Days Just After Ten Years Past

DAYS JUST AFTER TEN YEARS PAST

written 9/11/2011 

Strange was the air then that fall.

You’d hear an airplane drone,

Breaking the morning silent.

You’d look up and quiver some

Then bow your head in

Silent mourning.

Illustration: "Children - American" by the author.

Each week on Sunday the Monkey Man gives a challenge to write a poem in only 160 characters. Like writing a tweet – it takes some doing to convey thought in so few words. Come join the fun! 

Lady of the Shore

When you’ve been out in search of whales

Under the windy billowed sheets,

You dream of home and safe shores

Safe from the waves constant beats.

You go for days, for weeks, for months,

Until the hold is filled and full.

Water turns brackish, salty the meat,

And you live on hardtack and guell.

And at last in on the dim edge of night,

With tired body and fearful soul,

Your eyes search out the lady of light,

Where she stands beyond the shoal.

Up the mast, the call, “Her light”,

To guide you betwixt Hell and Heaven.

To a old salt home from the sea,

Lighthouses are alluring women.

Written September 7, 2011 for  Slam Week 9 at bluebellbooks. Com as inspired by the picture shown.

In the Colors

Move the colors.

But they stop and go,

Not red or green or yellow.

No, no, they flow where colors never go.

Some darker stolen

Painted skies from haunted worlds

And go away and go away

How I wish they’d go away.

But the colors stay

And they have a weight

Because they’re not a shade;

They’re not a ghost, a specter or a sigh

Of wispy hues at all.

Move the colors, make then change,

From dark and deep and deeper gray.

Make the colors

Give me back the sky

Of golden rays and lighter blues,

But be careful there if when they lift

That reality I fear within

Doesn’t fling the shattered palette

And blind me to the outside day.

Photo by the author

Bride

She comes all winter warmth

Swathed in clinging frost

And diaphanous gloom.

Her smile of frozen teeth

And her eyes of icy ponds

Send shivers through the room.

We think of death as skeletal,

Cowled with cloak of black

Hunched like some old farmer

Over his scythe and sack

To cut and carry us to our doom,

But no, death is not the groom.

Death comes dressed in marriage veil,

In a snow white bridal gown

With a long icicle train.

Our final vows are sealed by one

Who doesn’t steal, but stills our heart

With a lover’s kiss that ends all pain.

BRIDE the reorder reading by the author

It is suggested you scroll down and turn off my music before playing the video.

I am hoping this will work now on "Voices and Friends". Soundcloud burst and rained on my parade trying to use it for that purpose, even with Nancy trying to help me. So decided to go to the video route.

I am not sure why I picked this particular poem. Maybe because the poem was a troublemaker, too. One day I got this one line in my head and couldn't get rid of it: "She comes all winter warmth." I could seem to do anything with it either, except I kind of liked it. Finally, what we have here is what I came up with.

After chatting with nancy, I decided to record this in a graveyard and then realized I never saw any graveyards nearby. Where I grew up all the churches seemed to have a cemetery, but not so in my current neck of the woods. I finally located one and wandered back to these older stones. The folk in the house in the background were having a Labor day BBQ. It smelled good. I wonder what they thought of this strange guy kneeling behind a tombstone reading something? Probably thought I was praying.

Friendly Gatherings

When it was still early morning,

Came some in curiosity and some with needs.

Ah, I like this.

Me, too.

And they shared in the bounty of the seeds.

Over the season in the sunrise,

There is friendly gatherings a-twitter.

Ah, this is life.

Some flew

When in bound some unfamiliar critter.

But even the beast from the hedgerow

Was soon accepted at the table,

Among the feathers of many color and hue.

I wish I could belong to this congregation,

But as a human I am not able.

I can only watch from a concealed view.

The wrens rush in rapid flights for their ration,

While the grackles gather about the edges.

The mourning doves, in moving pairs,

Come early and earnestly ignore

The in and out swooping sparrows.

Blue Jays and Cardinals add brightness to the gang,

And a squirrel, switching his tail,

Peels a nut to the rhythmic caws of a crow.

In the hours before the sunset,

When the seasons are turning their collars to the cold,

Oh, how I wish

I could

Sprout wings and fly south with that friendly fold.

Beware of the Blob

In the dark, sticky recesses of our only such repertory.

In the flicker of the screen and the screams

Of some girls who sat not silent beyond

I, in utter fascination, watched the Universal uglies,

The makeup formed fantasies on the faces

Of Bela, Boris and Lon.

