November 2009 Poems of the Day

Poem of the Day

NOVEMBER

November 30, 2009

U-N-I-verses

                    (...the gravitational collapse of certain 3-dimensional distributions of matter
                    leads to the formation of a 'naked' singularity--an exposed point in space
                    where physical quantities such as density and gravitational force become
                    infinite...and the theory of relativity breaks. down. This violation of cosmic
                    censorship represents a potential disaster for general relativity.)
                                                                                                from SCIENCE NEWS

                                                Clara keeps her exposed lemon on
                                                the butter dish
                                                she says this goes way back in time.

                                                Stephen Hawking says we live in 7 more dimensions
                                                we aren't aware of because they are curled up
                                                like the surface of a lemon's skin.

                                                Small perturbations we don't sense from
                                                our great distance
                                                perhaps something like the history
                                                of the whole she-bang.

                                                Clara bristled with feigned offense
                                                on the night a war ended
                                                (I shudder to think what a 10-dimensional
                                                war is like)

                                                I don't think it was Clara's war that ended
                                                definitely somebody else's
                                                somebody she just can't see through
                                                probably because he is, too, dimensional.

                                                Twice to give
                                                once to receive
                                                as life turns inside out
                                                see love peeling from rough
                                                and smooth surfaces.
                                                We have a long way to go before
                                                we really know lemon peels;
                                                not full, not yet complete,
                                                a sphere fleshed
                                                from crescentic pulses.

--TimVan Ert
(from CREATE THAT LOVE THAT LOVE CREATES)

November 29, 2009

Notes from the Delivery Room

Strapped down,

victim in an old comic book,

I have been here before,

this place where pain winces

off the walls

like too bright light.

bear down a doctor says,

foreman to sweating laborer,

but this work, this forcing

of one life from another

is something that I signed for

at a moment when I would have signed anything.

Babies should grow in fields;

common as beets or turnips

they should be picked and held

root end up, soil spilling

from between their toes--

and how much easier it would be later,

returning them to earth.

Bear up...bear down...the audience

grows restive, and I'm a new magician

who can't produce the rabbit

from my swollen hat.

She's crowning, someone says,

but there is no one royal here,

just me, quite barefoot,

greeting my barefoot child.

--Linda Pastan

(published in SUTURED WORDS

contemporary poetry about medicine.)

November 28, 2009

Farmyard at Chassy

From the window of your sickroom, you look out

across the farmyard to the arch of the front gate.

A man in a blue coat stands in the road. It's raining

and his reflection glimmers in the water at his feet.

To your left and right, the stone farm buildings

seem deserted, although you smell the damp smell

of hay and manure, and sometimes you hear your horse

stamp once in the barn, then fall silent. For a week,

you have lain bored and feverish, and looking out

this wet afternoon, you see no living thing except

the man in the roadway, but he stands so quietly

you begin to doubt him, wondering if he is some

trick of the eye, some accidental configuration

of branches resembling a man. But you know very well

you haven't imagined him and you begin to worry

he might demand something from you, something as

inescapable as taxation or death; and you become so

uncertain, you want to erase the very thought of him

and in your fever you decide it's you standing there,

that you are on your way to warm lands to the south,

and for a moment you have halted at this farmyard

without animals or even wet pigeons ducked beneath

rickety eaves, a farmyard so poor that you doubt

it could even keep a man alive, and you shiver

briefly, glad that you don't live here, and pass on.

--Stephen Dobyns

(published in SUTURED WORDS

contemporary poetry about medicine)

November 27, 2009

First Deer

I trailed

your guts

a mile through snow

before my second bullet

stopped it all.

Believe me now,

there was a boy

who fed butterflies sugar water

and kept hurt birds

in boxes in his room.

--Joseph Bruchac

(published in COME TO POWER)

November 26, 2009

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of Innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the dessert

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

--William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

(published in THE PREMIER BOOK OF MAJOR POETS)

November 25, 2009

Heavenly Bodies

Behold you now this Western man's

Orbits of will, control and plans.

Life's energy thriving on same

To burn with a pride steady--

Strong, unapproachable flame.

Yet who bears therein Womankind,

Seduction of another Mind..?

