POEM: POUNDING SAND POEMS

Man Sitting After Last Bus Has Gone

The Red Door                  

The ice man won’t ring. 

And blue birds won’t sing.

Those clear skies won’t bring  

back your bright tomorrows.

The marks on your door

you cannot ignore—

They even the score

with their dreadful furrows.

Those lines are to trace

and keep you in place.

A life meant for grace;

you were all but winning.

They say you’ll be saved;

your way now is paved.

Like a flag that’s waved

o’er the world’s sad sinning.

Don’t open the door!

Leave others to war.

You’ll gain so much more,

if you’ll only listen.

You can’t walk away;

all the rest will stay.

You’ll rue this black day!

Not all souls will glisten.

Hangover Sunday

Prepare the corpse.

Guide it to its chair at the table.

Put paper by its craven hand.

Give it a pen to write with.

Urge good penmanship.

Pour coffee over its head.

Then cry “Desolation!”

in its ear.

Landfill

You drive along the curving road

up a hill fringed with late season snow,

and for a minute you’re off to the cottage,

not to a place where a hundred thousand people

leave their garbage.

Your ears pop with the slight change

in elevation, and then you’re at the top:

Gates and fencing, sheds and admin buildings,

and the landfill just over there

is oddly subtle and unobtrusive,

haloed with flocks of circling gulls.

There’s a light snow falling.

The sky is a soft, luminous white,

diffuse, distant and comforting.

The air is brisk, clean, with wafts of cool breezes.

It’s April, and winter is giving 
its last, loving touch.

You stand at the top and look around

at the piles of wood and plastic,

broken TVs, bags and boxes—

all the detritus of a city,
bundled, binned and arranged 
into dumpsters and crates

along fences and inside long metal sheds.

Cars and trucks drive by, but not too many.

An older man carries a computer monitor

from his car to one of the bins.

You see him try to lift it over the fencing

and you walk over to help,

but then he unlatches the gate door

and carefully places it inside.

You put your own monitor

beside his with equal care.

You say, “It’s too bad we have to throw

out all this stuff.”

He says “Yes”, and walks away.

You thought you had more to say to him, somehow.

You look around at the browns and yellows

of early spring, at the grasses and hedges.

You look at the piles

of dark compost off to one side

as snowflakes blow around

like puffs of dandelion seed

or exploded mattress stuffing,

floating and dancing on the breeze.

And the circling gulls are garbage angels.

They tell you it’s a lovely in-between time—

when winter is not quite ready to let go,

and spring is too shy to come on stage yet.

It’s nature acknowledging its past,

with a tip-of-the-hat and a drum roll to the future.

…..

You know you’re standing in a place

where things go to die.

But it’s also a place where things

(and perhaps people)

go to become something else.

…..

After a time, you’re reminded

of other places you stopped at  before,

like those highway service centers—

lone, windy places,

with their modern plastic shapes and colours, 
and all  the cars and people

lined up for gas and coffee,

everyone going someplace else,

becoming something else.

Then, you’d felt the space

around you open up—

past the blue helmet of sky

with its bright, bright sunshine, 

out past the straw-yellow plain

of raw, spring fields.

Then, you’d clung

to the centers’ ribs and spine,

island-safe inside their functioning.

And so you do again,  

here at the landfill.

…..

And you think:

In a hundred years, a thousand,

what’s left?

Odd-shaped  mounds

with bits of metal and plastic

picked over by people,

who wonder how they were made

and why, and by whom?

…..

Except, not today—

not this day,

a day still so in-between,

with the snow gently falling

and a sky free of expectation.

Standing Stones #1

Moving one heavy stone

against another,

he stands at the foot

of his driveway

with a shovel for a lever

and time as a fulcrum.

Then he uses bricks

to wedge them in place

for a while.

National Porn Week

Buck Right! Here! You dirty old sod!

You’re hung just like a Roman god!

And still you’ve got that really great bod.

Are you up for your latest Prick?

Come meet a star, everyone!

Buck, this is my wife, Fanny Fun,

and Danny Dong, our handsome young son,

and his wife, Beaver Dong.

I tell you truly that Mighty Dick

has nothing on you, dear old Stick!

Last year’s Prick was last year’s Prick.

Here stands a legend, kids!

Where are my manners? Please sit down.

Everyone here in this fucking town

is buzzed you’ve finally come around

to doing hat tricks again.

I saw you in your latest flick.

It made my Fanny dear quite slick!

Buck, I know it’s just a camera trick,

but I envy you and Dolly.

Say, where is our Dolly, today?

She’s sure to beat out Lisa Lay.

Her implants! Well, what can I say?

(Where did she get those done?)

You missed the opening Tickle and Grope,

and Sub Missy’s trick with her honeyed rope,

and the Shower Boys’ choir complete with soap.

They’ll be starting any time, now.

Hey, what would you say to a four-way?

Oh, don’t answer me now. Okay?

It’s Fanny who asked me to say.

She’s tired of our washing machine.

More drinks at our table! It’s bare!