But in the lonely, looming dimness

Of my bedroom in the midnight minutes,

I cringed in fear and loathing reliving

Mummy, monster, bat and beast.

Would a vampire wing in through my window?

Would the Mummy unravel my restraints?

Would, oh horror of it all,

Frankenstein’s creature crash my hall,

Smash through my confines

and drown me in the sink

Like the flower and the child?

I had a few defenses against these imagining of mind.

What did they have in common

That could provide me escapes?

Slowness of step and ungainly gaits.

Why the Mummy moved like molasses

And the Monster stumbled in outsized shoes.

I could outrun both as if they walked in glue.

Oh yes, the Wolfman was quick,

But restrained by the moon.

And you get enough garlic and the ghastly Dracula

Will fall into a swoon.

Besides, I reasoned, in my bed and my room,

I dwelt safely in the center of the streets

Of our tiny, tidy town.

By the time these hobbling horrors hop from the gloom,

They would have satiated appetites and want no more of eats.

So safe in bed I’m found.

Until…

The Blob “glides across the floor,

Right through the door

And all around the wall…”

Not only would nothing stop it,

As it slid in through some crack,

It was never satisfied,

Eating its never-ending snack,

As it creeps,

As it leaps,

To a tune by Bacharach.

NOTE:  “The Blob” starring Steve McQueen came out in 1958. It was made by Valley Forge Films, which normally made religious films.  I saw The Blob on its first run at the Colonial Theater in Phoenixville, a somewhat bizarre situation watching a monster in a film eat the theater you are watching the film in.  Those who fled the theater and then ran into the diner must have been quite athletic. The theater is in Phoenixville and the Diner is in Downingtown, around 16 miles apart. I have also eaten in that diner.

It the scene from the film that I have inserted at the end of this poem also has meaning for me. The fireman dressed in white is Tom Ogden. More correctly, Reverend Thomas Ogden, who was my minister when I attended the Downingtown Methodist Church as a boy. He played the fire chief in the film.

Jobs

JOBS

Let me sing, like poets before, of the land and working poor,

Of crops sown, the new mown, the buildings built on vacant lots,

Of the shirts of blue and shirts of white, the every day commuter flight,

The backs bend forth over field or desk, the drip of brow and the drops

Of sweat; the sighs, the ruined eyes, the muscles strained, those who die

Creating the economy that taxes our credulity as well as our wallet and soul.

Ah, the jobs I’ve held, or should I say, the jobs that held me.

Bound to the clock on another’s sleeve so have I spend my time,

Being there at beck and call, doing little or doing it all.

It mattered not in the scheme of things, not to the rhythm or rhyme

Of what was in my mind. No, the necessary daily grind was a wall

You beat upon or clawed with nails, banged your head, tried to climb.

Honest work I do not disparage. I’ve fulfilled my own with honest pride

In achievement and accomplishment. But all in all I would have rather been

The underfed artist burnishing the blazing pen of truth dramatized,

Than those deceived by the glittering façade of success and wealth.

Now the wasted youth, those stolen hours, what have they gained of worth?

A crumbling society of grasping greed, cheap thrills and broken health.

Here I stand behind a lifetime of labor and where is the monument?

It was just make work after all, a putting in of the time, a clog.

Most places that paid me my wage to make their gears turn

Are footnotes in the history of industry, a jotting in a log.

That I was soon not missed each time I left is probably quite true.

I’ve broke your clock and falled your wall and miss you not at all.

Photos from some places I worked: Atlantic Refining Company (later ARCo), Philadelphia Gum, Welded Tube Co. of America, Wilmington Trust Co. (2 Photos), Mercantile Press and Chicos.

This poem could almost be a companion piece to the essay I recently did on my "Drinking of Old Men" Blog entitled, "A History of Work".

Change of Hope

Once were nights that seemed less stark

You saw stars shining, each hopeful spark

Showing there still was light.

Now all I see is starless night

And dark upon dark.

Each week on Sunday the Monkey Man gives a challenge to write a poem in only 160 characters. Like writing a tweet – it takes some doing to convey thought in so few words. Come join the fun!

Photo by the author, Talley Day Park, Delaware, 2007.

Summertime and the Breathing's Not Easy

I step with splashes, but there’s no saving rain.

Only sun much more hot than heat.

A steaming stalled sizzle of summer steam.

