Five Poems by Frederick Pollack

 

Secret Springs 

 

 

A home away from home. But does one need 

such a thing? Such are the questions 

posed by each arriving billionaire: 

can you provide a luxury or novelty 

I don’t already have? A recipe 

unknown to my cooks? And if you do 

won’t I resent you, go home, obtain it, 

disparage you and never come again? 

Do I need the company of 

my peers, given that the concept 

is problematic? – And the management  

and staff (who are all, after all, employees), 

give proper non-answers; 

the season is their jeu, their tightrope. Meanwhile 

guests, mingling like proles in the lobby, 

check out old and new wives, arm candy, boys, 

have already checked out cars and planes, 

will hear (already knew) 

about houses. Kiss air, hug manlily,  

act wig-and-snuffbox or prole according 

to taste. Someone bumps 

a cut out of whatever marionette 

will flatter them that evening; they don’t 

discuss him, only drinks. The Springs 

is somewhere in the northern hemisphere; 

which country doesn’t matter much, 

Over its door would be, if such things were: 

Each man is a fraction, divided by others; 

only the rich are whole.

 

 

LA 

 

 

A nondescript face, the sort with nothing to hide, 

keeps turning away from the camera. 

Of course it’s looking at ashes, 

its own, in a street, a horizon of ashes, 

but the reporter senses something else 

and gently asks, “What are you thinking now?” 

“I’m thinking of some lines by Bertolt Brecht: 

‘Of these cities will remain 

only the wind that blew through them.’” 

It isn’t the usual tears or stoicism; 

the reporter feels dismayed yet oddly pleased.

 

 

Last Class 

 

 

The medium through which they 

communicated with him at the end was,  

mysteriously, their normal silence. 

He cursed their illiteracy and ignorance. 

But they knew about insulting, hard-sell 

ads and heard this as a plea to read 

his crap. He managed to convince them 

this wasn’t so, that he genuinely 

believed in some collective ideal 

or other. Which exhausted the last 

of their patience; he no longer even annoyed them. 

 

The hour ended; they filed out. 

Instas were already abroad. 

He looked around the room, managed to see it 

as an icon. The silence remained loud. 

The idiom of prayer was barred to him; 

addressing nothing, he thought, one should do so 

elegantly. Please let me know, 

in secular terms, all the determinants 

of my actions, what I should have done 

and why I couldn’t. Then I will either  

defiantly retain myself or let it go.

 

 

The Arranger 

 

 

I was asked to organize a party. 

I forget if it was for a birthday. 

Would prefer to think not – my guilt 

seems less, somehow, if more than one 

were traumatized. Setting out sweets 

was easy – my own tastes 

are essentially infantile, though I probably should have gone 

with Twinkies rather than île flottante. 

Likewise the drinks and cold cuts. And 

games – though I like the one  

where you tell without hesitation the whole truth; 

I guess some games, like truth, are premature. 

And I should have sought advice about the music, 

though it’s gratifying that Mozart can bring tears. 

 

In my defence, I tried to demur, said 

I couldn’t organize a sleepy kindergarten. 

Was misunderstood; “They won’t be sleepy!” 

laughed someone and slapped me on the back. 

Now a parent yelled in my face: “What could you organize?” 

And my guilt (or shame? I’m never sure) was 

so great that I said, “A morgue, probably.” 

But a strange thing happened. The kid was standing 

right there, and grew, and became 

the irate parent; the parent became a balloon and I 

a clown. Animosity dwindled 

throughout the neighbourhood and in most cases 

I and my crime were forgotten. 

Yet I dream sometimes of being again 

an impresario of parties, perhaps in settlements 

of the future, or on Musk’s Mars colony 

(they’ll need one), or festively floating 

on LHS 1140b, 

which is believed to be a water world.

 

 

Wind. An Owl 

 

 

A wish to write radio plays! 

The appeal of a genre deader 

than tableaux vivants or the theatre of Racine! 

Spontaneously inventing 

rationales: that the 24/7 

invasion of all our senses (someone is even 

trying smellovision again!) helped prepare 

the return of fascism,  

which radio (remember the Morse-code V 

broadcast to Nazi Europe, 

remember Norman Corwin) fought … 

That note could even appear 

in the play, distant, scholarly, scratchy, 

one alienation-effect 

among others. Otherwise: silences.  

Voices from 

the shadows. And what do they say? 

No idea. (Only poetry 

can say anything now, whether it does 

or not.) I’m more interested 

in sounds: a fridge 

being opened, a can, a keyboard clicking …  

How would these need to be altered,  

how long would they have to go on, 

before you sensed some evil?

Frederick Pollack - Author of two book-length narrative poems: THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS (both Story Line Press; the former reissued 2022 by Red Hen Press), and four collections of shorter poems: A POVERTY OF WORDS, (Prolific Press, 2015), LANDSCAPE WITH MUTANT (Smokestack Books, UK, 2018), THE BEAUTIFUL LOSSES (Better Than Starbucks Books, 2023), and THE LIBERATOR (Survision Books, December 2024).

Pollack's work has been published in Poetry Salzburg Review, The Fish Anthology (Ireland), Magma (UK), Bateau, Fulcrum, Chiron Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, etc.  Online, poems have appeared in Big Bridge, Hamilton Stone Review, BlazeVox, The New Hampshire  Review, Mudlark, Rat’s Ass Review,  Faircloth Review, Triggerfish, Lothlorien Poetry Journal (2022, '23, '24), etc. 

Website: www.frederickpollack.com