Sending poetry to the world
Sweetness
I’ll wait for you while
The seasons do their
Yearly dance
From one color to the next,
I’ll wait through
A loss of leaves
A loss of tight young skin.
I’ll wait for you
As long as your phantom
Hand holds mine.
As long as that endless ocean
Waves back.
I have so many poems already written (Try over 100!). Some stretch back as far as college (that first exciting writing class sophomore year!). I wish they were already posted. But, I have to be patient… here are two political ones. More to come today. I’m feeling motivated. [First one: Spoils. Second: Saddam Hussein]
Spoils:
We photographed ourselves
around the naked prisoners in Abu Ghraib
with thumbs up.
As we’re told, all is fair
and it felt so good to indulge. We were all smiling.
Then in a dream voices spoke
of what we are told not to speak.
I was told by some
that the casualties of war are
other people’s brats
who are expendable
and born to be.
Told by others
that the casualties of war are
decent folks who become
beasts with red eyes
and calculating cold fists.
I was told by the Ministry of Truth that
there are no casualties in a war
that results in victory and peace.
Then we woke up.
We nod our heads yes
to the talking heads mouthing
our shock and dismay of mistreatment on film.
How unfortunate that a few bad apples
went and spoiled the bag.
We do apologize for them.
But history will prove us right, despite the setbacks.
We will write how we liberated the shiny gold road of freedom
in such a god forsaken desert. We will write how we
selflessly gave the spoils to the poor people
like a patriotic Robin Hood. It is all so simple.
We will devour the photographs with our smiling white teeth.
We will wipe our mouth with a napkin of self-righteousness.
Saddam Hussein
They got him.
He was wallowing in a hole,
a spider hole,
six feet by eight feet,
and the walls were dusty and steep.
Doesn’t it seem strange,
to find him there, trapped as a rat.
A murderer taken with
no shots fired;
he acquiesced and was pulled into enemy arms.
The shots and shouts of those freed
alerted tentative neighbors
something in the desert was gone,
something was different today than before.
Those restless souls, those tortured and in pain,
those paranoid, scared,
starving and hot,
thirsty souls might get a chance after all
to feel a rain, so unimaginable.
They got him
he was living in a spider grave,
bearded and tired,
he did not flinch when the enemy
examined him.
He was in good physical shape despite the humiliation.
Years before in Vietnam,
those Vietcong waited in spider holes despite
the venom bites.
They waited to kill.
They knew battles might be lost,
but that war rages on.
He looks like a tired defeated old man.
He looks happily forward to his genocide trial,
his place in history,
his name, his glory—
see his bearded face on TV.
Will tired ghosts finally sleep? Will revolution mean change?
Can spiders in hiding ever disavow his name?
He imagines the back page headline: a car explodes in the desert.
War rages on.
I wrote this today, actually just about 30 seconds ago. I probably should give it time to marinate, time to revise and reflect… but nah, not today. Not with cabin-fever setting in (Baltimore is a wintery sink-hole!)
Snowed-in
With gentle whisperings soft
snow creeps ever higher
Onto windows, doors,
Piles high on cars,
Rooftops, and chairs left outside.
Snow seems to come
From every direction, white
Crystals so light and
Yet how they pile, how
They trap us with every inch.
My mind is covered in
The ceaseless display of how
Many many small things
Can add up to a great power,
Can create an entire alien world.
Another piece from my great-grandmother Alice B. Johnson from her book “Where Children Live” (1958)
The spring will come again–
To every war-torn land. Winter’s gloom
Will flee each hill
Where children still
Will seek the violets that bloom
Beside a country lane.
The spring will come again–
Shell craters will be grassy hollows where
The quail will nest
And wild fowl rest
While lifted wings of swallows there
Will brush the gentle rain.
The spring will come again–
And stately trees will leaf and shield
The trunks stripped bare
That mutely stare
Across bleak meadows that will yield
A wealth of golden grain.
The Goodbye Party
While some were swirling drunk on the dance floor,
Holly cried goodbyes into
empty beer bottles and tipped wine glasses, and
half-eaten cake,
some smeared on her jeans.
She was in disbelief of
such a dreamy move to Key Largo
and
John Mackey of the old Baltimore Colts was
signing autographs.
The song was “Satisfaction” and Ron
clutched and gasped like Jagger back then
and sang it from the floor dirty.
He didn’t care.
He had already slid across it with Coco and Sylvia in a dance
that seemed primitive and animal and
private except for obstinate clothes. We were all watching mouths open.