It is my sweat dripping on the street

And forming puddles at my feet.

Each week on Sunday the Monkey Man gives a challenge to write a poem in only 160 characters. Like writing a tweet – it takes some doing to convey thought in so few words. Come join the fun!

Photo by the author, Desert of Maine, 2006.

End of School

Back on the street

Where the boy played

Was the teacher of the man.

From a hard hand

And sharp tongue

Blood and fear was all he learned.

He had not asked

To be born here

Nor die in these alleyways.

Do not join the gangs, mama said.

Be a good pupil, mama said.

Learn you’re studies well, mama said.

If you don’t join us, you’ll be dead.

Back on the street

Where the body laid

Was the creature of the man

Growing with hate

And bitterness

In the gutters of his youth.

He died today,

Years later, still young,

End of school, all lessons done.

For the One Stop Poetry Saturday prompt, Bob Dylan.

Photo by the author, 1969

A Stinging Attack

A STINGING ATTACK

Once poet T. S. Eliot said April is the cruelest month.

You know I think it is a fact.

Along comes a nasty spider, a real blighter

Called the Federal Income tax.










Each week on Sunday the Monkey Man gives a challenge to write a poem in only 160 characters. Like writing a tweet – it takes some doing to convey thought in so few words. Come join the fun! 


Cartoon by the Old Goat when he was the Young Kid.

What Lies Ahead...If

Climbing down the last steps of March

Buffeted by the ill omen breath of change.

Shaken by the earth and by the bombs,

I wonder if we’ve reached the final page?




Each week on Sunday the Monkey Man gives a challenge to write a poem in only 160 characters. Like writing a tweet – it takes some doing to convey thought in so few words. Come join the fun! 




Illustration: Taken in Iraq, 2003, by my daughter while deployed with the Army.

Best Laid Plans of Mice and Fathers

Puffed up and powdered,

Shined up and showered,

Finally got these kids

Posed before my camera.

I couldn’t be more pleased

Except as the shutter I squeezed

 I sneezed.

Each week on Sunday the Monkey Man gives a challenge to write a poem in only 160 characters. Like writing a tweet – it takes some doing to convey thought in so few words. Come join the fun! 

When the Muse Takes vacation

The hardest part of all,

As every artist finds,

Is when the paper stares back

With a blank expression

And this Cathode Ray Tube

Of your so-called mind

Fades to black.

Each week on Sunday the Monkey Man gives a challenge to write a poem in only 160 characters. Like writing a tweet – it takes some doing to convey thought in so few words. Come join the fun!  

DELAWARE GRAFFITI by Larry Eugene Meredith

Poems of Age 2010-2011

Month Misplaced

Where did March go?

I seem to have missed it.

It didn’t come like a lion;

More like the March Hare,

Quick and darting

And certainly a bit mad.

There it goes down some hole,

I catch but a glimpse of tail

Too quick to grasp.

It came an assassin at Ides

And slashed from me my month.

It caught me unawares,

Whistled by me on its winds

And took it on the lamb.

When the weeks are like a day

And the day is but an hour

You understand the parade

You missed in the March of time.

Country Song

I’m sittin’ in the snow in my underwear;

I musta had a hoot last night.

I’d sure like to know if I had fun,

But my brain ain’t a workin’ right.

My hat’s on my head and, well, I guess that’s good,

But my boots are nowhere to find.

I think there was a gal, perhaps there was two,

I can’t seem to clear my mind.

What she gonna say when I get home,

She’s gonna black a eye,

She’s gonna break a bone.

I better have a durn good lie

This time.

My trucks still in the lot up on cinder blocks,

But I guess it don’t matter much.

I don’t have my pants and I don’t have my keys

And don’t have a clue to where they may be

And she’s gonna kill me when I get home,

Gonna blacken both eyes

And break every bone,

I better have some durn good lies,

This time.

It might have been the whiskey, might have been the beer,

Might been the men’s room tote.

Whatever it was, whatever I done

I smell like a billy goat.

It’s gettin’ mightly cold sittin’ in the snow

Without no coat, socks or a shirt.

I’m just wearing a strange tattoo.

And, man, it’s beginning to hurt.

I am freezing my rear in a snowbank here,

It musta been a howl all right.

I’m never goin drinking alone

Well, at least not again tonight.

What she gonna say when I get home,

She’s gonna black my eye,

She’s gonna break a bone.

I better have a durn good lie

This time.

This time.