best yet
in a jacket
casual cool
thoughout the bar
i know
women are looking
at my swagger
with a look
she is
eating out of
my hand
she is willing
to toss that hair a bit.
-
forget the past (1938)
hi all – I felt like featuring some poems from my great-grandmother’s earliest text – Silver Threads (Alice B. Johnson, Layren Press: 1938). This one goes out to my cousin tonight. i love this poem (and hope you read it someday JRB)
Forget the Past
“Forget the past,”
A small voice said,
“Bury it deeper
Than the dead.Bury it deeper
Than the dead,
A ghost of fear
Might raise its head.Shades of remorse
Regret has fed,
Bury them deeper
Than the dead.”“Forget the past,
The past is dead,
To-day is yours!”
The small voice said.
-
a welcome home of sorts….
wheels rolling fast towards home —
FREE STATE STEEL
stands in its stoic capital letters all lit up
and Peterbilt’s giving a smile
(perhaps a smirk) and
the logical lines of the plant that has no name
its horizontal pipes
leading the waywhite smoke casually glances
and the piles piles piles of decay
or construction
give a deep bowand in a near distance
the Natty Boh man
beckons with a neon
towering
wink.[author’s note on this: for better or worse, baltimore always has that knowing, that good natured ability to look at itself and take it all in with a slight* chip on the shoulder]
-
untitled [pale hands]
watching the color drain
as the fall slips a sulking hand
into winter’s firm grip and follows
until my skin pales around
veins blue, icing up
the backs of my hands and wrist —
it is the blood leaving the heart.
-
to the antiques roadshow — haiku
that basement dweller
dusty, all that time, all those
stories….spotlight waits.
-
hanging in Calvert Hall (a ghost story from St. Mary’s College of MD)
when leaves die
undignified on the lawn,
winds howl laments
that curl the building
in a straightjacket
when the halls empty
of sound, those kids
off in costume to party
in blissful ignorance
when the moon shrouds
itself with funeral gauze and lace
she paces the halls
without footsteps
she moans
the eternal attire of a noose
its comforting burn
and the swing swing
of mortal troubles living with
damning persistence.
-
cemetaries dressed in their fall finest
cemetaries dressed in
their fall finest —
orange tafetta red bows
draped in yellow satin
— headstones primp while
their stone angels admire
and smooth the dressings
with a soft ghost hand.the dance begins
and for a season
cemetaries
feel the flutter of
a young girl’s anticipation
and take a break from
supine rest.
-
watching volleyball, remembering
stands empty yet
how the court shines.the net doesn’t quiver yet
i can feel the sting from one
huge kill.hear the squeak from shoes
in a quick back slide[currently watching TX vs. NEB in set 3, women’s volleyball, wanting to be out there sooo bad]
-
cab in Tampa
then i’m in a cab in Tampa
and the woman
says that in Christmas they camp
and one year
the cold kept them in the van
with homemade stew
and strings of cranberriesoutside the palm trees
snuggle with the humidity
and again the woman says
she’s been driving for 25 years and
when she turns 50
the theme of the party will be
life is highwayaren’t we all just another fare,
another green light to
leave behind.
-
even you disappoint
how i lit a match
watched the smoke
do one turn
then leave.how the porcelain owl
has vacant eyeswatching waiting never moving
and the street
gutters stink like piss.
Poetry by JC Snyder 