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Poetry by JC Snyder

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never mix hawking and kerouac and coffee

is it
the Jeff Buckley or the Hawking?
or the coffee or the Kerouac?
making my mind
alight brighter than the pregnancy
of a rain sky
seeing clearer all these
coffee shop signs marketing to me:
billboards singing,
“lover
you should have
come over”

what is it about
Mondays? is it space time
or caffeine
saying to me
if you could do it again
you would ~
and don’t believe it otherwise.

people come,
they go,
outside to smoke
while I wait with my books.

I heard in a movie of
a man
eating an ice cream cone
for every book he finished reading ~
and he became fat.

is it the Kerouac
or the Hawking?
is it the tedious reliving of
a day
after a day
after?

each is the same. but either way,
the grey sky is bright
and alight
with the heaving breast of
possibility.

March 16, 2010
Domesticity (pasta cooked past al dente)

Now quiescent words
Between us—
Earlier it was all howling shouts
Starting those
Angry tears that I hate so much.
Shaking, shaking,
A sapling expecting to survive a hurricane…

Then, what was it
About the way I was standing
Spoon in hand like a weapon,
The water boiling over and creating a hiss?
What was it that made you deflate faster
Than me reaching over and
Turning off the burner?

Now, silence,
We sip wine and
Eat pasta cooked a minute
Past al dente.

March 16, 2010
Voyeurs are Artists (in southern California)

There, a girl,
thin, in a light black sweater,
green suit bottoms,
legs bare.

She forms
an “O” with her body.
Her arms twisted comfortably,
her head tilted
in
to
her subject.

A shutter clicking
soft
against the backdrop of
waves, and
she
moves into another contortion,
into another
frame of
photographic art.

We, in southern California,
are artists
covered in sand.

March 15, 2010
Dreaming hour

Upon the late hour,
the fog and mist settles in and tucks my bones
into a soft sense of belonging
so I may sleep at once.
But no sooner do I close my eyes
then fantastical bright lights,
the colors that used to dress my body and flow through
my veins and out the cuts in my arms,
are dancing off into some distant masquerade.
In one scene
cutting through the fog that is now a sea
a shark is there.
And he moves so carelessly to and fro
gently cutting the waves. Suddenly he is by me
my hair extended in a hello, and
with an understanding, he passes.

March 14, 2010
Confessions (on a rainy day)

Driving rain on the skylight makes perfect music for reading. Have Hawking’s A Brief History of Time and Kerouac’s Book of Blues and I’m not sure that it is such a great idea to read them at the same time…..

Anyways, a confession.

Confessions

What I wanted—
This writhing naked soul.

You, the ancient samurai,
Split in half with your guts spilling
With a sense of duty.

What I thought I wanted was
This blank admission.

You, as a great artist,
Throwing paint in heated frenzy. Desperate
Through the mess to speak.

You, as a lover,
Throwing your arms around mine
And lifting me up, and up,
until.

What I need now—
A quiet meditation,
a hushed whisper and time to think.

March 13, 2010
Finding an Old Master: Leaves of Grass (The Deathbed Edition from 1900)

One of the coolest books I’ve ever held in my arms, Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass from 1900, publisher David McCay. Found when going through my grandparents’ and great aunt’s things. How many have felt that same spark when holding it. Sigh.

Finding an Old Master

The smell of dust, dirt,
years of basement trappings
wafts to my nose
and surprises my brain.
The book heavy in my arms,
the spine aches
when I turn the pages.
It is old but prescient.

With its age it realizes
many things–
among them
a collection of dewy sighs
and fingerprints, some ghostly,
settle into my own
and together us pioneers
continue the story.

March 12, 2010
ghosts at church point (at st. mary’s college of maryland)

Justin lays frozen
beneath a pile of oyster shells
on the slope of the hill
at the edge of the old graveyard behind
Calvert Hall and the church.
I press my hand
on the cold metal of his name and
continue the walk down gravel
to the frozen river, the shore dressed in white.

At the end, a tall wooden cross
guards the river. I lean against it,
steamy puffs of air rising
up with each shallow breath,
one gloved hand splintering wood.
I hear birds flapping their wings and water
clicking and clacking in a strained attempt
at escape. There, the frozen horizon; it
stretches far beyond my sight.

Spread wide, my arms north and south,
face pale and cold, cheeks ruddy
from light river breezes.
The songs of the Sunday
church choir come floating in my brain,
the ghosts on the hill with
their soft waves of whispers. I walk
closer to the water; I am now
closer to that compelling
that led Justin quiet from this life.

(Rip, Justin, April 30, 2001)

March 11, 2010
Goodbye Sassy Cat

Seriously all over the place today, thinking about mortality in all ways. My parents got me a grey cat for my 11th birthday. She was the best~ and now, age 19, she is gone. For those animal lovers out there, you know how I’m feeling. Thinking all sorts of things. It is the end of an era. Goodbye Sassy cat.

Writing an Obituary

It is a clinical process:
I take the facts and look at them in their structure,
their organization.
I try to remember newspaper etiquette and to
include full name, date of birth,
date of death,
names of family who are left; names of family who are gone.

I am part of those still here, made especially clear
as I sit typing.
I am alone with my syntax; I am alone with
my gift for turning a phrase or placing a comma.
It is not enough.

March 10, 2010
feeling careless (wine in the bathtub)

In my bathtub
legs have to bend
under the bubbles
smelling of lavender and vanilla
and fading fast; faster
they float off on some
imaginary breeze
when my fingers skim the surface
and make ripples in the
fading chalky streams of soap.

My head rests on pale
yellow tiles and my one arm
lazily sinks
while the other tips a large
red wine glass full
of tannins and aged oak
and hints of spice and vanilla
to relax the
fading chalky streams of soap.

I finish the wine,
crumple my body,
sink my head
under
water
till it spills over the sides
onto a canary yellow bath rug.

March 10, 2010
Pine in Bryce Canyon (and i’m back from Jamaica)

Back from beautiful Jamaica… and I’m not sure how I convinced myself yesterday to get on a plane back to Baltimore after all that sunshine and blue salt water and all the friendly “yeah mon”s… And since I haven’t finished processing it all, I went back to an older poem from an older trip, my cross country trip in 2001.

Pine in Bryce Canyon

Stretched between tall
hoodoos of red sandstone
burning hot beneath summer,
a lone pine stands. Its
roots strong
to the dusty red ground,
and its brown trunk growing
up and up
and its green needles bursting
from their thin branches. It
heaves a light swaying sigh
of being ever green in
all red rock and dust, yet
after all, this pine
still thirsts for blue Utah sky
and gazes up longingly.

March 9, 2010

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