Poem of the Day
OCTOBER 2009
October 31, 2009
The Raven
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Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and
weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of
some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some
visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and
nothing more.'
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak
December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the
floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore -
For
the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Nameless
here for evermore.
And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each
purple curtain
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never
felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood
repeating
`'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door -
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; -
This it
is, and nothing more,'
Presently my soul grew stronger;
hesitating then no longer,
`Sir,' said I, `or Madam, truly your
forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently
you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my
chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you' - here I opened
wide the door; -
Darkness there, and nothing more.
Deep into
that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before
But
the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,
And the
only word there spoken was the whispered word, `Lenore!'
This I
whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, `Lenore!'
Merely this
and nothing more.
Back into the chamber turning, all my soul
within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than
before.
`Surely,' said I, `surely that is something at my window
lattice;
Let me see then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore -
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; -
'Tis the
wind and nothing more!'
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with
many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the
saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute
stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above
my chamber door -
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber
door -
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
Then this ebony
bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern
decorum of the countenance it wore,
`Though thy crest be shorn and
shaven, thou,' I said, `art sure no craven.
Ghastly grim and ancient
raven wandering from the nightly shore -
Tell me what thy lordly name
is on the Night's Plutonian shore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'
Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning - little relevancy bore;
For we
cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed
with seeing bird above his chamber door -
Bird or beast above the
sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as
`Nevermore.'
But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust,
spoke only,
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did
outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered - not a feather then he
fluttered -
Till I scarcely more than muttered `Other friends have
flown before -
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown
before.'
Then the bird said, `Nevermore.'
Startled at the
stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
`Doubtless,' said I, `what
it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy
master whom unmerciful disaster
Followed fast and followed faster
till his songs one burden bore -
Till the dirges of his hope that
melancholy burden bore
Of "Never-nevermore."'
But the raven
still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a
cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door;
Then, upon the
velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking
what this ominous bird of yore -
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly,
gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking `Nevermore.'
This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the
fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more
I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion's
velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er,
But whose velvet
violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er,
She shall
press, ah, nevermore!
Then, methought, the air grew denser,
perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls
tinkled on the tufted floor.
`Wretch,' I cried, `thy God hath lent
thee - by these angels he has sent thee
Respite - respite and
nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind
nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'
`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or
devil! -
Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here
ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted -
On this home by horror haunted - tell me truly, I implore -
Is there
- is there balm in Gilead? - tell me - tell me, I implore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'
`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil!
- prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us
- by that God we both adore -
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if,
within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the
angels named Lenore -
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the
angels named Lenore?'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'
`Be that
word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!' I shrieked upstarting -
`Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
Take thy
beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!'
Quoth
the raven, `Nevermore.'
And the raven, never flitting, still is
sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my
chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is
dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on
the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the
floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!
Edgar Allan Poe
[First published in 1845] |
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October 30, 2009
Poem In Three Parts
I
Oh, on an early morning I think I shall
live forever!
I am wrapped in my joyful flesh,
As the grass is wrapped in its clouds of
green.
II
Rising from a bed, where I dreamt
Of long rides past castles and hot coals,
The sun lies happily on my knees;
I have suffered and survived the night,
Bathed in dark water, like any blade of
grass.
III
The strong leaves of the box-elder tree,
Plunging in the wind, call us to disappear
Into the wilds of the universe,
Where we shall sit at the foot of a plant,
And live forever, like the dust.
--Robert Bly
(published in COMTEMPORARY AMERICAN POETRY)
October 29, 2009
Mouse Turds
They paw and crinkle through attic
anterooms as prelude to my dreams
the way cartoons used to come
before the main attraction.
But tonight they are vinegar
dribbled on a love-sated palate
as their intimate intrusion summons
Dylan Thomas's pitifully repugnant
lament of the foul mouse hole.
Hired-gun thoughts of traps, warfarin
nibble noisily in my mind.
Obsessed, I charge the attic.
Finding nothing else, I finger
tiny turds from fecund invaders.
These torment with memories
of mummies picked up in the past:
bloated behind the polished rice,
clan parched beneath the stove,
leathery loner under the couch.
Why do they torment me--
and leave no ripples on my
wife's unconscious waters?
It's only when your' home still,
quiet, I hear you grumble.
It's true, I can stay away
or keep the volume way up high--
then there is no nibbling.
