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SMASHED

POEM: Smashed

Faced today with a growing hurricane season, it seemed appropriate that I start off my blog with a poem about the mother of all hurricanes, the 1900 storm that wiped out Galveston. This is especially so, as I have just been thru a few myself, and a good part of the southeast is dealing with a double dose of overlapping hurricanes visiting within weeks of each other: Helene and Milton.

When I first came to Texas, I had the dubious honor of riding out Alicia, which passed its eye right over my home, like the welcome wagon from hell. It was a get acquitted card for the 1900 Storm which had become, for me, new local history. It came before the naming of storms, and had it been named, it would have been instantly retired. The 1900 storm was the worst disaster in US history, to this day. It began a life long entanglement with storms, both live and in poetry. I gave the storm the name Misery, and titled this project, Misery’s Lick.

The pieces in this project tend to be longer than my average, as there was just so much to absorb. It was a storm so terrible it was not spoken of afterwards. It altered the course of history, destroying Galveston as the Newport of the West, a playground for millionaires, and gave the crown to Houston. The entire island was covered by storm surge so deep, it smashed buildings, wharves and railroad bridges, using the debris to batter the rest. ‘Smashed’ is one of many poems from Misery’s Lick, most of which are very dark, being true to the nature of Misery.

Having just stood toe to toe with Alberto and Beryl, not to mention the recent drecho, this seems like a foreboding, but poignant first offering. Hope you enjoy.

Smashed

Everything we could possibly make

Was unmade.

Stairs and straight lines

were destroyed.

All things hospitable to man

were rubbed into splinters,

jarred into angles we can’t

live with.

Chaos was heaped into a useless order

and tossed over the living and dead alike.

The stone walls of churches fell

as though bombed by a distant hatred.

In the days before we mastered

a bird’s eye view, the city was raked

into a jungle of rubble, a language

of what was now indecipherable

even to the babbling, to the

converted.

The winds had done as much damage

as the waters.

Hundred mile an hour gusts

took the measuring equipment off the roof

before the winds peaked.

It lifted house-tops and slung them aside

into random targets of what was

still standing.

Home pillars and lamp posts

joined the wharf boards and

pier pilings sluicing through the streets.

The dead and doomed were rammed

and bludgeoned by the torn-away weapons

of the rains and winds.

The city ground away beneath the flood line

in a lurching, battering slurry.

Nothing waded away.

No one swam ashore.

No one would walk on water

that a desperate limb wouldn’t

pull him under.

Beneath the raging crests

waited sunken cemeteries

undersea silent gardens

where crosses made

and unmade themselves.

KEN HOLDS BARBIE

POEM: Ken Holds Barbie First appearance in Inlandia: a literary online journal

Growing old, and, growing old together, were not included in the box. Not sold separately. Yet it was always there, in the play, in the premise. That this was the brand of romance that was timeless, forecast, indestructible. I felt this at a certain age, when my wife and I rested in quietness, fulfilling our fairy tale moment, as a destiny.

Punctuation are commands to the voice. In a reading, this piece may appear as more conventionally marked, keeping the flow of sound more tended. On paper, visually, much of the punctuation is replaced by line breaks, spacing, and blocking of phrases. It shifts, sending signals to the mind in different ways, thru different senses. Most of us are more visual observers. Once you’ve meandered thru the landscape of symbols, try going back, reading it aloud to yourself, for a second consideration. There are treasures each way. Enjoy the comparison.

Ken Holds Barbie

no longer brand new out of the box

most accessories lost or replaced

Malibu Barb, Stacey, Pepper; all grownup,

moved away into lives of their own

families of their own

the branding is stretched

she lays down, head in his lap,

and he strokes the side of her face

as if making wishes

for more of this

the pink jeep has been retired

the pink corvette rarely used any more

the Barbie house is mostly quiet

and the days peel off

on their own

one by one

like wishes

and their hands

paler, smaller from wear,

still fit perfectly

still somehow

made for each other

like bookends

of wishes.

~~~~~

PUZZLE BOX

Poem: Puzzle Box First appearance in WILDsound Writing Festival

The metaphor at work here is, that letters in a panning box, are like ideas in a mind. They are subject to being jostled into all sorts of relationships. It is language and convention that steers them into normal pairings. It is the creative urge that places them like speed-dating, with unlikely candidates, that search for that remote association that startles the mind with ‘happened upon’ consequence.

The coda addresses the micro focus of the poem against the macro frame work of all else continuing, and commenting on, this pin point experiment. It goes from the abstract of a musing to the hardcore reality that we are all choosing how each of our moments are spent.

Puzzle Box

my letters are tossed into a panning box

which I shake and watch

shake and watch

but no words emerge.

the letters dance, swing themselves,

and crowd into frightened huddles

of code,

or nonsense.

this morning, I almost saw

the words evil, silver, and sliver,

but they weren’t there,

only broken versions of

happy, sometimes, and

don’t.

silently, I cheer on their tiny teams

hoping they gel,

cement into significance.

yet their marching never runs above

a stagger,

slow gangs

of panic.

I reach a bony finger into the box

and stir them

shove them

nudge them

I coax nothing.

I salt them with periods,

painting

with confused pepper…

nudge and shove

I will continue my harmless singing,

keep injecting myself

into them,

experimenting

with expression

as I,

we,

play with

the end of time

~~~~~

BORROWED ILLUMINATION

POEM: Borrowed Illumination

Alberta Turner was a professor who had taken poets under her wing. One of them made sure I became another.

She taught at Cleveland State University and took over its poetry center with this philosophy:
“Whether they’re academic poets, street poets, language poets, or living-room poets, it really doesn’t matter. Whatever opens your soul, that’s fine.”

She had a great and poetic retirement plan: collecting islands—a fine meeting place for the muse. Among her several books, she also authored two poetry manuals: Fifty Contemporary Poets: The Creative Process and Poets Teaching. Not all can. Those who do, and do so well, are rare and exceptional to know.

She marshaled three dozen poet-teachers to share how the work is done, using student poems. Checking the internet, I see that one of her books is still out there, still viable—used copy selling for over a hundred dollars. Daiquiris on the beach.

She was with me, way over in Texas, far from her island map, as I reread her poems, reliving our time. She used simple things to bleed complexity into a thimble—like using a parking lot light to read poetry while a teenager practiced driving in and out of an abandoned mall anchor, weaving through sectioned-off empty spaces, skeletons of a busier time.

Me and her, our islands, bumping gently like rafts—together once more, tiny in the seas of distance and years. Whatever opens our soul.

Borrowed Illumination

I am in the parking lot of a dying Sears

reading by borrowed

illumination.

I have two slim volumes

by a woman who took me

under the arm of her own muse

she never told me I would be this

half a century later

the one still alive

I have so many questions for her now.

Back then, we only talked about me.

She collected islands.

She had mastered the

skewed congruence

I could only recognize as fencing.

It was a fence of closets

only a longer life

could decode.

In that

we are still

together.

~~~~~