Oh, waiter! (Now, I don’t mean to stare,

but that boy is really quite fair!)

How often do you use Viagra?

.....

And the scene moved on along its way.

Buck won a Prick—his fourth since the day

he’d first dropped his socks for a fist full of pay.

But Dolly was not there beside him.

Of late she thought she had the flu,

that it may be old, as well as new,

something she’d borrowed, something blue.

In the end she just couldn’t decide.

Spoons

“Oh Heather!

You pleasure my nethers!”

(I’d never said that before!)

And Stella,

you were a fella.

But like an umbrella,

you kept me warm and dry.

Mary, Mary,

so contrary!

Love was scary

in your garden.

Kate--

No debate!

You were bowl and plate,

a mate for all seasons.

All you others:

whose names I’d ruther

just rhyme with “mother”.

(Nothing right 
or wrong about that!)

On to Jackie:

“You’re pleasin’

my lesions!”

You give me reasons,

and seasons of more.

…..

The Finally Om:

You were the sum,
the calling drum,

the forgiving "hum..."

of sweet life’s hesitations.

Standing Stones #2

He balances one stone

against another,

and a third to complete the group.

They’re not megaliths,

but heavy enough for one man

with just a shovel and some bricks

to erect them.

Then comes a comic tableau:

An old man and woman stop by.

He’s tall, angular; she’s small

and uses a walker.

From across the street
it's too far to hear them clearly.
So I watch, as in pantomime,

while the old man directs and advises, 
and offers to help the younger man,

the one with strength in arm and back still.

The younger man gestures his thanks,

but no, he doesn’t want the old man

to try and shift the heavy stone:

It is his work to finish, his marker.

Still the three remain there,

standing like stones

at the foot of the driveway,
as I stand across the street
watching them.

Winter Prayer

Let the sun shine on stone

and the ice melt

in shared warmth!

Here, there are chants still

and breath left for chanting.

I thought I would stop pounding sand for a few minutes and send out these few ditties from the archive. A couple are old, a couple new, one is borrowed, one’s just blue. 

RED DOOR is a newbie that I’m not too unhappy with. Of course I was thinking about the Passover story, where Yahweh, the Old Testament's grumpy God, warts and all, who tells the Jews in Egypt that He will continue his campaign to free them* by unleashing the Angel of Death (AOD) to come around and kill the firstborn of every family in Egypt as punishment for imprisoning His Chosen People. (Couldn’t he just teleport them out and vaporize the Egyptians? Just askin'.)

Now, it was really important that every Jewish family slather their front doors with sheep’s blood, so the AOD would know not to slay their firstborn sons (daughters? Meh…). This is Yahweh’s tenth try at convincing the Egyptians to release their Jewish slaves so they could begin their sojourn to the Promised Land. Let's hope #10’s a winner!

Anyhoo, I just kind of played with the story a bit and speculated what would be the case if, generally, being “saved’ in such a manner wasn’t somehow problematic. And I wonder, as we look around the world today, if we aren’t experiencing our own set of biblical plagues. I hope Yahweh doesn’t get frustrated and start pounding sand as He tries to get through to us. The question is—do we stay or do we go?

"Oh, my inflatible--you were so ateable!"

NATIONAL PORN WEEK—is fun and I hope the reader gets a chuckle or two from it. Just where is Dolly? Is she at home looking in the mirror, admiring her award-winning implants? Or, if we look closely, do we see a tear in the corner of her eye?  I envision NPW being held in Las Vegas, which in english means means “The Meadows”. The city got its name in 1829 when trader Antonio Armijo discovered the desert springs oasis when travelling along the Spanish Trail to Los Angeles. It’s certainly come a long way from a place to water a few burros—now it waters millions of thirsty dreams. Surely, the spring has run dry by now? 
The STONES poems—I was out for a walk and that’s what I saw. I wonder if the three boulders the guy put out that day are still there. Or did he accidentally back into them with his truck one snow-blasted winter’s morn? If so, perhaps the truck would make a suitable addition to the monument? 

"Must. Have. Bush!"

LANDFILL—this one rambles on a bit too much for my taste, just like the runoffs and seepage, methane leaks and debris that will eventually spread around the area like middle-age sag-butt. It seems contained now, but with all the garbage being piled up, something’s got to give. Hey! How about a Plague of Garbage! #11’s a winner! 

WINTER PRAYER—This short ditty always gives me hope that sharing and communality, and mutual respect are all around us, if we’d only take them up. Or let them sit for a spell.

Enjoy the poems or go pound some sand!

Cheers, Jake 

(< And I have NO idea WHAT this thing is beside my name! It sure is funny-looking. Maybe it's a doorstop? A cairn? Dunno.)

 

*Having sent nine previous “plagues” (which is bible-code for “bad things that happen to you”) like locusts and floods and thunderstorms. But plagues of gnats or boils? Cummon! Aren’t they just annoying? Now, the first one: turning the Nile’s water into blood—that would have been enough to convince me! (It must have pissed-off all the vegetarians in Egypt.)