--Tim Van Ert
(published in NOTHING ELSE MATTERS)
October 28, 2009
Don't Whine, Wino
Where do you go,
you of the meso-muscular mind
(traipsed through pre-dawn)
after coming upon empty--
where to reach
when squalling infant mouth
slips from calming nipple?
Drag down in your boots,
churn through cockerels thigh deep
to kick open vaults
of last year's Merlot--
end artery spurting memories
on trial repeatedly
with hung juries.
At the end of your tether
(bobbing erratic as lightning)
there is the struggle,
the tussle with learning.
Your yearning is like dreaming--
seeming too real, too cruel.
So, follow the sun down
to another day's blackout--
or ten, eleven, twelve steps
to a hight power.
There, back on the ranch,
hundreds of people are clapping
to welcome you home.
--Tim Van Ert
(published in NOTHING ELSE MATTERS)
October 27, 2009
Teachher
I felt there were things I'd
Experienced
That I just had to teach to you.
I felt there were things you
Had always known
That you could not help but give me.
Who are you?
You who are who
I've felt I've felt?
Release me!
I've got the key--
God, who knows me?
--Tim Van Ert
(from COLLECTED WORDS)
October 26, 2009
Stay at Bay
Warm skips orange
bouncing from shattered rock
to eye of shattered
being
bounced further from all
light sources.
Warm moves blue
penetrating pulsatile flesh
through heart tattered
blowing
gushed beyond reasonable
bounds
Shroud covers love
hiding in animate fear
beyond the many calls
biting
thrust upon deefenseles
s elves
Dark permeates all
exposing the many cells
to each others'
building
touched about, within or
out
Bright breezes sun
sailing its tireless rockets
over the water body
bidding
return to endless
self.
--Tim Van Ert
(from COLLECTED WORDS)
October 25, 2009
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In a week or ten days
the snow and ice
will melt from
Cemetery Road.
I'm coming! Don't move!
Once again
it is April.
Today is the day
we would have been married
twenty-six years.
I finished with April
halfway
through March.
You think that their
dying is the worst
thing that could happen.
Then they stay dead.
Will
Hall ever write
lines that do anything
but whine and
complain?
In April the blue
mountain revises
from
white to green.
The Boston Red Sox win
a hundred
straight games.
The mouse rips
the throat of the lion
and the dead return.
--Donald
Hall
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October 24, 2009
The Old Must Watch Us
The old must watch us as we walk the streets,
And ghosts of flesh must summon in their brains
The autumns of a fallen past,
The lovers' wood in which no tree remains.
And then the memory of bits of leaf
Caught in the loosened hair; by heavy seas
The wind that rasped across their skin,
And all the body's changing cruelties,
Must make them hate us as we walk the streets,
Hand in hand and brushing hip to thigh,
And they must think we love, and know
That they can only watch and wait to die.
When skin hangs loose upon your shaken limbs,
Remember love you feared when you were young.
Then read this on a weary night,
And roll these vowels on a shrunken tongue.
--Donald Hall
(published in SUTURED WORDS contemporary poetry about medicine)
October 23, 2009
Sailing Stones
Ever since then I try to find one
the size and weight of a silver dollar--
twenty something bounces
across Lake Shasta after Grandpa hunches,
cocks his arm and delivers
that silver '21 Flying Eagle.
But they never fly like that one:
mostly one hop and a flop right dab
in the middle of its own little ripple.
Still it's worth it. I can't resist the urge.
Bent forward with my simple missile
I stare at the orange setting sun,
picture a direct hit on that big, burning rock.
Heart races its red rivers to overflow
in salty streams to sting eyes and cool cheeks.
On adrenaline rushes my aging body
backslides to ten years old--an unrivalled ride
once life has become more complicated
than playing, eating and doing chores.
On the bay shore a nautilus shell
hints of the sea world program
that impressed the image of a soft creature
growing larger and older
to make its shell stronger and more striking.
I pocket it for a souvenir--
it wasn't made for skipping, anyway.
--Tim Van Ert
(published in NORTHWEST PASSAGE)
October
22, 2009
Flowering
Creative warden
of mind garden;
you've gotta tend it,
you'll need to mend it--
but in the end it
will get grown
with a life of its own.
--Tim Van Ert
(from A FIRST EDITION OF HAI-CHOO:
little sneezes of profound dittycism)
October 21, 2009
Midnight Musings
A music carolled favourably low,
The voice I love floated, easily airborne
Upon the pre-dawn's smouldering glow.
