Yellow Truck
... Yellow truck, stumbling reluctantly
along the desolate road.
Stops.
The driver turns his head …
to look out the passenger window.
This window,
large and picturesque,
Is now showcasing
a white ash bookshelf, empty, damaged
… quite off to the side of the road..
He asks himself: what are the chances that anyone knows I am
here?
Homage to My Mother
… as he looked up … his hand brushed – sharply, pushed really – the glass of hot
coffee over on his computer, and he was seen swearing around the village for
generations …
Birds whose names start with “t” are as follows (pause) :
Robin –
Weeping willow
Campbell’s soup
Thomas Payne
The TV series MADMEN
Dancing
( pause, dance, pause dance ) …
… when my mother, my true and honest mother, my theatrical, demonstrative, “come get the funny while you can” mother died. All the men in Holland baked apple pies
Whereas the Northerners were called carpetbaggers because they were migrating to South Carolina.
How many children are dying?[1] UNICEF says that 29,000 children are dying each day.
My father fell face down in the mud and then swore never to drink again.
Wyoming
Part One
Please wait for Part Four,
as it may,
Possibly, or not,
be more interesting.
Part Two
... maybe it was the high-pitched voice,
that doomed him we'll never know ...
and that is not to be taken lightly ...
Part Three
There are 6 species
of Grebes [ 1 ] , [ 2 ]
in Wyoming,
They are:
Pied-billed Grebe
Horned Grebe
Red-necked Grebe
Eared Grebe
Western Grebe
Clark's Grebe
...
Part Four
What would Weldon Kees have done,
if he had left for Mexico
on that fateful day
by way of Wyoming?
Would he,
for example,
have
left his 1957 DeSoto [ 3 ]
open and available
to the various Grebes,
even though they are ungainly
on land
and might have refused?
...
The two situations are,
in their Absurdity
equally unknowable:
Let’s review:
1 – Was the fate of our unknown man
sealed by his unusually high voice?
2 – a hypothetical question regarding
poet, Jazz musician, painter, and
filmmaker Weldon Kees.
…
Sarah sits on her bed
a …
not …. only
slight, but also
frail girl
of 13 years
nearly destroyed
by the unending
bullying.
...
The children joke in private about her unusually low and manly voice … Sarah, already is beyond cutting. Beyond meth and ecstasy ...
Her heart is just tired.
I guess some folks would claim
that the following is good news :
statement:
“Despite her best attempts
Sarah is too sad to do herself in …”
The statement may be seen as good news,
Since, as the maniacal positivists
claim
There is always hope.
...
Sixty-one years from now
Sarah will be rocking in her delightful
chair
refusing visits from
not just caregivers
but the children of her neighborhood
who have come to admire her
who want to listen to her worldly wisdom
and make tea.
---
end ---
Footnotes for Poem - Wyoming
[ 1 ] - Birds of Wyoming
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_birds_of_Wyoming
[ 2 ]
Pronunciation of the word Grebe
http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=grebe&submit=Submit
[ 3 ]
- Some of the facts regarding Weldon Kees disappearance are,
if I am not mistaken, also wrong .... for
example the car was not a 1957
DeSoto, it was – perhaps something else
... for example a Plymouth
of some mid-1950s year.
Postulation
... alive ....
as would come a natural
moment of the heart ...
... so far, ... a man who finds the happiness,
beauty, oblique-ness in everyday things.
…
a boy reaches over to scratch
a persistent itch. The tall man,
a shock of blond hair, experiences this American Boy on this American Street as a child in Fallujah
A huge green truck, a huge old rusted
creamery green
truck with scrap metal overflowing in the
back, backfires loudly.
… in the former soldier's mind, his mind,
forever right now ...
to detonate
in this soldier's head
the explosion goes off yet again,
body parts airborne ...
his companion's body parts a vicious meat salad for the sky fly again as though for the last time and yet again his companions are blown yet again forever and yet again
Meanwhile back here on the American side walk the friend with whom he had been spending the afternoon gets up off the sidewalk having mimicked him by hitting the sidewalk hard and says:
are you listening?
sometimes i have the feeling that you are not really listening ....
Part 3
...
will someone please run to the Betty Ford Clinic and get me some of
those great drugs that Betty and the Jets - of course
what i meant there was
those great drugs that
Benny and the Jets took off the various people who came into the clinic for treatment, they must have a great stash back there ...
... as I look around the room, test the microphone and say ...
i don't mean to scare you folks out of your natural wits, of course by then the damage is already done,
the woman in the back yanks at the substantial shiny blue hem of her skirt - wishing the skirt were endlessly longer, wishing she had gone to Vietnam for that lovely vacation that her pet zebra of a husband
rather than volunteer to help these Iraq War Vets …
Part 4
... Anna's Hummingbird
with its blood-red crown
knows all it needs to know,
in its bones,
not in its wings ....
footnote 1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Fallujah
monday, january 02, 2012
footnote 2 -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna%27s_hummingbird
monday, january 02, 2012
Making Progress
..
this communication,
sent in the form of a poem ...
poetic interludes
i suppose, only the heart
sings like this ...
the mountain bluebird,
sits on her eggs,
the wild poppy with its
homogeneous red beauty
such as Photographer
Lewis Collard shot
many years ago …
Part 2
Dearest Sensei,
i have been wanting to tell you
this:
when we all - during a
half day zen retreat,
go to take our lunch ...
that journey,
back into the caverns
of the art gallery
At which we sit ...
a beautiful walk for other
participants,
I am sure ...
is pointedly
treacherous
to whatever is left of me ...
...
as i walk deeper and deeper
in
i think of Che Guevara telling
us that North America is the belly
of the monster,
i think of Movie Maker David Lynch,
his particularly
twisted videos
full of surprises
…
last time we all had our
light hearted and healthy meal
after two periods of zazen sitting
i spent the time
wondering
if i could get out alive
back out to the light
Without disturbing
[1] About 29,000 children under the age of five – 21 each minute – die every
day, mainly from preventable causes. More than 70 per cent of almost 11 million child deaths every year are
attributable to six causes: diarrhoea, malaria, neonatal infection, pneumonia,
preterm delivery, or lack of oxygen at birth.
https://www.unicef.org/mdg/childmortality.html
Marc Isaac Potter (we/they/them) … is a differently-abled writer living in the SF Bay Area. Marc’s interests include blogging by email and Zen. They have been published in Fiery Scribe Review, Feral A Journal of Poetry and Art, Poetic Sun Poetry, and Provenance Journal.
Twitter is @mocai01
Marc Isaac Potter (we/they/them) …does not have a dog named Wilbur
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