Reality

Justice Struck Me – NaPo 2025 Day Twenty-Seven

And so, today I was challenged to write a poem that describes a detail in a painting. My poem was to begin with a grand, declarative statement.

Who Was She?

It is never just the painting and the world, I know.
Each painting unites with each eye, each mind,
to make the art meaningful. Neither stands without the other.

I recall the overall picture vaguely, but it’s the setting
I remember well. An empty courtroom
except for a little girl standing with her back to me,

and a judge looking down from his bench. Authority!
I cannot see her face, but I know it is the face
of every child confronted with

the reality of the state, power, autocratic justice.
Fear. Helplessness. Hopelessness.
I felt all of that. Overpowering feelings.

A Miami artist opened emotions
hidden so deep that I denied them.
I almost cried. I moved on, hiding the real me.

Look both ways as you play the great pretender who will live forever.
Mind the gaps because somewhere out there,
an artist knows your truth and may tell you.

 

A Toast to the Town – NaPo 2025 Day Twenty-Two

Today I was to write a poem about something I’ve done, presumably as a child or adolescent, that gives me a kind of satisfaction. I think it is supposed to be something for which I am grateful. I had to dig for this one.

Grateful for the Grog

It wasn’t cocaine but some think it’s the same
when the forbidden froth of the fifties,
long before there were Swifties,
beer became the name of the game.

First taste was a sip, likely bogarted from
mother or father, or perhaps from my drunk-ass brother,
to wash down that salty Wise potato chip?
Hometown suds, favored by local buds
and still tastes like bad-beer today.

It was gunna happen anyway.
I learned to like it and how it made me feel.
I would have tasted beer someday,
then acquisition became part of the deal.

Tom T Hall’s song set somewhere aside,
beer became my pleasure and my problem.
I’m shocked that to some
the pleasure is none
and beer is forever denied.

“I like beer, it makes me a jolly good fellow
I like beer, it helps me unwind and sometimes it makes me feel mellow
(makes him feel mellow) … (He likes beer)”

So let me explain
in this little refrain

how grateful I am
to the woman or the man who drew me my first mug
from a spout, a bottle, or a sealed tin can I can chug.

Look both ways for the imperfect pleasures of life.
Mind the gaps and watch the taps, as the kegger is still a rite of passage.

Git ‘er Done – NaPo 2025 Day Fifteen

My halftime (mid-month) NaPo challenge was to write a six-line poem that is informed by repetition, has simple language, and expresses enthusiasm like “The Shirt,” a poem by Jane Kenyon and the introduction of the band MC5 by Jesse Crawford. I never…

Stand Up and Holler

I tell you what. Let’s do it!
I can’t tell you
cuz awkward embarrassment
about what’s what
her, us, and back then, when
I’m telling you, it was against the law.

Look both ways when crossing aisles in the big box stores.
Miles of Aisles and Joni.
Mind the gaps between the stacks when you try to explain, but you dunna wanna.

Cowboy UP – NaPo 2025 Day Twelve

Today I was to try writing a poem inspired by Wallace Stevens’ verse, “Peter Quince at the Clavier.”  My poem was to reference myth, legend, and/or other well-known stories. Not to get too complex, this poem was also to feature wordplay (including rhyme), mix formal and informal language, and contain multiple sections that “play with” the theme. I was also to incorporate at least one abstract concept such as desire, sorrow, pride, or whimsy. Whew. Happy Saturday, y’all.

Pardon Me, Messers. Dobie and Grey

  I 

Please, do not get me started
debunking the hard drinking, sharp shooting, dude
with a solid heart. A good, God-fearing man of independence and
self-reliance (but they could live in conditions most of us couldn’t).

Today, cowboy is a status symbol
consisting of some form of horseless truck
bigger than a dad-blamed Greyhound bus.
While real, the Buffalo Bill we knew was bullshit.

Cattle drives were real and so were the cowboys.
Black ones, Mexican ones, and po’ white ones.
But this is the age of fiction where facts and history
may just get you arrested by modern day SS of 1939.

C&W music aside, the only cowboys known for singing
came later when actors sang about those real boys,
home on the range and yodeling and all that.
I don’t know how they felt about the brand.

           II

But cowboy songs, then and now, are all about
desires for things like water, food, and a decent scout.
And some boom-boom along the way at the cat house,
maybe a sarsaparilla with a dash of cherry while out and about.

