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My favorite quote about poetry
by Bruce Weigl

“Ah, my twenties! I thought poetry was better than heroin. I still do. In fact, it's too bad poetry's not illegal, because if it were everyone would want to try it, and people would find out how good it is.

"We all want to know why the universe is the way it is and not otherwise. Or why it is at all. Poetry is my way of putting on such questions and going outside for a walk. It's good for all kinds of weather, for the country as well as the city. When I'm inside poetry I seem compelled to enter the ocean, or an idea, or a city I once knew, or my own cruelty, or whatever--without lying. Poetry seems to have something to do with attention; and with love, if one can say such a thing without getting all wet. But what that something is, I don't know.”

Books!

Gambling for Good Mail

 

For the Sake of All Others

 

The Underbelly

 

• Lose yourself in a dramatic page-turner
  
• Find yourself in the characters
  
• Cry, laugh, think and argue with the characters
  
• Feel wonderfully connected and alive
  
• Get your money back if you are not satisfied

1. Personal

Metaphor
“Make up metaphors every day!”
In tones my poet lover
as if his were God’s words
according to Ecclesiastes.
“Look through a camera,” I say.
“Wear blinders to see
a hundred-to-one reduction
and Fibonacci’s series.”
“Focus,” I say, yet gulp panorama
like brandy and lemon
with time-release seeds
and ache
for metaphysical miracles,
for Pompeii where love
is a permanent noun.
The earth moved because it is matter.
Struck by a stroke, my father
moved 5.8 on the Richter Scale
to a nursing home beside
a pre-school playground.
From his wheelchair
he gazes into a small boy’s eyes
that stare back, knowing
without knowing
what meta is for.

for Everett Cole

WIND
Wind blows.
We feel, hear and see it
in the motion
of bushes, leaves and
heartbeats
Wind, a faceless
force, a ghost,
fecund, fetid or fresh,
blows a seed to its womb
or a flake of carotid artery
upstream
striking the human genius
in one stroke
leaving us
speechless.
Wind blows
letters, words and spores
across the firmament
mindless of another
blown mind

MATRICIDE
I place one arm beneath her legs,
the other wraps her torso.
With the grace of a Njinsky I carry my mother
in the evening of a swan.
Handle with care
Smoothly, as if skilled in killing,
I lift her to the sky
and take stately steps
to that blustering Wuthery height.
So light, her bones
Still, the gods won't take her.
We descend again. She, a babe in arms,
I, a Charlie Chaplin
in the neighborhood of love.

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2. Tripped on a Stone

I entered this world
from a stone castle
that hovered over the driveway
beside a bedroom window
at 12 Kinnicutt Road
in Worcester, Massachusetts
I wore the castle as my skin
and did not shed it
until I grew an ego
and saw stones as objects
to throw
or to draw pictures
on cars
or to build walls
to separate me
from them
And I had important things
to think about
like Shakespeare's stage
that a whole world is
and Hawking's strings
that might or might not
explain things
and John Hagelin's
simple universe
Aye, there's the rub
At the bottom of his universe
I tripped on a stone
with hints of gold
It sang to me
in a baritone

CRAVINGS
I want to put out bowls of candy
to welcome every guest
all kinds of sweets
dripping with decadence
to offer red wine with legs
stuffed grape leaves
Retsina Italian prawns
carrot flan Incan fire dip
and succulent salads
chilled ready to serve
spinach asparagus pistachios
all fresh aphrodisiacs
marinated meats
ready to grill to any taste
from rare to rubber
spiced tofu for some
a full shelf of pies
I’ve just baked with perfect crusts
Tiramisu and mocha mousse too
and apricot clafoutis
I have a craving for candy
I don’t eat
a passion for cooking concoctions
others won’t eat
a yearning for money
to give it away
Why?
A craving
to please
to ease
Why?
A craving
to give
to live?
Ah
Do I need to put out
or die?

