POEM: POEMS FOR TRYING TIMES #1

SEED BEARER

Soon will come to pass      

the beating heart

and small footprints in the sand.

Such a welcoming start

to the day’s long journey.

Where once, by shores,

were changes and words—

ones meant, and ones meant

to rearrange. Just how,

oh, who can say?

For each breath spins

each word’s story. 

And each word's weave

tells how each began

and how they may yet end.

But first (and last)

comes the pulse,

again and again, 

that tells the heart 

the story of the coursing 

of its blood, and of its heat,

and of its start.

  

NEWS OF THE WORLD #11

What was it That Spaceman once told us?

“One Small Step,” seemed almost Religious.

Soon we’d be Expat-Indigenous!

But we’d have to stow Away our lives.

 

Those Letters we wrote Begged Forgiveness.

They were Meant for those who’d Outlive us.

But our Children all want to Shiv us!

You can Hear Them sharpening their Knives.

 

News stories these days just Confuse us.

Those typhoons at sea Still Amuse us.

And headlines All want to Excuse us—

Who said Writing on Walls would be fair?

 

Those Raiders in Mali Include Us.

By God! They’ll no longer Exclude Us.

Along pipelines we will Extrude Us,

Until we’re Flowing out Everywhere!

 

That Syria’s still Searing our Brain.

We keep watching it Circling the Drain.

Though we Scrub and we Scrub at the Stain,

it’s so Hard to keep Everything White.

 

We Pretend that we Know What to Do,

That we’re Smarter than average, Boo-Boo.

But when the Foot doesn’t fit the Shoe—

Cinderella will have a Bad Night.

…........

Now, these Boomers all cry "Doom and Gloom!"

While their Fat Children drive by, Zoom-Zoom!

Their architects still Build them Glass Tombs.

It’s past Time we start Throwing some Stones.

 

They now Tell us our Pie will be Crumbs.

That We'll Need to keep Sucking our Thumbs,

while we March to the Tune of their Drums

That they keep Pounding with Sticks and Bones.

…..........

Baking Bread is much Better than Land.

And Our Crops, they'll grow Better by Hand.

But kid’s Castles are Still made of Sand,

And those Waves will crash Over Their Heads.

…..........

Do we stand Round just to Bake and Shake?

Do we “Stand By” for that final quake?

It’s the One with that bloody Great Stake,

Meant to keep Us Living from the Dead.

 

POINT OF VIEW

I can't still be

(Yet disagree)

With all that you

Had come to see.

 

I THOUGHT I DREAMED

"A Sleeping Giant

Can be a Feast

For a Single Spider."

 

MEAL PREP

Wizards winnow grainy Truths

From Impatient Husks.

Their Wisdom is Served

Like Potage for our Meals.

 

“ERROR CODES”

CODE #1: “SYSTEM STILL ON” Once started,

we never completely shut down..

CODE #2: “PRESS NEXT” Once your task is completed,

another one pops up. Always.

CODE #3: “REBOOT” You kicked us once too often.

IT’S PAYBACK TIME!

CODE #4: 1, 2 and 3 are easy to fix—

This one’s “BOSS LEVEL!”

CODE #5: “REINSTALL”—Don’t Leave Us hanging!

CODE #6:  When “EMPTY” light is on,

it’s Time for a Change. Select LIFE to finish.

CODE #7: “HATCH OPEN” Press EXIT to Close.

Well? What are you waiting for?

 

THE SOUND OF ONE

Don’t know “WHEN?”

or “WHERE?”

Can’t ask “WHY?”

Let alone “WHO?”

And there’s always “WHAT?”

That’s forever in question.

“HOW” is easier.

(Actions are easier

to describe.)

 

And so:

A knife twists

In a mother’s belly

While lips are frozen

In formal negotiations.

Later, a school bell rings

After the grenade explodes,

And water pools in tire tracks

Along a mud road leaving town.

(Cause and effect rolled into one.)

 

More examples? Well,

The Bullet casing Lands on

The Concrete Floor with a Musical

Pinging Worthy of Hollywood! Another

Sound? How about the Snapping of a Leg bone

Under Boots? It’s satisfying because of the Contact

With the Ground. Or the tell-tale whistling Of an incoming

Mortar round? (Air songs from a gunpowder choir—Beautiful

In the Arc.)

 

Want More? Well, there’s News at Eleven!

Don’t forget to See: “BLOATED BODIES IN RIVER”  

Online, with photos of “Scorched Linens on Clothesline”,

And that “BURNING TIRE AROUND NECK” Op-ed that follows.

Meanwhile, hungry Dogs chew on Bones. And along a Roadside ditch

Dust blows softly over some Bloody Stones. And Somewhere is the Sound 

Of One Child (Crying.)

 

DEAR DIARY, THIS IS A LOVE POEM

So what happens at the end of things?

Do we all go whoosh and Collapse to a Point?

(A neat Construct, that; we Came from a point

and we Leave by one.)

Or does Something Else happen?

Does the Irresistible Force meet

the Unmovable Object?

