it's yours.
--Cynthia Huntington
(published in NEW AMERICAN POETS OF THE 90s)
August 27, 2009
Day's Dance
When a day begins as dance
sweat rivers overflow, driving
the loose-knee rubber-hip trance.
Mind has no chance now to ask
questions of the night's dream show,
queries about today--or
What's important here to know?
Body spins wobbly orbits--
arms and legs have come alive
with the juice that makes all fit.
Self floats free from its snug mask,
called by child's lost playground
where each pebble rubs senses,
warm body cheer for each sound.
Brain tumbles into body
which stows a dream into day
like precious, guarded booty.
Pleasure easily steals limbs;
freed snakes belly through bowels
now the center of being
laughter-driven joy howls.
Way before that first mocha
is asked to kick-start your day
gulp down hip-hop or polka!
Make your living room a gym
that charges next-to-nothing:
just billions of cells hungry
to flat transform everything.
--Tim Van Ert
(from IF YOU LIVE, YOUR TIME WILL COME)
August 26, 2009
Walking on Water
There is a good friend whom I know
Who likes to fly above the snow
And walk with grace upon the water.
He has no desire to show
That he knows how to go
The way people think he oughter.
--Tim Van Ert
(from A FIRST EDITION OF HAI-CHOO: LITTLE SNEEZES
OF PROFOUND DITTY-CISM)
August 25, 2009
Dance Troupe Meets the Regulars
at the Esalen Baths
White-breasted body weight shifting
nervously between lower limbs,
the chorus of visiting dancers shuffles
like a colony of lost penguins--
slowly enough to be constantly touching.
Toweled torsos deny distinctive form
until, shook loose by giggles, they are molted.
Down moist, wooden steps they enter our room
lit orange-red by human skin in candlelight.
From sulfurous spring-fed tubs
soft gasps and short groans blend
with ocean's cyclic boulder crashing
as older skin relaxes into crinkles.
Here, fat shows itself in haphazard bulges--
like straw stuffed to make bedding,
quick, before the hearth coals dim.
And aging breasts settle to rest
closer, now, to the earth's center.
--Tim Van Ert
(published in SEEDS ON A WIND RIDE)
August 24, 2009
Planetary Motion
I've held love's spark
In my heart for you;
Half light and half dark,
As I thought you knew.
I'll hold it, though,
To my grave, unless
It's enticed to glow
And your form caress.
I'm asking true
Come down, face the flame:
Let it engulf you
With love without shame.
I love a poem's song--
I hope you do too!
The above is strong
As well as it's true.
Don't be intimidated
If, like me, you are feeling
Slightly intoxicated
With head, heart and soul reeling.
Respond as you like,
Respond as you will.
But drive down the pike
And visit me still!
--Tim Van Ert
(from COLLECTED WORDS)
August 23, 2009
Two Suffering Men
I sat across, behind my desk,
and told him I thought
he might be alcoholic.
"I never been drunk," he said.
I made a note on the medical chart.
I could see him getting irked.
His liver sick;
his wife gone with the kids!
I made a note on the chart.
I saw him gaining rage.
He clenched his fists,
leaned forward,
his arms on the desk.
He held his breath
until he turned red,
then, sighing, fell back
in his chair and cried.
Breaking a long pause,
he asked, "You're telling me
I'm alcoholic? How in hell
would you know, in your
'pretty' white picturebook
middle-class hospital coat?"
His face suddenly tensed.
He pursed his lips
and lifted himself from the chair.
He stood tall, straight up,
bulging with pride
for all the ground-in years
of his laboring trade,
shouting,
"Stay out of my head.
Stay OUT of my head!"
and slammed the door behind him.
I longed to lower my eyes and cry.
But, from the bottom drawer
of my desk, just one small glass
of vodka and a chlorophyll candy
taste so damn good in the morning.
