October 2

 Barb agreed to MC another session!  thank you Barb. 

Sight will Sharpen by S. Thomas Summers; Halley's Comet  by Stanley Kunitz; Day Star  by Rita Dove; Earth Tremors Felt in Missouri  by Mona Van Duyn; Crossing Over  by William Meredith; Echo by James Richardson;  Warning To Children by Robert Graves .

In my note to send out poems, I share this:  I am writing you this just before sunrise in a small town, as yet unspoiled by modern tourism, in the heart of the Engadine mountains in Switzerland, where you will not find anyone who speaks English, or even Italian for that matter, only German, as just over the border will be Austria.  I thought you all might appreciate this quotation from Ralph Waldo Emerson on friendship (thanks to Maria Popova's blog):The field where friends have met is consecrated forever. Man seeks friendship out of the desire to realize a home here… The friend is like wax in the rays that fall from our own hearts. My friend does not take my word for anything, but he takes me. He trusts me as I trust myself. We only need to be as true to others as we are to ourselves that there may be ground enough for friendship.

  

September 25

Paul was kind enough to offer to MC.  Poems drawn from the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, "Beloved and Influential Poems 2011" + one by Thomas Lux Ode to the Unbroken World, Which Is Coming 

The Poem by George Oppen; (picked by C.D. Wright https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolyn_D._Wright); ;Sonnet XXIX by William Shakespeare; (chosen by Ellen Bryant Voigt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Bryant_Voigt  To Awaken an Old Lady  by W.C. Williams:  (chosen by Alan Shapiro: https://poets.org/poet/alan-shapiro) Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas: (chosen by Vijay Seshadri: https://poets.org/poet/vijay-seshadri The Waking by Theodore Roethke: chosen by Thomas Lux for its music, passion, simplicity and technical achievement of the villanelle. : https://poets.org/poet/thomas-lux Although the wind by Izumi Shikibu  (ca 1000) and The Lake Isle of Innisfree by W.B. Yeats chosen by Jane Hirschfield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Hirshfield

September 18

 Barb will be MC and has chosen: On the Grasshopper and Cricket, John Keats, 1817;  Jack by Maxine Kumin;  Enter the Dragon, John Murillo; a poem by Sharon Olds, from Odes;  An Old Story, Tracey Smith; For the Children by Gary Snyder.

Thank you Barb!

September 4

In the Community Garden by Mark Doty; The Gardener 85  by Rabindranath Tagore; Better Yet  and The Need Is So Great  by Jim Moore;  A Voice I Heard Not Too Late to Make a Difference  by Martin Willitts, Jr.; beware: do not read this poem by Ishmael Reed 

Nutshell:

It takes a group to confirm  the fascinating variety of possibilities of meaning in a group of poems.  The grouping of poems had a subconscious theme of how to deal with the fact of death.  Starting with the glory of "a community" of sunflowers, the discussion branched out to deal with other collective nouns.  The Tagore poem and Moore poem "the need so great) triggered thoughts about the magic of dusk, Bernie's sharing of his poem about silent crows and a breathing invitation and Maura's invitation to come see spectacular sunsets from her place in Victor.  Please contact her if you want to experience the beauty!  

Community returns in the Martin Willitts poem, and subtly in the theme of interrelationship in the Tagore, and Emerson.  The final poem reminds us of the counterpart which destroys it.

Mark Doty:  This captivating poem about sunflowers with a title that suggests "we are all in this garden" subtly  examines the stages of life and the bigger question whether elegy is useful, and our role in lamenting the passing of nature's magnificence as we move from Spring to Winter.  Wonderful adjectives:  sunflower "architecture"... "muscular leaves"... personnification -- shiningly confident... or barely able to hold head up... to be in a rush//to be nothing but form.  Skyrocket passage through the world?  Do flowers desire?  want to live forever?  Projection:  How could they "stand apart from themselves and regret their passing when they are a field (hence the word community in the title) of lifting and bowing faces (like a singing church congregation?) faces ringed with flame.  Comments:  Bernie shared his breathing meditation: "flower fresh; mountain solid" and how he feels like an autumn flower.  Many felt a childlike quality, like children writing letters to God. 

Rabindranath Tagore: (1861-1941)for those not familiar with this poet, Wiki has a good introduction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabindranath_Tagore  It will not replace the fine aperçu Judith shared who mentioned that most probably he wrote this poem in English (not a translation of Bengali).  We did discuss the old-fashioned use of "an" before a word starting with "h".  No one would pronounce "an hundred" today.  

