Just an Old Poet

My poems have meters

Rhythms

And frequently have rhymes.

I hope you’ll forgive this

Old poet

Yet learning new times.

On Rhyme in Poetry

ON RHYME IN POETRY

In our discussion group we deduced how some distrusted rhymes.

                        But I consider it a crime to excise rhyme from all lines.

                                   

                                                It isn’t that

                                                I reject

                                                Insight from

                                                Unrhymed verse.

                                                It is that

                                                I expect

                                                Delight from

                                                All lines first.

                                    Poetry is a pleasure palace of purity and pearl,

                                    A repository of risky phrase and repetition,

                                    A handsome home for honest homily, and the Holy Grail

                                    Of quests for meditative quality and soulful question,

                                    Down ancient alleyway of metaphor and allusion,

                                    Or avenue of allegory and alliteration.

                                    It is freedom

                                                            To       be     free.

                                    It’s this and that    and me      and you           and who

                                    Enjoys expression of the emotion

                                    Within that seethes and stirs and soars our soul.

                                    It should be said either plain or fancy,

                                    Whether in verse as blank as a brick wall

                                    Or as elaborate as a lace lattice

                                    Without fear on part of reader or of poet

For fear is the death of art and we all know it.

Black Mountain

BLACK MOUNTAIN

Photo is of Black Mountain College, Asheville, NC 1933-1957

            Up on Black Mountain again

                                    Lost

I am

Here

            All I have is

 Bleak and

Barren rock

                                                            And rough crags.

            Any second

                                                I

                        Might step off a ledge

                        Plunge

                                    Freeeeeeeeeee

Float with the sky, the clouds, the bird, the plane, the superman

                                                                        But

                                                                        No

Here I am                                                                                                                        Lost

                                    Up on Black Mountain again.

Half & Half

HALF AND HALF

A Sestina

My name is Bobbi Cork and I

Was a Half-and-Half long ago

When the sideshow had its heyday.

I stood upon a tiny stage

Selling post cards and if you would

Pay one more dime I’d show you both.

Chang and Eng Bunker, I knew them both.

Created by God not like I.

Wishing all their life that they would

Be free, but together they’d go

From circus to museum stage

One-in-one until their dying day.

Even sadder back in my day

Were the Toccis Twin boys, who both

Stood on one set of legs on stage.

They did not live long, unlike I,

Who lived to see freaks come and go.

You claim you wouldn’t look. You would.

If we couldn’t display what would

We do to live back in the day?

Where do you think a freak could go?

To poorhouse or graveyard or both.

Locked away out of sight? Not I.

Give me the freedom of the stage.

Sell a ticket to the tent stage.

I will show the rubes what I would

For the dimes that I earn when I

Tell them “you won’t forget this day!

Behind this curtain I’ll show you both.

Don’t miss that sight before you go!”

One more thin dime to have a go

At seeing more than shown on stage.

I’m the Half-and-Half and have both.

I know you think that this life would

Grow wearisome day after day,

But you are not the same as I.

So here stay I after you go.

Freak of my day, free on the stage.

Would you like both? I bet you would!

Songs of Brotherhood

SONGS OF BROTHERHOOD

A Ballade

On a seventeen seventy-six night

Paul Revere saddled his horse and did ride

To warn his mates of coming British might

This was at great risk to career and hide

Still he showed courage as the warning he cried.

He offered up his life and all he could

But not gentry born, he was pushed aside.

Another rousing song of brotherhood.

Sing one more uplifting spirited song,

Back it with drums and the waving of flags,

Then get a rope and tie knots tight and strong.

Start the truck and see if it holds and drags

The dark man into pieces, bits and rags.

And just so we are not misunderstood,

Let us go beat and brutalize some fags.

Another rousing song of brotherhood.

Are you my brothers sitting here tonight

Sharing the poet muse’s mysteries?

We’re different in more than weight and height;

In sex, skin and family histories.

Don’t you think all of our varieties

Are why through time it’s the artists who stood

Against the prejudice of tyrannies?

Another rousing song of brotherhood.

Some would use brotherhood as excuse to fight

The rainbow for the storm cloud if they could.

To dim the blend of color that creates light.

Another rousing song of brotherhood.

Back to School

BACK TO SCHOOL

A pantoum

It is the end of August,

When children return to school

And we long for noisome lust

As the autumn days grow cool.

When children return to school,

There is time for us once more,

As the autumn days grow cool.

To steal afternoon amour.

There is time for us once more,

With passions full violence,

To steal afternoon amour.

With no restraint or silence.

With passions full violence,

We still wait and stew and foam.

With no restraint or silence,

Our grown children still are home.

We still wait and stew and foam.

It is the end of August,

Our grown children still are home.

And we long for noisome lust

Monday in the Park with Eugene

Please scroll down and turn off my music player if you wish to watch the video.

The man lay on his back in the center of the green.

He appeared from nowhere to lie still upon the grass.

Had he fallen from a silent plane to some odd death

Ignored and unnoticed by the walkers that pass?

What a strange sight across the expanse of open ground.

His arms are thrown straight back, like old discarded clay poles,

Awaiting some Good Samaritan to check his pulse.

But no one will approach the man to save their souls.

Strollers go by in their noontime lunchtime procession

Circling the neo-brick sidewalks without a glance

At this fallen forgotten wayfarer among them.

He is but a woeful stranger, why take a chance?

