Anthony Watkins's Blog, page 34

What John Ate for Supper

Boondoggle dragons play poker

with napkins and public transit

while new yorkers eat

hot dogs and each other.

 

Frank gets his watch fixed

and dies in the dark

on the beach

and John mourns him for fifty years

while they build

and blow up so many buildings,

sometimes with airplanes.

 

On the off chance

you have a half dollar

can I buy a token for skee ball

on the boardwalk

or for the bus to get there?

 

I do not have to go to – New York-

to Smell it

Where am I going (Suzanne’s Poem)

to find the peace

and quiet to write my poetry?

 

That’s what I need,

not my teenaged son’s bedroom

not my couching with a boney

whining dog pressed against my leg.

 

So, I could just toss them

out, like that:

one, two, three.

 

Throw-away poems

you call them,

and I don’t even have one

I wish I had three,

I could throw

one away.

 

(Suzanne’s poem transcribed as she spoke)

This Sunday

bookended by two long

weeks of rain, dreary

green leaves hang past

the water glazed screening

 

A Sunday morning, maybe

the happiest of all

times: most are not

working, a pure leisure.

 

Reading, cooking, even laundry

goes at casual speed.

Where would I go

in this green muck?

 

Sunday morning stillness except

for gentle to gusting

bands of rain dancing

on the metal roof.

Never Trust a Poet

They lie.

They tell stories.

They hide behind words.

When all else fails

they make stuff up!

 

I have known poets –

a lot of them –

not a one of them

are to be believed

they mean to say

what you read

no more

no less

pretty boxy

metered rhymes,

scrawly, scraggly

lines bending and jumping

but in the end,

a poet is not to be trusted

the most

because, with all their lies,

they tell the truth.

 

You can never, ever,

trust the truth!

Does Anyone Remember

the sound of flash bulbs,

a wet electric pop,

the sonic image

of a bubble gum

bubble collapsing,

blinding light,

crumpled, deformed bulb,

after its momentary use

ejected and replaced?

Half Remembered Stories

The Moon sank with a clunk

like a wooden paddle hitting

the jon-boat

which is what I heard.

 

Rickey had kicked the oar

as he shifted in the dark.

 

The fish started biting,

we filled two five-gallon buckets

in darkness, talking softly of fishing:

he, of snakes he caught in the dark

pulling them into the boat

before realizing his mistake.

 

Me, I told him about us running trot lines

and set hooks with my father

and catching nothing but a turtle

on a Sunday morning before church.

 

Daddy telling his stories and me

repeating them half remembered

about jumping in after a bucket

and mornings of ice water

and pigs and persimmons.

 

Fish quit biting

as sharply as they started,

we noticed mosquitoes had not,

Rickey pulled the outboard’s rope

and at two am, we cleaned fish

on his tail gate.

 

He had Pabst, I had coffee

not quite cold from a thermos.

 

He wondered at my coffee,

it was still sticky and ninety degrees.

 

By 4 we had the boat on the trailer

and fish in freezer bags,

by daylight I was asleep,

no church this Sunday,

but one more story

I’m Folding Up my Tent

of academia:

I am a two-dollar roadside poet,

that’s all I’ll ever be.

 

I’ve studied with the great

minds of literature.

 

I discovered

I am the pig

In the phrase:

Pearls before Swine,

 

I have tried but I cannot

See what others plainly see.

 

If you want me to write

About homelessness and soda bottles

please put two dollars in my jar.

 

I’ll do my best for you,

but whatever I’m saying

will only be about homelessness and soda bottles,

though you are free to see whatever you can divine.

 

and now, just for fun, in latin

Pulvis elevationem

mille annos mortui sunt

vere venti

Ego hic nisi momentis

donec veniam ad pulvis

iam viventem,

in hoc momento

Et video

ortum, opus solliciti

suas vires extollere aratra

obtrectatoribus coegi,

aliis sit

a vita ad desks.

De aere, redolentque thymo fragrantia

ut vadat

solus sum

Nunc vitae

Habeo:

Quis mihi pulvis mortuos suscitat?

Qui videt me vastata tunc?

Non inferno, pulvis.

Two from May, so far

Raising Dust

 

thousands years dead

spring wind

I, here only for moments,

until I join the dust

 

now alive,

in this moment

I see them

rise, work, worry

 

heavy hands lift plows,

drive tractors,

others sit

a lifetime at desks.

 

The air shifts

they go

I am alone

this moment of life

I have:

 

Who raises my dust?

Who sees my wasted moment?

Not hell, dust.

 

Outside

 

our bedroom window,

honeysuckle

grows thick on

chainlink fence.

 

Thru the screened window

sweetness flows

to our bed.

 

Morning wakens,

the sound of bees

from one to hundreds

growing to a gentle

waking roar.

 

Yard full of dying

blossoms,

green fence,

summer heat,

no bees,

until May

comes again.

 

 

More Blocks

As a form, I am leaning toward the haiku tradition of not naming the poem, though that goes against all MY conventions.

I think the idea in haiku is that it is such a short poem, that one both accesses the meaning with immediacy and that a title does one of two things, it overwhelms the 17-syllable verse, or it allows a sort of cheating by extending the verse by a few pre-poem syllables.

With a single block, I think these all apply, and as the concept is, even if you stack them, they are all, each one an independent unit of 16 words, so the case still remains. for now, and as long as I am the only writing them, I can make the rules, so I say “block” poems do not have titles.

 

 

The crusher claw lifts

the Corvair, rusted, motorless

glass showers with rubber,

another cube is made.

 

 

 

Under the leafless pecans

the crow gun fires

frightening no one, not

even pecan eating crows.

 

The echo of rifles

as farmers stand, shoot

real bullets, killing birds,

ricochets through my mind.

 

Clear cold blue skies

cover the dead crows

more like a sail

than a comforting blanket.