The reader is immediately swept up in the aliveness of a living poet writing to him/her, no matter that we are reading this poem 100 years after it was written.  He is sending us not just one single flower, but a wealth of flowers on spring dawn, as well as reminding us of all memories that brings from 100 years prior.  

Jim Moore: 2 poems: Better yet: We enjoyed how we went from considerations of centuries, to imagining what happens before we are born.Neil brought up the question why "shame" in the list of "expected" responses to life (see my notes!)[1]

The Need Is So Great : The poem doesn't explain its title, but it certainly evoked many associations with the sense of "calm at dusk" observing the light at the end of day.  Everyone felt the predominance of liquids in late,last light...the repeated leave, with the double punch of meaning as noun and verb... the repeat of light and how it falls on last (of stricken) leaves with the double punch of meaning as noun and verb,  the choice of  stealing, slowly.  Many stories about Copper Beeches -- which indeed are magnificent trees and known for their grandeur, unusual branches running close to the ground, and Elmer told us more about the fungus that curtails their lifespan of a few hundred years.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fagus_sylvatica

Emerson:  the introductory poem to the Poets Speak Anthology Water edited by John Roche. I would not have stumbled on the poet Martin Willitts without this anthology!  I was pleased to find a recent poem by him.  

Willitts:  This poem immediately elicited approval with a chorus of oooooooh!!!!  From the 13 syllable title, to the emotional reassurance most of us wanted to keep this poem in our pocket for a reminder of the importance of slowing down, mindful noticing of all the possibilities of vieewpoints.  Unusual vocabulary included "glassful of promises and memories", with the sound of that proverbial glass half full, half empty to explain attitudes towards life.  One trusts the italicized belonging to the now and how the imagination can connect us.  Indeed, if you are on the look-out for "startled energies", you will be amazed by the aliveness. Polly confirmed the ability of the heron to stay in the now.   We were intrigued by the shift on the 26th line, where the "I" becomes part of the whole of the world observed, and we imagine the slow signing adding to the "spell" (although he does not use this word.)  The "voice" referred to in the title now returns in the last five lines, but the reader is now offered a chance to hear it, "in a place sacred only to you".  Indeed, you nod affirmatively at the last line:  "There's room for many possible voices to hear."

Ishmael Reed:  This poem, on poet's walk is definitely political and the poem tile, "many mirrors" calls on  us to look deeply and reflect.   The hunger of the poem... reminded some of Shel Silverstein and story about being swallowed by a boa constrictor.   https://allpoetry.com/Boa-Constrictor  What is this poem with greedy mirrors-- and how are you part of it... Ishmael point out we are all part of it -- if we saw him performing it, perhaps he would point to different people -- his head... his arms... his fingers... his fingertips... and the reader.  He doesn't say "you".  We are statistics.  The final line delivers a multiple punch.  And how do we deal with the empty space left by missing friends?  Are we part of the poem, allowing them to go missing?  Have we experienced losing a friend?  Paid attention to the way people are invisibilized.  

---

[1] Better Yet:  

I am not Catholic, but perhaps the poet Jim Moore is and uses "shame"  in his poem "Better Yet" as the well-known feeling that leads humans from one sin to another.  I found this article enlightening -- and was delightfully reminded of C.S. Lewis and Screwtape's Letters!  https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/feeling-shame-is-not-repentance/. 

I also saw this explanation about pride:  in Roman Catholic theology, it one of the seven deadly sins, considered by some to be the gravest of all sins. In the theological sense, pride is defined as an excessive love of one’s own excellence. As a deadly sin, pride is believed to generate other sins and further immoral behaviour and is countered by the heavenly virtue of humility.

Let us hope our guardian angels help us with these matters. 

In terms of the poem's structure, there may be some help to identify what kind of tone is implied.

 It would seem Moore is coupling these paradoxical emotions:  

happiness/sadness

confusion/shame

grief/joy

The usual givens of  joy/sorrow are recognizable -- but perhaps he is implying something about "confusion" -- as the list starts with happiness,

and ends with joy -- having gone full circle.  

