Celebrating National Poetry Month

Thanks to Barry Marks for allowing me to post this amazing poem. One of my favorites.

I Stop to Ponder the Stentorian Colors of the Day

by Barry Marks

The railing down from the deck

to the garbage cans was wobbly and

since you left I’ve certainly had

time on my hands,

so I unretired my rusty box saw,

found an old two-by-four

and some three penny nails,

and got to work.

A dog was barking, yelling his name

at the dog next door

Big Dog Who Swims! Big Dog Who Swims!

To which his neighbor barked back,

Dog Who Hates Cats! and

some nearby mutt yapped

Mama’s Favorite! Mama’s Favorite!

A cardinal was shouting

Beauty! A mockingbird said

the same, of course.

A chameleon shot out of the hedge,

stopped by my foot, and turning from green

to almost-brown, sneered

You can’t see me then skittered off.

The sky was whispering until

I looked up and it screamed,

Forever

to which the grass responded,

Joy is fragile!

And the saw

sang in my hands

and the wood?

Come on, now. An old two-by-four

with a bent nail in its heart?

Everyone knows dead wood

has nothing to say.

Half In, Half Out

I think every writer stands in the doorway of their prison. Half in, half out.  - Sherman Alexie

Elegy for the Forgotten Oldsmobile
by Adrian C. Louis

July 4th and all is Hell.
Outside my shuttered breath the streets bubble
with flame-loined kids in designer jeans
looking for people to rape or razor.
A madman covered with running sores
is on the street corner singing:
O beautiful for spacious skies…
This landscape is far too convenient
to be either real or metaphor.
In an alley behind a 7-11
a Black pimp dressed in Harris tweed
preaches fidelity to two pimply whores
whose skin is white though they aren’t quite.
And crosstown in the sane precincts
of Brown University where I added rage
to Cliff Notes and got two degrees
bearded scientists are stringing words
outside the language inside the guts of atoms
and I don’t know why I’ve come back to visit.

O Uncle Adrian! I’m in the reservation of my mind.
Chicken bones in a cardboard casket
meditate upon the linoleum floor.
Outside my flophouse door stewed
and sinister winos snore in a tragic chorus.

The snowstorm t.v. in the lobby’s their mother.
Outside my window on the jumper’s ledge
ice wraiths shiver and coat my last cans of Bud
though this is summer I don’t know why or where
the souls of Indian sinners fly.
Uncle Adrian, you died last week—cirrhosis.
I still have the photo of you in your Lovelock
letterman’s jacket—two white girls on your arms—
first team All-State halfback in ’45, ’46.

But nothing is static. I am in the reservation of
my mind. Embarrassed moths unravel my shorts
thread by thread asserting insectival lust.
I’m a naked locoweed in a city scene.
What are my options? Why am I back in this city?
When I sing of the American night my lungs billow
Camels astride hacking appeals for cessation.
My mother’s zippo inscribed: “Stewart Indian School—1941”
explodes in my hand in elegy to Dresden Antietam
and Wounded Knee and finally I have come to see
this mad fag nation is dying.

Our ancestors’ murderer is finally dying and I guess
I should be happy and dance with the spirit or project
my regret to my long-lost high school honey
but history has carried me to a place
where she has a daughter older than we were
when we first shared flesh.

She is the one who could not marry me
because of the dark-skin ways in my blood.
Love like that needs no elegy but because
of the baked-prick possibility of the flame lakes of Hell
I will give one last supper and sacrament
to the dying beast of need disguised as love
on deathrow inside my ribcage.
I have not forgotten the years of midnight hunger
when I could see how the past had guided me
and I cried and held the pillow, muddled
in the melodrama of the quite immature
but anyway, Uncle Adrian…
Here I am in the reservation of my mind
and silence settles forever
the vacancy of this cheap city room.
In the wine darkness my cigarette coal
tints my face with Geronimo’s rage
and I’m in the dry hills with a Winchester
waiting to shoot the lean, learned fools
who taught me to live-think in English.

Uncle Adrian…
to make a long night story short,
you promised to give me your Oldsmobile in 1962.
How come you didn’t?
I could have had some really good times in high school.

Writing By the Water

Over the week-end, I went to beautiful, glorious Blue Mountain Beach, Florida for a three day Write By the Water writers retreat.

It was awesome! I had a glorious three days of walking on the beach, pondering, plotting, and recharging my creative batteries. Got some work done on my work-in-progress, the second book of The Moonlight Ridge Series. Talked to some beach birds, called my greeting across the waves to my dolphin friends.

 

On Saturday night, we had the pleasure of hosting a very creative and active local poetry group,

Say Word! Everyone got the opportunity to read to the group. I read my poem On Becoming One With Earth. And we listened to some fabulous guitar and vocal music performances by Weck and Rhoda, and creative easy-listening music from ConsthanDivine, whose name I may have spelled correctly, and maybe not. He's a sweet, talented fellow, and I'll correct the spelling if I have it wrong.

Here's ConsthanDivine Harris on the left, Maria Schabla on the right, and Angela Durden in the middle.

Linda Sands, the extraordinary organizer of Write By the Water, did such a marvelous job. She had everything ready for the visiting writers, and all we had to do was show up and enjoy ourselves. Linda is so talented, energetic, fun to be around, and her organizational skills are amazing.

Thank you so much, Linda, for a marvelous retreat.

I heartily recommend Write By the Water to all my writer friends. The next one is scheduled to be in Sicily! Y'all go for it!