It was really just another exhibition. He had already swung across the rafters just to make the crowd go “Oooh” like
I imagine all the young girls said when he was
twenty-three.
Holly grabbed the microphone. Over the hip hop,
she cried “Thank you, oh, i love you” to those
still hot jiving on the dance floor, fast and boogie feet,
and holding each other up with hugs and clapping for Holly.
She didn’t think about the move,
only the flashing moment,
the blood bursting in the arteries of her heart from the heat of it.
Ron slow danced alone
and friends thought to steal his keys.
Holly slurred more goodbyes to the scattering crowd of ten.
They would miss her in the morning,
after the hangover and back in the reality of it all.
John yelled “Touchdown”—
his Alzheimer’s making the tavern seem unfamiliar
and the field
much closer and more brilliant.
Now that I have a window
it seems I am aging faster.
I resemble a family member who has
already died.
I see the sun set and it drops into
the dirt faster every day.
I imagine that is me. I am the sun,
scorching orange fingernails
scratching at the dusky sky
trying to remain relevant.
And what if this time,
there is no morning?
But then,
after the dark night there are
blushing hints of sun. I may be my great aunt reborn.
I am the promise that
the universe crackles at its tips
into yet another big bang.
Look at the man walking, cold breath rising.
Look at the trees bare to their necks.
It is winter…
but only for now.
A poem from my great-grandmother Alice B. Johnson…
The Silver Ring
Within my palm a ring of silver weighed
The many years that marched in swift parade,
As treasured memories it stirred today–
Small silver ring with trinkets laid away.
Once long ago, my daughter, you possessed
The silver ring within my palm now pressed–
I see again your wonder at each move
Of finger where it made a gleaming groove.
How strange to think, the long years through,
It waited this day to return to you–
A silver ring and memories that linger–
I wonder– will it fit YOUR daughter’s finger?
…It fits my finger. I have only this to say:
how to explain?
the words could have been mine, but they’re not.
they cover my mind
with disbelief and astonishment
that curls the corners of my
Cheshire grin.
how can this be? I read on
and on and it is all so familiar.
a déjà vu of structure
and metaphor.
it sits heavy in my gut, a premonition
of thoughts—
this will not be the end of us.
Burn-out
I am flowers dried in tangled hair
and tarnished stars in smudged eyes.
feel that gravity;
feel that pyre burning higher.
for years, we passed around the white and green
while the bottled brown took a turn.
the crowds looked delightfully soft like a
pillow of arms and encore lighters
and I spun dancing into my conflagration.
“Here, scattered to the wind, are the last remains of ____
May there be rest in peace.
May God save the soul from the flames.”
of my name, a gentle breeze.
of my black and white friends, only ash.
sleep on the lawn and rest in these arms.
Born at the Wrong Time
One summer, I saw a Texas-style Paul McCartney
in a dark mahogany leather coat
slurring to Bob Dylan’s “rainy day woman”
outside the full moon at a wrangler bonfire in
Colorado.
Last night, I saw a gray haired woman, four feet tall,
in full length tattered gown
swirling in her mess of beads
and her hands in the air like she was
summoning back
the 60’s.
I saw myself tripping on the old Baltimore cobblestones.
I saw myself drunk with Janis and having a grand old time.
Science Fair Project: How to anodize aluminum
Meet at 210 Charmuth Road,
to the house hidden in aging oaks.
Grab one carrot cookie and go
down creaky wooden basement steps,
pass the antique hair dryer chair,
the wood shop littered with hand cut toys,
down the dark and dusty hall,
There he waits.
Pans of chemicals set up and reflecting our
faces in their sheen.
Before I was born,
there were the late nights, the trials-
mistakes, creativity, mistakes.
Testing all the variables,
days passing to weeks, seasons dusty with neglect.
Did he ever doubt?
He didn’t.
Follow the patented instructions
he knows as
sure as he knows every anode,
every alloy, every wrinkle of the metal
and wait for the results.
As the aluminum changes in the bath
so does the light. The glow in the basement is
from years ago,
my memory of a middle school
science fair project.
My grandfather patient
while I strain to understand.
It is his life in the process.
It is our work there in the morning together
that changes the aluminum,
it is his blood in
that hard and durable, corrosion resistant, permanent coating.
I know I am older now, but is he?
He is that unbreakable spirit, that hard determination,
that iron will.
(RIP Chuck Burrows 10/25/08)
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