--Edward Hirsch
(published in BLOOD & BONE)
August 22, 2009
The Night We Pitch It
Until the TV sails through wet, black air,
the bowling balls at the Strand
seem heavy, the linoleum floor in the cage
elevator shaved too thin. Until the TV sails
into the valley of railroad tracks, silent
as a fuse, our flat Iron City drafts
at Lasek's bore into our stomachs
and stew. A steel worker; two roofers, and a printer,
our jobs seem dead ends of our youth
that Sunday night in May when Agnole
says at the light, I got a busted black and white
in the trunk to get rid of. The answer
surfaces inevitable as hills, Throw it
off the bridge. Until the TV booms into the empty
coal car, a shower of sparks and glass,
and we hoot and high-five, speeding off in the car
like crack high school commandos,
we aren't sure whose side time is on,
playing tackle in the mud, buttoning our nights
with Space Invaders at the Luna,
considering marriage. But there it is, that sound
filling up the deep beneath us,
and Jim shouting in the car above the rest,
By tomorrow it'll be in Chicago.
--Peter Blair
(published in LAST HEAT)
Aufust 21, 2009
Woman Bathing
Naches River. Just below the falls.
Twenty miles from any town. A day
of dense sunlight
heavy with odors of love.
How long have we?
Already your body, sharpness of Picasso,
is drying in the highland air.
I towel down your back, your hips,
with my undershirt.
Time is a mountain lion.
We laugh at nothing,
And as I touch your breasts
even the ground--
squirrels
are dazzled.
--Raymond Carver
(published in A NEW PATH TO THE WATERFALL)
August 20, 2009
HEART’S PRAYER
My sister whom I was once able to love
and now am
unable to find
hopefully you
will one day
and hopefully
one day soon
be able to
understand how
you turn gold
into straw
how you
scratch those trying
to get close
to you
understand,
relax
let people
hug you again--
I can do
nothing
except pray
and cry
and pray for
the day
you relax
and let
people get close again.
--Tim Van Ert
(from IF YOU LIVE, YOUR TIME WILL COME)
August 19, 2009
There's Youth Still
A man has written his feelings--
Can it be done?
Has he found the path from ink to soul?
The truth certainly is:
It burns in my heart.
Can I release it as flame, or only as acid?
As children we embraced;
Loved with a passionate flame pure as Truth's!
No longer feel myself innocent, nor see you child.
An artist, a scholar, a physician, a poet.
A philosopher, a disciple, a scientist, a dreamer.
A selfish brat--ah, there's youth still!
--Tim Van Ert
(from COLLECTED WORDS)
August 18, 2009
Unable to Stand
White body leans against the plate glass
letting sun rays pour hot onto skin
to flush it port red around the breaks
with their spilt lymph like the lava rocks
my bare, roaming feet recall too well.
Seeing blurred blue smoke thread
hills' rifts while weighed down
by summer's inversion,
I recall the drowning
pull of passion's syrups.
Summer sprinklers make sense to me,
shoosh, shoosh, shoosh...splatter-splatter-splatter
because I think I grasp hydraulics.
A tomato plant speaks out by begging,
through its drooping, for relief from drought.
It is strange enough producing
technicolor dreams nightly
from beneath basal ganglia,
but how does my TV know
to grab invisible power
surges and create sensible
images entrancing enough
to reverse the tide of literacy?
In mockery of mind
both knees buckle;
I cannot stand
not understanding.
--Tim Van Ert
(published in NOTHING ELSE MATTERS)
August 17, 2009
Batman
Temptations to gamble keep
nibbling on me
like memories of that bat
(plunging toward my warm-bodied
signal of a head,
exciting two frenzies with each swoop)
gnaw insistently:
catching me in the dark,
naked, unshielded.
I feel the expansion of time
in the compression
of each breath.
Exhaling, I seize
time enough to dream
of metamorphosis:
caterpillar climbing
inch by inch,
day by day,
struggling to budge
to that sheltered safety
where we all long
to hang topsy-turvy
in our changes.
Drawing there pictures found
of the world within,
and then full around;
recording words, images,
rhythms, sounds--drawing
heaven and hell to earth,
their hallowed place of birth.
Now ready to cast off the skin
of sacrificial totem,
I wave past him.
He waves erratically,
unstoppable...
--Tim Van Ert
(from CREATE THAT LOVE THAT LOVE CREATES)
August 16, 2009
Small Haiku Opera
The cat leapt from the
railing to the deck as if
I did not exist.
I watched the cat leap
as if there were nothing else
as real in the world.
A child with cancer
dies in Portland wishing he
had a cat to hold.
His mother, crying,
tries to imagine holding
her son forever.
If I could, I would
hold this stranger until she
cried herself to sleep.