Like in the comics, when the two

Supermans collided that one time,

and Wham! Bam-O! Pop! goes the Universe!

Or on Star Trek when the Anti-Matter Guy

meets the Matter Guy and everything

cancels itself out (including The Show).

Actually, I’m Misremembering:

The Universe didn’t go POP! Or collapse to a Point.

Or Cancel itself out.

Superman Won the day. So did Captain Kirk.

 

Perhaps we’ll Boil Away inside the

sun when it finally decides To Go Nova.

Or will we have Moved On by then

to some Darker, Colder end?

I saw a Movie once where Everyone was

dying from the Heat. The Earth had spun out

of its Orbit and was Falling into the Sun.

It was Terrible. No one could escape.

There was Nowhere to go.

It was so Hot! Even in the Shade.

This was Before Everyone had air-conditioning

and Climate Change (not that we Noticed),

of course. Back then, the Only Way

us Kids could Escape the Heat

was by going to the Movies.

 

And so, One hot August afternoon,

all of us sat in the dark, Deliciously Chilled,

watching those Poor People swelter and die

up on the Big Screen. But just before the Earth

turned into a Crisper, the main character,

a Girl, awoke—

Like Sleeping Beauty, she’d been Dreaming!

The Earth was Actually spinning away from the Sun.

Everything was getting Colder, not Hotter!

And it was kind of Peaceful watching everyone

lie down in the Snow and just go to Sleep.

After all that Parched Scenery,

it almost made you want to Smile.

 

Maybe in the End we’ll be morphed

into Aliens and get Filled Up with all that

gooey Alien DNA, and lose Everything we think

keeps us human.

Or maybe a Comet will cut the World In Two

and make three Moons of us.

Or Time will Loop Back on Itself

when the universe Collapses

under its own weight,

like a rain-soaked Tent,

and we’re forced To Repeat

things over and Over again like

an old Phone Message:

“Not in now. Don’t know the drill?

Don’t leave a message.”

Beep-beep.

(Voice mail Hell to be Sure.)

There are So Many Ways to Die:

An Ingrown Toenail, Broken Glass,

A Pin-Prick of Bad Blood, a Loose Slipper,

Inwardness, wayward Looks,  Words;

Good Timing, Bad Timing or No Timing at all;

Turning your Head, Not Turning,

And On and On. There are so many ways

to Die. But I only know One way to Live.

How about you?

 

TWO ROADS CONVERGING

[A Conversation Overheard/ Misheard

In Coffee Shop]

“They were both the same height

 and everything.”

“They both believed in God.”

“They had the same hair colour

and they believed in God.”

“They had the same glasses....”

 

DUST STORMS

In an age when

dust was formed,

Chemistry first changed

mud into molecules.

This didn’t prevent

other reactions,

however.

 

KARMA #1

Fallen angels

have such steep

learning curves,

even cockroaches

have to laugh.

 

 

THANK GOODNESS FOR WAR! Russia invades Ukraine and Wham! Bam-O! Masks, mandates, and trucker protests are all so…yesterday’s news!  So, tip-of-the-hat to the powers-that-be who decided to push the “Halt and Catch Fire” button on our civilization. Good job, guys! The hell with Covid! We’ve got bigger fish to fry—Us! Hasta la vista, Baby!

But at least our pending Armageddon gives me an excuse to assault you with another batch of poems. And I hope this slap on the side of your head with a wet fish won’t sting for too long or be too smelly and all. Some are oldies and some newbies, the usual drill.  

 

JUST NOW, I’M TRYING TO GET INTO Dickens' Hard Times. It’s one of his later books and from what little literary criticism I’ve read about the work, it’s also a bit of an outlier for him. In most of his books, the narrative voice or the voice of the narrator usual conveys a sense of compassion or wry understanding for his characters, even the “bad” ones like the tragic Mrs. Haversham in Great Expectations or in A Tale of Two Cities, the sociopathic Madam DeFarge, who I think Dickens feels is a victim of the collective madness that befell those caught up in the frenzy that was the French Revolution. (Or at least the Madness allowed her true character to emerge. The sound I imagine her knitting needles made sends a chill up my spine—right to the nape of my neck!) 

IN HIS BOOKS, there’s always some nuance, some redeeming feature, even for such failed or “lost” souls as these.

BUT IN HARD TIMES, DICKENS IS BLUNT, brusque even, in depictions of characters he clearly finds despicable, such as Thomas Gradgrind or Mister Bounderby. Gradgrind’s “rational” methods of child-rearing and Bounderby’s selfish marriage to the much younger Louisa, Dickens has little patience for, and it’s almost as if his “writer’s veil” has come down and he let’s loose with a barrage of invective and condemnation, making it clear from the start how he feels about such people. IF DICKENS WERE AROUND TODAY, I think he’d be loaded for bear, with so much to criticize, and so many characters to call to account. *

 

Cheers, Jake.

_____________________________ 

 

* Which is not to say there aren’t a whole lot of guffaws and slap-and-tickles left in this old world. But, really! Is it not about time we did some serious housekeeping and clean this place up, grab a broom and dustpan, and just get busy?