Five Poems by D. R. James

 

 

Whose Life Is It, Anyway? 

 

A dingy ladybug just slammed

into this split-ended web of grass

as if shot from an organic cannon

 

for a miniature net. Nonplussed,

she has seemed to decide

to climb to its frizzy top

 

and fling herself,

to no applause whatsoever,

toward the sharp tip of a taller,

 

naked shaft nearby—

there, to re-form and sway

in the slightest breeze.

 

I say she has seemed because

I don’t know whose life it is,

anyway. It’s all about me,

 

of course: earlier,

I found myself atop

a mental mountain (you know,

 

surveying the lesser peaks?),

then flung myself for this poem,

fluttering into the snare

 

of choosing this or going with that

as if I determined all my decisions

all along the live-long day.

 

But I know me: soon enough

I’ll fold my wings

to re-form a spotted shell,

 

and it will seem I’ve decided

to head down that one long blade,

then, to no applause, up another.

 

 

On Purpose 

 

What was I thinking

when, while dictating my will

through an interpreter (since at the time

I was all alone in northwestern Bayonne,

where interpreting is interpreted as being creative)

I bequeathed myself to the earth?

 

I was thinking of Walt Whitman,

of course, whose solipsistic report—

it’s small objective being simply to contain

everything—makes bequeathing in general,

let alone of the self to the soil,

sound sound.

 

What was I thinking

then when the only aspect of me

to remain ungiven,

and therefore in the long run unplanted,

was my BMOC key to the campus, i.e.,

my key to what didn’t really matter?

 

I was thinking it should matter,

of course, which would’ve been welcome

relief regarding how I’d spent

my life, but frankly Ivan Ilyich

and I had at least this much in common:

we’d always thought we’d always

been doing it right.

 

What I wanted

was to discover after the fact

that the return on my investment

in the song of my self

had created a rabbit hole

of an opening, a view,

some self-esteem I could live with.

 

And if I was instead found loitering,

like an early Christian hanging 

back before the crucifixion,

then I wanted to be able

to drum up a good excuse

uninduced by some rooster

fore-ordained to reveal three times

the he’s-only-human truth.

 

What I didn’t want

was to stand on ceremony,

especially at the bitter end

under the trees and next to

the squared-off shrubs

just outside the stone-cold residences

of our rather common ancestors.

 

                                    —after Jack Myers

 

Dear Consciousness, 

 

and you are, you know. 

I know, I still curse you

in the cynical night, in my

stumbling through the numbing day,

calling you out, indifferent hex

on homo sapiens.

You’re why

 

I can’t rest in a shower, or

in the cool cavity of my skull. Not with

the world’s open sewers, polluted alleys,

those impossible bellies and the flies

plying the sweet corners

of children’s mouths.

You’re why

 

the soft, inexplicable give

so satisfies and why the take,

abrupt as a thought, snatches

the calm of veiled being,

a permeable haven, after all—

what we didn’t have to feel

to be salvation.

But horses

 

run for being muscle and horse,

and birds, even in cages, sing

for a sake all their own,

and I

 

am you. I am the knowing

to anticipate my sons’ returns

in joy, my sons’ returns

in the skinnings, the exiles

of their own lives (a throbbing

knot in my throat

in either case),

and their one day

not returning.

 

Wired 

 

What was I thinking

when, without qualifications,

except for being as cold

as anyone all last season,

I ran to get elected

County Commissioner of Winter Heat?

 

I was thinking of warmth,

of course, the irony involved

in commanding the motion of electrons

within a fifty-mile radius of my

two-fold ignorance: geometry

and electrical engineering.

 

And what was I thinking

when I yearned to prefer

the official wire required

for the job rather than

the under-the-table imitation

available for a little gift of graft?

 

I was thinking of the Second Coming,

of course, that seek-and-ye-shall-find

system of irrevocability, how

I would want a seat up front.

 

What I wanted was

inclusion, to be connected,

wired if you will,

to the universe of painlessness

unavailable to those in pain,

by which I mean everyone.

 

And if I gained favor

by following the ritual

of water-into-wire

then you could count me in,

count me among the sheep,

not those goats also spoken of.

 

What I didn’t want was what Mugsy

got: jolts at inexact intervals

from an on-going present eternally

separating him from any wire at all. 

 

                                    —after Jack Myers

 

World Lit. Postcards 

 

1.  from S. Beckett

 

Salut, cher idiot.

This place is a brain.

The weather ended some time ago.

The folks are bottled.

I’m feeling something might happen.

I spend my time scuffing between high windows.

I need another gross of non sequiturs.

I’ll see you with whitened eyes.

Give my regards to your fleas.

 

2.  from M. de Cervantes

 

Hola, well-meaning amigo.

This place is like a prison.

The weather never closes.

The folks are brown and dusty and dull.

I’m feeling sardonic.

I spend my time inventing the novel.

I need the Flying Circus.

I’ll see you singing and adapting on Broadway.

Give my regards to Sister Juana.

 

3.  from E. Dickinson

 

Dear postmodern co-dependents.

This place—a Grave.

The Weather—like an organ.

The folks line up for miles.

I’m feeling discovered.

I spend my time imitating tiny birds.

I need steel-toed shoes.

I’ll see you in Daddy’s study.

Give my regards to every little thing.

 

4.  from L. Pirandello

 

Ciao, Baby.

This place is multi-leveled.

The weather matters unpredictably.

The folks are dearer than you’ll ever know.

I’m feeling, really.

I spend my time cataloguing possibilities.

I need you to see me.