I like very much in the poem that he questions  if "wanting to go beyond where I've already been" is a "good thing".  He then couples that thought with "going back to the day before he was born".   Perhaps the poem's title, Better Yet is a loaded gun-- the colloquialism by itself smacks of judgement about the best option...   but perhaps he is making fun of the whole idea of options, desire, hanging on to life.

This explains my sense of a flippancy in his ending.  Aren't we all kicking away for all we're worth "in the dark" ??? 

 

---

[1] https://poets.org/poet/jim-moore

 

---

[1] https://mag.rochester.edu/walk/about  Poets Walk was the brainchild of Joe Flaherty, founder of Writers and Books who envisioned an interactive community  space for the Neighborhood of the Arts. https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/lifestyle/2015/06/16/iconic-founder-writers-books-retire/28809565/

Aug. 28

when it is August,/ you can have it August and abundantly so.  from YOU CAN’T HAVE IT ALL by Barbara Ras

 Welcome Morning by Anne Sexton;   What It’s Like to Wonder Whose Country It Was First -- by Abby Murray;  Frederick Douglass by Robert Hayden; Blackberries by Seamus Heaney; The Rice Fields by Zilka Joseph; Wallpaper Poem  by Phillis Levin; stanza 1 + final lines of Mutability by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Nutshell: 

August 28: ironic that this day, 61 years ago, Martin Luther King delivered his iconic speech: "I have a dream". https://www.riverbender.com/articles/details/this-day-in-history-on-august-28-martin-luther-king-jr-delivers-i-have-a-dream-speech-75404.cfm

Welcome: Is the title a command?  A private conversation between the poet and the start of a new day?  We discussed how quickly we can shift our reading of tone of a poem by a current mood.  For some, the poem felt like the manic phase of Sexton's bipolarity, unlike her usual confessional style.  Judith offered the opinion that the poem seemed to be an unsuccessful attempt at sounding like Mary Oliver; others felt it expressed a sense of religious rite, supported by the "chapel of eggs", the "godhead of the table", the "holy birds".  Contrived or no, annoying or pleasurable, the mention on the first line of "joy" with a small "j", ending the final couplet with the mention of unshared "Joy" with a capital "J" that dies young, invites reflection on the possibilities of finding it in the everyday ordinary details.  The "practical" such as the "outcry from the kettle", the repeated "each morning" couples with a sense of offering grace, as prayer of rejoicing.  As Kathy put it, one feels glad that the poet is experiencing "laughter of the morning" akin to a sense of God, and able to share it.  The final couplet invites us to tell a story.

I added the anecdote of my poet friend David Delaney, who prefaced a reading of a poem about an IV drip of chemo, with these words: "an infant comes into this world like his daughter's 4 month old son.  They want food, love, safety.  And after that?  Solomon Rushdie says, You give them stories."  I didn't mention in the video recording, he is holding a painting he did of A.A. Milne and Winnie-the-Pooh:  behind him a WW1 gas mask, and behind that is the burnt and ruined landscape once known as "No Man's Land." Milne was a soldier (officer) in British army during the "War to End All Wars"; he saw heavy action in the terrible trenches of France. And from all that horror came the 100 Acre Woods and some of the most endearing characters  Winnie-the-Pooh.  

Yes, welcome morning.  The dark hours of 4 am and yesterday have moved on to the present, the possibility, to imagining, dreaming, creating —.  Now, how do you imagine "holy birds" -- and what will come of that "marriage of seeds" on which they feed?  If you feel Joy, indeed, share it!  

What it's like: The title intrigues:  What does definition of a country involve?  "Who was here first" ? Judith recommended this short video: Nina Tayley + This land is mine

 We pricked up our ears at the mention of  "non-man" and "we, the non-men" as bigger and beyond gender identity and also  picked up on the importance of naming, labeling, claiming which led to wondering what language Adam and Eve spoke... how they referred to themselves and each other.  The poem triggered a sharing of ideas of ownership bumping out the idea of common good... tribalism, Darwinism, anthropology... fear, survival... the stereotypical "male" response of controling "it".   .Many saw "our mother" as Earth... but some men objected that they were excluded from naming if mother was not Earth.  

I wrote Abby to ask her to explain more about the stream being so perfect it broke a man's heart... was he thinking to call it "his" to deal with his grief?  How to understand that?    As one person put it, if we lose something, we feel hollow, and desire it even more.  And yet, trying to have it can result in more destruction. Abby replied: the man in the poem breaks his heart on beauty and calls it his out of grief, which is, I think, giving him the benefit of the doubt. (Many might argue it was out of pure greed.) 

