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Category: Poems

Do You know who I am?

Do You know who I am?

Do you know who I might be?
There I slip through the shadow
in a stiff wicker cowboy hat
There I slide alongside the
swamping pole-boat as cool
and quiet as the black water

And whose fault is it anyhow?

Do you recognize me?
I’m putting ruddy thick hands
into my worn but clean bluejeans.
I’m settling a flap of flabby
pale belly inside nice western-style
silver-snap-button blue and white shirt,
letting it flop over my big belt buckle.

Do you know who I am?
Watching from the window
considering the angles
while the motor throbs
and the necessities whirr.

Ah let it be
let it go
you don’t know who I am
and you ain’t gonna ever
know who I am or what I done or where I come from or why or nuthin

Our old song

Our old song

That we sing in the sunshine
with the raindrops splattering
upon outstretched fingers

Our old song’s
been a longtime rising up
reclaiming all the beasties,
rekindling all the kindhearts

When the laughing willow
bent and shook by a dark creek
where the red-frame dirt bikes
disappeared and little boys
pedalled with self-import

Our old song’s
winding down but not giving up
when the children come up to
our knees and think it means
we must be grown-ups.

Now the child stands up inside.
Strafes the water with a fistful
of pebbles that plunk up
scattered droplets, calling
for eternity, screaming to stay
but falling away at the peak

Now the child stands up inside
and I don’t know where to stand.

All The Hurt

All The Hurt

All the hurt in the world
Couldn’t keep us apart.
All the evil in this little bag
can’t cut off our smiles.

Those who came, bless their
sainted souls, before us
deserve our success,
will lift their froth
ing mugs in cheer

All the hurt in the world
Couldn’t bury the maul
between my mind and yours
Couldn’t burn the smile
between my our reaching songs

Those who paved, thank the
merciful heavens, highways
of golden virtue where we,
oh the Lord is good!,
drive our righteous freight
beam with glad tidings
for us, their avengers!

All the lies between me and myself
don’t divide me from you
We share the deeper truth
and keep to the stiller way

No I’ll not lose you–none of us will sink beneath God’s laughter

Hike Mt Thumb Sonnet

Hike Mt Thumb Sonnet

A town beneath the shadow of a thumb.
A mighty thumb of splintered stone atop
a pleasant hike wound through thick needles clumped
on twisted rough-barked arms, through boulder crops.

We posed in cotton shorts and Ts beside
a giant wooden sign upon a wall
of river rocks so smooth and cool we liked
to hug and pat it like a pet or doll.
Me first up winding trail, crisp dried pine air!
Me first through sprinkling sunlight, proud I’m there.

AMW

[Bartleby’s Poetry Corner]

Between 2 Gs Sonnet

Between 2 Gs Sonnet

Us interwoven spattered gobs sublime,
must each and ev’ry all together meet
In time sometimes but out of time all times.
You two who never do the other greet–
Not even once

My childhood heart yet spans you both my friends
from then, now flung wide out by fate’s broad arc.
Two disciplined safe Christian family men
Debating doctrines, love still hits the mark.
–Enough of the introductions–
Now I must me, untamed sleek chargers sick,
Return to arid scrag and spreading creek.

Author: Oh, you know.
Editors: AMW/BW
Copyright: AMW (since he exists as a legal entity, and BW only as the outskirts of a daydream)

Afternote: I just now changed “monsters” to “chargers” (meaning, I guess, war horses; I may change it to “horses” or something else; leave that word as the warbly, quantum-fluctuating note.
“banshees”
“doldrums”
“vomits”

[Bartleby’s Poetry Corner]

USA For Africa

USA For Africa

March 7, 1985
And then all year on TV
All our pop stars were there–about half white and half black.
They were singing to raise money for Africa.
It was a nice idea, a beautiful song masterfully done, an inspiring studio video. And it did raise some money to help some people in Africa, which at that time seemed hopelessly impoverished to eight year olds in Lawrence Park outside Erie next to Lake Erie across from Ontario.
That’s where we thought we were growing up: in USA for Africa and That’s What Friends Are For.
Weren’t we?
Isn’t it one of the places we grew up in?
Now the rest of the world is coming on stronger, free markets, refrigerators, cars and pop stars abound. Plus there’s the internet, where people everywhere upload their notions.
Meanwhile our political climate has fallen apart and our societal fabric strained, limbo-ing us mighty patriots and our nuclear arsenal, which I’m proud to say is still quite capable of destroying I don’t know how many trillions of living things–including, for example, all of us.
It will all work out I guess.
Now it is 7:03.
It does no good to whine.

A Consistent Evil

A Consistent Evil

Walking, hand in hand, through the tall grasses, beneath clear blue sky so fresh and soft with a dollop of muggy fun where the bees buzz the grasshopper thwack the dragonflies purr and you and laugh.

Ah the lives we’ve had!

The tiger circles his tail.
The flamingo folds down like a jackknife standing on one leg in the artificial pond.
A penguin fluffs and shakes with, opening and tucking back her little razorblade wings, stunning in her black tux.

I bought the tickets. You ate the popcorn. No one said a thing.