Death Dates
"My birth certificate has
an expiration date," says
Stephen Wright.
"At the moment of birth,
your date of death is set,"
says Dr. Hawkins.
"I will die in Paris on a Thursday,
with a rainstorm,"
says Cesar Vallejo.
The urn for my ashes, I say,
will be black and white,
shades of yin and yang
Sometimes I question
my spiritual core.
On forms that ask religion
I check "none."
I have no Faith
yet have much love.
I have long denied
the God of my culture.
"Men wrote the Bible,"
I chose to believe at fifteen,
and since. Translated with flourish
in the time of King James,
the Bible tells tales
of good and less good.
What else is new?
Quantum physics is new,
string theory, varied
perceptions of life and death,
yet our atoms never die.
They come back to haunt us.
Perhaps.
It's all beyond my grasp.
yet I ask and ask,
fascinated.
How can I deny divinity?
Our world is too wacky gorgeous
to be reduced
or deduced--
in the eye
of this beholder.
The urn for my ashes
will be filled on an unknown
Thursday, perhaps,
when the sun heats
those cold Pacific waves
that I ride in play.
I have no Faith,
some charity
and much love.

The Butter is Always Soft in Fiji
So, too, the military coups
every two or three years.
Soft moist air and
gentle warm ocean
mirror the people.
Coral cities undersea
among scattered seaweed forests
show off architectural masterpieces
for aquarium fish
and intimate mysteries.
I ask myself,
who laid that perfect egg on the veranda?
Is that royal-blue avatar alive
or part of the décor?
Residents of this liquid universe
can't hear me or pull their shades
to block my snorkel viewing-
I feel a voyeur's shame.
Above sea level
on a Fiji island resort
music is only live,
native, and joyful.
Coconuts fall
but not on your head.
No one but babies cry and
teens are mercifully missing.
Indolence prevails.
Without world news,
pains, or frowns,
tasks of any kind,
a strange malaise seeps in,
a need for trouble.
Having once left the Garden of Eden
have I no right to return?
If I am witness to pain
am I more worthy than
when innocent of it?
Or do I just have too much time?
Time has no meaning in Fiji
though it's twelve hours exact
from Greenwich mean
and the butter is never hard.

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3. Public

Einstein, that master
of conscious thought,
once said that we cannot
solve a problem
with the same level
of consciousness
that created it.
We create industries
that pollute
to solve problems
of production.
We make nuclear weapons
to end one kind of warfare
and lo, create another.
If we want to stop
warming the globe
we must create
a new source for power
and a new diplomacy
for global economy
from limbic levels
of thought
such as
making the earth's magma
our giant oven
and the moon's rays
our dancing partners
to stir oceans' waves
into white
heat.
While some simulate the Big Bang
and delve into dark matter,
others seek enlightenment,
a peace
that surpasses all
levels of
consciousness
I'm wondering if
the quest for Truth
through enlightenment
would work with a
level of consciousness
needed to solve
problems
for the Truth
of enlightenment
I'm told
denies the existence
of problems

Christmas Eve, Fin de Siècle
Paris eve
I stood in line
at Notre Dame
Gendarmes pressing in
blended us – one smooth sauce
of reverent voyeurs
warming in the crush
to hear the choral anthems
that soothe and save us.
Nine thousand moving voyeurs
drown out the choral anthems
so I sought a smaller
service in an unknown church
nearby. One thousand warm
French Catholics mumbled
in one tongue and hummed
a choral anthem,
that lullaby of love.
One beggar, drunk, sat by me
when I missed the metro train
at thirty after midnight
Christmas morn.
He placed his empty bottle
behind our waiting bench
like a priest replacing chalice after mass.
His bleedy eyes rolled over me;
I felt and smelled each glance.
His words, thank God, were nonsense sounds,
his thrusting hand a piece of ice,
his smile a wobbly frown.
I wrapped my purse into my lap
And curled like escargot..
A dark young man intervened,
drunker than my friend,
by handing out strong cigarettes
gifts for everyone.
My clochard, refusing, said,
“Smoking makes me cough.”
I pretended language loss.
Three more drunks came in,
young punks careening metro deaths
with legs outstretched across the tracks
distracting those who simply leer
or offer loose-leaf cigarettes.
At fifty minutes after twelve
with the last train coming in
I shook the hand of my clochard
and wished him Bon Noel.
He reached into layers of ragged wraps,
vestments of the metro mass,
pulled out a foot long wilted weed
half smothered in its lair
pale green and full of seeds.
His gift to me, he said.
I left him in that station;
He had no place to go.
His weeds and I expanded
en route to Sevre-Babylone
while the last train hummed the anthem
that barely saves us all