Who today can afford the wrong cow in the wrong place?
Lawyers and doctors and candlestick makers.
Real cowpokes made for silly jokes, but those are
the myths and legends, like Pecos Bill and Judge Roy Bean (also real),

were much more fun and interesting
than the boring factual truth, that
your ropin’ and cookin’ skills meant more
than shooting or the Marlboro Man himself.

Justice? If he stole your hoss, ya hung ‘im.
We learnt that watchin’ Lonesome Dove on TV.
And the Hat Creek Cattle Company, heroes of days past,
who stole most of the cattle they pushed to Montana.

But if you want them ol’ boys to look at you funny,
talk to them about ideas like love, justice
(it was legal to shoot Apache, Cheyenne, or Sioux),
freedom, and what happiness meant to them.

    III

But still, we love the stories, the art,
the concepts of the rugged pioneer who
tipped his hat and killed all the bad guys
for, and to protect, our wives and our daughters.

Men who made the world a better place
by stealing, lying, cheating, and murdering.
For better or worse, our past is what it is.
However we may feel about it.

It’s fun to ride alone. To be glorified.
To be the story told to children
to make them better people. But
only cows and chickens love vegetarians.

Look both ways and enjoy the stories.
But mind the gap between reality and fantasy.
While a man hears what he wants to hear and a woman believes
what she wants to believe,
many of both live to seek the truth.

Rhyme Time – NaPo 2025 Day Nine

Today’s challenge is to write a poem that uses rhymes, but unlike yesterday, without adhering to specific line lengths. That’s it.

The Pedagogue Bullfrog

Biology class.
Dissection Day.

The stink in the classroom would make ya cry. Remember?
When we were there to slay already dead frogs, not toads.

I think.
Step by disgusting step we cut the carcass open to expose wads and globs
of all the things I learned in high school: heart, lung, stomach.

But the smell is what I remember best.
Formaldehyde, Baby.

Like in the beer in the Nam,
A key component in dead humans when used to embalm.

But gizzards do not abound in and around Bullfrogs. Just chickens and turkeys
dissected at home by Mom for celebrations of life.

Of “all the crap I learned in high school it’s a wonder
I can think at all—but I can read the writing on the wall,”
and a good witch can read the petri dish entrails.

Look both ways and hear the moan of the bull
because those frogs are not an endangered species.
Mind the gaps and touch your face before licking your lips. Embrace the stink.

Sammi’s Weekender #367 – Party

What Matters?

I envied parties.
Younger me wanted something,
or was it concern about missing out?

My last party,
a high school graduation overdone deal
for a grandson, with whom,

I exchanged five words.
People I didn’t know,
went mostly unnoticed by me.

Many lacking in the social graces
except for some like me
so many names with unfamiliar faces.

I talked to his other grandfather,
and to my twin step-granddaughters
who seemed to like me better,
after thousands of words, I felt likewise.

Small intimates are for me now.

Look both ways because the life of the party is not who it once was.
Mind the gaps when you soberly tell me about your life and what really matters.

NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 24, Baby Bomber

To meet today’s prompt; after much wondering, looking, rabbit-hole tripping-into, and unsuccessful Google hunts, I landed on a line (two, actually) to bogart from the poem “Weatherman” by Emily XYZ (from the book, Verses That Hurt: Pleasure and Pain from the Poemfone Poets, (eds.: Jordan and Amy Trachtenberg).

The prompt was to write a poem that begins with a line from another (person’s) poem. The line(s) I chose begin Emily’s poem and mine: “Had I been a bomb builder then instead of a baby // boomer which I was which I am still”….

Baby Bomber

Had I been a bomb builder then instead of a baby
boomer which I was and which I am still,
I could have been either famously infamous,
or just plain old famous.
For my cause I could have maimed and murdered
my way into a second life as a Jeff Dunham puppet.

Born after, I missed the big WW-two, was virtually clueless
about a Korean War which ended on my 7th birthday,
but the big boom-boom, GI-numbah ten, at 17,
that dirty old Southeast Asian War for which I was almost eligible for the draft,
so I joined up. Git ‘er done, ya know?

But ten years later, as that buff bomber guy, I learned how nukes were made (Top Secret with critical nuclear weapon design information/CNWDI).
I coulda kilt many a monkey (literally) in Nam, disabled shit factories and fried females that the Chinese didn’t kill for crowd control, or pounded the Rooskys so hard I might have sterilized Putin’s daddy. Coulda but didn’t.

Never built a bomb or John Wayned
some commie pinko fascist and there are days when my ambivalence
flips my lifeless wig. Today, I wonder.
Left, right, left, and now your right;
what side am I on? And who cares?