Would you could observe, absorb

Feeling depths moving you? Soft,

Mysterious, provoking Orb.

--Tim Van Ert

(from COLLECTED WORDS)

November 24, 2009

Schwarze Sauer Cafe

The monk slides in--body moist,

emotions dry--to dribble out

verbrechener deutsche.

Drunk tangos in--passion aroused,

manners not--to spew french over

unwelcoming body parts.

Barmaid waits, confiding

with Freundin her vision of flying

away in eine Stunde.

Fraulein blue-eyes--which barely cool

fire of her self-reddened hair

and 'sex-mich' sharp face--rises

to show pumped-up legs delicious

in fishnet, twin mounds holding

shirt-dress in a flutter just below butt.

Best to say lust leans both ways.

And surely away from the drunkard

combing fat fingers through wavy hair

as imagination loosens mine through theirs.

I chew the orange slices just cut

from their wholeness and drop straws

to get warmer on the Sidecar

(Cognac, Contreau and lemon)

as I watch Berlin whiz by.

--Tim Van Ert

(published in SEEDS ON A WIND RIDE)

November 23, 2009

Cut a Cross

Swirling in the tidal pulls

of Katie's oceanic gaze

is her riptide

ripping a cross

across her vulnerability;

signing to

deaf-muted feelings

buried, ironically,

so much more than skin deep

that even her mother,

like so many others,

would dive right in--

penetrating that naive mystery

as so tragically

had been enacted before

these currents pulled Katie

to the brink

of its disintegrating reclamation.

Katie's trespasses

to these forbidden shores

have sounded

so many alarms--

have you heard them?

felt their piercing

screams?

their gut-wrenching

grip?

their subtle, insistent

cooing?

Like the day she

asked you if she had

skin cancer,

and you could only

wonder what

she was doing this for?

You know she has asked

much more of so many,

but these many she

keeps inside

so their muffled

replies

surface only in

disguise

and do not help her

master sociology

let alone her own

body, soul and

spirit.

Spare her we pray--

do not (yet again)

spear her.

--Tim Van Ert

(from CREATE THAT LOVE THAT LOVE CREATES)

November 22, 2009

An Old Song Ended

'How should I your true love know

From another one?'

'By his cockle-hat and staff

And his sandal-shoon.'

'And what have told you now

That he hastens home?'

'Lo! the spring is nearly gone,

He is nearly come.'

'For a token is there nought,

Say, that he should bring?'

'He will bear a ring I gave

And another ring.'

'How may I, when he shall ask,

Tell him who lies there?'

'Nay, but leave my face unveiled

And unbound my hair.'

'Can you say to me some word

I shall say to him?'

'Say I'm looking in his eyes

Though my eyes are dim.'

--Dante Gabriel Rosetti

(published in A BOOK OF LOVE POETRY)

November 21, 2009

The Planned Child

I hated the fact that they had planned me, she had taken

a cardboard out of his shirt from the laundry

as if sliding the backbone up out of his body,

and made a chart of the month and put

her temperature on it, rising and falling,

to know the day to make me--I would have

liked to have been conceived in heat,

in haste, by mistake, in love, in sex,

not on cardboard, the little x on the

rising line that did not fall again.

But when a friend was pouring wine

and said that I seem to have been a child who had been wanted,

I took the wine against my lips

as if my mouth were moving along

that valved wall in my mother's body, she was

bearing down, and then breathing from the mask, and then

bearing down, pressing me out into

the world that was not enough for her without me in it,

not the moon, the sun, Orion

cartwheeling across the dark, not

the earth, the sea--none of it

was enough, for her, without me.

--Sharon Olds

(published in THE WELLSPRING)

November 20, 2009

{The Lay of the Land, or Gender Geography}

Geography of a Woman

-Between 18 and 22, a woman is like Africa: half
discovered, half wild, fertile and naturally beautiful.

                                            -Between 23 and 30, a woman is like Europe:
                                             well-developed and open to trade, especially for
                                             someone of real value.

-Between 31 and 35, a woman is like Spain: very
hot, relaxed, and convinced of her own beauty.

-Between 36 and 40, a woman is like Greece: gently
aging but still a warm and desirable place to visit.