Frederick Douglass:  Robert Hayden provided an unrhymed sonnet next with a preponderance of somber long O's  (diastole, systole, more, world, none, lonely, Oh... alone, ) oh so much more than the gaudy "mumbo jumbo" of politicians.  A beautiful example of weaving repeats:  beautiful, first with terrible (as in great, as in fearsome) then with "needful" on the final line (needful repeated from the second line, "this beautiful/terrible thing, needful to man as air).

Whether Frederick Douglass speaking or Robert Hayden, or the countless poets, visionaries, ministers, in their rhetoric, the voice carries conviction.

Blackberries:  Like Abby's poem, sometimes you want something so much, truly it doesn't seem possible or fair that it rot-- and ironic that you could hope so hard but yet know cannot do otherwise.  Kathy pointed out the word choice on the final line where Heaney does not use "but"... I year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.  The dynamics of expectation are reinforced by the momentum of the 24 lines, and as Claudia pointed out, the description was filled with color like a painting -- but also sound... the occlusives of clot, inked up, cans, tinkling... pass on the the b's and p's of blogs,  pricks, palsm, Bluebeard himself and smell that you can taste in the ff's of fermented fruit, sweet flesh.

The Rice Fields:  Clever metaphor and funny story telling combine in this delightful poem.  What do we carry that no one can see?  What do we hope to hang on to, and preserve?

Wallpaper: forgive my typo on the poet's name!~!! Not Philip Levine! but Phillis Levin.  (In July issue of New Yorker).  We enjoyed the references, the implied transcience of dust, and time's timeless print/ Gone now Here tomorrow ending with the word "still".  

It seemed appropriate to end with the opening stanza of Shelley's Mutability whose fourth and final stanza ends on that word.  It reminded Richard of Keat's tomb:https://wordsworth.org.uk/blog/2018/04/16/the-gravestone-of-john-keats-romancing-the-stone/ (Here lies one whose name was writ in water.)

  

Thoughts before leaving on a 7 week trip

 I am cleaning out papers... seeing in December 2011 I quoted this:

There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write. -- William Makepeace Thackeray

What a wonderful middle name!  I need to "make peace" with the fact that, true as this is... I am not making time for my own thoughts unless I am writing a poem.  I came across this note from 2007 in

The Seattle Japanese Garden -- no crutch of wiki or google, no doublecheck on etymology -- just a "crutchless moment" unconnected to anything-- and then I see the Striped Maple leaning on a crutch and write In the Japanese Garden, March 29, 2007.

**

Well, now for looking at notebooks.  No one needs to read them, but I like re-reading.  This one was given to me in May, 2018 by Jocelyn, the then mayor of Rennes on a visit to Rochester.  

Rivers... some braid their hair (Rita Dove, La Chapelle), some like yesterday, in Ellison Park, laze between muddy banks, licking all that springs up from the bottom -- and a series of l's appear... lapping, linking, and LOVE and doubLe -- no leaking away in worry.

Oct. 2020: water skaters rival solo drops released by leaves over Botheration Pond.  Eloquence of subtle echoes, as a raindrop pearls on a leaf... 

But there, in 2020, I have started a new journal, and remembering all that had happened since February and spelling out All That in seven letters.  (Joke my mother used to tell)...  and thoughts about our inner oysters negotiating thoughts and feelings.  

and today after a visit with my best belovèd daughter, and thinking of our best belovèd son, a conversation last night with one of my sisters who is writing her book of travel stories and her "charming Italian translations",  I receive a reply from a poet friend about my comments about John Ashbery's  poem "Myrtle" and how he leaps into naming a river after a long-lost girlfriend.  I coined a phrase:  "thinking management" evident in a poem.   

I love that someone came up with the germ Gregueria,  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greguer%C3%ADaa one line poem which combines metaphor and humor.  Example:  Hummingbirds are quarter notes which have left the nest of the flute.   I was reminded of Francis Ponge and Parti Pris des Choses and the  French spelling of oyster.  huître where the I hides under the hat of a circonflexe. 

I suppose a Gregueria about the oyster might be this: Aside the impenetrable fortress in which it lives, the oyster's entire living world may offer more than a gastronomic delicacy in a pearl— the perfect metaphorical response to minor irritations. 