Eugene sits on the splintery surface of a bench

Chasing an occasional yellow jacket away

And eating his lunch and watching over his book top

The man still so still upon the grass where he lay.

The sky is high and the trees are a bright Kelly green.

The day is toasty beneath the yellow noontime sun.

The man jumps to his feet and waves his hands over head.

Just another jogger stretching out for his run.

Eugene marks his place carefully and closes his book.

He pauses one last moment to enjoy the quiet scene

With a sense of adventure lost, he walks back to work,

Ending one more Monday in the park with Eugene.

Autumn Leaves Without Fruit, Twice Dead

Anthrax Scare in Fall 2001

Autumn in New York after the fall.

Wind blows with a sigh, with a shiver,

Through the dust and ash and brittle leaf

At the end of a broken summer.

Autumn in our land before the flu

And already a dusting of white,

Already a chilling of the blood

Brooding malevolent malady.

Autumn days of our despondency

Usher in our winter of discord,

When the shadow spooks of All Saint’s Eve

May bring less fear than a Christmas card.

Autumn in our time like all time by

Bodes one more long uncertain winter

Of desolateness and bereavement;

Yet expectations of spring leafing.

Visitor

Dead in the center of the bed

Under the gaze of a bird at the sill,

Icy eyes glistening against the glass.

Into the blaze of dawn the bird flies.

Shed black feathers flutter in the wind

And clutter the perch where it stood.

Across the crackle of waking life

Come caws nasty, brutish and short.

Punctuation looking for a sentence end.

In the fade of the sun

In the rise of the moon

At the end of the day

Comes the end of its flight

Perched on a sill, it taps the pain,

Typing the period to the life now

Dead in the center of the bed. 

Illustration: "The Raven" by Gustave Dore, 1884

Travel is Broadening

First time I flew was American Air

                                    Straight to the airport in Dallas Fort Worth.

                                    I thought what opportunity to have

                                    Experiences beyond my own home

                                    As I sat and ate my Big Mac and fries.

                                    I took Continental to Arizona

                                    And a bus trip north to the Grand Canyon.

                                    It was ninety-two degrees in Phoenix,

                                    But from the bus stop window I watched snow

                                    As I sat and ate my Big Mac and fries.

                                    I flew Delta to Atlanta of course

                                    And stayed at a complex called the Omni.

                                    On Sunday I took a long walk downtown.

                                    Empty streets, no wait at the restaurant

                                    Where I sat and ate my Big Mac and fries.

                                    TWA took me to chill Florida.

                                    The beach was lonely because of the cold.

                                    The unusual freeze led to disaster.

                                    At lunch I heard the shuttle exploded

                                    As I sat and ate my Big Mac and fries.

                                   

                                    It was Northwestern to Los Angeles,

                                    With a stop over in Minnesota.

Near Mann’s Chinese Theater a man stopped

By my table with a Rolex for sale

                                    As I sat and ate my Big Mac and fries.

                                    United took me to mile high Denver.

                                    I rode the van to the mountains of Vail.

                                    Paddled a raft down the Colorado,

                                    A fond adventure I contemplated

                                    As I sat and ate my Big Mac and fries.

                                    Every airline seemed like any other.

                                    Each hotel had the same lobby décor

And a picture hanging above the bed.

I wonder where the regional color went

As I sit and eat my Big Mac and fries.

Middle

An Occurrence on French Street in Wilmington

Dotting the vista of brick -

The branding islands of green

Canvas awnings claiming our street

And I a camera stand

Upon the middle snapping

A memory of freedom

A street in America

That my taxes helped to pave

All framed neatly in my lens

When a tap, tap, tap, taping

Interrupts my snap-snapping.

Behind me a uniform

Badge reading security

Questions my citizenry

"What am I doing? For  whom?

Am I a tourist in town

Taking pictures of this street?"

For my daughter in Iraq,

A soldier far from her home.

I made no explanation

Silent here in the middle

Pondering on a riddle.

Why is it my prodigy

Is asked to risk her hide

To carry America’s

Version of democracy

To a land in the middle

Of disarray and terror

If we can’t walk without fear

Of the Patriotic Act

Trumping the Constitution?

Is the guardian in our midst

Truly our new terrorist?

Still I snap my photograph,

He talks to his radio.

I wander to the corner.

   Blocks away flash police lights

And in a courtyard on King

Stands a bold shining statue.

Words in metal for all to gaze.

The title across the top

Plainly says Our Bill of Rights.

I take no picture here lest

I invite my own arrest

And walk instead into uncertainty.

On the Road of Myself

Do you know whom I saw today?

Myself down an ancient country road,

A twelve year old looking around a curve.

I didn’t know whether to lead or follow,

For I knew the road all too well.

I knew each loose and tripping stone,

Every broken jarring pothole,

Every rut and hill to its destination.

I could show where the mudslides were,

Where the high grass hid the carnivores.

I knew the distances from day to night,

The long lasting stretches of exposure,

The asylum of sheltered sites,

Waterholes of sanctuary

Where gathered each fellow journeyman

On this over-traveled road to desperation.

I met myself when I was young

And decided that I would follow

The boy I was once, not the man he is.          

I promise not to cry out directions

When he takes a different turn

I’ll be silent at each mistake

And embrace the unknown path taken

And look ahead in joyful anticipation.

Please scroll down and turn off my music player if you choose to watch the video.