-Between 41 and 50, a woman is like Great Britain:
with a glorious and all-conquering past.

                                            -Between 51 and 60, a woman is like Israel: she
                                             has been through war, doesn't make the same
                                             mistakes twice and takes care of business.

-Between 61 and 70, a woman is like Canada:
self-preserving, but open to meeting new people.

                                            -After 70, she becomes Tibet: wildly beautiful
                                             with a mysterious past and the wisdom of the ages,
                                             and adventurous spirit and a thirst for spiritual knowledge.

Map of a Man

-Between 1 and 90, men are like the citizens of Iran:
ruled by their nuts...

--compiled by Phil Proctor

(published in FUNNY TIMES, November 2009)

November 19, 2009

Holly Day Night

Staring night's roads through its many eyes

I sit waiting

These twin lights will stop

Playing games with me

Games of surprise

Smoke and smell stop

Surrounding silver streak

Reveal the driver burning her flame

Rolling through a time and space for

Smoke, presence, ears to listen, joy to speak

So what's a hundred miles Holly

A possibility of breakdown turned chance

To let down, to open up

To personal revelations of folly

Now who stood beside that road felt cold

Turning deeper courting with despair

Of ever finding that sufficient warmth

Only a facet of the many

Let's the highway our river

Our present moments a dream

The moments melt to magic

Tastes of which coax

Euphoric shiver

--Tim Van Ert

(from COLLECTED WORDS)

November 18, 2009

BEFORE THIS DAY IS DONE

Setting sun tosses dozens of pink

rose buds across the sky

as my car slows on our drive.

White puffs of dandelion hope

settle into tentative stillness

the way quivering lips silence.

Bee brushes black poppy pistil

clean of the sweet marrow

meant to fertilize a red tomorrow.

Pressed-wood door sweeps in

day's end inspiration

from across begonia blossoms.

Delicious daughterwoman crush me welcome

with your petal-dropping embrace

and its flesh dew taste.

At the close of each long day

there's no place I'd rather bring

my pistil home to play!

--Tim Van Ert

(from IF YOU LIVE YOUR TIME WILL COME)

November 17, 2009

Mesmerized

Witness hushed parade:

three generations bearing

down cramping aisle.

The only music to be heard

above winds blowing

hundreds of miles per hour

somehow slips unattended

through headless headsets.

For-abundant mother presents

blossom-eyed daughter

(clasping archetypal progeny

in caring arms)

who halts their march here.

Mesmer asleep in his seat,

a face in his hand,

holds this budding woman

in unconscious sway.

Mother, finger-to-mouth,

pantomimes to no avail.

The spell is not broken:

three times the child beholds man,

then her Mother's signal.

Finally she smiles,

rocks her doll knowingly,

stands rapt in her vigil.

Mother wouldn't speak,

daughter wouldn't know what to say,

and the sleeping man couldn't know

what to make of this play.

Mysteriously as his spell had been cast,

the child seemed freed from it.

Now the mother speaks, "I'm sorry"

as she was caught by his web.

"No--please excuse my obtrusive foot!"

And the march goes on.

--Tim Van Ert

(from CREATE THAT LOVE THAT LOVE CREATES)

November 16, 2009

In Louvre Again

At the Louvre's new swimming pool

children go wading in undies,

man goes belly up with his best friend

(who has more teats showing by ten).

All are recorded by cameras of every angle

as my feet are cooled,

but my loins heated, by fallen sleeve

on one of Paris' many fallen angels.

Courtyard's modern monstrosity--

wild beyond all previous inhabitants'

capacity to dream.

Yet the crowd dreams

of endless vacation times under such

clear and warm skies

with fountains of water

moving to lap at tired feet.

Yes we dream,

so we build this new monster

in the embrace of the monster of yore.

--Tim Van Ert

(from CREATE THAT LOVE THAT LOVE CREATES)

November 15, 2009

From This Distance

He would take a small folded paper from his pocket--

"I have been diagnosed with schizophrenia"--

the same moment you wanted to kiss him.

What was he wringing in his hands all those years?

The chicken refused to smoke a cigarette.

Seven white stones circled a thistle.

You would have gone with him,

but he climbed a high fence.

There was always this Y in the road.

