What the Chairman Told Tom

Poetry? It's a hobby.
I run model trains.
Mr Shaw there breeds pigeons.

It's not work. You dont sweat.
Nobody pays for it.
You could advertise soap.

Art, that's opera; or repertory--
The Desert Song.
Nancy was in the chorus.

But to ask for twelve pounds a week--
married, aren't you?--
you've got a nerve.

How could I look a bus conductor
in the face
if I paid you twelve pounds?

Who says it's poetry, anyhow?
My ten year old
can do it and rhyme.

I get three thousand and expenses,
a car, vouchers,
but I'm an accountant.

They do what I tell them,
my company.
What do you do?

Nasty little words, nasty long words,
it's unhealthy.
I want to wash when I meet a poet.

They're Reds, addicts,
all delinquents.
What you write is rot.

Mr Hines says so, and he's a schoolteacher,
he ought to know.
Go and find work.

--Basil Bunting


What's funny is, I'm not sure if that's ironic or not.

Striving to Bee the Best

a poem from a collection called Emergency Kit: Poems for Strange Times, for BL. It never hurts to have a little extra in your emergency kit, when you're doing things that others might not understand.

A Bee

Become at last a bee
I took myself naked to town,
with plastic sacks of yellow turmeric
taped to my wizened thighs.

I'd been buying it for weeks,
along with foods I no longer had a need for,
in small amounts from every corner grocer,
so as not to arouse their suspicion.

It was hard, running and buzzing,
doing the bee-dance. I ached
at the roots of my wings, and hardly yet discerned
that I flew towards reparation,
that in my beehood my healing had been commenced.

Words they use in this hive. To me it seems still
that clumps of tall blue flowers,
which smiled as they encroached,
had been born of my apian will,
in which to my shame I struggled for a moment,
and stained the air with clouds of my dearly bought gold.

--Peter Didsbury

Make me the Giant

There's a poetry slam on Thursday. I think I'll call this poem, Halloween Costume.



Make me the giant.
Make me the jolly green giant.
Give me a smile, give me a laugh
give me muscles,
and give me a toga my lover can eat.

Give me a lover, maker her a woman
who can see, I have strength that can't be seen.

My problem is I turn sideways and I can't be seen.

I am skinny. I am scrawny. And all these girls I like
date men twice my size.

I am coming to grips with this.

I have come to grips with this.

I struggle to change. I struggle to grow.
I open my buds and I know I will grow.

I ate more double whoppers, double quarter pounders with cheese and monster thickburgers than I could count. The weight of all that meat adds up to three times my weight.

Once in Amarillo, Texas I had a 72 ounce steak, a baked potato and some corn. I ate it all in 48 minutes. The meal was free but it didn't pack a pound on me.

Make me huge, make me large.

Every woman I see wants a man twice as big as me.

And they tell me that men don't have body image issues.

Kermit says it's not easy being green.
But it's not easy being me.
And I think it's just tough to be a frog.
Blending in with the lilly pads.
And I don't want to blend in anymore.
I don't want to be overlooked and pushed around
and joked about.

Ho, ho, ho.
I want to laugh with somebody, not be laughed at by everybody.
I want to grow in the sunshine.
I want to feel the rain on my naked body.
I want to be free and rooted in the ground.
I want to be the giant.

Make me the jolly green giant.

I want to be the big man in the toga with green hair.
Saying Ho Ho Ho.

And can I get a voice box with the costume.

I am your father Luke.
Eat the brussels sprouts. Eat the broccoli.
Eat the green beans. Eat the spinach.

Once, while talking about visiting a friend in California,
I said I'd be the poet on the beach.
I'd be the skinny guy with a pen and a notebook
writing poems about asparagus and hollandaise sauce.

Make me the giant, the jolly green giant.
When I was younger, I always thought I'd grow up to be bigger.
But nothing works but my imagination.
So I'm becoming a creation
of my own choosing.
The harvest is now.
I am becoming the one that I'm been waiting for.
Greater than the great pumpkin,
I know that I'm something,
I know that I'm someone.
Skinny or scrawny,
laughed at or ignored.
I'm somebody and I've got a voice
and a backbone strong as Jack's magic beanstalk.

But if you would,
if you could,
for one night,
make me the giant.
Make me the jolly green giant.

Things that make you go hmmm or the poetic feet post with comments about actual poetic feet

Just a quick thought - Is Poetic Meter the way they measure poetic rhythm and timing in the metric system and Poetic Feet refers to the way we do it in the United States?

I wish I could give my readers more concrete info about poetic feet and what they actually are.