A CAT
There are no illusions to die
in a cat's day.
The allure of a spider
must lie in the eye
of the beholder.
There is no word for love
in a cat's lexicon,
yet there are laps, birds,
and warm spots.
A cat has nine lives.
Nine days? Nine years?
Nine meals between naps?
Nine litters till spaydom?
A cat naps and nips,
kneads, needs, and licks,
scratches and stretches,
purrs and performs
a mobile, living, breathing
work of art that
expresses harmony in form,
movement and purpose.
A cat bears no reason for being,
wears no signs of time.
just waits and waits
until something stirs
calling for action
to restore inner harmony
rebalance those forces
that make up a cat.
No wonder their guts
were used to make music.
What else can be gained
but art from a cat?

KILLINGS

Murder is a dirty word . . .
she sprays the flies
spays the cat
pays for a daughter's D&C

While salmon die to spawn
she pollutes the air
to clean it
and flies return to Capistrano

Fleas pollute the cat
chemistry kills
seven dollars a flea bath
seven hundred a kid

Who's the hitman?
The spayed cat purrs
doesn't matter to her
who done it. It's done

Hymn to Success
Pick up some milk, Dear
we need a new wrench
the faucets need washers,
that pine bent the fence.
Am I a success, Dear
now that I've quit
working for ... asking for,
I forget, was it lip?
Next year I'll make it!
My business will boom.
I'll show my folks yet.
I'll mend their tomb
when it tears and bends
in the wind
in the wind.
Lets have some kids.
No, we tried that,
they all failed their tables
past six.
Who can stand children
who can't multiply
multiply?
That pine bent the fence
while we kissed
you and I
or is it you and me?
Ah yes, success,
success yes.

Amtrak Ambling
Your train comes in
announcing its arrival
in two short blasts
from its massive chest
as it pulls in close
dwarfing you
When your car rumbles toward you
and your conductor drops the step
to pull you on board
you feel it in your groin
for your car is huge and loud and hard
and taking you places
you can not go to
any other way
Thrusting you deep into dry scrub ravines
dotted with tuffs of grey flora
across majestic plains that shimmer and shift
from tan to brown and every shade of green
and then so high over giant tree tops
on slow mountain curves
you gasp
Chugging you through the sides of all cities
that showcase graffiti
really big plaka art,
trashed back yards,
trailer parks, not mobile homes,
and you know how trains invade
the privacy of the poor
Riding the rails
through black tunnels
in decadent luxury
you see your reflection in the window
over the stories of tunnel walls
and you travel a new
interior

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4. Angry

TO THE GUEST SPEAKER AT THE HOUSE OF CARDS
You come.
You give our house
steel frames
which we refuse.
We must, of course,
protect our house
from such brave beams.
You come
water our dry cells
drown our realities
with the free flowing
micturition
of your dreams.
Wet cards stick.
They won’t stack.
Propriety perpetuates,
tradition trumps your wild card.
Generic wishes dissipate
in water held too long.
You, the Jonathan Edwards of great preachers,
whose enthusiastic coming
we perpetually await,
piss upon our sad specifics,
pass out diuretics and
rinse the suds out of our prayers.
You come
water down
our house of cards
which we rebuild
with our shame,
without your frame.
But thanks for coming, anyway,
a spark of steel remains.