 He humorously portrays the disposition of "things"-- in small lyric paragraphs... In the case of an oyster, even the spelling confirms this small shellfish is nothing short of a miracle, for inside the impenetrable fortress (which, worse than stone, will cut your fingers and break your nails) is an entire world many enjoy eating and drinking... and unexpected dividend, the small halos it secretes around an irritating molecule of sand, turns into a pearl.   Were we humans even half as gifted.

Invisibles...in Portuguese Saudade and a nostalgia for something that does not exist. 

I return to this theme again and again.  The valiant effort of a spider to spin its silk; the way the sea cradles life, and wind cradles wheat, and the universe cradles limitless worlds-- this amazing embrace of something larger to keep us going.   Sun spotlights, bubbles rising to the surface of a brook,  a spill of light down angel stairs, 

Goodbye friendly reader.  Try not to use up your life in hating and being afraid. -- Stendhal

September 11

 special speaker, John Roche has an impressive CV of his accomplishments which includes involving community in poetry and using poetry as an activist for human rights, the environment (see his trilogy of anthologies: Water, (2017)  Walls, (2018)  and Survival.  You see I have used the introductory poem from Water: A Poets Speak Anthology, edited by John Roche: Water by Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1841 as well as  a recent poem by another author in the anthology on September 4.  

(2018).  I first knew him as from his work on the selection committee for Poets Walk [1] that borders the Memorial Art Gallery campus from Prince St. to Goodman and as President of the local Rochester organization of Just Poets.  

I've asked Barb Murphy to be MC.  This special event coincides with the "O Pen" time slot, but is open to the public.  I do hope you will invite all your friends!!! 

His talk for September 11 : Light Verse for Serious Times: A Talk and Reading for Pittsford Community Library by John Roche, 9/11/2024

 

John Roche, RIT emeritus associate English professor and former president of the Just Poets organization, will be discussing the tension between accessibility and substance in poetry,

as well as reading from his new book Tubbables. (see press release)

 

Questions: How does a writer navigate between what Horace said were poetry's two purposes, to educate and to delight? Is it "barbaric" to write poetry in our era that does not directly address war, poverty, and climate apocalypse? Can "light verse" or children's verse or "trifling verse" also be a "poetry of witness"? Can poetry help keep us sane in these times? Is there a danger of poetry (or performance poetry) striving to be too explicitly "therapeutic." How does your poetry respond to such considerations?

Poems from Tubbables for discussion:

 

 

Prologue, or, A Defense of Trifling Verse

 

                        When the stars threw down their spears

                        And water'd heaven with their tears:

                        —William Blake, The Tyger

 

 

Because London Bridge is perpetually falling down

Because no one can put Humpty Dumpty together again

Because the cupboard was bare

Because the old woman who lives in the shoe still doesn’t know what to do

Because three blind mice

Because Mary is quite contrary

Because along came a spider who sat down beside her

Because the bough is breaking

Because the sky may not be falling

but the polar ice is surely melting 

 

Double Tubbable

 

                        Tubbable, 1920s synonym for washable:  tub + able (fabrics)

 

Whites and darks in the tub tubbable

Suds and spray and toil and bubble 

Pound on rock or play washboard trouble

Anna Livia Plurabelle gossips double 

Splashes and sprays and tells oh tells does lovely Annabelle

 

 

Heffalump

 

                        If honey's what you covet

                        You'll find that they love it

                        Because they guzzle up

                        The things you prize

                        --"Heffalumps and Woozles" from Disney's 

                        The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

 

The word “heffalump,” meaning “elephant,” was coined by British author A.A. Milne in the Winnie-the-Pooh books. The first appearance of the charming term was in the original 1926 “Winnie-the-Pooh,” with the fifth chapter titled, “In Which Piglet Meets a Heffalump.” While the illustrations by E.H. Shepard clearly depict what adult readers would know to be an elephant, Pooh and Piglet only meet the Heffalump in their imaginations. The word “heffalump” thus became a childlike synonym for the giant animal, and a metaphorical term for an imaginary creature. Heffalumps became more popularized in Disney’s “Winnie-the-Pooh” depictions, beginning with a song called “Heffalumps and Woozles” in a 1968 animated featurette. --"Heffalump," Word Daily

 

An elephant in the ear of a child

penned by a man with the eye of a child.

