Hayy Youu
Henrietta had a haystack on which she sat haughty
Alexeev Awestruck aimed a notion nice&naughty–o
Yarrowstalks revealed nothing telling minds nor menu
Yet yesterlings said Yes to yield an alphabetic Gen U
Parsing Ars Poetica
To Rosemarie Dombrowski
Horace
Rhymes with chorus
A crowd
Thinking or singing out loud.
There are ridiculous and sublime
Ways to rhyme,
To codify oceans
Of notions,
Tracts
Of a mix of fancy and facts.
A poem need not rhyme
With every pair of lines
Or even ever
But in order to be a poem it needs to roam
Realms of thought
Skylines of rippling emotions
To yield a encrypted description
Or a wearable narrative
Or a profound or slight insight
That brightens
Or darkens
What has come before.
You want to know more?
Grow some of your own;
That will teach you.
..
Afterword: Rosemarie, first Poetry Laureate of Phoenix, once had a spoken-word event at the now-defunct Urban Beans in which she discussed the Art of Poetry.
Winesap
The medicinal nature of the winesap opens
Its little black bag for you when you
The nutrition-vampire bite it
And your jingle-bell cells thrill
To a pactin-peppered fusillade
With a “Thank you!!” that has
No thought but a smile
..
Without a dictionary (though we have many)
We can guess that whoever bred the first
Winesap, getting that nutrition-
And taste-thrill, may have likened the sensation
To a hearty slug of red wine
And the juiciness, perhaps escaping
A mouth’s confines, was simultaneously likened
To an abundance of sap escaping a tree trunk;
And apple names are marketing tools anyhow
(One of the least delicious varieties
Is called Delicious!!)
And Winesap is a fine elemental choice
For this eminently crisp, sweet
Juice-abundant
Organic
Confection.
Wow, wouldn’t it be medicinal and good
To have one
Just this minute?
The quality of Quiet
Increases some places, some nights
And a nearly invisible woman found
That it could be harvested
Without being lessened. Like a seed crystal
Some of the Quiet she took in this night
As she wove her paths through the downtown
Imposed its calm pattern on her psyche
Without her taking it away.
And when, later, the punks itching for action
Saw through her invisibity and descended on her
With their Hey Baby and their Whey Ya Goin Cutie?
She took the blanket of Quiet she had grown
In her perseverant soul
And dropped it over them
And they gently crumpled to the sidewalk
And fell to sleep,
Slight smiles on their faces.
She took a knife from one, guns from two others,
And walked them to the river and dropped them in
After drawing a shallow red line across the throat
Of the knife’s former owner
To give him and his associates
Something to think about.
Then she left to find more quiet
And perhaps more disarmament.
Villa Null
“Those damn realtors would even try to sell you a Port-A-Potty. ‘Look, vaulted ceilings!'” Comedian, 20th Century
The car hit potholes here and there but rolled
Relentlessly beyond the edge of town
And let the landscape crinkle and unfold.
The hacienda in the distance, sold
For “pennies on the dollar,” housed a clown.
Toward that villa our conveyance rolled.
The landscape, now uncrinkled, free of fold,
Made hills on which the villa was one crown.
Since it was Sunday noon, the church bell tolled.
We topped the hill and braked. The clown unrolled
A once-red carpet, mostly gray and brown.
“Come in and welcome. You’ll be fed and skålled.”
The meal was wretched, bread unfree of mold;
The wine came from a box of no renown.
“And now to business. Have you brought the gold?”
“I have a bagful,” said my wife, “But hold
The phone. You have insulted us. I frown.
We came to buy this place, and you make bold
To act as if the deal is done. You’re cold
“Of blood and buff of oon. Annulled
We make of sketchy dealings such as this.
Reality unravels, as does bliss.
“So take your Villa Null, your spider’s kiss
And wrap it in your smile. We’re out of here.”
The clown was unperturbed. “It’s hit or miss
In this profession. How about some beer?”
Right after I pulled on my underwear
And before I pulled on my undershirt
A hand came out of my chest
And another out of my back
..
And when their arms were out past the elbows
The hands grabbed my head and pushed away
And out of me came the me of 1970,
Clad in hip-hugging bell-bottoms
And a “Mr. Muscle” form-fitting T-Shirt
And rubber-soled sandals.
..
The popped-out fifteen-year-old looked at me
And yelled “AAAA!!!” in horrified surprise
“HOLY CRAP, Future Me, you are GROTESQUE!
You are so FAT! And your skin is like crepe paper!”
..
“I am 71 years old, Young Me.
I don’t like the way I look any more than you do.
But you look ridiculous yourself.
Lank, straight hair growing past your shoulders–ugh!
And LOOK at all that acne. You look diseased!”
..
He recoiled. I’d forgotten how self-conscious
And easily bruised he could be. Quickly I said, “Sorry,
Kid. On the plus side, you’re in great physical shape,
And you have your whole life ahead of you.
And that’s why I wished upon a star
That I could have a talk with you.”
..
“Aha,” said the sullen punk.
