Kiss It All Away
I crumble under the weight of your wings
as you leap from the balcony and find that you’re only human
and the two of us fall.
There are gods burning in the fire place
painfully smiling through bruised lips
I’ve got runs in my hose from their fingernails; they need us, too.
What a disappointment it was to discover
that you still have one foot stuck in the real world
and it’s the foot that counts.
Read more "HOLLY DAY – KISS IT ALL AWAY"Physical Therapy
The petite young blonde assigned to guide
me through exercises for relief of my shoulder
pain has cold hands, but a well-trained friendliness
I believe she mostly means.
I could be embarrassed by how much stronger
she is, could fit the bill of the old guy, who
brags about how far he could once throw a football
or get grumpier still and say, “Let’s wait ‘til you’re 61,”
but of course I won’t be around to see how that works out.
A right “shoulder impingement” is hardly unbearable,
shooting pain only when I reach too far or long
for something over my head, or behind my back,
and with my family’s history (three siblings
have already beaten cancer, one has not),
I complain though most would agree I can’t.
Even now my younger brother, prostate cancer
gone, has three worse ailments than my single woe.
My mother-in-law has her own cancer battle,
unfair to pick one with an eighty two year old,
but she’s still fighting. My nephew will lose
his stomach in a few days, will hope it takes
its cancer with it. I was aware long before
I met 60 that aging means debilitation, loss;
I’ve already been a regular, with regular lapses
visiting nursing homes, in vain efforts to cheer
any of us up. I still have two children at home,
though, and another two out of the house
who might miss me even more than they imagine.
Beyond blood, for as long as I keep my job
as a teacher, some young people will have to accept
me as mattering, at least for a term, and those
terms are still acceptable to me, since I’m certain
I can live with the pain, or better still,
avoid it almost entirely, if I remember
nevermore to reach too far above
or for anything behind.
Read more "Joe Benevento – Physical Therapy"
Look on the Bright Side
Yes, she broke your heart.
Yes, I got that.
But let’s be honest
There are some good points,
And why not focus on them?
The top is on the toothpaste tube
For the first time in two years
And there are no long hairs in the sink.
The checkbook balances
For the first time in two years
And the lights you turn off stay off.
The caps are on the soda bottles and milk bottles
For the first time in two years
And there are no pizza boxes on the couch.
The medicine cabinet door is closed
For the first time in two years
And your T-shirts she slept in are off the floor.
The movie DVD’s are in the right boxes
For the first time in two years
And there are no bras and panties on the rugs.
The dresser drawers close and nobody hijacked your tweezers
For the first time in two years
And your décor is not candy wrappers.
So suck it up.
Get a porn library
And a puppy.
Read more "ANDREW HUBBARD – LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE"
Reapers of the Water
The nets newly tarred
and the family arranged
on deck-Mass has started.
The archbishop in
his golden
cope and tall miter, a resplendent
figure against an unwonted background, the darting
silver of water,
green and lavender
of the hyacinths, the slow
movement of occasional
boats. Incense floats
up and about the dripping gray
moss and the sound of the altar bell
rings out. Automatically all who have stayed
on their boats drop to their knees with the others
on shore. The prelate, next taking up his sermon,
recalls that the disciples of Christ were drawn
from the fishermen
of Galilee. Through
the night, at the lake, they cast in vain.
Then He told
them to try once more, and lo!
the nets came heavily loaded…. Now
there will be days when
you, too, will
cast your nets without success-be not
discouraged; His all-seeing eye
will be on you. And in the storm, when
your boat tosses like a thin
leaf, hold firm….
Who knows whose man will be next? Grand’mére
whose face describes how three of hers-
her husband and those two boys-had not returned,
now looks toward
her last son-
it is a matter of time. The prelate dips his gold aspergillum
into the container of holy water
and lifts it high. As the white
and green boats
pass, the drops fall on the scrubbed
decks, on the nets, on the shoulders
of the nearest ones, and they move up
the long waterway.
The crowds watching and waving:
the Sea Dream, the Normandie,
the Barbara Coast, the Little Hot Dog, the God
Bless America, the Madame of Q.-
racing past the last tendrils
of the warm pudding
that is Louisiana.