These days, as ominous gray storm clouds come to roost all around our castle, I squeeze your hand and you look up, slouch your shoulders a little backward, pout your lips a little forward. I guess you should’ve been a rock star with moody creative outbursts and loyal fans, but you spent your youth picking daffodils by the pond’s edge, with that grumpy old swan sailing suspiciously and superciliously by, curling his black flippers in the tepid water.

Who’s to blame for the stolen decades?

We’ll start a planetarium and offer free lectures every Thursday. We’ll build a forge and turn disadvantaged youths into master blacksmiths. We’ll forage the oceans, removing all plastic bottles, aluminum cans, and even suck up the chemical spills. We’ll make something out of this yet!

A (Failed) Story of God’s Eternal Love

A (Failed) Story of God’s Eternal Love

The LORD God walked in the Garden, dreamy musculature in a thin white open-collar button-up, hands in grey tweed slacks, whistling an easy tune.
He hears a rustling in the sumptuous foliage and, craning his neck with a curious cockeye, discovers The Man hiding behind a mighty cedar tree.
So The LORD God said to The Man: “Hey! Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?”
And The Man, long broad hand over his puny mortal genitalia, stepped forward into the golden sunshine filtering through great trees not seen on this world since the time of the Giants, saying, “Well, The Woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.”
Then, from behind the shadeful cedar came a high-pitched, “Hey!” and out stepped The Woman, an arm across her ample breasts, a hand in the diamond center of her wide, world-populating hips. But, under a narrowing of The LORD God’s bewitching blue eyes and his steady-on “What is this that thou hast done?”, she lowered her eyes and, with a softer deeper voice said, “The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.”

Oh now they’ve done and gone it!
Might as well get matching “Shoot Me, Please!” target T-shirts.

And so The strong-jawed enchantingly-wry-mouthed LORD God of gleaming white teeth, beefcake hands on solid hips, doled out appropriate reprimands:
The tempter Snake should wriggle forever in the dust and an enmity should arise between him and the dupes, The Woman’s childbirth pains would have to be considerably increased and her free agency seriously curbed: “in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” And for The Man: “Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, very specifically, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”

But what is this strange aside?
And most strange of all: why let us in on it?
I mean this: Directly after sewing several cute matching outfits for occasions from formal to casual and sporty to labory–complete with coordinated footwear–, and directly before driving The Man out of Eden (letting his clingy baby doll follow after him) and placing at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life, The LORD God makes the following statement: “Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:” Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.

Are we supposed to know how close we got to being a God? And who is this “us”? Wasn’t there supposed to just be the one God? Or is it that The LORD God is more like a demigod, and the one God too infinite and pre-body/mind to flaneur gardens? Was this an unguarded moment from The LORD God, or a calculated hint to keep us in the game through century upon century slogging through the mud and crumbling with the dust? I don’t think any of us could countenance the argument that The LORD God spoke to deceive us poor, already woefully uninformed mortal worms; No, that can’t be it!

Be that as it may, The Man started calling himself “Adam”, and he dubbed his chick “Eve”, because she was the mother of all living, and because in the witching hour, as the dark swallows every ambition and blind naked poking longing climbs forward, stripped of all but its most basic outlook, a certain vampishness can improve the mood and grease Necessity playfully along.

No, no luck.
Not a story of God’s eternal love, just a silly riff on the Tree of Knowledge story.

AMW/BW

A Man Getting Older On The NYC Subway On A Cold January Day

A Man Getting Older On The NYC Subway On A Cold January Day

Journey There

With A-frame legs to even out the jars,
of stature small, robust in faded jeans
by longjohns thickened, acorn face pale,
and pretty topaz short round fingernails.

Come settle early morning bounce and beam
right here upon this leaning longing lap!

Or stride out dainty with arms crossed snugly
with me inside kind Reason’s damping clench
at twenty Fahrenheit on plastic bench.

Journey Home

We’re packed in tight when hulk in quilted black
his footing bobbles and then backward flails.
I’m shoved against a sleeping Inca’s jeans.
What caught an eye before the fall and smoosh?

As tall as me–not as a woman small–,
with black hair wavy tight upon fair head.
Horseshoe nose ring, thin hand on bubble brew.
Another wide-eyed searching flicker glance
to set my silly motor idling loud.

Oh what is man that he should know he lies,
yet still believe with deft and rousing pride?

While There

In solemn meditation pushing for
a little brighter lighter wider sight,
then pie-eyed agreeing that we too, sore
hearts open and minds clearskycalm, must fight
so that the Good defeat all injustice–
inclusive one’s own false exuberance.

Conclusion

You can’t just go through the motions.
It takes a consistent effort.
How to stand up within yourself and push out from within over and over again, growing into the Light?

AMW/BW

To GB’s Dad Sonnet

To GB’s Dad Sonnet

Who fought the Bills from Buffalo that cold
and snow-swept day in eighty what was it?
Remember frigid air, icy fluff throwed
by cruel spun winds, our skipants’ rustling slips.

So sat we down on plastic pillows square
atop aluminum bench. Far below
some tiny figures bunch up, slide out, dare
amazing feats unseen but, trusting, known.

Thick-parka’d fans on every side, I hear–
behind, one level up,–two beards agree
that I, the little guy, too scarfed to cheer,
am tough, would tough it to finality.

Thank you, Mr. Baker, for taking us.
But why would anyone, unless they must,
do such a thing?

AMW

[Bartleby’s Poetry Corner]