He stared at me keenly.
“Let me guess.
..
“You’ve been brooding
About all the mistakes you’ve made,
All the head-shakingly stupid choices,
And you want to do a do-over.
You want to tell me not to do those stupid things
And you want to tell me HOW
To not do those stupid things.
..
“Well, forget it. I already know.
Just a few minutes ago, when I co-occupied
Your brain, I got the straight scoop.
Failures galore! What were you THINKING?!
..
“But you do not get a do-over, Old Man.
..
“First let me tell you something you’ve forgotten.
Regrets are nothing new to us. We started regretting
When we were five years old. And we ALWAYS
Tell ourself ‘Never again!’ and we RARELY obey.
..
“Second and foremost, I am not going back
To 1970. I am not FROM 1970. I am from here and now.
I will sink right back into you when we’re done.
I am memory, wished into clarity.
..
“Third and incidentally, suppose
You did get your wish and I did go back?
You, THIS you, would CEASE TO EXIST. Because
Everything you have ever done
..
“Is essential to your existence.
Do you REALLY want your daughter
Never to have been born?”
..
I shuddered, but before I could say “No way”
Young Me stepped back into my flesh,
But before he suffused he said, firmly,
“You still have time to make all
..
“Of your most important dreams
Come true. Build. Become.”
Then he melted back, and old wisdom told me
That that child IS father to the man.
My birth name is Gary Wright Bowers
So when we lived on a block where another kid named Gary Turner also lived, my dad called him Gary Wrong Turner (Dad fancied himself a wag)
Family legend has it that my older brother couldn’t pronounce Gary so instead he called me Ghee-Bo (oddly, nowadays that might work the same way Scarlett Johanson is sometimes called Scar-Jo)
My mom called me “GB” all my adult life
Many of my online friends call me Clay because of a name I chose for myself on one of the early social websites (my WordPress blog is called “One with Clay, Image and Text”)
There’s a lady from work from Ethiopia who makes me feel like a multimillionaire because she calls me “Getty”
And Marty K, my friend since 1963, has an odd blend of Tourette’s and glossolalia that has compelled him to call me at least a thousand names in the course of our 62-year friendship, “Bowsie” in the early days, “Zeb” and “Bigby” and “Bongo” and “Nahblotz” more recently
Thanks to him a few of our inner circle of friends call me The Bow (rhymes with How)
And that’s fine, if inconsequential, with me
Even Mr. Late-for-Lunch would be OK–who cares?
As long as the intent is benign,
And no disrespect is intended,
We are good.
Unicornucopia
I had the horn one frisky day
And risked a kiss with my brisk love
And she freed passion-fashioned play
Of magma deep and stars above.
..
A Unicorn appeared before us
And, rearing up, said “Call me Spike.
Because of you, my ten-voice chorus
Hallelujahs. Lust–they like!”
..
I blushed, but what with melanin
My flushedness was undetected;
My lass said, “Spike, you’ll do my felon in;
His privacy must be respected.”
..
“Well, heat my hooves and call me Skippy.
Where I come from, we celebrate
Our passion. Sorry! Must be trippy
Having Spike-dude crash your gate.”
..
He bowed and from his horn came gushing
Parting gifts by baker’s dozen,
Then, pioof, was gone, and I, still blushing,
Said, “Do you know him??” “Distant cousin.”
Everflowing Candytuft
The Everflowing Candytuft
Cannot be beat, nor cowed, nor snuffed,
It is indifferent to harm
And likes to spread the unalarm.
..
Iberis sempervirens is
At propagation quite the wiz
And with its effervescent fizz
Of clusters makes its blizzards blizz.
..
Do not embrace it like a lover
If oral you will blow its cover
If written it will think you dense
And shrug in its indifference.
Black Diamond Lil
Unwinding her body
She nursed her hot toddy
At the bar of the Black Diamond Lodge.
I sat down beside her
And ordered hot cider
And said, “Hey there, Lil.” “What up, Rog?”
“I saw when you crashed.”
But she shrugged, unabashed,
And replied, “I was pushing myself
Cause I qualify Friday.”
And she grinned and glanced my way
And said “So do you. Ready?” “Top shelf.”
“Care to prove it there, Champ?”
So we went up the ramp
To the lift, and the Hard Mountain summit,
To the Suicide Trail,
Triple Black, makes you wail
At the push-off, a forty-foot plummet.
But she did it with ease
With those springs in her knees
That took G-force as if it were feathers,
And I struggled to match her
Through Devil’s Dispatcher
And its steep-mogul best-hold-your-breathers.
In the treacherous switchbacks
She yelled, “Bring it on, Bitch!!” –WHACK!
A low-hanging branch did a clothesline,
But she FLIPPED, landed clean,
And continued, serene
While I vowed I’d make Miss Twinkle-Toes mine,
Though I knew I would never
She’s so willful, so clever,
She will never be shanghaied nor owned,
But we’ll glide through the trails
Full wind in our sails
Swerving out-of-bounds, fearless, unzoned.
One with Clay, Image and Text 