Her warm voice fanned ears blazed as with coal
As I savored the art work of her lips
Etching love's lithographs on my soul.
I'd come in my post-modern mythic way
To be at this incongruous wooded desk
Seduced by hopes a muse would light and stay.
Surely stationed at this midnight's table
Vulnerable to dark forces of the night,
A sentry at that frontier of fable.
I've guests enough not to be caught unawares
With a great storm introduced through displays
Of billows, flashes, claps and attendant airs.
Hearing no footsteps fall, nor signal call
To announce visitation from this spirit
Whose soft embraces hold my soul enthralled.
Yet I hear your pleas sing out in chorus,
Breathy vespers of the breeze: cooing, mourning
Doves perched on moaning boughs in the forest.
Speak, speak now while the clouds have cleared
Before the morning's glaring light intrudes
To show illusions have disappeared.
The refrain, "Let not fear give you flight"
Echoes your words pouring in to melt me:
"Stay, allow this dark to yield light!"
--Tim Van Ert
(from CREATE THAT LOVE THAT LOVE CREATES)
October 20, 2009
Eye Speak Easy
I
seek
to grow
to know
what need
t o f e e
d
I R E E
K !
A
I
squeak
speak
or rumble
of forces
d o n' t m u m b l e
of c o u r s es
be s t r o n g be s o n g not shown, yet
known
W H A T C H E E K !! D O
S E E K ! !
--Tim Van Ert
(from COLLECTED WORDS)
October 19, 2009
She Elves
Our selves:
they're like shelves
full of things,
full of things,
full of wings...
--Tim Van Ert
(from CREATE
THAT LOVE THAT LOVE CREATES)
October 18, 2009
Fear of Gray's Anatomy
I will not look in it again.
There the heart in section is a gas mask,
its windows gone, its hoses severed.
The spinal cord is a zipper
& the lower digestive tract
has been squeezed from a tube like toothpaste.
All my life I had hoped someday to own
at least myself, only to find I am
Flood's ligaments, the areola of Mamma,
& the zonule of Zinn, Ruffini's endings
end in me, & the band of Gennari lies near
the island of Reil. Though I am a geography
greater than even I surmised, containing as I do
spaces & systems, promontories & at least
one reservoir, pits, tunnels, crescents,
demilunes & a daughter star, how can I celebrate
my incomplete fissures, my hippocampus &
inferior mental processes, my depressions
& internal extremities? I encompass also
ploughshare and gladiolus, iris & wing,
and the bird's nest of my cerebellum,
yet wherever I go I bear the crypts of Lieberkuhn,
& among the possible malfunctionaries,
floating ribs & wandering cells, Pott's fracture,
mottles, abductors, lachrymal bones & aberrant ducts.
I will ask my wife to knit a jacket for this book,
& pretend it's a brick doorstop.
I will not open Gray's Anatomy again.
--Brendan Galvin
(published in SUTURED WORDS: contemporary poetry about medicine)
October 17, 2009
Piute Creek
One granite ridge
A tree, would be enough
Or even a rock, a small
creek,
A bark shred in a pool.
Hill beyond hill, folded
and twisted
Tough trees crammed
In thin stone fractures
a huge moon on it all, is
too much.
The mind wanders. A
million
Summers, night air still
and the rocks
Warm. Sky over
endless mountains.
All the junk that goes with
being human
Drops away, hard rock
wavers
Even the heavy present
seems to fail
This bubble of a heart.
Words and books
Like a small creek off a
high ledge
Gone in the dry air.
A clear, attentive mind
Has no meaning but that
Which sees is truly seen.
No one loves rock, yet we
are here.
Night chills. A flick
In the moonlight
Slips into Juniper shadow:
Back there unseen
Cold proud eyes
Of Cougar or Coyote
Watch me rise and go.
--Gary Snyder
(published in RIPRAP, &
COLD MOUNTAIN POEMS)
October 16, 2009
DRUNKARD'S DREAM
Since life's alluring vices
Always command high prices
I'll state what my advice
is:
Store value some virtuous
way
So you can tender, you can
play
For escape from life's
rainy day!
--Tim Van Ert
October 15, 2009
LOVE
I go through
the motions—
She goes through
e motions:
WHERE?
--Tim Van Ert
Octtober 14, 2009
Alive In Order
I'm alive because I was born
into a universe whose order
I cannot fully fathom.