The cat is sleeping
on the blanket I laid out
by a bowl of milk.
--Scott Lubbock
(published in ON THE WAY TO WATER)
August 15, 2009
Vacation Trip
The loudest sound in our car
was Mother being glum:
Little chiding valves
a surge of detergent oil
all that deep chaos
the relentless accurate fire
the drive shaft wild to arrive
And tugging along behind in its great big
balloon,
that looming piece of her mind:
"I wish I hadn't come."
--William Stafford
(published in THE WAY IT IS)
August 14, 2009
Aborderlinosis
Angry? First hurt, now this...
Don't you know
how hurt and anger
neighbor?
When their fence falls
revealed are no fine
neighbors,
but ranging flood waters
fluidly looting each other's
vacancies.
Don't you know
any good
contractors?
--Tim Van Ert
(from CREATE THAT LOVE THAT LOVE CREATES)
August 13, 2009
Slide
Did I hear any of that from you
Or are these just the echoes
From the avalanche I experienced
As I felt my heart sliding
Down from its lofty perch?
--Tim Van Ert
(from CREATE THAT LOVE THAT LOVE CREATES)
August 12, 2009
Wandering Away
Like
a corpse I lay in the waste land,
And I heard God's voice cry out,
"Arise, prophet, and see and hear,
Be charged with my will--
And go out over seas and lands
To fire men's heart with the word."
--Alexander Pushkin
With wisdom too weak to weather
Weight of wanton ego, wander
West--unaware of what to do
When wakened with world-wide water
Washing your way in wind-whitened
Wonderfully overwhelming waves.
--Tim Van Ert
(published in NOTHING ELSE MATTERS)
August 11, 2009
Essays
My lines slur
summer's essays
on human being:
breath blown
too softly.
--Tim Van Ert
(from A FIRST EDITION OF HAI-CHOO: LITTLE SNEEZES
OF PROFOUND DITTY-CISM)
August 10, 2009
Waiting
Soft yet sharp like the junco's call
sunlight knifes between clouds.
Soft, then sharp.
As brigade after brigade of moments,
the hours march through me--
soft ahead of sharp.
Their earth rumble awakens desire:
thirst for soft,
hunger for sharp.
Mosquitoes light on me soft
before sharp.
--Tim Van Ert
(published in SEEDS ON A WIND RIDE)
August 9, 2009
Elsewhere
Sitting at a checkered tablecloth
listening to myself breathe
I feel like the man who invented
the boredom of accordian music.
I would like to compose
an image of my life
whose sheer weight
is quiet enough
to last a lifetime.
But to be alone like this
shakes the blossoms
from the stick trees
again and again.
I think how grief exactly fits
the size of anything living,
how it's infinitely expandable,
but I am no more than a mote
floating through the small blue sky
of someone's mind, darkening
his rights and privileges.
Knowing this, I am lifted up
and then there is a calm, a settlement
of white blossoms,
trees like massive nerves
holding up the sky.
--Jack Myers
(published in AS LONG AS YOU'RE HAPPY)
August 8, 2009
Storm Windows
People are putting up storm windows now.
Or were, this morning, until the heavy rain
Drove them indoors. So, coming home at noon,
I saw storm windows lying on the ground,
Frame-full of rain; through the water and glass
I saw the crushed grass, how it seemed to stream
Away in lines like seaweed on the tide
Or blades of wheat leaning under the wind.
The ripple and splash of rain on the blurred glass
Seemed that it briefly said, as I walked by,
Something I should have like to say to you,
Something...the dry grass bent under the pane
Brimful of bouncing water...something of
A swaying clarity which blindly echoes
This lonely afternoon of memories
And missed desires, while the wintry rain
(Unspeakable, the distance in the mind!)
Runs on the standing windows and away.
--Howard Nemerov
(published in THE WINTER LIGHTNING)
August 7, 2009
The Five Year Indian
Frankie was a pony baby,
baptized without food bowls
or ceremony fires in a gold
defaced church near the reservation.
No feathers, no beads nor stains
adorned his head for twenty one years.
Five years ago, he was Mexico race,
so enrollment cards say.
Today with feathers flying,
hair growing, beads banding,
leather fringing and ATM card waving,
he is one of us.