Red checkered jacket draped

over picnic table.

Arrangement of broken bottles

in the doorway of the Paris Hatters.

He would take a word and remove its shirt.

The open heart of the o, the wink of an e,

the long trapped mystery of the crossed t;

and the squirrel gathering what it needed,

scrambling high into the branches,

dropping shells on his face

as he stood under the tree looking up.

--Naomi Shihab Nye

(published in FUEL)

November 14, 2009

I Know What I'm Missing

It's a birdcall from the treeline.

I hear it every day.

It's the loveliest of the songbirds

And I'm glad it comes this way

And I stop to listen

And forget what I've to do

And I know what I'm missing--

My friend

My friend.

It's fluttering in the palm fronds

With a flash of black and gold.

It's the whistling of the oriole

And its beauty turns me cold

And I stop to listen

And forget what I've to do

And I know what I'm missing--

My friend

My friend.

Do you wonder if I'll remember?

Do you wonder where I'll be?

I'll be home again next winter

And I hope you'll write to me.

When the branches glisten

And the frost is on the avenue

I'll now what I'm missing--

My friend

I'm missing you.

--James Fenton

(published in OUT OF DANGER)

November 13, 2009

NIGHT'S MELODY

Staccato pops of the young maple branch on fire--

insistent enough to be heard out on the porch.

Slow owl strains of Whooooo......Whoo..who-who

from the woods back-up the hill.

Bone-buzzing bass rumble from freight train

passing Parker's quiet mile with its noisome match.

Peeper calls tumble like a rock pile,

one upon another at the pond's shore.

Rain's raspy splashes vaporize

in their long fall to weathered tin.

Small bird cries like a baby wakened hungry

and wanting the company of warm milk.

--Tim Van Ert

(published in SEEDS ON A WIND RIDE)

November 12, 2009

wedding dream

thieves assasinate Buck's sleeping teeth in Ginsberg's wet dream

cursing night, nose flares over slabs where body leaves no sweat

it's mean to eat pizza in burlap sack without drunken student invited

kissing distant second cousin's winter salt water

top branches of her noisy mind chopped before they could wrestle

with electric wires strung taut as she was young

I did not care, except to write it down with my fingertips

still sticky with black cherry jelly

I could tell she cared about her thin eyebrows, but I did not have to look

June, I'm gonna bake you a delirious poem

I say on my way to our wedding tomb

and hug her to me, twirling her uniformly sweaty breasts

she laughs play time's over, back to work

and I ask the manager

would he never put her down again

--Tim Van Ert

(from IF YOU LIVE YOUR TIME WILL COME)

November 11, 2009

SWEET

Forward -- no need

for any retreat.

Stranger with each deed

is plenty good feat.

Never to feast on

what the cynic would eat.

Stay young to think clean,

unplug synthesizer's beat.

--Tim Van Ert

(A FIRST EDITION OF HAI-CHOO:
little sneezes of profound dittycism)

November 10, 2009

Meditation on a Death Sentence

Each day shuffle the corridors,

Head bowed as if to better catch

Mocking echoes that ricochet

Between anemic iron poles.

Moth dry with the smells and tastes

That shrivel for want of spring air.

Beetled eyes dash along the floor,

Rarely daring the spider's heights

Where reflections from outside

Meet to hide in cornered cobwebs.

Like a Sunday mass veil

This white lacework arouses

A reflex bob of the neck

To sign (for the hundredth time)

"Bless me Father, for I have sinned."

Glance up to see the sealed room

Where gases may be heard hissing

Like a priest's foreign vespers

Or niehgbors' guileless gossip,

"The time has come to take your throne."

Each day that I skip my mute walk,

Fail to sit supple upon

This hard bench bridging death's abyss,

I cry like the woman hours

After her scheduled abortion

As I miscarry my own hope

With an umbilical serverance

Of still-fetal being

Before it is ready to wail

In its own strong voice on this earth.

--Tim Van Ert

(published in NOTHING ELSE MATTERS)

November 9, 2009

Some Parts

Black hole is a life

creator fills partially

with some designer parts.