I live in order to
daily discover this universe
into which I've arrived.
In my life Being shapes
for me the arrow of Will, whose
bowstring is supplied by Ambition
with feathers gathered
from Moral valuse.
--Tim Van Ert
October 13, 2009
What You Hear
Without removing cap or gloves
I slump smooth in polythene chair.
From algal green and rust red gutter
stuffed with leaf litter and rain water
plastic plops and steady dribble
provide bass rhythm reminiscent
of a maddening means of torture.
Until spring peepers harmonize
to the wind-sprung chimes
and thistle-seed-cheered wrens.
Spring-promise symphony! I sing out
to my cats dry and dubious at the door.
Alfie braves puddles with one wet paw
held flexed, drawn more
by bird song than mine.
Peepers pause as currents still
to let down a drizzle of rain
and we both retreat. OK,
another soggy Oregon sunset, then!
--all irony wasted on those felines.
--Tim Van Ert
(published in NORTHWEST PASSAGE)
October 12, 2009
Respite
Whispers still paw with their feline lunacy.
Streamed behind the hired tugs
of life's masquerading fascinations
shredded feelings flap in vibrant array.
The need is not another world to run to:
a knoll's cool, green shawl of solace
where thick memory lifts, drifts and drips,
confusing sweat while forcing fibers of muscle,
bundles of nerves, to flatten in their fibrous sacs
(soiling infant soldiers drafted to action--
not missiles of innate heroism rushing headlong.)
Rather seek that seminary where wattles
are unwoven by longed-for discourses.
Feel damp marbled slabs,
smell the lime of molding mortar
and call out for the wrecking ball.
Or make limber mind and muscle
to move the manifold block
with the repetitive power
of meditative motion.
"Love me again and again,"
she whispered,
"Once is not enough."
She insisted,
"One life is not enough."
She purred,
"One night is not large enough;
who of us feels large enough?"
--Tim Van Ert
(published in NOTHING ELSE MATTERS)
October 11, 2009
Parable of the Dove
A dove lived in a village.
When it opened its mouth
sweetness came out, sound
like a silver light around
the cherry bough. But
the dove wasn't satisfied.
It saw the villagers
gathered to listen under
the blossoming tree.
It didn't think: I
am higher that they are.
It wanted to walk among them,
to experience the violence of human feeling,
in part for its song's sake.
So it became human.
It found passion, it found violence,
first conflated, then
as separate emotions
and these were not
contained by music. Thus
its song changed,
the sweet notes of its longing to become human
soured and flattened. Then
the world drew back; the mutant
fell from love
as from the cherry branch,
it fell stained with the bloody
fruit of the tree.
So it is true after all, not merely
a rule of art:
change your form and you change your nature.
And time does this to us.
--Louise Gluck
(published in MEDOWLANDS)
October 10, 2009
Paradise
I grew up in a village: now
it's almost a city.
People came from the city, wanting
something simple, something
better for the children.
Clean air; nearby
a little stable.
All the streets
named after sweethearts or girl children.
Our house was gray, the sort of place
you buy to raise a family.
My mother's still there, all alone.
When she's lonely, she watches television.
The houses get closer together,
the old trees die or get taken down.
In some ways, my father's
close, too; we call
a stone by his name.
Now, above his head, the grass blinks,
in spring, when the snow has melted.
Then the lilac blooms, heavy, like clusters of grapes.
They always said
I was like my father, the way he showed
contempt for emotion.
They're the emotional ones,
my sister and my mother.
More and more
my sister comes from the city,
weeds, tidies the garden. My mother
lets her take over: she's the one
who cares, the one who does the work.
To her, it looks like country--
the clipped lawns, strips of colored flowers.
She doesn't know what it once was.
But I know. Like Adam,
I was the firstborn.
Believe me, you never heal,
you never forget the ache in your side,
the place where something was taken away
to make another person.
--Louise Gluck
(published in NEW AMERICAN POETS OF THE '90s)
October 9, 2009
Mississippi 1955 Confessional
It would have been, I think, summer--it
would have been August, I think,
Somewhere near midway between solstice and
equinox,
When the tractors move all daylight in
mirages of their own thrown dust
And the farmhands come in the back gate at
noon, empty, with jars in their hands.
Imagine yourself a child with a fever,
half delirious all that month,
And your sisters lift you in your white
wooden chair, carry you to the edge
Of a hayfield, set you down in hedgerow
shade and leave you
While they go into woods to turn, you
think, into swans--
They are so lovely, your sisters, in their
white sundresses
That appear and disappear all afternoon
among the dark trunks of trees.