TOUT LE MONDE DESCEND ICI
Near the Belgian border in northeast France
an abandoned train station sits
like an aging dowager among
ragged shrubs and young woodlands.
.
Two turrets flank her girth, Suddenly you hear a train come in!
spots of rust, like tear drops,
stain her stones. You hear the horn of the diesel
Graffiti decorates her skirt. swirl to face the open gate
smell the burning rubber of its brakes
Her mouth, an arch, gapes open. run out to see who disembarks
No trains traverse within.
Her only sound the murmur of a A lone conductor dressed in black
film projector fan and vacuum pump jumps from a passenger car
that sucks you in puts a megaphone to his mouth and calls
"Tout le monde descend ici!
Fifty wooden benches face one wall "Tout le monde descend ici!"
damp palms have shaped their arms.
A silent movie's running, black and white, Everybody gets off here!
the stone wall adds a fourth dimension.
You recognize Gallipoli
Tripoli and Rome,
the Gulf of Tonkin, Dresden,
Gettysburg and Somme
The Alamo, Hiroshima
Jerusalem and Crete,
twin towers in New York
collapsing endlessly
You recognize Helena,
Marlene and Melina,
Marilyn and Madonna
slowly sliding across the stones
and Dachau now
with no concession stands for
tourists leaving those gas showers
under signs in every tongue that say
"plus jamais!"
Of course, never again!
Picasso's Guernica flows by
followed by his nude. . .
Guernica, erotica,
Guernica again.

Disconnect
Babies' brains light up in one spot for faces
another for things.
The spot for faces in autistic babies do not.
For them, things and faces look the same.
Boys fight hand-to-hand
kick, scream, swear,
spit, push, bite,
back away crying
then go play together
Gloved men fight
left upper cut
right to the jaw
knockouts by the rules
then go drink together
A soldier in battle sees
the enemy’s eyes
looking at his
as he kills him
the eyes go out with him everywhere
A bombardier shoots from the sky.
Curled tight, he studies the map
looks down on his target,
aims, drops, and flies away
He drinks to collateral damage
The command programmer
guides a missile from a Predator
into a car in a desert
two hundred miles away,
leaves patting his back
A four-star general
dictates the code
that destroys a whole city
on the other side of the world
He watches results on six o'clock news
His wife, in white pantsuit, stirs a martini
then leaves to buy bouillabaisse
He grunts as the carnage starts.
Six minutes in his cell phone vibrates
Daughter whines him away
She needs a ride
he takes the Hummer
she chats on her pink phone
he on his GI black one
A radio host takes calls
The general laughs into his
She throws hers out the window
A ten-wheeler in the slow lane
rumbles across it
The pink phone emits a scream
The general's wife stands in their doorway
Tapping on her Blackberry
Daughter slides by, disappears inside.
His hands go cold
frozen to the steering wheel
The woman in the doorway
in a white pantsuit
smiles at him as if she knows him
but he doesn't recognize her!
He cannot place her face!

STICKS & STONES
My last lover loathed my first love
language.
He said it's used
to obfuscate
manipulate
lie
My mother slapped
words off my face
when I was
too much
two.
Said she hated
sassy kids
trying to control
with "No, no,
no."
I asked my lover to define
his terms
demanding a precision
that might lead to a
decision
He said truth lies
in the zen of ken
that words just fuck you over
again and
again.
I called him vague
spiritually tight
a girdled Buddha
a plague against
light.
She slapped my face
he loathed my love
language.
But my words,
did not break
their
bones.

Poetry Rant
I dislike a poem
that tries to be
a Marcel Duchamp
with block phrases
descending
a staircase
nearly nude
or a Jackson Pollock
that drops clunks
of thoughts onto
an audience
as if it were
a blank canvas
or a John cage
without his
blessed silence
I like a poem
whose sound
and sense dance
along a limbic
tightrope
between birth
and death

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5. Amusing

READ THE RECIPE FIRST
She poured in a whole quart of love
before the man was warm
didn't save enough sugar
to sprinkle on anyone else
She melted all of the butter, too
There wasn't enough left
to grease the pan
let alone the kids

or the skids
She whipped up a frenzy
without separating
the juicy bits
from the facts
She set her oven
too high
let her edges burn
her middle sigh
Next life she vowed
she'd read the recipe
all the way through
measure before she began
The next life she came back
as a pile-driving man

