10 poems for Dr. Zoller

1. Missing Keys
2. The American Dream
3. At her desk
4. On the steps of St. Paul
5. Piece
6. Banana Bread
7. Hail Mary
8. In Memory
9. Words between Friends
10. The end of the story

At her desk

As shaking hands grasp
The blue pen,
A halo illuminates
The ragged pages.

Peaceful beams
Casting shadows,
Into her final darkness.
It is hard to say goodbye.

A girl in front of a painting

There is a ribbon beside her,
But she doesn't notice.

Too engrossed in the masterpiece,
she doesn't feel the eyes on her back.

This moment, trapped in color,
Art is all that matters.

Strolling around the room,
we see her passion.

Stop. Stare.
Begin to care.

(Inspired by Megan Tennant's Art Gallery)

The end of the story

Dante said,
      You belong at the bottom,
      In Hell's inner circle.
Hey, betrayer and traitor,
      You died without hope.
      You didn't know the end of the story.

Jesus said,
      You can't serve 2 masters,
      It's money or God.
Hey, Mr. Moneybags,
      You chose wrong.
      Silver can't save your soul.

Peter said,
      You shared in the ministry,
      You were one of the Twelve.
Hey, disciple of the Messiah,
      Why did you let Satan
      Have a foothold in your soul?

David said,
      It would be better, for you,
      If you weren't even born.
Hey, owner of the field of blood,
      You screwed up bad, and tried to undo.
      Because of the guilt, you chose death.

           But He,
            Jesus,
           Teacher,
           Messiah,
The King, who was hated,
 betrayed, and whipped,
          mocked
          & kissed.
          Was tried,
           crucified,
           and died.
           But then,
           three days
        later, He's alive.
         
Hey, Judas Iscariot,
      You missed the end
      Christ died for us.
      He died for our sins.
      But now, He Lives,
      And He Forgives.

Fate

Cold hands clasp
cold steel.

Blades snarl as they
slide apart.

A single strand
dumb to the future.

Snip.

Words between Friends

You spoke first,
A brief word of greeting,
which I repeated.

I followed by asking,
How you were doing,
A phrase you then echoed to me.

We both answered
           Fine.
 And went on our ways.

Society's catechism,
Lives held by standards,
Keeps us strangers.

A sonnet for a friend.

Here are the stages in five easy steps.
First comes denial, you try to forget.
Second is anger, you punch lots of walls.
Later you bargain, you barter it all.
The next one is fun, depression is great.
You don't want to move? Just swallow a pill.
The grande finale, the end of it all.
You accept their death, stop grief, and move on.

But wait. That is CRAP. Acceptance? Yeah right.
These simplified feelings? You think just work?
Don't tell me my hurt. Hell, what do you know?
You are not me, and shit, I am not you.
Stop with the hugging. The 5 simple steps.
Please, Leave me alone, and just. let. me. grieve.

The Prodigal

In my Bible,
Delicate swirls and curves of a long lost pen
 wrote:

Even when we are at our lowest point

God will take us back.

But do I want to return

  to His arms?

In Memory

Remember this moment.
the warmth of bread
      filling.

Remember this moment.
the tangy wine
     lingering.

Remember this moment.
your heart's silence
    at peace



The moment is gone
    and yet...

   Remember

Hail Mary

Joy.

Contentment.

Peace.

Soothing Psalms gliding over a troubled soul
as bruised knees press darkened wood.

Will I remember today,

in the Hell of tomorrow?

memories

The noodles of my brain
     sit in a colander
      dripping away
         memories.

the church kitchen

The fruit 

must be broken,

peeled,

mashed,

before 

the Flesh

can be 

eaten.

The body of Christ broken for you.

Pieces

You tore my heart
   cut so carefully
with dulled blue scissors.

Response to Lizzie's poem

Old People on Benches

A haggard man drinks coffee on a bench
Wearing a Stop & Shop apron,
Smoking.

Across the center
A prim old lady
Positions her body away from him.
---------------------------------
Richard

Captain of the football team
Rugged, handsome
Straight A's

Voted most likely to succeed, and leave,
The Town's pride and joy
Oldest son


Sitting, 50 years later, on the same bench
where he heard of death's spite
stealing away his future.

Frozen in time, left to rot away years in an apron,
Smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee,
As he dreams.

Response to Christy's Poem

Christy's Poem

the blue pen
gripped
between dry
fingers


-------------------
At her desk

As shaking hands grasp
The blue pen,
A halo illuminates
The ragged pages.

Peaceful beams
Casting shadows,
Into her final darkness.
It is hard to say goodbye.

Homeward Bound

Muddy boots taint
    fallen snow
Lying across the path
    glittering
In the pale light.