None of this ever happened. But
remember the body-heat of the wind
As it came behind the tenant shack just
there on the eastern border
Of your vision to touch you with its
loving nigger hand? And there you are,
A white boy brought up believing the wind
isn't even human, the wind is happy
To live in its one wooden room with only
newspaper on the walls
To keep out what this metaphor won't let
me call the wind--
But don't worry about that, your sisters
in the woods are gathering
Beautiful fruit, you can hear it falling
into their hands,
And the big pistons of the tractors drive
thunderously home into cylinders
Steel-bright as the future. You are
five years old. What do you know?
Your fever is a European delicacy, it
burns in your flesh like fate,
A sign from God, cynosure, mortmain, the
intricate working out
Of history in the life of the chosen.
O listen, white boy, the wind
Has a mythic question only you can aswer:
If all men were brothers,
Would you want your sister to marry
one? Let me tell you, white boy, the wind
Is in the woods with its cornmeal and its
black iron skillet,
It's playing its blues harp in the poison
oak where your youngest sister,
The one with hair so blonde you think it
looks like a halo of rain,
Is about to take off her dress. You
sit there dreaming you mild fever dream.
You tap your foot to the haybaler's
squared rhythms. They've dressed you in linen
From the woods where your sisters lie
suddenly down, you burn, snow-white.
I've seen your face. i remember your
name. I prophesy something you can't imagine
Is coming to kiss you. And you
thought I was reaching back to you in words
To tell you something beautiful, like
wind.
--Terry Hummer
(published in NEW AMERICAN POETS OF THE
'90s)
October 8, 2009
At The Gulf
Your body lies under orange eyelid blanket
but needs setting sun's cool warmth to keep from freezing.
Two horses pound wet sand in stiff staccato.
Roused dog yips and your eyes open.
A spooked Morgan cuts sharply away from the mutt,
it's rider falls with the "plop" of a flat inner tube.
That's when your eyes come alive -- in pain.
Suddenly at his side, you ask if he can move his legs.
I notice sunset's horizon no larger than your outstretched arms
as my heart pounds out swells which break in fluid foppishness.
I smile to see thunderous downpour send you home
and mistake your tears for falling rain.
Now it's your yelps, nearly drowned in shower's patter,
send me sure-footed as a stag to your stairway.
Oh, up these stairs you stroll as if nothing is splitting wide between us.
"Up the stairs, upon airs -- up your stares!"
my rolled-up eyes scream
as I suspect you want to clip me from your night like some spinster
snipping coupons from the monthlies.
To meet you within your dusky doorway
where you may ask me to manifest my elastic scepter
like a wizard's wand to transform your storms,
I must breathe, must inflate, must picture myself
a Mary vision before the prostrate faithful.
We surge together impulsive as a wink.
Animated through liquid power to will,
muscles engorge with brackish red tide
as I grasp and fondle the littered shore of another sex.
Be a master, let go of my leg. Splash it out to sea.
Then grab handfuls of sand, hop aboard and ride again.
Salt water back harbors smell: warm and metallic.
White and red ooze from our bodies' horizon,
linear as he time of synchronous cries
too weak to echo shores held at watery bay.
--Tim Van Ert
(published in SEEDS ON A WIND RIDE)
October 7, 2009
Pine Woods
There is a pine woods in Paris
(where once there were pine forests)
in this quarter that, then, was not Paris.
Wrens and grosbeaks sing about it, out of sight,
while crows crowd black and silent as night.
Narrow, rusted train tracks lead in and vanish
under a snowfall of rose-dotted petals
a swirling May wind has quietly managed.
Modern, ancient city intrudes its auto voices
ignored by lovers, and others, with softer choices.
A domestic wolf-pup prances lean, nose to ground
past a balding gardener who takes a look, and a puff,
before starting to hoe his newly formed mound.
Seven brown pigeons glide through one of their passes
over two teen-aged girls calmly cutting math classes.
Wonder with me in that voice unheard;
if you chose for just one Spring day,
would you float like petals, gardener or bird?
Boy-child wobbles on bike while mother hovers;
he still has time for all these--and how many others?
--Tim Van Ert
(published in SEEDS ON A WIND RIDE)
October 6, 2009
T Reach Her Us
After all these weeks
Embers
Just begin to show
Dimunition
In the hearth.