Pain Haikus
Acupuncture cures
Chiropractice eases pain
Chemistry works too
Poets bare their hearts
Academics think they know
when a poem breaks
When I am weakened
by surgery on my knee
my friends talk too much
Sometimes I wonder
why people love misery
I guess it pays well
Pain dulls my senses
clutters the thoughts running free
and closes my heart

Knees
When I was a child
I spake as a child
Played hard and skinned my knees
When I was a teen
I struggled between
God or no God and skinned my knees
When I was a woman
I gave birth to two girls
Loved them and doubted myself
When I was divorced
In my mid thirties
I played hard and hurt my knees
When my children were teens
My parents were dying
I cried hard and felt my guilt
When I crashed into the sixties
I longed to love truly
and succeeded on bended knees
Now in my old age
I speak as a guru
Play hard and replace my knees

In Defense of Characters Who Quote
Willy the Shake

Personally, I know people
who go to Ashland, for Chrissakes,
every year, camp out and
wallow in metaphor a whole week
Shoot, my old boss
spent one whole semester
with a wild semanticist at Whittier
reading Hamlet--nothing but
He wrote a paper from Yorick's
point of view
(Yorick, in case you haven't gone
to Ashland, is a skull
Hamlet knew well)
Hell, guys lifting weights
at the Sporting House
argue about Portia and
women sipping Starbucks
discuss and disdain Desdemona
My characters do not quote
Hegel or Thomas Mann
Hemingway's grace under pressure
Faulkner or Tom Robbins-well
maybe Robbins who quotes them all
from Jesus to the Dalai Lama-
but mine are not pedants,
they know only the famous lines
such as Lord Buckley's:
"To swing . . . or not to swing,
that is the hanger. '
and
"Hipsters, flipsters and
finger popping daddies,
knock me your lobes.
I have come to lay Ceasar out,
not to hip you to him.
"The bad jazz a cat blows
wails long after
he's cut out,
but the groovy, the groovy
is often stashed with his flems.
So don't put Caesar down."
Alas, this novel is merely a tale
told by an idiot
full of sound, wind, and fury,
signifying nothing
who had a lot of fun
showing off Shakespearean lines
along the way
because she don't know any better lines
anywhere, nohow.
Neither do her characters,
and they go to Ashland
every year.

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6. Love

DEAD LOVE
Dark despair
slowly burns off
at its edges
like homemade
whole wheat
sourdough toast
letting its thick
intense middle
be known
and eaten
by any passive
sentence writer
who drops by
tastes your despair
and spits it on the beach
for young seagulls
to toss in the air
and dissipate
You love your friends

True Clichés
You see him across a crowded room
highlit
hands square strong
shoulders pushing at shirt
blue eyes glance your way
he smiles
moves toward you
You drop your hormones
You see him across the table
candlelit
eyes deep blue twinkling
he hands you
a ring
a promise
your heart jumps
You watch him build a marriage
sunlit
brick by brick
shoulders glisten
legs shine
You listen
drop a stitch
in time
You watch him make breakfast
sausage
one egg over hard
frayed white shorts
fringe strong tan legs
thin white hair rings bare head
in handsome parallel
You laugh and
drop one deep
sob

Hospital Daze
Waiting all day
I wander through
a thick fog of love
Of love
so sharp I feel it
cutting
Of love
so strong I feel it
shoving
Pushing me beyond “I feel it”
beneath fear of loss
to gratitude
For love so deep
it drowns
me

Your Deep Blue Eyes
When you opened them
in the recovery room.
you stared at me
You knew me
You've never stared at me before
yet every day in Intensive Care
you stared at me
arcing the space between us
I stared at you
in your narrow bed
inhaled your hope
for life
Your deep blue eyes
reached into mine
for rope,
and built a ladder

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Copyright © 2009 Evelyn Cole, All Rights Reserved