Posts (page 2)

Tomatoes

 

I looked for love like a gardener

watching tomatoes every day

....................still green........

prodding a bit, watering

adding compost

pullling out a weed

...................still green.......

staking, pruning

killing bugs.

Each morning eye straining

no miracle overnight

....................still green......

Tired of hard green fruit

I looked away, got busy.

 

Red and plump they drop

into my hands, my basket, my jars.

Enough to keep.

Enough to give.

Enough

         to throw against the walls

         and into sour faces.

 

 

Ester Hauser Laurence

 

 

 

For Bill & Michelle

 

It's made

Love is.

It's chosen

It's allowed.

It's fallen into

          on purpose.

 

And best approached

Like a puddle

By a child.

 

Ester Hauser Laurence

 

 

To Save My Life

 

I would crawl under smoke

across scorched floors,

tumble down stairs,

break through windows

and jump into a fireman's net

to save my life.

 

To save my life

I would throw myself

out of a speeding kidnapper's car,

pound my way out of a locked trunk,

push through waistdeep snow,

pull myself out of the suction

of goopy marsh.

 

To save my life

I would swim away from stiff currents

or hungry sharks.

I would cling to cliffsides

or pull the parachute ripcord

with my teeth.

I would battle bulls or alligators,

lions or polar bears.

 

Nothing is too hard

to save my life.

 

Yet, to save my life

I can't get going out to walk.

I keep enjoying second helpings,

More food! Chocolate, cheese, ice cream!

Easy. Nice. Good living. Can I never spare it

to save my life?

 

Ester Hauser Prudlo

 

 

(Cheryl Lynn Moyer)   For Bill Kanouse   In your name I leave the refrigerator half empty. Fresh air blows through windows resorting partially written pieces of my days.   Swimming in fresh water can be difficult, so I must lay in the rain, soaking up what remains of unspoken truths.     Cheryl Lynn Moyer            Earth Stew

Turn the atmospheric convection oven                                                            to a slowly increasing simmer. Melt the glaciers and ice caps to a flooding gruel. Stir tens of millions displaced humans and expiring species with increasing tornados and hurricanes. Sip slowly this bitter broth. Cheryl Lynn Moyer     Birth Bangs     I was shattered at birth little bits of me flying away and inwards, dazzled into endless skies unchartered by my senses. No compass to mirror the distinction of me versus all the otherness, imprinting me by their repetitious sounds. That eternal observer that dwells in everyone opened my inner chambers, familiarity set in. Knowing began to leap up, singing in my throat. 'Call everything home.' Inner chambers are without walls, ceilings, or floors. The world can fit snuggly inside, all the lost pieces returning: 'Ohmmm, ohmm, ohm, oh, O' Cheryl Lynn Moyer Our Last Jazz Note     Like a beloved child with aids New Orleans' soul passed on. In denial, a nation prayed it wouldn't happen, then that it wasn't so. Katrina, that angry woman purged our primeval soul, tested our very humanness, then piously exhaled our last jazz note. Cheryl Lynn Moyer

I Dreamed of Hendrix

 

The white ones unwarranted,

hardly a one cared for

a colored lad with long locks,

greedy for the guitar and

assorted girls, especially

during that goddamn War.

 

But I was born to rule

the blues, to do with it

whatever I chose. And I

would take that guitar

and I'd choke that son-

 

of-a-bitch. I even made

music with my mouth, by

taking those tiny strings

into my teeth, making them

sing, like a sparrow on

its first outing into early

April sun. And the people

 

didn't know what to make

of me, a prodigious man, no,

a wild, black, prodigious

man controlling the band

stand. And I could not

cross the crowds that swarmed

like flies to the concerts, or

wherever I was performing

 

only to see me, witness

the magic of my every opus,

I was an ex-patriot. I

was angry as every average

person was at America's

politics. I was ready for

 

a revolution long overdue.

I was propelled by the

plight of my people, called

colored then, but emerging.

I, well, put me in the place

like the parapet ready to

see the bottom rail rise

to the top as the Biblical

 

passage spoke of an oppressed

people.  We were the only

ones, see, all of the Indians

wiped out, or having lost

the distinction of indiviual-

ity. I needed that dumb

 

needle and the coke in order

to cope with fame, and with

failure, too.  It became as

perfunctory to me as an at-

omizer is to any woman

with night needs, having

to look to more than one

man to earn her quota

in money.  I made music

And the music made me.

 

America wasn't only fas-

cinated with that fat, lean

thing making an odd seam

down the length of my jeans,

it was also fascinated by

the slow, heavy weight of

a dark man dying by

the help of what it makes

available to that sinking

man's hand, sometimes

 

in the notion of his needs

this, as medicine, knowing

all the time it is dealing

death to him in disguise,

but my fame continues to

rise, all of those unusual

beats I brought, strange

chords, and other things

which made my music amusing.

But no marvelous man has

ever been alive to witness him-

self being made into a martyr,

 

neither me, Malcolm, nor

Martin. And even dead,

sometimes I find my form-

less mind befuddled by such

ambivalence, of how they

can kill a man in America

and canonize him after the kill.

 

Willie James King

 

(Published in  Wooden Windows, 1999)

 

 

It Was Hard

 

It was hard having

To live with the fact

That my father's

Bruised body

Would never heal,

That there'd be wounds,

Not always the gaping kind

But those that

Are concealed.

I could never see

The blue upon his  blackness

But I had a way

Of always knowing

It was there.

 

Willie James King

Published in At the Forest Edge