Five Poems by Gregg Norman

 

THE BRIGADES

 

Farm boys and warrior poets

students and riders of rails

fronting fine-tuned senses

of right wrong and adventure                   

out of work looking for war.

 

Spain by mountains from France

on poor shoes and bad rations

rope-soled sandals and chickpeas

Women with guns that won’t stop

the rumble of Franco’s tanks

 

Taking cover in puddles of bloody mud

waking concussed with severed heads

in their laps under jaunty berets

Asses and ideologies whipped

worn and wounded unto death

 

 

TONGS

Back in the day

Boxed set of escargot tongs

Could have got me killed

In the Amsterdam Airport

Passing through Security

Wearing a big-ass belt buckle

Bought the tongs at Duty Free

For the kitchen that had everything

Carryon bag and belt buckle

Hit the scanners together

Like a high-tech pinball game

Nervous pimply kid in uniform

Thin white knuckles gripping

A semi-automatic rifle

Pointed at my churning guts

Olympic terrorists not yet out of mind

Asked him to lift his trigger finger

But he didn’t

 

 

THE DRUNK

Clear-eyed and conscientious

but there was a time by God

when he wandered a neon wasteland

garish-lit and him aglow

with addled pretention

Slippery bar stools

crumpled tender in a careless fist

eyebrows arched barward

another?

until he’s told no more

and must move on

until the liquor decides

he’s done

Wincing away from headlights

leading a charmed life

all the way home

with no harm done

except to everyone

 

 

WITH HORSES IN A STORM

A leggy gelding

and a fine-boned mare

bays both

circling the corral

faster than my slow rope

Not catch-me-if-you-can

but something else

in their noses

their rolled-back eyes

It came on us quick

foothills weather

a blackness of rumble

and a single gust

twisting in the dust

then sheet lightning

and sheeted rain

bull roar of thunder

bone-crack flashings

and an ozone stink

Just time to run under

the low roof

of the long open shed

to watch

to wait it out

Standing between the horses

quivering close to me

hooves dancing into the earth

God flickering in their eyes

 

 

CORMAC

(in memory of Cormac McCarthy)

Literary necromancer

Wordsmith at his forge

Hammering hot words

From unbound imaginings

Glowing sparks dancing

In the Outer Dark

Of his prose

Characters from private

Heavens and hells

Incestuals and necrophiliacs

Tortured souls

Beyond the pale

Screaming hordes

Of fantastic beasts

Clad in human skin

Of their victims

Storylines of the damned

Defying Hollywood

Blood Meridian

Apex of his craft

Riding roughshod

On the western canon

 

 

Gregg Norman is a retired corporate lawyer living in a lakeside cottage in Manitoba, Canada. He is the author of four published novels and a novella. He reads and writes poetry every day and thus retains his frail grasp on sanity.