Janece and the Wheat Back Penny

She still searches for that '43 copper
like nothing ever happened.
Heads still look the same,
but turn them over tails
and you get a handful of memorials,
Lincoln like a ghost
floating between the columns,
somewhere above the black shaft;
although he got it, too,
Honest Abe.
Sometimes in her searching
wheat comes up
(food=love=peace),
then she looks for a date
to find the ice of '58:
Nothing could grow on that landscape.
One day she'll hope to turn and see
Lincoln in his stony shroud;
heads will still be heads,
but tails a tiny mushroom cloud.


(Arkansas Magazine, Arkansas Democrat, 1986)

Tire Pressure

Whenever adding air to tires, always spit on your finger and put that slime on the valve stem. If it makes bubbles, that's your air leak. Buy a tool and tighten the valve core--cheap fix.  I learned that trick from my father in 1956 at the age of six while airing up bicycle tires, but it works equally well for motorcycle, automobile and aircraft tires.  It would work on the Space Shuttle, F-22 and F-35 tires, but we killed that technology birthing happy-dance puppets, so those tires no longer require inflation.


(Photograph by Steve Ketzer, Sr.)

Between Heaven and Hell

Sometimes there is only God, whether

a God skulking in black holes of

mind or scintillating light

years in all opposite

directions, whether

active, passive,

many, one, or

none,

I

choose

not to believe in

man, because I am, but

to believe in the possibility of

love and perfection and do not blame

my lack of these on snapdragons and daisies.

(Arkansas Magazine, Arkansas Democrat, May 19, 1985;
Blind contour sketches of the poet by Beverly McLarty, 1983 or so)

The High Country

I haven't hiked the high ground
or picked a flower there,
but I've seen them pressed in books;
their blood stained pages show
another world of wild flowers
than you and I can't know.

Still, I think they should suffice,
these hills we have at hand,
as long as we can climb them,
though up and down we go,
and pick a simple flower
the high ground doesn't grow.


(The Sentinel-Record, Hot Springs, AR., April 20, 1985)

Ice Water and the Mockingbird

Across the asphalt wet with mirage he goes,
mockingbird walking with quick stick legs.
This same bird sang last spring,
but today he's far too hot to sing,
hurries with his head down,
beak open (he doesn't see me),
wings raised,
and I thought I was suffering,
sitting inside on the hangar floor,
a glass of ice water at my lips.

I rattle the cubes;
he snaps an eye in my direction.
I offer him the glass,
but his wings burst into grey-white fans,
and off he goes,
above the brown grass.


(Arkansas Magazine, Arkansas Democrat, August 10, 1986)

The Veteran

"I moved for my health; winters in Wisconsin
were getting too hard on me.  It's the lungs.
I was a POW, worked the coal mines in Japan
for three years," he shrugged, embarrassed.

"My father was a POW in Germany," I said,
guess you guys had it a little worse."

"Oh, I don't know, maybe sometimes. My boat
got blown out of the water. I bobbed around,
finally washed ashore on Bataan, and they decided
to keep me," he smiled.  "I weighed 155 then;
when I got out, I weighed 90."

"I can't imagine it," I said, shaking my head.

"I was one of the lucky ones. I'm 64 now.
Besides, everyone has something to go through.
I can never quite get it out of my mind, though.
I mean, I don't dwell on it all the time,
but sometimes I just...I don't know.
I like to fish; that's my therapy;
Just sit there and look at the water."


(Arkansas Magazine, Arkansas Democrat, November 17, 1985)

Africa on a Plate

This liver looks like Africa,
the onions like great white chains.
There's a fried vessel where the Nile should be,
a hole for Lake Victoria,
Libya up there oozing bile
(I jab it with my fork), and
South Africa sick with cirrhosis.
Turn the plate around: Look at it.
This organ produces red blood,
it seats emotions,
metabolizes minds;
it's cooked,
too well done,
burnt
and curling up on the edges,
getting ready to cave into itself,
a ball of meat, wrapped in slimy chains.
I didn't order this.
Take it away, quickly.