If I’d been born a bomber instead of a boomer; things would be
exactly as they are. Except for this poem. And except for the spelling of this cause or that; how much difference is there between them and me?

Look both ways down the tunnel searching for which religion or cause is worth dying for.
Mind the gaps that may suck you in, or pay you well, because killing for a cause is killing still.

Emily XYZ

NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 23, What’s My Measure?

Today, without charge or payment, NaPo poets were to write a poem involving a “superhero” (a fictional hero having extraordinary or superhuman [as in not human] powers).

Actually, and indirectly, I’ve already quasi done this. But is not a superhero (SH) a matter of opinion?

What’s My Measure?

Superhero (SH), Man! Impressive!!
How good are you? How real?
How many followers you got?
Seventy-four million “yeas” gets you funded,
your lawyers and other whores paid as well.

What do you call Batman and Robin
after they got run over by a … never mind.
Then, Rock-in Robin came bopping in—

When the Dell Comics (Marvel?) boys called
wardrobe for a masked sidekick for the real
Caped Crusader. Shazam!

Batman sales doubled, thanks to Robin.
The value of America’s superheroes
took a new low bow but made high book.

Robin aged-up from (tweet, tweet, tweet)
and morphed into superhero: Nightwing,
when that role wasn’t confused with,
or filled by a morphed Superman.

Yeah, Babe, it’s all about cold, hard sales—
product endorsements, shoe sales,
pizza stores, and insurance coverage
(and now bibles, for Christ’s sake).

Is there anything in this country
not all about, and measured with, money?
Is that our reality? TBF, even Wikipedia
and self-pubbed twit poets (like me) need money.

Is wealth and value our true measure?
Are our real SH’s Bezos, Musk, Gates,
Zuckerberg, and Buffet? Even God
seems to constantly need more money.

Look both ways and wonder where your money goes.
Mind the gaps for anything that makes us feel better,
anything that will push product out the door.

 

NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 19, The Burden of Truth

My poem today was to be about something that “haunts” me. Fair enough.

But the prompt also required that I change the word haunt to hunt. Since my nineteenth poem uses neither word, it is not (technically) written to prompt. But almost.

“You better stop, look around — Here it comes
Here comes your nineteenth nervous breakdown
Here comes your nineteenth nervous breakdown
Here comes your nineteenth nervous breakdown
Here comes your nineteenth nervous breakdown
Here comes your nineteenth nervous breakdown
Here comes your nineteenth nervous breakdown”
(From the song, “19th Nervous Breakdown” by The Rolling Stones)

The Burden of Truth

There is a profound sadness in me—
One retained by conscience and nourished by guilt.

More than thirty years of unhealthy, but honest regret
and self-disgust padded with insufficient amends
has not mitigated my permanent tattoo of rue.

Done cannot be undone.
But a foolish deed,
words written or said, cannot be overturned
by going back in time —
back in time to fix, to heal, or to recover.

No amount of positive can reverse it.
Neutralizing is impossible.

Repression of memory is pathetic denial—
defense mechanisms to palliate my purgatory.

Even the permanence of death
leaves lasting damage to unrepairable hearts,
minds without memories,
which may be just as well. I know and I do not know.

Perhaps there is a time for every purpose.
Maybe this stone will be cast away.
Hope so
because I don’t know how to turn
guilt into innocence with only time.

Look both ways at the story of life for forgiveness and regret.
To kiss and to touch. To be right and to be wrong. To climb and to fall.
Mind the gap to fit the story but we may never know the truth.
Even eyewitnesses are wrong seventy-plus percent of the time.

NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 14, When You Know

The NaPoWriMo, Day 14 task is to write a poem of at least ten lines in which each line begins with the same word: an anaphora.

When You Know

You know when you’ve had enough
When hopes and dreams are done and gone,
When your dog might outlive you,
When you can’t pass a bathroom,
When your hair is a memory,
When all your friends seem new,
When you wonder if you still can,
When someone says you’re harmless and they’re right,
When pain, not darkness, is your old friend,
When all your plans have come and gone,
When regrets and memories are the same
— if you have either at all,
When walking is workout,
When a game of pool is high impact for you,
When your favorite song is sung and gone,
When cooking and cleaning
— are aerobic exercises,
When grumpy, old, or sweet apply
— like names to all the people you meet,
When “I don’t care” answers every question.

Some of us have more past than future, but we look both ways.
Mind the gaps, ignore the aches.