These are poems that aim at reflecting something uniquely American in experience. Be it a place. Or a person or an experience. It had to happen somewhere to become something.
Looking up
Bubbles dot the sky
A rainbow of
Colorful forms
Separate Vessels
Full of lives
And danger…
Hundreds together
Inhaling thinner
Oxygen than
Those below.
The roar
Tearing through
Silent, cloudless
Skies, Alarming!
Then warming
Then lifting
Then floating
In the parkie
Morning…
I am interested in place as place, a single objectified reality that is changed only by subjective interactions with it. This as a separate pursuit of the human experience that is influenced by place which is history and human presence objectified.
The park
Neon and forest green
Rolling blend of Kentucky blue
Clover and dandy lions
Shaded by old line of elms
The park
Neon yellow and navy
Zipping children chasing and surging
Tearing out clumps of Kentucky blue
In pursuit of glory
You can have a place
And use it too.
To capture being
As we are not things
As “things” go
Us Being
That Is or shall I say
I Am
No thing
So this is where it gets confusing, you see
So often we write of things, describing things, filling empty pages with empty rooms, filling them with words about things to fill whole rooms. But, then enters the main character and that’s when it goes to hell because lead role players are always such emotional beings so it’s tough to say where it will all go and what will set them off so the room fills with emotional predicate.
We enter
Asking for your attention
The town crier
Speaking of the here
And the now
Present for this expression
Of the hearing
Spoken in clear and present tense
The words of the people
So that they may be heard:
What they say—
How they say—
That we may say about them
And this place; The good
And bad and in-between places
That people go to become their
Very own demonstration of their Human
Being. We are here to write it down.
Oil over metal
Fuel into fire
Inertia soon released
Smoke off tires
Green lights blink
Foot off clutch
Pedal to metal
Checkered flag rush
Open up throttle
Chaos in control
Chasing white line
Racing’s in your soul!
“Start your engines!”
We sit and eat
And stare at
The paintings
On the wall
Across the
Street.
They don’t
Really represent
What they
Look like.
Proportions
Off, eyes
Too small
For large
Black heads
Dog and cat,
Couch of
Snake and fish,
Blue iguana.
Staring contest
w/ the cartoon
Crew across
The wall
From them.
GoodShepard
Animal clinic.
“The Doctor Is in.”
Beautiful day
Ruined
By schedules
Subjective
Of course
The day
Perfectly happy
To be perfect
Not bothered by my
Objective
“Off course, re-routing”
The Birds are
on the move
Snatching up the
Last mating
Bugs of Summer
Slow
Oblivious
Fattening up for
Winter’s rest
Or supper.
Anytime I Go
Anywhere, I know
Exits and barricades.
I have to know
Where we are to go
If you’re on a rampage.
Your second privilege becoming our existential threat.
What do I tell my children?
“There there little one, don’t you cry.
There’s ‘thoughts and prayers’ for us when we die.”
“Now, now, there there, don’t you despair.
Run for the exit, it’s over there.”
It’s easy to see
Why Georgia O’Keefe
Landed in Abiquiu.
All these cowboy clouds
and sunshine smiles
So much painting to do.
Rosie red arches
And sulfur burning
With Yellowing tongues
Rising, Lashing out
Lapping up lapis
Skies, with brushes swung
Heavy oil to evoke
American dream.
A land growing lost
To the lush beauty
She acquired on
blank sheets of canvas.
”Stone of lumination.”