Four Poems by Mark Novak

 

Thelwall making a speech about democracy.

James Gillray, Copenhagen House, 1795, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.

Poems from a Bastard Child of Chaos

 

Board Pounder

Board Pounder bored,

Pounding upon boards,

Bob Dylan and saw blades.

 

Mismanaging meanings

In craftsman Carl Sandburg,

Show me glory in hard labour?

 

Weary-thin, like a bald truck tire

Check on the Check Engine Light,

Tappity, Boom! -Ah mi, Ah my…

 

Culling potential in a dusty room,

Outdated, and now offensively plain.

Compost & tillage, Times They're A Changin'

 

Beaded opal runs of glue and staples,

Smooth knots in the walnut and maple,

On aching knees and a back that kill

 

This carpenter. Nail and lashed to a cross,

Power air-spear in his side. Varnish and gloss

Assault on redolent utopia. Dying only because–

 

Board Pounder, bored,

Pounding upon boards…

 

 

Break On Through

 

Standing before your tomb in a Parisian cemetery,

Beholding the result of your mad kamikaze ride,

Your spirited break through to the other side,

Where I can see your enablers still bleeding you.

 

The blasé, gray barriers hold me 2 meters at bay,

While tour guides bring broods of Japanese tourists

To snatch their digital voyeuristic reminders.

African shamans tell that photo captures do steal the soul.

 

-So, cover your face, hide your insecurities, faltering shame,

Sopped in alcohol, -they will manage without your pàin,

Sad flower in the sand, shedding lizard skin by the Seine,

Seeking solace in the pathways of Wilde, Crane and Verlaine.

 

While your golden vocal cords are coughing up blood,

Heroin runs rampant in the Parisian streets, where your beloved

Makes clandestine rendezvous, drugged and misjudged,

Bent on another backdoor man's White China buzz.

 

Your wheezing worsens in the shadows of legal troubles,

Fuck Los Angeles, it's palm trees and your Floridean struggles.

Listening to Piaf with a single malt whiskey, As chaos crumbles

And decays. La Vie en Rose, petals fall 'neath a waning sex symbol.

 

"Shall I call for a doctor?" Pam's tired voice responds from the black.

"No," you return, curbing and restraining the coils of a panic attack.

'No one here gets out alive' you think, as fingers trace her lovely back,

"It's alright," you at last slur, "Go to sleep…

-I think I'll run the bath…"

William Pitt portrayed as death on a pale horse, trampling democrats.

James Gillray, Presages of the Millenium, 1795, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.

 

Thelwall's Lament

(If The Lions Are Drinking…)

The rending gilted tone 

Of a dire, knell-chime's call.

The eleventh hour hands speak

Before fate's axe should fall.

 

Tell, who will call for you now?

Radical passing beneath the

Threshold of Traitors Gate.

Drop the Portculi of Newgate

And the yard of London Tower…

 

Tell, what good are Romantics?

Waving raw blood ink of word steak 

Before the dogs of PM, William Pitt.

How long could your lot hold out before

Muzzled hounds of the Bloody Code bit?

 

And watermen of the Thames

Sing their warnings out:

"If the Lions are drinking

 London is sinking

 If the Lions are dunked,

 London- is Flooded." 

 

Warily look over your shouldèr

As you finger your belted cudgel.

Fear adrenalized corpse flower

‘Most dangerous man of Britain!’ 

 

Rats and Ravens in a tiger-Pitt

Dying democracy knows no difference.

Hung, Drawn and Quartered.

Democrat! French Sympathizer!

Importing Great Terror to a ruling class.

Demolish the opposition by law and tax.

 

Carry Paine's flag, let your ego orate

Polemic voicings to the beta inarticulate; 

Inspiring masses with your booming lisp

Quaking powers move to behead you asps,

 

Calling for the hides of Tooke, Hardy and you: John Thelwall!

Where are the powers of your Corresponding Society behind these walls?

Penny-Stankers! Groundlings, All!!

Coleridge's comforts topple and fall

Flat in the shadowed need to forestall

And save one's own skin…

 

Like the stench of humanity

In a sweltering tube,

The stench of torture clings

To these stone walls.

5 meters of dense brutal labour.

 

Now you see the piss-poor values 

Born of men of poetry upon Earth?

In this place, what good are 

scratchings of Blake or Wordsworth!?

 

And the beefeaters of power

Sing their warnings out:

"If the Lions are drinking

 London is sinking

 If the Lions are dunked

 London- is Flooded."

 

Pen your lines to the Politic editor,

Pen defense to charges as traitor,

Seditious speech, that Britons are

Capable of self-directing the law's arm.

 

To what end is Parliament needed!?

In a System of Spies and Informers…

Where is the morality of these Tories!?

 

And when your sideshow speeches,

Mocked the government to the citizen's delight,

How wary did your esquire become?