I’ll see you in more ways than one.

Give my regards to Fellini.

 

5.  from F. Kafka

 

Hello, fellow exoskeletal.

This place is a two-hole shitter.

The weather doesn’t symbolize the abyss.

The folks are finally happy.

I’m feeling somewhat not myself.

I spend my time under the couch.

I need inflating.

I’ll see you after the recital.

Give my regards to the manager.

 

6.  from Euripides

 

Greetings, festivalites!

This place is less patriotic.

The weather favors me over Aeschylus.

The folks are finally openly barbaric.

I’m feeling existential.

I spend my time rifling local mythology.

I needed you.

I’ll see you in hell.

Give my regards to all the other gods. 

 

                                    —after Ron Padget

D. R. James,  retired from 40 years of  teaching  college  writing,  literature, and  peace studies, lives with his psychotherapist wife in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan. His latest of ten collections is Mobius Trip (Dos Madres Press).
https://www.amazon.com/author/drjamesauthorpage

Two Poems by Jeanna Ní Ríordáin

 

Golden Age Thinking

 

I wish I could go back

to Roaring Twenties Paris –

 

Ebullient & après-guerre,

Vibrant, dapper, debonair –

 

I’d wear flapper dresses & a slick neat bob,

I’d dance the Charleston & the Foxtrot

 

I’d spend my days in rive gauche cafés, 

brasseries & Stein’s salon

 

I’d rub shoulders with Picasso,

Matisse & Marc Chagall  

 

I’d attend the opera & ballet,

The Moulin Rouge & cabarets

 

I’d live it up with the Fitzgeralds,

James Joyce would be my drinking partner

 

There would be no thoughts of home,

past sorrows or the years to come

 

& there would never be a shortage

of brilliant stories or witty conversations,  

 

Or great friends, inspiration, absinthe 

 

*Inspired by an article in Vogue magazine

Paris in the Rain

There’s something cinematic

about Paris in the rain

 

The snug cafés

& cosy bookshops

 

The warm refuge

Of charming bistros

 

The glowing lights

& glistening puddles

 

The couples huddled

In street corners

 

The empty parks

& quiet gardens

 

The misty skies,

The vintage street lamps

 

The lovers sharing

An umbrella

 

Or stealing kisses

In the shadows

 

The fresh Spring showers,

The rain-drenched cobbles

 

The Eiffel Tower

Backlit by storm clouds

Jeanna Ní Ríordáin is an Irish-language translator from West Cork, Ireland. Her work has been featured in Quarryman Literary Journal, Drawn to the Light Press, Cork Words 3, New Isles Press, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Swerve, Black Nore Review, Reverie Magazine, Burrow, and Otherwise Engaged Literature and Arts Journal among others.

 

Three Poems by Allan Lake

 

Survival

 

I drink espresso at Elwood Beach Shack,

at Lark, at Arlo, at Prickly Pear, at Turtle,

Kremma, Superrandom, Carter-Lovett,

The Wall, The Galleon, Jerry’s, Johnnie’s,

Journeyman, Spout! Sip and stare ...

into space, take notes in moving motes

as caffeine is turned into verse,

some better, some worse.

 

And I recall another man, a daily drinker

of beer in the one pub in a frosty/dusty

prairie village that once was my home.

That man stared into space, took note

of the diminishing change in his pocket

as he turned alcohol into toxins until

bad got worse got predictably terminal.

 

Not all that long ago, Charles Darwin,

an unusually insightful wine-drinker,

whose doctor dad was a tea-drinking

teetotaller, discovered evolution to be

divergent and often incremental but

not necessarily progressive.

Romantic Talks to Self 

 

Without a companion animal

or carer who cares what others wear

– what’s trending – you’re by your

self. You suspect youth is trending

but you misspent yours a while ago.

There’s a fake fireplace that warms

the heart at that cafe on Tennyson,

in the suburb where every street

is named for a poet who is known

for a tragic death or a verse or two.

Too late for early death for this minor

poet who won’t become a street but

there was investment in life-shortening

that came to naught. He plodded on

without noticing anything sticky,

left by some bitch or son of a bitch

with no sense of civic duty, no shame.

You know the type. Fears thunder,

chases his own tail, finds foreign shit

irresistible. But that sticky/smelly

is how old toothbrushes achieve their

second life. So unlike nearly expired

romantics without pets or Juliet’s.

Them’s busy adding to a highrise

of mouldy poems while contentedly

sipping coffee. They chat to themselves

or imaginary fiends on-line or old friends

they once thought they knew so they feel

like the centre of a squeaky wheel that’ll

roll on till it leaves the almost path and

come to rest in tall grass nearby.

There is no shame there either.

Answering a Question

 

Could I be happier? he wondered while seated

on the toilet in his one-bedroom apartment

with old heater glowering because it was chilly

winter, Again. New fluorescent orange socks

and Avatar on profile had accomplished no up-

ward surge on his Happiness Graph. Could any-

thing sweeten the past or improve circulation

going forward? Perhaps he’d peaked, despite

existing on flat prairie. Having thought it through,

he sensibly turned heater Off to save a few cents

and to some degree Nature itself then ventured

outdoors for his daily walk that culminated in

coffee at a local cafe where they seemed pleased

to see him and he felt happier, as usual.

Allan Lake is a migrant poet from Allover, Canada who now lives in Allover, Australia. Coincidence. He has published poems in 24 countries. His latest chapbook of poems, entitled ‘My Photos of Sicily’, was published by Ginninderra Press. It contains no photos, only poems.