The Head and the Heart--"Down in the Valley"(Lawrence High School Classr...

God bless my friend Jeff Kuhr and LHS's Room 125 Productions!

Day 8 & 9: Agreement & Speed

Unsocial Contract

You choose language

uncarefully, shouting

this or that expletive

 across the bodies

circulating around,

oblivious, you:  

no sun but a burning

sphere of invective &

meaningless phrase.

Forgive my complicity

in your ignorance.

It’s just that the

language we share

allows me no bridge

to cross the distance

between your bold

star  & my humble

orbit through your

hurled words.

Circa 1905

Stacking minute upon minute,

the day works its way into

the week’s end then:

slow, now, slow.

Week by week, the years add

a number of epiphanies

& weaknesses, but at the

midpoint there’s a need

to  slow, now, slow.

Time may wrinkle face,

hands, & resolve, but

the day’s quick pace

pulses & pride thickens

into humility allowing

that begging voice at

the heart’s deep core

to urge more & more:

slow, now, slow.

Give us just a little

more, Time.

Days 6 & 7: Weekend Poetry is Difficult

Day 6:

Looking for Obscurity

Everyone wants clarity, some

pray for it, even. Give me a

cloud-filled sky, it’s November 

after all: let the ribbon of birds

lose itself in a temple of cumulus.

Let truth slip away unnoticed,

waiting for some rambler to

pick it up & call it something new.

Let all of us lose our senses

trusting that behind the darkness

is that same blue sky waiting

for the lightning to strike or a

new sun to rise up like a first fire

burning every preconception to ash.

------------- 

Day 7:

Pro-Memory

without it, we would

never exist but in the

tiniest segments

four shiny sea shells

a broken bicycle chain

a can of old coins

nothing is all gone

everything leaves its dust

choose your objects well

seven unplayed cards

one fractured black rosary 

a pile of lost leaves

Day 5: Friday Found Poem (mostly)

Before&After

Nothing is constant, but change
comes quickly or not at all.
Someday we'll be happy here
comes the sun, tomorrow?

Or is it rain or wind or storm:
Let storm! Life is ... born too
young into a world already so
gone too long to keep so dear.

What can you do for change,
on a lark, on the lamb, in a bus,
on the way to wherever you are:
you are, all the things you are.

There is no mistaking here:
Everybody know this is ...
nowhere to go but...up to no
good to know you too, pal.

Day 4: Stuck or Unstuck [in time]

Containment Unit # 231

We watch the movie frontwards, stopping
not often for questions & noticing, they would
rather plug in to their own headlessness.
I insist that they remain well postured.
This doesn't please the prisoners, who
don't buy that they are free to come & go:

stuck, unstuck

they renounce my influence: traitor,
liar, thief, hypocrite, warden, bum.
My ticks don't bother them anymore,
they react, only to keep themselves awake.
Even when they smile, their teeth shine
with disdain, or is it just the clock, shine:

stuck, unstuck

big hand catching up with little hand
seconds committing suicide with
a leap less of faith than absolutism,
to keep all the watchers hoping
& guessing that soon even this will pass,
at the top of every hour a pause:

stuck, unstuck

but what of these friends unshackled,
choosers, minds broken open to see
that what matters here matters every
where, that what is true is as uncom
fortable as a poorly engineered desk,
a false ergonomics of education:

stuck, unstuck

We are held here, we two, we many,
an invisible thread, a visible cell white
walled & dingy, speckled with useless
memorabilia, a story soaked wasteland,
unkempt wordhoard, ill used, piling up,
forever unread, only to contain us.

Are we really stuck? Unstuck.

Day 3: Woeful Wednesday

Here, KS

A colleague of mine's brother-in-law lives there,
all wrapped up in soft-spoken age & false teeth
letting slide the subtlest lies through a radio fourthwall.

Believable lies, willingly suspended, make his brand
of honesty so compelling. I believe in Irma,& Ted,
& even Jillian as much as any Chuck, Dave or Maryette.

But the state I live in is not all dotted with resolve, or
picked ripe as September's last acorn squash. Whatever
do they do with all those leftover pumpkins, anyhow?

See, here in our corner of a mislead & unheard populace,
we don't worry much about American exceptionality,
& sure as shit don't talk about settling our entitlements.

We just want to bring our children up to know the difference
between right & wrong is not often debated about on television.

Day 2: Two For Tuesday (on a Wednesday)

Cut the Noise

November comes in like a megaphone
& dies out under a blanket of regret.
With hope, we survive the season's
sadness & light our candles one by one
hoping that the coming cold will bury
all the fearful chatter: the throaty violence
of  peaceful overthrow. Let there be
birds collecting seed beneath the frost.
Let their red coats bristle in the freeze
& their pecking beaks strike harder
than the oil man's spike. May we all
find the silence our broken spirits
need to purge the liar's spectacle.
Let freedom's ring muffle under
the gleam of falling snow.


_______
The Truth about Disappointment

It rarely accomplishes what it starts,
but slides away to a delicate sense of loss
that suggests a permanence that is always a lie.
Nothing is worth sleeplessness except love.
So says the sleepy election day Kansan with his bitter pill.