Walking the Street

Pigeon shit mingles
With the stench of his hat,
On the cobble stones.

On the steps of St. Paul

Moldy crackers scattered for pigeons,
Stripped flesh consumed.

Her Teacup

Worn, creased hands
      cradling
A porcelain teacup

Holes in a Trash bag

Truths hidden 'neath the surface
Of a cooling glass bottle's
Tinkling shards.

Searching for Truth

A voiceless teacher waves his hands
As slumbering students
Dream of answers.

Description from my window

Echoing footsteps,
Along the drenched wooden planks
Travel mere inches to inside the wall

Dripping rain,
Harmonizes with my clicking keys
And the whispery scrape of pages.

Dum - Dum - Dum - Dum

The underlying pattern
Stays the same as they
Form, fall, splat, and soak into the ground.

Hearing the cycle
I cannot see their doom
from inside the window.

Clinging haphazardly
The older and larger surrender to gravity
As the young hold desperately to the screen.

Pounding the snow,
The brave, or the foolish,
Crush the snow into slush and then, mere mud.

Crying for the sun,
The mimosa plant shutters in captivity
A witness to the battle waging outside the glass.

As the storm intensifies,
And the light turns off,
The darkness has won.

Description from my window

Footsteps echo on the drenched wooden planks along our house. The walls are so thin that it sounds as if the passer-by will walk inside, travelling through the mere inches that separate us from the outside. The dripping staccato of the rain harmonizes with my clicking keys and the whispery scrape of pages. Dum, dum, dum, dum the underlying pattern stays the same, as they form, fall, splat, and soak into the wooden planks outside my window. I can not see their cycle, but can hear their doom from inside of the wall. Their brother drops cling haphazardly to the screen. The older and larger surrender to gravity as the younger hold desperately on, watching their siblings die. A few of the wiser drops have made it to the window pane, which while slicker is also a mere sideline to the battle waging outside. The brave ones, or the foolish, are pounding the snow, crushing it into slush and then to mere mud. As I sit, an unaffected witness to the war, the mimosa plant between my seat and the window is crying out for the sun. While sitting in the warmth of the house, held captive from nature, he attempts to open his leaves and gather the few rays cast by the hidden sun and the florescent lamp. But for most of his arms, the darkness has won and he shutters their leaves, leaving only a few open as the storm intensifies and the light turns off.
Sadness is what I have seen today as the rain wages battle with snow, and a dying plant watches on.  

Why sleeping bears should not be awakened

Wake up!
Wake up, I say!
Her shrieking bellows
Echo in my brain.
Why won't she shut up?

Swoosh
The coldness storms in,
My comforting warmth
Is wrenched from my hands.
Why won't she get out?

The pleading comes next,
Kissing and hugging,
Ugly caressing,
Fat lips still speaking.
Why won't she get off?

I told you 12 times!
12 TIMES, I said!
First just a trickle,
Then baptised again.
Why won't she fuck off?

Livid with anger
I roar from my den.
Calming sleep vanquished
Washing love away.
I shut her up.

Smack 

The American Dream

        something came apart

 The sign on the picket fence said.

A few thoughts that I have figured out...perhaps

I don't usually ever write poetry, well, at least not consciously and never for fun. But that is part of the reason why I am in this class. Already (due to some crazy assignments by Dr. Zoller) I have figured out a few things about me and the way I write which I would like to share with you.

Both of my second edition poems are "greatly reduced." Almost to the point of not getting my point across, and perhaps my point was did not get across to you. For this I am quite sorry and actually am in the process of editing these to guide the reader's interpretation more. But here is what I was attempting to do:

In "Tapped and Showed" I have three stanzas, two with 8 lines and one with 4 lines. The point of the assignment was to find the meaning in the text and centralize your poem (at least that was my interpretation of the assignment.) After reading the prose, I was struck by the setting of the poem, the characters, and most of all the actions. So those are the things I tried to emphasize. I saw this poem like the zoom of a camera focusing on the larger picture and then focusing in on one man's actions only to zoom out again. For most of the participants it was merely a typical description of the end of the day. This was where they worked, they were hot, tired, angry, thirsty, and wanted to go home. It was ordinary. Ordinary from the location, to the conversations, to the actions of lining up around the pump. And yet for one man, it wasn't ordinary. What I found extraordinary about the paragraph that we read was not the descriptions, rather this one individuals actions, his honesty. He could have kept them, he could have got the money for himself, but he chose not to. Why? Why was this his choice? Did he battle with himself, weighing his choice of action or was it natural? It was a normal place, a ordinary end of the day for everyone else. But this picker chose to act, in an extraordinary way.

