Tag: Poetry

I don't want that old thing
that you had before.

I just want to tell you
one thing:

I want to play baseball

now

at the park

because there's no baseball space here.

No baseball space at all.

~ Spring/Summer 1989

Summer came today
Cool, windy, clear.

On the weathered picnic bench
I sawed limbs,
fallen during the storm,
into firewood.

She stacked the logs
on the deck
near the gate leading to the
driveway.

~From my Indiana Journal circa 1988

~ July 3, 1976, Davenport, Iowa.

~ July 8, 1976, Fort Benning, Georgia.

I'm still here

     listening to the rain
     falling outside my window.

I'm still here.

~Aug. 18, 1975

Editor’s Note: I flew from Amsterdam to Montreal in late October 1974. I took a bus from there to Davenport, Iowa. There was not a lot to do on the 24-hour bus trip so I wrote this poem/song. I never finished it. It’s a slice of that life.

Chicago Blues Poem (I'm going to Chicago)

I'm going to Chicago
     make no mistake about that,
Just got into Montreal
     but I'm leaving again real fast,
If there's one thing I can't wait to see
     it's the faces of Chicago women looking at me.

There's a lot of people talking about Niagara Falls
     they say this bus should go that way,
Man they got balls.
They just don't understand at all,
     Chicago's the way for us all.

Now I ain't no Jack Kerouac,
     I ain't no James Dean.
Yet if you cross my path
     I'll look at you real mean.

If there's one thing I do look like,
     it's a man with Chicago on his mind.

~ Nov. 1, 1974

I bud with the maple tree
     in Spring.

For as insignificant as we seem,
     come summer,
     we shall grow, and develop...
     make manifest our promise

Come first frost
     our colors will change
     and beauteous become our pigmentation,
     as experience will become this adult body
     into which I've settled.

So as our days are spent,
     whether as bud or as autumn leaf,
     we bring our ideas to fruition.

And despite the promise of this Spring,
     I regret
     that all I have now
     is this bud
     on a maple tree that needs pruning,
     in a yard someone else landscaped.

~ In the 1980s

Basement blues
Typewriter table
Steamer trunk
William Carlos Williams

From driftwood
and childhood

   I made a lamp

From German wood
and found wood

   I made a table

Basement blues
Typewriter table
Steamer trunk
William Carlos Williams

Pack up those basement blues
in the steamer trunk
and sit with
William Carlos Williams and me
at the typewriter table and we'll light

   Our whole world.

~ May 28, 1983

As a mouse chased its tail around in circles.

A game of Monopoly unfolds:
Mediterranean, Baltic, Ventner, Marvin Gardens.

A buffoon in scholarly robes
says
Life is one big Monopoly game.

Simon, 
in abstinence from intoxicants,
says
No, it's not.
Life is what you perceive it to be.

As a mouse chases its tail around in circles.

~ Walling Court, 1974

Music was in the air
on Taylor Drive.

Songs of California in Iowa, 
west meeting center
on Taylor Drive,
a development
risen from corn fields.

We played music,
mixed wild and brown rice
with Esther's asparagus.

Talk about dawn and beginnings
hand-pushed versus power mowers
and wedding photographs
blending into the night.

First guests,
with wine from France
a rosé for our gustation.

~ Spring 1983