You
So many months ahead of
Me
In this cooling process
Must suppress a laugh of
Recognition
As I share my relief
At getting through
Another day without
Agony of
Painful love
Withdrawal.
Please
Share your secret,
Lighten my load;
I want so
Badly
To keep cool
This burning heart.
Don’t let me down:
Help take the sting, er, out.
The song is
Strong,
The audience
Gone.
Don’t let me drown:
Teach me to
Float,
To rise above it
All.
--Tim Van Ert
(from COLLECTED WORDS)
October 5, 2009
CIVIL WARS
My mind, closest friend,
plays traitor
as heart, masked stranger,
courts danger--
while my body
tugs to flight.
--Tim Van Ert
(from A FIRST EDITION OF HAI-CHOO: LITTLE SNEEZES
OF PROFOUND DITTYCISM)
Ocotber 4, 2009
The Invention of Comics
I am a soul in the world: in
the world of my soul the whirled
light / from the day
the sacked land
of my father.
In the world, the sad
nature of
myself. In myself
nature is sad. Small
prints of the day. Its
small dull fires. Its
sun, like a greyness
smeared on the dark.
The day of my soul, is
the nature of that
place. It is a landscape. Seen
from the top of a hill. A
grey expanse; dull fires
throbbing on its seas.
The man's soul, the complexion
of his life. The menace
of its greyness. The
fire, throbs, the sea
moves. Birds shoot
from the dark. The edge
of the waters lit
darkly for the moon.
And the moon, from the soul. Is
the world, of the man. The man
and his sea, and its moon, and
the soft fire throbbing. Kind
death. O,
my dark and sultry
love.
--Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones)
(published in THE PREMIER BOOK OF MAJOR POETS)
October 3, 2009
Toad's Poolhall
I'm tired of all this, I said.
While shutting one eye
And calculating the odds with the other.
In my mind already I was larger than life.
Fit for the screen
Of a drive-in movie in the desert.
I stood on the empty highway
With my thumb raised.
The sky over me
Was like a western star's dress
Strewn with sequins.
See how far you'll get,
The one we called the Theologian
Muttered behind my back.
He read the writings of Calvin
And savored their meanness.
Oh, but the June sunrise
In the back of a pickup truck!
The radio playing
Old-time fiddle music...
And then I missed the shot.
--Charles Simic
(published in WALKING THE BLACK CAT)
October 2, 2009
So Many Ants on the Melon
Door swish signals refuge from Portland's racket
in Powell's storehouse of printed pleasure packets
where I imagine scoring a small clutch of books
bearing odes to common medical afflictions.
My parking meter mind
thought me making a bee-line
through that scroll-strewn cave
where the dead still help us see.
An end-aisle display shows off yet another
from a favorite of mine, titled fuel : the cover
flashing enough orange flesh from a cut melon
to make a dry mouth (even insect eyes) water.
Man, ants all over that cut cantaloupe;
like me with a new book of verse, swarming with hope!
Having not found enough woeful odes, I'm pointed
"down 10th Street there" to the county library.
In the backwater town where I grew to love printed lines,
the county library was no shrine to the shining mind.
but Multnomah county library is a castle of stone:
high sculpted ceilings, sensuous marble, rich brown oak.
Computer lists but one volume--by Dr. Strauss.
I go to 811.5 to let eyes roam and fingers check it out.
Like a lover warming up to give a massage,
I'm already pleased--yet ready for surprise.
As fingers pull from its hundred hugging peers
V.H. Adair's Ants on the Melon, my heart cheers,
"There is some sweet mystery here
I plan to feast on all day long!"
--Tim Van Ert
(from IF YOU LIVE, YOUR TIME WILL COME)
Ocotber 1, 2009
Even As the Birds of the
Field
Eruptive ground swells to
bear me life anew
Offering a changed world of
things to do:
Pulling inside out of me.
Life there in wrenched fully
free
To love to help your own
dreams come true.
I've felt me a great reiver
flowing strongly;
Yet, viewed thus narrowly is
see so wrongly--
Now another streaming
mingles
Warming flow bringing what
it knows:
Vitality within and without
me.
Revelling in wonder at what
has begun,
Penetrate sweet mystery of
two merged one.
Come, dive in, float to the
sea.
Rise, vapor, to rain on me.
Explore our depths, feel the
currents run!
--Tim Van Ert
(from COLLECTED WORDS)