In the secular house near the Rock of the Half Moon
the door weeps for lack of oil.Wind bleeds through crease and hole
and my son mistakes the mourning dove’s morning song
for that of rock pigeon.We are at mercy here,
gun powder the rage as eye liner,
thirty-five poems the maximum filler for any book.
We write about our lies:
experience better exaggerated,
and questions a need for answers
left out by the back forty.
Depression binds light.
The baby pigeon knows not its predator,
a prime number knows not its factor,
sleep is an accomplished act.
We built this place for the criminal,
the insane, the man lost on his way,
one wanderer carrying spirit drums,
another a kora,
a third a cowbell tied to rope and wood.
You might as well leave us be.
There is nothing you can do.
We have made our choices,
dumb choices,
derelict choices.
The place I settled near the Corner of the Half Moon
is no longer there.
All of its pieces are lost.
Everything I owned is gone. Everything I wanted to own is gone.
Everything I imagined owning is gone.
Daughter, hold hard to yourself.
The life of a cat is not that great.
In the Valley of the Death of Man-Trees,
the woman on the bridge over the train track
bends to the trestles and a confusion of ants.
Dusk-light ripples
through sky-ponds
and the farming village
thick with fresh plowed soil
soaks in it as if it were.
Everywhere you look
a farmer’s wife stands near
beginnings of gardens,
skies full of eyes.
And when it is ended
dragged into promiscuousness
by name calling, half-calling, pretend calling,
Jackie Robinson moments before the desk of rude words and
aberration, racial slurs and smoke, everything that makes bad breath,
I steal my words from the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language,
dress a line without a care to quality, quality control, environmentalstability or the rage of the self-taught man lacking the credentials
for the only job he can actually do,
and find within the spot a spot of grace.
There is no hero in any of this.
| Copyright © 2021 by Michael H. Brownstein Michael H. Brownstein’s volumes of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else and How Do We Create Love?, were published by Cholla Needles Press in 2018 & 2019, respectively. |
Michael, good one! ANOTHER good one!
ReplyDeleteFrom my earliest reading, I thought the setting was a father visiting an abandoned prison with his son, with stanzas from the father interwoven with stanzas of a poem from an imagined former inmate.
From a later reading, I saw both father & son INCARCERATED; they aren’t visiting an abandoned prison on a walk!
Today I’m thinking the pair COULD be taking a walk, to visit the prison where they HAD at an earlier time been incarcerated!
I still can’t parse the plural “questions” in the third stanza, though. You sure it’s not a typo?
Nope, poetic license for the word "questions".
DeleteOver “great” editorial objection!
DeleteMichael, I would like to state, by way of admission, that I seem to have very limited capacity to appreciate poetry of the caliber at which you write it, over and over and over. Perhaps the only (or main) contribution I am making (besides publishing you at all) is the competent way I set up the posts for publication, but that's a relatively secretarial task, compared to being able to truly understand what you are doing. (I know that Eric Meub, Maik Strosahl, and Roger Owens are fully up to that task.)
ReplyDeleteThank you for abiding with me. (The reference to yesterday's "Goines On" post, which was published this afternoon, back-dated to yesterday because Eric, alas, didn't have a new submission for his and Susan C. Price's "Poetry and Portraits" column, is intentional.)
You're a great editor and a great help. Thanks for your kind words and for allowing me to have a plaTform.
ReplyDeleteYou are always welcome on this plaTform!
ReplyDeleteSo many great images weaving through. Feels like two poems with a setting in common, first four stanzas in the place, the latter observing after it is no longer. There is much for the reader to enjoy and let their own imagination run wild.
ReplyDeleteI'm with Maik. For the reader this poem is a potpourri, a confection like your aunt makes for holiday dinners. You may not know what-all is in it, but it sure tastes good!
ReplyDeleteRoger and Maik,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your excellent input. I really appreciate it.