~
This poem originally appeared in James Tate’s first collection of poetry entitled The Lost Pilot (Yale University Press, 1967). Here’s a recording of Tate introducing and reading the poem (minute 5:27). In the introduction, Tate says this poem is about the blessing of a shrimp fleet he saw in Thibodeau, Louisiana. Here are some fleet blessings so you can add his intended imagery to the unintentional images that may also be spurred on in your mind by his lines. Long live JAMES TATE!
Bombing Vietnam
Good old Joe,
a hell of a pilot you were.
You was my friend,
you was a big child,
all heart, stupid as paint, sure,
but the feel in your talented fingers,
your far-seeing blue eyes;
you and that plane united to kill
every goddamned gook down there
living in that green placid land.
I thought of you,
bombing airstrips, roads,
buildings, villages, factories,
the whole place;
it sickened me and
was I ever up your
big face and down,
looking for tears,
for remorse?
I’m sorry, Joe,
best friend,
I gave you love and respect
with full conveyor belts,
encouraged you
to blow this green land
to hell and gone,
so it’s me and you,
doing a lot of death.
Now you’re dead, too,
burned to a crisp
in your crashed B-52.
He was Joe from Muncie,
a bull’s eye,
a real true soul
who didn’t think much,
an O.K. guy, a
stamper on
American roads,
and now he’s gone.
Olan Mills
Once I wore a dead girl’s dress;
elastic bands loose on alabaster limbs.
The flash of a bulb captured
a sash of yellow ribbon and
eyes of rainless oceans.
The portrait hung there
submerging memories
of the daughter who came before me.
Her chance to fill the puffy sleeves,
stripped in evening slumber.
A babe drifted into black velvet
lined with stone, wood, and earth.
My Mother’s arms barren;
Daddy’s apple rotting,
leaving never a bite for me.
Still, I ache for the embrace
of her hand-me-down dress
on my skin once more.
A faded photograph,
on a pale yellow wall
is my only connection to
a ghost I call sister.
Sunday at Village Inn
Sunday morning at Village Inn,
coffee or orange juice? I am asked.
Every time, every day, those two drinks.
What if I want a milkshake for breakfast?
No, that is for dinner with your
chicken, bacon, ranch sandwich and french fries.
Always the same. Each. Time
is a constant, or is it
really? The clock always ticks at the same
rate – sixty beats per minute. A
metronome keeping the pace –
the pace of a walker, a jogger, a runner, a marcher?
Trumpets play too quickly, their egos
force it. Flutes play too slowly, their fingers
ache. What are the drums even doing?
Marching
at different rates, in different shoes, but still
to the same, old tune. Never
updating the song that plays when
the sports team scores their ball in the endzone
or the pep rally begins with the batons in the air.
Until that day that
The band director came.
The one that took the repeating
notes of the sheet music and switched them up.
The one that took that old song,
burned it to ash, then like
The Phoenix,
morphed them into a
New show to bring the audience to their knees.
Yet, in the end,
when the trophy is given
and the players celebrate their first place banner,
What do they do?
Have their milkshakes and
chicken, bacon, ranch sandwich with french fries,
at Village Inn, on a Sunday afternoon.
Read more "AMANDA VAN VEEN – SUNDAY AT VILLAGE INN"A VALLEY CAN ALSO BECOME A DEPRESSED STATE OF MIND
Everything you wear,
you wear to its grave,
your gray stockings\
a small hole near the big toe,
its color an undistinguished gray
your shirt with a stain
your pants frayed at the bottom,
a rip in one pocket,
change falling freely
creating melodies you are always
too busy to hear.
Complete Freedom
No past lurking like a phantom
The future? Not tricking me today into possibles and impossibles
All untrue, untrue
The caffeine I am weaned
Booze, a distant memory of last weekend’s 3 pints
Gordon Biersch with a Chicago teacher
Aches and pains from my beloved sport?
Not a knee, ankle, wrist, back, Achilles, shoulder, or calf
No Advil in sight
Worry about the wife and kid-no way!
They more likely to worry about me…the Chinese Queen and Princess
Arizona clan? They got their pine breezes, lakes, and Trader Joe’s
Worried about living on an island?
Teaching and coaching?
Writing in the mornings?
You see, I would have to make up some ills and blackness
Like an actor
Why? When real life is so sweet, and the freedom you can taste
Read more "Robert Allen Beckvall – Complete Freedom"99 Problems
99 PROBLEMS – by 47 teenagers and 1 teacher in Southern New Mexico