Your head on the King's block.

 

So the English rose, demanding your release,

When so badly the State hungered to cut your tongue.

"If discussion be shackled, how are discordant opinions to be adjusted, 

but by tumult and violence? "

 

Be assured, -these wars are never done…

Measure of wit before measure of sword-

Pèrhaps your exhausted spirit then broke?

Perhaps this was always the ancillary Stratagem in removing your fetters?

 

And the ravens of the Tower

Caw their warnings out:

"If the Lions are drinking

 London is sinking

 If the Lions are dunked

 London- is Flooded."

 

Dreams of a westward walking tour,

Promises of Salisbury Plains assuring

Some port free from London's storms.

40 days and nights of rain.

 

Trudge toward your utopian retirement

Thinking on pastorales in Nether Stowey

Fissures in the enamel of a provincial brain?

Where strains of wit may at long last rest,

In the rolling lavender fields of Sussex,

In the quiet and green blades of promise-

 

Where morning meadow thrush 

Trill their warnings out:

"If the Lions are drinking

 London is sinking

 If the Lions are dunked

 London- is Flooded."

 

 

The Ode of Convict Mike

 

Memory-misery, the Ode of Convict Mike-

Before we bestowed your well earned title,

Poring over blood stains of the bar fight

That took your old man's life. Knifed while

 

His young bride nursed your then newborn,

Sister and your pattern psychic mirroring.

Do you still cut yourself these days to mourn

That ancient loss? Tell us, does the liquor

 

Bring you closer to a father figure's image?

All moments conjoin to what came before.

Lineage is no defense before a court judge,

Repeat offense reaps warnings you ignored.

 

Freshly released with your rap-sheet reviews

You sit in the dark of a dive. Theory of mind

Catalogs the injustices that have inked you,

Soiled in solitude & begrimed in your crimes.

 

The beatings borne by your mother's arm

Drove you to the neighborhood's embrace,

Blood and alcohol and ambulance alarms

Screaming in the night to rinse the tastes

 

Of Tarpey Village from your Valley palate,

Where all the cops know you by namè.

The silences of your daughter are habitual,

No response is a response just the same,

 

An averted blaze of faces fill the dumpster fire,

Of your life. You toss back Jack, light a smoke.

Thickening clouds around your parole requirements,

That keep you from orange institutional clothes.

 

Discard and draw, all dirty numbers in a losing hand.

Life is hard, and then you die. And everything's gamed!

Drown it all away, your noyade, and then God Be Damned!

You call to the bartender; he approaches the inflammation

 

Of your mind, "Pour Me Another," you command!

"Sorry, Mate," the bitch returns, "You'll settle and leave.."

"Like Hell!" You puff as your fist then slams

On the bar. 

"Pour Me Another," you sozzle, "Now! Before I Leave-"

 

"Pay Up And Get Out, Or I'll Call The Law," stands the barkeep-

Arguments and fury gain no respect or traction.

Crumpled dollars in a puddle of suds, as you sweep

Toward the door in curses and demands of satisfaction.

 

Maudlin for keys, somehow now lost in your pockets,

Then set behind the wheel in hardline and evil thoughts:

The Pissant! A Dog Dares To Make A Man His Target!!

You reach to the latch stowing your gun in the glovebox.

 

You return, and set the loaded statement atop the bar,

"Another Beer," you demand, as the man notes the weapon,

And craze of your eyes. "Alright.." He concedes to the pour.

Appraise the prize, lip to foam to the sound of a ringing telephone.

 

Tension alert the barman answers the chime, mumbles in receiver,

Then announces, "I have to take this call in the back!"

He moves to the other room, leaving you to await his return…

Stupid cur- you slug liquid replacement of your prozac-

 

Strength earns respect, and respect makes the man-

Lessons of the yard and cell block branded into your core.

Manhood reclaimed- you empty the glass and retrieve your weapon,

Sheathed in your beltline as you make toward the door.

 

In the vast open space of a parking-lot black, a bullhorn

Voice cracks aloud: "Hands In The Air, Down On The Ground!!"

Crosshairs and badges, and a repeat of a deadly warning-

These Pigs Lie In Wait. Entrapment! To Bind And Surround

 

In Numbers, to Drag a Man Back to an Ugly Enslavement!!

Mike's fingers itch, boldness overrides a capsize-flummox

Of a criminal mind, -Reach For The Gun! Quick At The Waist,

As shots pop off and the bullets rip through Mike's stomach.

Mark Novak - Poet holds an M.A. in Creative Writing and Poetry from San Francisco State University.  In 2017, he was a finalist in the Writer’s Digest National Poetry Awards. Mark is both a regular contributing writer and vocal talent for readings on the poetry site, www.Voetica.com.  He is a resident of Marin County, where he lives and writes aboard his 1967 Hatteras charter yacht.