Run easy. Run smooth. That's what I say. Sometimes the best slam poems come to me when I'm running, but then once I've showered and cooled down I can't quite remember them.

Isn't that always the way?

A poem for Liviu Librescu, a poem for Yossi Librescu

Remember.
I remember
as a child
I worshiped my father
and now he's dead.
He loved life, was passionate about it.
And he knew death, knew the stench of it.
But never did he fear it.
He knew it too well.
He knew that fear was worse than death.
He never forgot
Ha Shoah.
Gas ovens, firing squads, mass graves.
And it never ends.
What was a 23-year-old punk with a gun
to him?
He stood in the door,
he took five shots.
And he told his students to live.
Jump out the windows and live.
He died so they might live.

I never thought of my father
as a religious man.
I thought of him as a Jew.
I thought of him as my father.
And now my mind flashes back
to scenes from the movie Gladiator.
A general who became a slave,
slave who became a gladiator.
We, a people enslaved,
we've become a mighty nation,
And I,
I am the son of a murdered father,
cousin to a murdered nation.
It never ends.
They want us dead again.
Iran, Iraq, the Palestinians.
They want to kill my brothers,
my sisters, my children, my wife.
What did the warrior say?
My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius,
Commander of the Armies of the North,
loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius.
Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife.
And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.
Father to a murdered son. Son to a murdered father.
Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife.
And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.
Except, except I will not.
I will not have my vengeance.
I've had enough death.
I will be vulnerable.
I knew a man once who said,
Death smiles at us all.
All a man can do is smile back.
And so I smile.
I remember everything.
I remember lines
from that movie.
What we do in life,
echoes in eternity.
And so I will do something with my life.
And I will remember.
I will make my father proud.
I will savor every moment.
I am because of him.
I live because of him.
And so do they.
He told his students to live.
Jump out the windows and live.
And I know
they will live and
they will remember.

An open letter to Wallace Stevens

An open letter to Wallace Stevens

What, sir, did you mean?
I'm referring to the time
when you said,
"Money is a kind of poetry."
But also, and
pardon me for saying this,
for perhaps being rude,
but your very existence
troubles me just a bit,
Mr. Stevens.
What do you mean by being
who it is you think you are?
Insurance salesman and poet.
Or do I have the title wrong?
Insurance executive and avant garde literary artist.
Whatever.
Don't you know artists are supposed to suffer?
Isn't that what life is about?
Finding the beauty in pain.
And then I learn that you said,
"Money is a kind of poetry."
And I take it you speak
from the experience
of having money,
not wanting it.
A poet speaks of writing poems,
not the battle with writers block.
How does a poet reconcile
a life meant helping people
be secure with money?
Insurance salesman.
Securities broker.
Financial advisor.
"Money is a kind of poetry."
I'm writing you sir,
in hope that you have
answers to my questions.
Questions like:
Did I go to college for this?
Should I be a starving artist?
Is there anything worse than
a disenchanted writer?
Is it OK to enjoy
the finer things in life?
I want to know must I write
to be a writer.
I just want to communicate
that some things are good.
Some things must not be corrupted.
Beauty, truth, avocados.
I've always felt that
avocados are a kind of poetry,
my favorite fruit.
But you, sir, said, that
"Money is a kind of poetry."
The more I think about it,
the more I'm inclined to agree.
Money can't buy happines
can't buy love.
You can be broke and happy,
homeless and in love.
But that's poetry and I know
poetry is a kind of money.
Money adds up and
the numbers are true.
The Bible says that the love
of money is the root of all evil.
Yet, the proper respect of money,
the perfect balance,
why yes I see it, sir.
Money has rhythms of its own.
Doesn't it?
I suppose
Am I on the right path?
Tell me,
What did you mean,
"Money is a kind of poetry?"

Fat and sexy poem

In the last slam, I prepared two new poems.

Then in the final round, I dug deep into my notebook to find something I'd thought about doing but had never performed in a competitive setting before. I don't think I've posted it on the blog before so here goes:

Yes, my dear.
The answer is always yes.
Every time I see you,
I say yes.
Yes I love you.
Yes you look beautiful.
And yes that dress makes you look fat.
Maybe I shouldn't say that, but it's the way I feel.
And you do look fat in the sexiest possible way.
You look fat like a mature woman
who has never had an eating disorder,
a woman who no longer gets carded
when she orders wine in a restaurant.
Every time I see your body,
I say yes.
And, darling, you remember that
old soul song where the singer
breaks into a rap and tells his woman
that if the years should take her figure
and leave her disfigured,
his love would still be there.
Baby, that's the way I feel.
But in no way am I saying
your figure is disfigured,
nor will it ever be
'cause in my eyes,
your body is amazing.
You are like grade A
top of the line,
choice beef.
Not that I think of you
like a piece of meat
because I don't.
Baby, you know I want to be a vegan.
The only animal I want to eat
is you my dear.
And I don't care what you eat,
whether you diet,
whether you fast, or
whether you splurge.
It does not matter.
Shucks.
Wait a minute.
This may be the wrong thing to say.
This may not be seductive at all.
But do you question my love
and or my devotion.
I'm not trying to cause a commotion,
But my darling,
quietly, strongly,
persistently,
Does it make you look fat?
Does it make you look sexy?
Am I totally devoted to you?
Yes, my dear.
The answer is always yes.

Back to Africa poem

Here's another piece I'm going to do in the Poetry Slam on Thursday:

I will go back.
I will go back to Africa.
I will swim across the ocean.
I will walk across the desert.
I will be baptized in a river of tears.
I will dance with my ancestors
and I will kiss this ground.
I will go back to Africa
Return down to Egypt.
I know God will call his people
To return to Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya.
Go deeper, yes, I will go deeper.
I will go back to Africa.
I will get darker and darker and darker
until you start to recognize
I become Pan-African
stretching from Baghdad to Benin,
from Senegal to Somalia,
Morocco to Mozambique.
I will reclaim paradise,
that garden of Eden,
nestled between the Congo and the Nile.
I will go back to purity,
commune with the spirituality
of rocks and trees and animals.
I will follow Mansa Musa on his hajj to Mecca.
I will ride elephants through the Alps with Hannibal.
I will walk with Joseph, Mary and Jesus back to Nazareth.
I will go back to Africa
and when I open my mouth
a lion will stick its head in
but I won't bite.
I'll just keep breathing
in and out, in and out,
again and again and again,
over and over and over
like the spirit of the drums
beating repeatedly deep in the heart BOOM
of this African land BOOM
like a stick turning into a snake BOOM
snake, stick, snake, stick BOOM
I will go back to Africa
back to the drums of passion,
back to the tongues of power,
back to the incantations of energy,
filling me with a desire
to fill you up with African strength and rhythms
until you scream out
I would go back to Africa,
if I could,
but I can't.
Because I never left.
I never forgot my God and my people.
No matter where they took me,
how often they whipped me,
whatever lies they told me.
My spirit never left.
I would go back to Africa,
except I never left.

Poetry slam Thursday

Ok, there's a poetry slam Thursday. I haven't been able to write
anything new lately. Not necessarily writers block. I don't believe in
that. Just apathy a bit. And then there's that Rilke quote.


But I love the competition. So what I'm going to do
is present two poems that I haven't done before in the slam. And if I
make it to the final round, I'll do the math poem.

Anyhow, these poems aren't on the blog either so I'll type them up here.

Let's call the first one "Let a woman be a woman."


He thought to himself,
"what's wrong with
a woman being a woman?
Isn't that actually
as right as life could be?"
But at the same time, he wasn't sure
what it meant.
Oh, it was by far his favorite part
of that old Prince song:
Let a woman be a woman,
let a man be a ma - han.
If he has a daughter,
he will tell her
she can do anything a boy can do.
She can be a mathematician,
an engineer, an astronaut, a warrior.
She can be president, pope even,
if she wants to.
But he thinks to himself
and more than thinking,
he feels those statements
are true
and at the same time
not true.
At the same time
not true in a deep, deep
sense that he can't really articulate,
but can only, really grunt.
Let a woman be a woman
let a man, be a ma - han.
But the politically correct thing to say,
he knows, will be that
there is no difference
between a man and a woman.
And while that may be pc
every man he knew was
too much of a man
to overanalyze that.
Still he smiled and remembered
what the old monk told him
while he was hiking through India:
I don't want to be the mango,
I want to taste the mango.
And he reasoned that mangos
don't want to be men.
They want to be eaten.
Lately though, he wasn't so sure
about anything in the natural world.
Up was down, down was up,
tops were bottoms and bottoms were tops.
And he wasn't sure anymore
if women were women
and men were men.
He was turning these thoughts
around in his head when one day
in the middle of a casual, boozy conversation
he said,
"If that's what she wants,
then what's wrong with a woman
being barefoot and pregnant.
I mean, if that's what she wants.
Staying home with the kids"
He said that, but
he just felt so confused.
He wondered, am I really a neanderthal?
Why, then, can't I grow more chest hair?
Why isn't my voice deeper?
Why won't someone sing the song with me?
You know the song:
Let a woman be a woman,
let a man, be a ma- han.