(Arkansas Magazine, Arkansas Democrat, June 29, 1986)

Mammoth on the Metro Mall

I hear heels behind me
playing red cobbles
on the Metro Mall,
hard heels in a hurry,
four, five pair of
clattering castanets,
and it's not so much
the lack of synchronicity, 
the unmanly pandemonium,
but the pace,
the quick and robotic click
of heel succeeding heel
that makes me think
I must seem like
some old mammoth
plodding through a bog,
a caveman, to be certain.
I push up a sleeve
on my Einstein sweat shirt.
Closer now,
a dozen yoked
behind me.
If I weren't a mechanic,
I might be frightened, and
yet, I couldn't block their way
if I wanted to,
so I draw in my shoulders,
and they pass on either side,
burst into the vision like a dream,
and look how pretty they are!
Coiffed and made-up, suited,
important, metropolitan,
energetic, athletic,
intelligent...
I light a cigarette,
scratch the beard:
Fare-thee-well!
Fare-thee-well, ladies!


(Arkansas Magazine, Arkansas Democrat, January 4, 1987)

I Don't get out of Bed

I don't get out of bed anymore to catch a rhyme, line or stanza, to sit drinking reheated coffee at the pendulous hour of 3 AM while children sleep and the refrigerator sings white lullabies. Oh, they still come, the visions, epiphanies, simple scenes that mean so much, and it's only a matter of hearing them correctly, their music, and rising to find words, knowing polish will come in the morning or next week, next year, that it's the idea that must be grasped and held. But, no, I lie there and fall asleep, letting them drift into dreams that vanish upon waking. I think it was Updike who said poetry was a young man's game, maybe someone else. I could look it up, but I'll let that go, too--it doesn't matter--but you, hey, get your ass out of bed and write that shit down.

Ultimate Autumn on Lake Hamilton

When it's ultimate autumn,
a fog bank moves on the lake,
early morning crows call as they emerge
from the grey-white stir, turn ebony overhead,
and wing toward the sunrise; when it's ultimate
and the lake lies like blue marble,
no longer laughs on the seawall,
tresses of cloud curl through shoreline trees
that hang and weep with dew; when it's ultimate,
and footprints on the lawn scuff like weary soldiers,
sometimes seen in circles, sometimes stopping,
stepping back, but down to the mere blue edge;
when it's ultimate and leaves go free
and mist there starts to rise,
an outline of a mirrored scene
forms on the other side.


(Remembering the Past, Poems by Roundtable Poets of Hot Springs, 1986)

The Carpenter

Shh, shh, shh.

Quiet!

Listen to the carpenter.

Byron's Babies

Any fool who walks on land
can make more love than Byron can.
Kings and queens rode purple fate,
but never drove on interstate.
All the wars that ever were
could not match one good nuclear,
and all the knowledge of the dead
is smaller than a baby's head.



(Sentinel-Record, Hot Springs, 1983; Poems by Poets Roundtable of Arkansas, 1985))

Haiketzer

Civilization,
come here old friend and look,
see your psychotic child.

McLarty's Weavers

Three weavers
behind an uncertain loom,
motherly metaphysicians,
pulling concepts out of chaos,
weaving precepts for the world.
They are ever at their work,
heads inclined toward the task,
emotionless they stand,
making sweaters one can wear
through a coup d'etat of ice,
and afghans for an evening
in the garden with a god,
beneath stars and cosmic clouds
with a black backdrop of drapery
in a circle all around.


(Views, Mid-South Watercolorists, January 1985; Poems by Poets Roundtable of Arkansas, 1986)

Earthworms

You see them on a sunny summer morning,
squirming on a sidewalk,
lost on hot concrete,
not knowing which way leads
back to the loam cool soil of birth,
back to the world of damp tunnel
and familiar root, brothers, sisters,
and fathers now the soil itself.

It must have been the night that drew them out,
a Stygian breeze chasing dew drops
down a blade of grass.
It must have been the moon,
half full and filtering through a cloud,
making the sidewalk seem so simple.
It must have been a swarm of stars,
each laughing down the lie that little earthworms
are free to crawl and not get caught.

But see them now on sidewalks,
their fine slick skins wrinkling,
turning brittle with the heat,
as the sun, its back toward them,
pulls itself slowly up the sky,
and ants begin to gather
from a sure methodic line,
part them into pieces,
and haul them away,
heart by heart.


(Arkansas Magazine, Arkansas Democrat, July 13, 1986)