 

My father used to read us

Winnie the Pooh and Doctor Doolittle

in between Bible stories

I still talk to animals 

but they seldom talk back.

Been a long time since I could decipher 

more than a bark or a hiss. 

 

 

Penny Ha’penny

 

Penny Ha’penny was a childhood friend 

who lived on Ha’penny Bridge on Penny Lane 

Penny, we’d say, a penny for your thoughts?

Penny would throw a penny o’er her shoulder in reply

Penny had too much sense to trade a pound for a pence 

Penny always wore a mac in the pouring rain

though it seldom rains on Penny Lane

Penny left a bike lock on Ha’penny Bridge

wouldn’t tell us who it was for

Penny Ha’penny left Penny Lane one morn

and her mum wouldn’t tell us where or what for

Hey, Penny Ha’penny, where’ve you been?

Hey, Penny Ha'penny, where’ve you been?

Where've you been?

 

Naptime

 

dust motes float

across universe

 

four years old

not sleepy at-all

 

dust motes float

prism on the wall

 

laughs and shrieks

kids playing outdoors

 

dust motes float

fireflies appear

 

four years old

a portal opens

  

 

In the Blueblack

 

                                    After Robert Hayden

 

Wake to sound of snowplow

dopplering down the street

notice scraping of shovel—

Dad out in the blueblack cold—

Aromas send you and your brother hurtling down the stairs

to the kitchen where Mom is making breakfast

Radio’s alphabetically announcing school closings—

first big snow of the year—

Listen impatiently as a thousand small towns report in

—delayed or closed—

But the tea kettle's hiss drowns out the S’s

so you’ll have to listen all over again

 

I Stole an Eclipse

 

I stole an eclipse today

Rode a snapping turtle 

all the way to San Luis Obispo

Climbed an agave stalk taller than an oak

higher than the campanile

Held up the sun with my BB gun

Put it in my back pocket

Ate a tangerine

Kicked a soccer ball to the moon

Listened to the Music of the Spheres

Watched as it ricocheted through the galaxy

Rode vampire fish sailing celestial seas

Hummed L’Éclair de Lune

and composed a sonnet

 

 

Eggs in a Basket 

 

Chicks may hatch

Hatchets may cleave

Cleave unto the Lord

The Lord of Dynamite

Dynamite omelette!

Omelans walk away

Away, come away, human child

Children cross the border

The border is wide, we cannot cross 

Cross of Fire, Cross of Shame

Shaming, naming, gaming the same

The same rain that falls on the rich man…

The rich man eats pâté de foie gras

Gross old man eats Big Macs on silver platter

The platters spin, the planets spin, the Wheel spins, 

the whale of a ride

Riding Hood holds her basket dear

Dear Heart, keep your ducks in a row

Row, row, row your boat ashore 

Ashore, on the other side, paragate, parasamgate, Bodhisvaha

Buddha sits basket in lap

Lapping waves all atwitter

Atwittering sparrows and avenging hawks

Hawking their wares at the county fair

Fair weather friend, what will be your end?

The End Is Nigh, or Never!

Never mind that man behind the curtain

It’s curtains for you, Mr. Rooster

Rooster may broil or broast, but hen will sit

Sitting, sitting, sitting, what chicks may hatch?

 

 

Snug of a Pub

 

When you get locked out of Twitter

When Spoutible fails to load

When you can’t recall your Linkedin password

When Facebook gets too boring

 

Remember that snug in a Dublin pub

etched in your mind

always open

always serving

good conversation 

and non-refrigerated Guinness

with reels and jigs

slightly muffled

by the oak partition

 

On a particular night,

maybe Joyce himself in one chair, 

Flann O’Brien in another, 

and you doing your best

to keep up with the ricocheting words

 

 

 

I Saw That Movie

 

It came on at midnight

I was too tired to sleep

so I watched it

Tried changing the channel

but there was only Bowling for Dollars,

reruns of My Favorite Martian,

and some guy demonstrating how to use a potato peeler.

 

The movie started in some American small town

What we used to call The Heartland

Though I never knew why.

 

Then there were monsters.

 

 

Virtual Reality Check

 

Sorry, friends,

but even your best poem 

won’t get nearly as many “likes”

as two koala cubs grooming

a tabby on top of a roof

or a bobcat lounging

on somebody’s patio