Day 1

15/35

At fifteen, restraint meant not
sticking up for a bullied friend
or joining in when insults were
handed out by the dozens like
some kind of locker-room party favor.
When the situation beckoned, fists flew:
willy-nilly, a few even landing on a face
that years before was a boon friend
& minutes after was the face of regret
& twenty years later shame.

At thirty-five there is little fight left
& restraint is easier to understand,
nuanced by years of practicing patience.
A man comes to realize that who we are
has as much to do with what we didn't do
as what we did--assuming the dents
we made are equally as important
as the ones we received.
                      But at the midway point:
perceived weakness & pretend strength
are equally unimportant. An aging face
shows all the signs of childhood fear
without the need for mask or lies.

http://blog.writersdigest.com/poeticasides/CategoryView,category,NovemberPADChapbookChallenge2010.aspx

Presences Impossible to Confirm

Something on the end of a fishingline,

hanging on, or gone, isn’t the same

as something slipping through fingers,

falling gracefully into the water beneath

your feet breathing in the rain.

You know when I talk about birds

that I am at my most faithful:

just today the absence of a

blue heron nearly killed me.

The ancients read from left to right

auspiciously, and right to left with

apprehension:      birdbrain

roadkill, birdsign, emptiness.

When memories of gone loves

gather in dreamscape,

do they remember one another?

Do they all wake up disappointed?

What is God but authorfunction?

Hopescape, prayerfield, amen.

If I scan all your old haunts are you

more likely to show up in my dreams?

Do ghosts still believe in forever?

in punctuality? in omniscience?

apologies?

Which big fish story started all this lying?

When I pull up the line I always expect you to smile.

I will never stop being five years old.

Polaroids never lie.

You’re still not here

____________

Forgive me. I've been reading Li-Young Lee again.

A Good Man’s Son

His first wife was a private detective, and he had a tendency to undermine his own best wishes. It would seem that things were doomed from the start. Their son, by the time I met him, had developed a healthy sense of disinterest, but then again this was high school. Long, stringy hair, in Cobain style, ten years removed: even down to the holey jeans, sans cardigan or hospital gown. He did his work, he passed his classes, but there wasn’t any care for it. In the best moments you got the sense that he was curious about things, that in some future he might have a chair where he’d sit and read a book, or even write one. He might just as likely never pick one up after graduation. He would graduate though; he owed his dad that much: a diploma, a photograph, even a real smile and the same shy slouch on a sunny day in May.

I never knew his mother, never met a private investigator, not that I’m aware of anyway. They spoke of her rarely. She wasn’t dead, but she was more of a ghost than a physical presence. Someone they both knew, someone they shared, who was no longer a daily part of their lives,  but you got the feeling that she moved through their memories, their imaginations, taking stock of their shared deficiencies but loving them in spite of them, most of the time. Then again she was gone; she left them, these men who barely needed speech, alone with their silence, with their television, headphones, and disappointment. And they had their cats: Tom, Whitey, and the one with the limp. These would never replace the woman that connected them, but they were faithful, they were quiet, and they were seldom disappointed.

None of this explains how it happened: how he had his chance to become a household name, his fifteen minutes. The east/west commute was brutal, only thirty miles, but the sun both ways. Mostly he took the bus. On this particular Tuesday he was early. His general psychology class didn’t begin until 10:00 am, but he was at the bus stop and on a bus at 8:15. He sat down in the middle of the bus, the sixth row from the front on the right side. He liked to be able to see out the south window on the way into the city. He enjoyed the way the landscape was so predictable, how a slight rise and fall here and there laid out where farmers would settle, how they would rotate crops, how roads would be charted and someday where housing tracts would be settled on and quickly developed, finally linking the larger metropolis with a series of what used to small towns. He knew each rise of a hill, each bend of country roads, and could mark the early autumn changes in the old growth trees.

When the car in front of the bus suddenly slowed, jerked, and rolled, he was looking at a familiar man-made mini-lake used by the college’s water-ski team. He ripped out his ear buds and gripped the seat back in front of him tightly, preparing for whatever impact or slide might occur. When the tires hit the shoulder and the brakes were applied, the slide into the deep ditch was inevitable. Most of its passengers were oblivious, but not Travis. By the time the bus came to a dusty stop on its right side, he was already on his feet and looking to help. By the time those who were sure of themselves were on their cell phones calling 911, he was out the emergency exit and running to the small blue car to check on its occupants.

She was unconscious when he arrived. There was not a lot of blood but enough that he was scared to move her. Her seat belt had kept her in the small car while it rolled and skidded, resting finally right side up and still purring. The windshield was gone, as was the driver. He felt the girl’s neck for a pulse, steady. He looked in the distance for her driver, another quickening of his heart and he was running again. Twenty yards south, slumped and unmoving, the driver was waiting to be saved. By this time the survivors were gathering and waiting for the first responders to make the scene, but Travis was on his knees palpitating the man’s chest counting out a rhythm as if he was still listening to a favorite song.

That evening on the news no one’s crying family members were interviewed. No memorial services were celebrated days later. There would be no roadside shrine erected in this spot. The odd image of a young man sitting on the side of the road with his ear buds back in his ears was multiplied through the papers and broadcast on the region’s various nightly newscasts, eventually reaching the television of his mother in a distant town and prompting a nervous voicemail message. Just like at the scene, Travis declined to be interviewed. This above all things would make his father proud.