--Lew Blockcolski
(published in COME TO POWER, Ed. Dick Lourie)
August 6, 2009
Post Card
Inert for aeons like magma spills
table's tumbled debris collects topsoil.
Neglected mail, Coke cans askew--
the spent surround the unopened.
Mayo stand once rescued from Wally's Thrift
lies lost between boulders of crushed boxes.
Piles of clothes stripped of hangers
form wrinkle labyrinths without exit.
Lemon-lime cans harnessed in six-pack plastic
bear the dust of nowhere to go.
Silver and orange shears perched at a stabbing angle
menace inhabitants of a warped white box.
Through this you travel nightly
leaving no trace of trail or change.
I worry that when you offered us your room last night
you meant it as a postcard from your deathbed.
--Tim Van Ert
(published in POETRY JOURNAL)
August 5, 2009
Tumbleweed Soul
When my soul tumbles
oh it tumbles.
I guess what I want to know
is when my soul tumbles so
where does it,
where do I,
where do we go?
--Tim Van Ert
(from A FIRST EDITION OF HAI-CHOO: LITTLE SNEEZES
OF PROFOUND DITTY-CISM)
August 4, 2009
Cockroaches
Cockatrice of shields,
having not read Newton or Einstein,
flickers head-first down
the moist pumice wall
pausing, I surmise, to die.
Meet a lit roach waiting,
inflamed with hunger,
in a skirmish only one can survive.
His chocolate syrup smear
on earth stone dais
warns the others.
The phone rings, to be answered
by a mockingbird at play--
or scolding (like June evening wind
shaking the budding birches below)
this hunter his trespass?
--Tim Van Ert
(published in NOTHING ELSE MATTERS)
August 3, 2009
Sharing Your Wealth
You just go ahead,
read those books on the shelves--
I read your bank account
through the windows
while you're both at work.
Money all over the house!
Sure, somes's tucked away real cozy.
Small bits sparkle in my flash light.
Necklace over my fingers,
pulling it ever so slowly,
I feel your wealth--
I want your wealth.
We both know I'll never
really get it,
but I'm here today to steal it.
Like your family 'hoods the best,
so easy to get in.
Petty rich folks is what I call you;
all the same:
take this stuff for granted
till it's gone.
But then, you got insurance.
So I buy me another
hungry day of wretched life.
Or borrow it from ya,
if you like.
How many of your days
would you say
are missing now?
--Tim Van Ert
(from IF YOU LIVE, YOUR TIME WILL COME)
August 2, 2009
The Song of the Old Mother
I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow
Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow;
And then I must scrub and bake and sweep
Till stars are beginning to blink and peep
And the young lie long and dream in their bed
Of the matching of ribbons for bosom and head,
And their day goes over in idleness,
And they sigh if the wind but lift a tress:
While I must work because I am old,
And the seed of the fire gets feeble and cold.
--W.B. Yeats
(published in THE POEMS OF W.B. YEATS)
August 1, 2009
Song of the Soul
In the depth of my soul there is
A wordless song--a song that lives
In the seed of my heart.
It refuses to melt with ink on
Parchment; it engulfs my affection
In a transparent cloak and flows,
But not upon my lips.
How can I sigh it? I fear it may
Mingle with earthly ether;
To whom shall I sing it? It dwells
In the house of my soul, in fear of
Harsh ears.
When I look into my inner eyes
I see the shadow of its shadow;
When I touch my fingertips
I feel its vibrations.
The deeds of my hands heed its
Presence as a lake must reflect
The glittering stars; my tears
Reveal it, as bright drops of dew
Reveal the secret of a withering rose.
It is a song composed by contemplation,
And published by silence,
And shunned by clamour,
And folded by truth,
And repeated by dreams,
And understood by love,
And hidden by awakening,
And sung by the soul.
It is the song of love;
What Cain or Esau could sing it?
It is more fragrant than jasmine;
What voice could enslave it?
It is heartbound, as a virgin's secret;
What string could quiver it?
Who dares unite the roar of the sea
And the singing of the nightingale?
Who dares compare the shrieking tempest
To the sigh of an infant?
Who dares speak aloud the words
Intended for the heart to speak?
What human dares sing in voice
The song of God?
--Kahlil Gibran
(published in A TREASURY OF KAHLIL GIBRAN)