My second poem was Peggy. Although it is not perfectly a reflecting poem. The point I was trying to make is similiar, I think to those, showing a progression. In the first stanza, I wanted to show a picture of Peggy, who she may have been, ordinary (except for maybe the rabbit bit). Then in the next stanza, I introduced another element of who Peggy was, or was thought to be. The fact that she was considered a witch, changed the Pineys view of her. She was not really an ordinary individual anymore, rather she was a threat, an outsider. Finally in the third stanza, I talked about her death. Whether or not she died because of the Pineys and her gold, I do not know. But I was struck with a sense of sorrow as she lived and died alone, without anyone knowing who she really was.   

    

Missing Keys

Jenny, I'll give you a ride in the car

Okay, Henry

He does not have a car.

Have you seen where I put the keys?

No, I haven't seen any lying around

He cannot see my face with his milky white eyes

much less the keys to his mind.

Do those 2 young men need a ride, Jenny? We have a Big car you know.

No, I don't believe so

He sits in his chair 

Pointing in the empty room

As the colorful afghan hugs his legs.

I hold his hand,

My thumb stroking back and forth 

To the rhythm of his questions.

I Love you, 

I Love you very much, my Jenny-girl, very much.

I Love you too, Henry.

My name is not Jenny.

Tapped and Showed

A clearing
Thousands of blueberry bushes
A school bus: "Farm Labor Transport"
Pickers swarming around a pump
A young girl
Charlie's sister, Charlie's daughter-in law
Pickers given cash in return
The end of the day

One picker in his sixties
Tapped
Showed
Honest Humanity

A line waiting to use an outhouse
Charlie's son, Jim
Middle-aged men
Charlie
Old women
Tickets of various colors
A small, low packing house-windows on all sides
Berries

berries

          We had come
A clearing where thousands of blueberry bushes grew.

          In the center,
         The packing house.
         A small, low building
         Open and screenless,
         Windows on all sides.

In front of it was a school bus
Marked:
"Farm Labor Transport"

The driver stood beside his bus.
A tall, amiable-looking man,
         Bare feet.
He wore green trousers and a T-shirt:

The end of the work day had come.

Pickers were swarming around a pump.
         Old women
         Middle-aged men
         A young girl          
A line was waiting to use an outhouse near the pump.
         
         Inside the packing house:
               Berries,
         Half-inch Thick,
         Rolling up a portable conveyor belt
         Into pint boxes.

Charlie's sister was packing the boxes.
Charlie's daughter-in-law was putting cellophane over them.
Charlie's son, Jim, was supervising the operation.

Charlie picked up a pint box:
In which berries were mounded high.

He told me with disgust that some supermarket chains knock off these
        Mounds of extra
           Berries
And put them in new boxes, getting 3 or 4 extra pints per tray.

At one window, pickers were turning in tickets,
Of various colors and were given cash in return
One picker (who appeared at least in his sixties)
Tapped Charlie on the arm,
Showed him a thick packet of tickets held together with a rubber band.
"I found these," the man said.
"They must have fallen out of your son's pocket."
He gave the packet to Charlie,
Who thanked him, and counted the tickets.

Charlie said, "These tickets are worth,
          Seventy-five Dollars."

Peggy

In Pasadena, five miles east of Misery,

          Lived Peggy.

         Peggy Clevenger

    Clevenger is a Hussian Name. 

 She could turn herself into a rabbit. 

The Pine Barrens once had their own witch.

Their own particular witch.

The Witch of the Pines,

Peggy Clevenger.

It was said she had gold. 

A dog was chasing the rabbit.

A Man saw a lizard and tried to kill it.

Pineys put salt over their doors to discourage visits.

Peggy lived in Pasadena, another vanished towns.

       One morning, five miles east of Misery,

           In the smoking remains of her cabin,

                 Peggy Clevenger

                   Her remains.

       But there was no trace of the gold.

                

Pine Barrens Witch

The Pine Barrens
Once had their own particular witch.

Pineys put salt over their doors,
To discourage visits.

The Witch of the Pines,
Peggy Clevenger.

She could turn herself into a rabbit.
For a dog was once seen chasing,
A rabbit.

The rabbit jumped through the window.
And there,
In the same instant-stood,
Peggy Clevenger.

A man saw a lizard.
Tried to kill it,
By crushing it with a rock.

When the rock hit the lizard,
The lizard disappeared.
Peggy Clevenger materialized.

On the spot,
Smacked the man
In the face

Clevenger is a Hessian name.

 Peggy lived
In Pasadena

Another of the now,
vanished,
towns
Five miles east of Mt. Misery.

It was said,
She had a stocking
     Full
        Of
           GOLD.

Her remains were found,
One morning
In the smoking ruins of her cabin,

But there was
            No
       Trace
    Of
gold.