B- College Poetry

Death and Human Stupidity

Each time we evade death,

we're made ignorant fools.

We smile at strangers

and find the moon profound.

But soon change is garbage,

coffee is black,  and walking the streets

at night is miserable and outrageous.

Escaping death is too convenient.

We forget

our colors are not perpetually fast;

they fade from exposure, and our engraved

epitaphs fade from erosion. Sunday words are lost

on the dead, eulogies like the work of Ovid.

I see Lucille Ball arriving on the shore

of the River Styx

and blinding Charon with a frying pan

with Three Stooges audacity.

Waiting

The breeze pricks my skin.

There is no promise tonight,

no greater purpose

on the breeze.

Light is captured on the lake as if by

John Constable's brush.

Light titillates the water's surface.

Waves lap at the shore like milk

at the lip of a cup.

O lake, who would want you on the wall to depress

while eating the morning's sloppy cereal?

Blue herons and white egrets enter

in sweeping arcs.

Their silent movements are like wordless lovers 

making a path through the dark

streets of Rome. They settle

on the branches, a collective

palette. The distance among

them is indistinguishable.

 

South Africa

At this season, the desert is inhospitable.

The threatening wasteland challenges us.

Our hosts meet us at our arrival and house us,

even though we are strangers. The diamond’s

good fortune is evident in the town’s spirit. 

Despite cruel brush, bipolar weather, and nasty locust,

vivid flowers grow in neat patchworks around well-kept villas.

I am enamored with the sound

of lion roar at night.

People are whispering:

there is rebellion in Johannesburg.

The people are wicked, like hyenas snapping

with their yellow teeth.

The war is present here, the Boers against the British.

It’s a dreadful feeling,

to look to familiar faces,

and ask the stupid question,

to which they have no answer. The walls and windows

are riddled with bullets -- the result of a young

soldier’s amusement.

In this bare place,

my heart sinks into my shoes.

I have serious thoughts of taking leave,

risking the soldiers, their bullets, dodging

through the night. I would find the Nile,

and dive down into its cool, shielding darkness.

Lady Sarah Wilson, South African Memories

 

Cricket Brownie

Your antennae turn toward me menacingly 

as a bull’s horns. I don’t think

this is what

Marie Antoinette had in mind – a cricket brownie.

You used to yell your battle cry

outside

my bed covers. Now you’re mixed

with flour, chocolate, butter, and salt.

I could pluck your antennae

and stitch

a button. I could close my eyes,

but still imagine

the decapitation. Are your brothers

and sisters,

ma and pa, weeping

for you at home?

I bear down,

and you give

a stifled crunch.

¼ c. flour, 2 tbsp. cocoa, a quarter stick of butter, a dash of salt...

A SalesmanHe kicked up sand with his snakeskin boots,
picking his teeth with a fang cut
from the kingsnake’s mouth. Pacing, he wondered
what to do. The snake-oil salesman looked
back on his tent and his towering supply
of oil cans.
Tilting back his hat,
he scanned the desert. The hundreds of leathered
snakes laid out in the sun looked well-done
like old people tanning. No one
vacationed on the desert, and the salesman was broke.
He opened his snakeskin pouch and fumbled
with the root, the powder, and the venom.
From the sand, he could make a man and a woman,
so the priestess promised. He figured he would make
a town. The town would run off snake oil.
There would be no law
except one -- he would handle the snakes. It would be good. 



 

Road kill

You are a beast of nature.

Bloody, still, pestered by flies,

sacrificed

to Gaia.

BMWs, Mercedes and Volkswagens

try to slink by

like a child tiptoeing past

sleeping parents, stopping

to sneak a look

at the unfamiliar, still faces.

One driver and passenger,

not fully satisfied

with  rubbernecking, 

hoist you up

like a bag of potatoes

onto the bed of a pickup truck.

The disastrous Odyssean journey begins.

The hunters bellow

from their fiery

throats. They make you a noose,

though you’re already dead, and

slash at your

flesh. No kind token

is given

to veil your startled eyes.  

Poison

The soup is on the kitchen stove -- almost

perfect. The clocks say it's a quarter past

nine. Come breathe in the broth --

it will do you good.

I dust every day, but the dead skin

multiplies. You stay fixed to the couch,

like the wine stain

from last Christmas.

Your nasal spasms frighten

the poor Siamese. At least, for now,

the lozenges silence your croaks.

Come breathe in the broth --

it will do you good.

I have been in a nervous sweat all day,

laboring over the stove. The least you can do

is have a taste.

Are you afraid

the Siamese will take your place?

You lie around like a festering sore, plaguing

the fridge, the couch, the TV remote. Your soup

is on kitchen stove -- almost perfect. 

Hunting for‘Shrooms

I’ve got bum luck. I should of worn my galoshes.
This muck's
staining my Toms, and all I got to show
are bad  'shrooms.
Leo went prancing off thataway, muttering something
about a righteous egret.
I almost soil my gauchos when    
    I encounter Cerberus. He has wings and a beak

and hungry talons.
    Shaking badly, I look for a way out.
I almost trip
    over this homeless guy with shimmering eyes
and a rippling beard.
    He offers to guide me
if I first follow him 
    through hell, purgatory, and heaven.

When he leads me through the
Florida bush,
I sense the eye of a higher power looking on
    jealously.
It's as if  slinking through musty, dead undergrowth is
    a human right!  

 

Mom and Dad

She saw him across the room, sitting next to a girl.

My mother took the Marta train

after class. He offered up his seat. The ride became routine.

My mother wanted to be married 

in a church. She made her own bouquet;

Piggly Wiggly made the cake.

She wore her sister-in-law’s dress

from a failed marriage.

They drove off

in his Toyota 77 Celica,

but not far -- the mountains were close.

In the anniversary album, he looks like a model.

His jeans were torn and faded.

His Lacoste polo showed off his pectorals

from loading packages into UPS trucks.

He was in training to be a pilot. My mother was still in school, working

toward teaching.

He traded his Celica for a steel-blue Ford truck.

She went

from her kindergarteners to her new little house.

She was

not as sick then.

They had a child and planned for more.

She fried steak,

and he slipped on the spilt hot oil. 


 

The Diary of Anne Frank

Dear young lady, I see you sitting at a windowsill

staring out at a sliver of blue sky. You know more exists,

even if not

for your eyes. You take in the sun, not directly, but you see its effect

on the buildings and the streets. You can’t feel its warmth, but you see

the long

shadows beneath the men in field-gray field blouses.

I write these words in a yawn-inducing state, embarrassingly comfortable compared

to your last months. When you wrote “Dear Kitty,”

a yawn must have clamored through the silence like a jar full of coins scattering

onto the wood floor.

You were a young lady of utmost poise. Hollywood trained an understudy

to play your part, but you deserve the Oscar.

You tiptoed across rooms. When men were present, you didn’t make a peep.

You dared not cough or cry; you stifled your sneezes.

Young lady,

you played a brilliant role, but you don’t know the

role you played.