Anthony Watkins's Blog, page 4

The Poem Around the Corner

These days,

between cancer and chemo,

my brain isn’t what it used to be,

I get snippets of poems,

a half of a line,

a thought, a jolt,

but when I try to collect it

into a series of words,

it melts like the shimmering puddles

on a hot summer highway.

I can see it, I can taste it,

it is a poem just around the corner,

I see a flash of its red shirt,

a pony tail, and maybe some sneakers,

but the poem is a mirage

gone before I see it fully

gone into the shimmering

puddle of a cloudy mind.

I know its there, and maybe

I will find it, maybe it will slow down

and I will speed up, but for today,

the poem is just a slip in the alley.

There Are Times I Write a Poem

That is really a song,

I sing it in my head,

with a nice melody,

probably without orchestration,

as I am not that complicated,

but I sing it and I

like the way it sings,

but as I have no voice

and cant carry a tune,

if I open my mouth

the song goes away

so it spends its life,

quietly on the page,

a song no one hears,

and maybe it’s better that way.

The Old Man Sits Sickly

Like an old bottle of Dr. Pepper said:

10-2&4, morning or night,

he plays solitaire and waits

for a poem to come along,

and sometimes it does, somedays.

He naps a lot and writes nothing,

he is waiting to get better,

knowing he might not,

knowing dying is coming,

and not minding too much,

but wanting to live a little

before its time to go.

Too weak to do the things

his brain thinks of,

too weak to think as much as he used to,

 so glad the little man with the typewriter

still send him a poem now and then.

Putting it all Down

Sitting on the front porch

in the October air,

eating popcorn and painting

with one hand, sneezed

and got paint all over my face,

not that it matters to me,

or anyone else

who isn’t there.

House paint rolls

onto paper grocery sacks,

post cards and letters

I paint them all though

I don’t know what the words

and pictures mean

folks still like them,

still ask me to explain

the things I don’t know,

always been that way,

maybe that’s the way

its supposed to be,

but I know poets and painters

who can tell you

what they are thinking,

but I just put it all down

and let you try to understand.

This Old Man Medicine

is for the living and the dying

as we do both by degree,

until it is all gone then

 you can throw my medicine

out the window

and book me one more ride

on that lonesome train.

I will not ride again,

I will not rise again, either.

 I will ride through your memories

as the man who loved you.

The foolish old man,

the bad jokes I told,

I will be there but you will not see me.

As the rails whine and moan,

I will be there,

when you sit on the bench

in the park, overlooking

where my ashes were laid to rest.

There is no medicine,

only love and life and until

we are all dead and gone,

and dead and gone

and no one will remember

but we lived and loved

and we remember.

Man in Black Blazer

I stood there in my dark

double breasted suit with black buttons,

waving my hand to the crowd trying

to make a point, all the while,

looking like an old Johnny Cash,

and appearing mostly ridiculous.

The podium gave me some cover,

but nothing shielded my face

and I spoke, my voice rising and falling

almost to a whisper,

all to tell you what it was

like on the inside,

dark blazer or not,

I stood naked.

Origins

In the beginning,
there was God.

We don’t know much
about his parents.

I Got a Home Gloryland

a silly take on both an old gospel and my hometown of Shorter, Alabama

Outshines the blues,

don’t you wanna come

along and get one too?

They givin’ them away for nothing

they giving them away for free

way beyond the blues,

for a song, can you sing

you can have one too,

I got a home in Gloryland

out by the track out by the track

where they run the greyhounds

day and night and we bet the chalk

 and play for fun out by Gloryland.

I Saw a Man in the Park

on a sunny afternoon

playing a big black grand piano,

top open to the world,

he played all the old songs

that I love and even sang

along with a few,

the leaves were beginning

 to fall but the weather

it was fine.

I dont know who wheeled it out there

or what the event was called,

I sipped my coffee

in the shade and watched

the sycamore leaves tumble down

gold against a silver trunk

and thought about Jesus and Zacchaeus

and how it wasn’t this kind of sycamore.

 And I thought about you

and wondered how being

dead was these days.

I miss you now and then

especially when I hear

a melancholy piano on the park

Watching God Follow a Pattern

Carefully stitching clouds

against a Florida sky,

a pattern given to him by

the old gay painter from Fort Pierce,

I marvel at the two of them.