Posted poems from time to time.
Note: unless otherwise cited, all work is my own. And yes, I am a geek, and quite comfortable as one. Going to start off with a couple simple ones: The Rose and 1776. Here goes:
The Rose
Between the thorns softly dark,
Daring some swift cutting pain,
I move on that which by design
Was so wistfully sought to gain.
How, then,
In coming at last upon this leaf,
The first beneath that bud
Which tight within its petals sleeps,
Could I still within that touch
Feel yet unfelt surprise?
This is, I know now,
Mere prelude to arouse in me
A wonder thought dead and gone
Of that, which here so near at hand
Awaits,
The plucking of the rose.
Seventeen Seventy-six
Oho the little drummer
Whose rapid hands upon the march ripped time
A due festoso
Beneath the brown hands
Beneath the leather hands
Stopped but a moment always
pressed soul to canvas
the imprint of beauty rubbed away
Marching backwards as we age along
Tell me
How did you fare
when casting up your music toy
to fright the silly British?
Did you feel a momentary pulse of purity
tripping through the heart of innocence?
Or did you throw down your face into the leaves
to bargain with the earth?
Perhaps you’re still too young
with pockets full of boy things
and mother’s wet kiss upon your cheek
But surely you heard the men talking
Did they speak of death and dying
sacrifice and fear?
Or did they whisper through their fires
of dreams between ages
the passage of mystery into stone?
Play a little now
A little roll to loose the centipedal feet of time
A little march
So we might know the meaning of your bliss
Alexander's Ragtime Band
How you danced in white pants,
Shuffling your scruffy brown shoes
in time.
You Alexander?
You the Rag Time Band?
Scuffling to the music
in red hat, shiny and paper
with the yellow bill
and a feather up top like an ostrich.
"Let your mother take your picture!"
"My dancer," she smiled
to make you smile
Her rough hands gentle
on the camera.
So you stood there in the dirt yard
before the asbestos house
and the bushes that refused to live
thinking of footlights and applause.
You stood in the dust squinting.
And you wondered, maybe,
why was she laughing
Why was she calling you
"my little dancer"
"My Alexander?"
Verses for Children
[The Seymour Recitation]
They gather around my feet
A semicircle of budding faces
As yet untouched by the stench of life.
And I, oh, most miserable bastard
that I am, yes,
I spread before their trusting eyes
Page after page of images
That have bedeviled souls out of time.
And, strangely, they do not hate me for this,
Not yet, not now, not here
Where every cafefully modulated word
Conceals the blood within the honey,
Deceives the heart by pandering to the ear.
I should be saying, "Don't listen to this,
Not now, not ever. Run for your lives
Before you, too, fall from the sky,
Before you, too, are left by an indifferent ship
going somewhere safely out of reach."
But I cannot. No.
For truly I am sick with envy of them
And want to drag them down to me
The way I was dragged down by others.
So I go on peddling pain as wisdom,
Hoping to leave a wound that will not heal.
Until, at last, when I can no longer
look at them directly
Without giving myself away, I close my books,
Knowing full well that, in their innocense,
They will thank me for my treachery.