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poetry
As a man is, so he sees
Fun I love, but too much fun is of all things the most loathsome. Mirth is better than fun, and happiness is better than mirth. I feel that a man may be happy in this world. And I know that this world is a world of imagination and vision. I see every thing I paint in this world, but everybody does not see alike. To the eyes of a miser a guinea is far more beautiful than the Sun, and a bag worn with the use of money has more beautiful proportions than a vine filled with grapes. The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity, and by these I shall not regulate my proportions; and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself. As a man is, so he sees. – William Blake
for a friend who died on this day in 2000
For my friend Joe – who died on this day in 2000. I miss you every day.
On the Feast of St. James the Greater
(for Joe C.)
This is where
he would have fished
imagine
him in the dark
gathering gear
stripers transfiguring
the moon’s
light he loses
all balance and
bearings thunder
muffling the dry
night sky
what we heard
is in the mist
blowing over
Ram Island
disappearing
like walks
we’ll never take
Tattoo by Shug Lescault from issue 2 of Hole In The Head Review.
http://www.holeintheheadreview.com
Look for Issue 3 on 08.01.2020 with wonderful work by Betsy Sholl, Charles Simic, Linda Aldrich, Alice B. Fogel, F. Daniel Rzicznek, Sara Pirkle, Meghan Vigeant, Janet Powers, Greg Clary, Russell Barajas, Michael Hettich interviews Denise Duhamel, and much, much more.
Slowly in Prayer – Matthew Lippman
To be thankful for the Starbucks lady, Lucy,
who is pissed at me for asking too many questions
about my damn phone app
is one thing.
To be thankful for my wife plastering my face to the bathroom floor
with pancake batter
for missing the bus
is another thing.
I tried to be thankful for my eyes this morning
even though one of them is filled with puss
and the other with marigold juice.
Marigold juice is the stuff that comes from the flower
when you put it between your palms and rub, slowly in prayer,
even though nothing comes out.
It’s the imagined juice of God,
the thing you can’t see when you are not being thankful.
I try to be thankful for the lack of energy that is my laziness
and my lonely best friend with no wife and children
knowing I am as lonely as he
with one wife and two daughters.
Sometimes we travel five minutes to the pier in Red Hook
and it takes hours in our loneliness to know, in our thankfulness,
that if we held hands it’d be a quiet romance for the ages.
I’ll admit, I’m thankful for Justin Timberlake
because he’s better than Beethoven
and my friend Aaron
who lived in the woods with an axe and never used it once.
I try hard to forget love,
to abandon love,
so that one day I will actually be able to love.
Until then, I am thankful that Lucy wanted to spit in my coffee,
or imagined that she did,
and thanked her profusely
for showing me which buttons to push
and how to do it, with just the right amount of pressure,
the whole tips of all my fingers dancing like stars
through the blackness
of a mocha latte, black.
Photo by Lisa Fotios on Pexels.com
I, Too – Langston Hughes
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.
Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—
I, too, am America.
take an axe to the prison wall
Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.
You’re covered with a thick cloud.
Slide out the side.
Die, and be quiet.
Quietness is the surest sign that you’ve died.
Your old life was a frantic running from silence.
The speechless full moon comes out now.
~ Rumi
The Sunfish – Donald Junkins
Slim without diet, he moves toward worms like an early bird.
Soft nibbler, heckler of fishermen, this busyfish hits
and runs. He cleans the steel hook like a dimwit.
Children love him under boats among the yellow weeds
and under the green shade of wharves for his backbone;
they dangle bait on lines that will not sound his greed.
It is all done by touch. From overhead they cannot
see his soft mail shading into black and blue,
his blood-daubed cheek, his belly orange as spawn, the hue
of silver fading toward his tail. This pip, this pun
is the harlequin of the pond. Out of the water
he fades like leather. All anglers fish for the sun.
[from Crossing By Ferry, Poems New & Selected, The University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, 1978]
He Prefers Her Earthly – Thomas Hardy
This after-sunset is a sight for seeing,
Cliff-heads of craggy cloud surrounding it.
—And dwell you in that glory-show?
You may; for there are strange strange things in being,
Stranger than I know.
Yet if that chasm of splendour claim your presence
Which glows between the ash cloud and the dun,
How changed must be your mortal mould!
Changed to a firmament-riding earthless essence
From what you were of old:
All too unlike the fond and fragile creature
Then known to me….Well, shall I say it plain?
I would not have you thus and there,
But still would grieve on, missing you, still feature
You as the one you were.
wounds and scars
On this day in 1944, my Dad was a 25 year-old first lieutenant in the 4th infantry, leading the men in a landing craft like this into really unknown waters.
He made it to the outskirts of Ste. Mere Eglise, where he was hit with grenade shrapnel. His left arm and hand were significantly damaged; shrapnel remained in his body for the rest of his too-short life, including in his eyes.
He’s always been my hero.
This poem is for him, William John Schulz, Jr.
Wounds and Scars
I have two noticeable scars
one on my forehead
from falling with a girl
on my back the other from
breaking a salt shaker in my hand
just before my first divorce
some wounds heal
from the inside out
raw and open for months
some wounds may never scar
Jesus had holy wounds
and Hemingway of course
Francis of Assisi had stigmata
as if Jesus was inside him
my father had shrapnel wounds
from a battle in France
I’d touch the scar on his chin
and he’d growl then laugh
over and over until
we both laughed and cried
Edge of Atlantic 