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There is plenty here I don't remember...
As I take you down the Hollywood boardwalk
And try to build back memories brick by brick
Of eating cheap pizza, slice by slice
Of pressing my feet into the sand and shore
Grain by grain, wave after wave
algae tangles
between my
toes and I
cannot say
how easy it
is
to sink
one moment
sunbathing
by white sand
castles
the next sinking
beneath cruel
waves that do not
care what they take
he finds he gets away with
not joining the army. it's through being medically
colourblind. it is fine – he is never
considered a coward, though he
is a coward. glad
he doesn't have to join the army.
they are desperate for men
but he holds his excemption
in his wallet and shows it
whenever he's asked.
he's married, but there are many
young women about, and not very many
young men. it's not of much value.
his wife is already a beautiful woman
and she's happy that he's still at home.
during the war it is easy to find work
and afterward he will have experience
so he believes that it will remain easy.
he thinks he should maybe learn
the language of the enemy
on the chance that they win
but that's hard.
The little girl knows
Rocky steps down the river
A thirsty flock of cattle
And a plastic container on her tanned back
The dust turned her eyes brown
A black beauty disfaced.
The road is rough
A muddy patch of a nightmare
Swallowing vehicles
And the food perishes with the hours
An unhappy home
A tired citizenry singing dirges at noon.
The little girl wishes
She could get a new uniform
Run to happily to school every morning
They are wishes at best
Stuck in her beautiful heart
She's buried in the hurlyburly of day.
We need more names, a catalogue
Of remonstrance, a book of all our sins.
More pages to outline the travesty
And the days will roll on our shoulders
Everything makes the devil laugh
And the priest is reading beautiful verses
This is not a good place
For the meek and mellow
A cheek to receive the alternate slap.
We devoured the lights
In gobbles of insipid demeanour
Nothing else to place in mindful remembrance
Of the sins of our fathers
The books are getting filled with odes.
genocide again
on the news website
headlines. I make a black coffee
for you with our brand
new machine.
Although sixty miles inland
I hear the sea gnawing at rock
festooned with barnacles and weed.
Maybe that’s just my pulse angry
with me for ignoring its needs.
Maybe it’s just the grinding
of gears on the local trash truck.
You lust for a glimpse of surf
even more deeply than I do
but you claim to hear nothing
richer than black mud slopping
in our rainy garden, May sprouts
drowning in elemental angst.
We could hop in the car and drive
that sixty miles. The radio
would amuse us with religion
and far-right propaganda
that would so infuriate us
we’d dash headlong into the waves
and rebaptize each other in pastel
greens and blues, dripping and sizzling.
But people flaunting their warped egos
in the ugliest of bathing suits
would sneer at us for aging
so normally, our rebirth on hold,
and the water up to our waists
would feel colder than scripture
underscoring our secret dread.
The lanterns of the night sky
light nothing but old histories
we’re afraid to tell each other.
The lanterns compete with stars
and usually outshine them
with staggers of eloquent fire.
The annals they illuminate
remain as true as ever, texts
composed of brittle human flesh.
Their haunted cathedrals loom
at the edge of forests reclaiming
cities recently abandoned,
but no one dares recite the tales
left untold in the shadows cast
by forgotten Gothic architects.
So many ruins coughing up weeds
and snoring in their spilled rubble.
We never got to visit the best
of them: Babylon, Joppa. Gdansk,
Sophia, Madras, Lhasa, Perth.
These fossil sites will haunt us
for a while, then forget themselves
in brambles, saplings, and dust storms.
The lighter of lanterns has passed,
leaving the sky in ashes. The moon
and the last stars have withdrawn,
leaving the lanterns smiling
over a landscape ripe for revenge.
Gerard Sarnat
To the best of perhaps incomplete knowledge
around 30% of all our classmates have passed
whereas ChatGPT tells Gerry that “about half
of individuals born in 1941 survive to age 80.
…However, survival rates can vary based on
factors like gender, lifestyle, healthcare access.”
Not to put too fine a point on it but in the US
“the richest 1 percent of men lives 14.6 years
longer on average than the poorest 1 percent
of men, while among women in those wealth
percentiles, difference’s 10.1 years on average.”*
Since data is pre-Trump, now only imagine…
*https://news.mit.edu/2016/study-rich-poor-huge-mortality-gap-us-0411
plants budding, flowers nodding open in the grass–
pollen exploding upwards like elon’s rockets,
bursting in the air, debris falling for human consumption.
cool air kisses me gently, promises hotter moments later today.
i feel persephone’s touch and lean my head back, eyes closed,
back arching into the feeling of returning sensation and life.
i hope when you die, that your veins run with the water of the brooks,
that your eternal eyes see the decomposition of the leaves–
ferns feasting on your pupils as you see the mites on their stems.
i see moss growing up your bones, it crept over from the waterfall rocks
to rest on you, to offer softness to your spirit.
i hope that the trout-lily nods gently from your ribs.
i call the fair folk to welcome you within them, to rise in trickery and joy of life,
let your soul take their hand as they lead you to the land of milk and honey.
i hope when god is painting the next winter frost, he hands you the brush for a few strokes.
i hope when the sun is smiling, you laugh down at us too.
i hope you forget nothing, you simply watch the waters of the river wash away hurt,
leaving ecstatic peace in its wake–your soul’s beauty finally at the forefront.
i hope you are found again as a body of bone, flame azaleas, softest moss.
The woman
in the crowded elevator
can’t get her hand
anywhere near
the button for her floor
and is too shy
to ask a stranger
to push it for her.
She’s on her way
to her crowded office.
She just emerged from
the crowded outside world.
I am in my front yard
raking leaves
and a friend,
a fellow poet,
walks by
with a golden lab
on a leash.
He stops,
and I pat the dog,
and we agree
on how nice
the weather is.
That’s right.
We both use
the word “nice.”
Poetry died then.
Even an expression like
“mildly agreeable”
could have saved it.
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