--Tim Van Ert

. (from A FIRST EDITION OF HAI-CHOO:
little sneezes of profound dittycism)

November 8, 2009

So Long

At least at night, a streetlight

is better than a star.

and better good shoes on a

long walk, than a good friend.

Often in winter with my old

cap I slip away into the gloom

like a happy fish, at home

with all I touch, at the level of love.

No one can surface till far,

far on, and all that we'll have

to love may be what's near

in the cold, even then.

--William Stafford

(published in THE WAY IT IS)

November 7, 2009

Living Apart

I leave our house, our town, familiar fields

Below me at take off when I fly to you

Deep in these shadows mountains. Now at dawn

I wake to the horse-clop of passing carriages

As if I'd passed through time as well as space.

Yesterday we saw an Amish farmer

Bearded and calm, stroking his horse's mane

Under a flaming maple as he watched

Hang-gliders drifting down from Hyner View.

We stopped to watch them, too. I was amazed

To see men falling toward the scarlet treetops

On out-spread wings. That's when I grabbed your hand

To tell myself we were alive and human

Not lost in hell which must resemble this--

A place where souls from many centuries

Stand side by side, united but unhappy,

To watch the angels fall from fiery mountains.

--Maura Stanton

(from NEW AMERICAN POETS of the 90s)

November 6, 2009

SCRAPS

                                trying to be
                                                        PART
                                                                        of the group

                                cuz I wasn't really
                                                            CONTRIBUTING
                                                                                          any thing

                                occurred when I was
                                                                COMING
                                                                                  up the hill

with a construction
PROJECT

                                and I saw some
                                                            PIECES
                                                                            bent, so I thought

                                I would cut
                                                    ADDITIONAL
                                                                                pieces

                                before I actually
                                                         WITNESS
                                                                            what was going on

--Tim Van Ert

(from COLLECTED WORDS)

November 5, 2009

NICHT GUT

Life without proper

niche

leaves one vulnerable

to existential

itch.

--Tim Van Ert

November 4, 2009

JEWEL IN A BASKET WOVEN

TO CARRY SMALL TREASURE

Madonna, your anguish

burns through the thin curtain

my consciousness drops at day's end.

May your soul cool down

to the warmth of love.

Do not relive Mount Saint Helens

by laying low trees of shade.

See me a leaf dried, dropped

and curled to be caught

on a wind ride to the river.

I haven't the oak's deep root

and hard wood you wish to hold.

How can a man be sorry

that he's not what he is not,

or is what he is?

I do not know the answer

to this nor a thousand questions.

Even before the Hubble spacecraft

I fathomed things going wrong

for a long, long time.

--Tim Van Ert

(published in SEEDS ON A WIND RIDE)

November 3, 2009

Mantra Crystal
with due respects to Ira Progoff

Whirlwinds blowing freely

Appetites passing through me

Appetites hurting deeply

Appetites passing through me

Light of Mind returns to see

Light of Mind who turns to see

Light of Mind it is but me

Light of Mind who turns to me

Light of Mind helps set me free

Light of Mind returns to sea

--Tim Van Ert

(from CREATE THAT LOVE THAT LOVE CREATES)

November 2, 2009

Listen to Her, Jim

I wonder not that you blink

To hear, "I will let you be."

For never was dream revealed

Dressed to match the dream concealed.

Keep your eyes wide as you feel your steps,

And fill me with that you think I give.

Eyes speaking, "Let love woo you from your fears."

Yours crying of yet others coming near.

Let it be that here we stand--

Moving more than time records.

--Tim Van Ert

(from COLLECTED WORDS)

November 1, 2009

Plane Life

TWA to Boston and

a woman in 'Ambassador' Class having a

heart attack while the

passengers wearing headphones are all

laughing hilarious at

a movie with

Dustin Hoffman in

which he

impersonates a woman and

they bring in the oxygen tank and

pump her up and

when she comes to she

starts crying and moaning over and over

O I am going to die

I am going to die

and the passengers all still roaring

the woman weeping and moaning

I am going to die!

but

she doesn't.

The movie continues

The passeners continue

The plane like life itself

sails on

carrying its helpless

passengers.

--Lawrence Ferlinghetti

(published in SUTURED WORDS comtemporary poetry about medicine, ed. Jon Mukand)