Wednesday, June 13, 2012

1st, 2nd, & 3rd June Poems, 2012



Task Completed

Skipping out the front door
With a wastebasket held high
Zigzagging a bit to the left
Then to the right
Sort of a pirouette
Before slam-dunking it
Into the street-side can
A quick about-face
Returning to the porch
This time wearing the inverted wastebasket
As a hat
Task completed
Performed little boy way

--Bill Krumbein





Walking home by night
just me and my white-bone friend
for everyone else is asleep,
or home with blinds drawn
leaving me to walk the street
while my friend walks that blue-black sky.

--Birrell Walsh


Out here
the tracks of something bright

they move with the wind and sun
I move with the wind and sun

the birds are telling me
the grasses are telling me

here is the voice of spirit
here is the song of spirit

my own medicine I am tracking
the weaving world rolls up

beneath my feet
the dreaming and the dancing

Out here
I am tracking something bright


--Amos Clifford


            

Fourth June Poem 2012


The Old Woman and the Desert #8


I’m on the bowl and
Miss Vicki and Shirley are at my door
Elizabeth died Friday
and we want you to sign her card
You didn’t know?
No
Friday night they found her body
But we don’t know when she died
You didn’t know
No
Her son had been missing her
so he came by to check in on her
and found her body
You mean Bette?
Yes You didn’t know
No
Miss Vicki’s voice quavers
(she was close to Bette
but even in sorrow she and Shirley
let themselves in to snoop
much to my embarrassment
because my home is a mess)
And Gail next door is moving out
You didn’t know
No
And Dorothy
I say better moving out than passing on
And pick up my broom
“A body in motion stays in motion”

--Richard Velez

Fifth June Poem 2012



                                                 Pablo Neruda (calls again)

I hate interruptions.
Ignore the knock at the door.
When a poem lacks a certain word,
the right word takes it’s time.
Go away
Oh, the comma!
The little tip of the fingernail fish,
when placed, just, so,
acts as a chicane¹
to
slow
the
reader’s
run.
    Concentration shimmers at the first ring.
    The display on the phone reads
        Pablo Neruda
        Don’t answer that!
Pablo Neruda has called again.
Deep breaths… concentrate…
Admit it,
part of me wants to
ask him, “About Picasso2?”
Breathe… deep breaths…
look at the page…
pick up the pencil…

I hate interruptions.
Ignore the knock at the door.
When a poem lacks a certain word,
the right word takes it’s time.



¹ chicane
    n: a movable barrier used in motor racing; sometimes placed
        before a dangerous corner to reduce speed as cars pass in
        single file
http://dictionary.die.net/chicane

2 He shared the World Peace Prize with Pablo Picasso and Paul Robeson in 1950. In 1971, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

--Jim Aaron