greenmountaineer's thread

[greenmountaineer]

Exit 3

This place has only three exits, sir: Madness, and Death.”
― René Daumal

Martyrs explode in Jerusalem,
in Gaza and Hebron as well.

The Prophet makes war with a telephone
for those who will take the call

while Saul from the school of Tilapia
swims upstream on holiday

to visit with his cousin Adeeb
in his brook by the River Jordan

who told Saul about the fish mongers
in and about the Dead Sea,

and only Fishgod knows
where they will spawn therefrom.

So Saul took leave from his cousin
to explore a tributary

where he saw more fishmongers,
blowing stone bubbles,

and when he swam towards the Dome of the Rock,
the Wailing Wall, and Church of All Nations,

he plopped into the Slough of Despond,
which, strange though it was, flooded the desert.

 

[greenmountaineer]

The Squeggies

Barb moved away from it all
to a high rise in Jersey City;
Ken, on the other hand, further away
from his class action suite of offices
where his driver at the end of the day
will shoo them away and finally
arrive at Stamford, Connecticut
where someday the squeegies will squeege
his windshield so he will see
sidewalks more trodden than yesterday
with their very own subway grates
for heat just like the subway line
that snakes its way underneath
the Hudson River to Jersey City
where Barb doesn't want to be squeeged.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Dithyramb

Though I don't know why the universe spins
with science I know I'll always know how.

The laws of science you can't disavow
because you want angels dancing on pins.

I can make robots that play violins,
grow vast timberlands from twigs on a bough,
though I don't know why the universe spins.

With science I know I'll always know how,
so why would I make up devils or jinns,
why kill the buddha or follow the Tao?

Yes, there's no silk in the ear of a sow,
but I can make purses; I can clone twins.

With science I know I'll always know,
though I don't know why the universe spins.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Poor Little Rich Kid

Grimes, le chauffeur, drives Benny down
to the club at five fifteen pm
where he orders Beef Wellington

without the pastry, Sacre Bleu!
he likes to say to snigger Papá
as the old man putt-putts in his den

unless, of course, it's gluten free
he likes to say to snigger Mamán
before Gustave begins her coif

at five fifteen while Benny watches
grass grow on the putting green
where someone pokes a ball now and then.

 

[greenmountaineer]

We Work. We Play with Dick and Jane.

Sooner than later play becomes work as in
Beth changes Dolly before she gets wet.
Sue does math tables in her head,
Frank learns to make hospital corners
so quarters will bounce on his bed,
and as for Billy’s sweet spot at bat
in Little League with an o and two count
he’d find it if it weren’t for the sweat.

See Dick and Jane doing their best
with a double income and picket fence
who hope that someday before they die
when there is nothing left to report
they will take an ocean liner
to Sydney, Manila, and China
to take great pictures from the deck.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Anonymous

We will never know his name
since culture does not accord fame
for actions that are quiet and meek.

His intuition is truth of the heart
that has a burning flame
to do what is right, to turn his cheek

into the piercing wind and rain
where most us don't notice pink
buds in the plants of clover
as we ignite our cars for the office.

It may be a stranger’s dead battery,
refusing the offer of a ten
or slipping it for “something to eat”
homeless men who need a drink.

Nor does he judge the nature of thirst,
but measures how perpendicular
the yellow dandelions stand nearby

who knows that life does not explain
itself and time and time again
will end by wilting or in a blink.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Blessed Are the Poor at Dade County Clinic

Big Ronnie, who went to Iraq
but never came back, watches the sunrise
in the red, white, and blue of his eyes
on the corner of Oakland Park Boulevard
where Ronnie sells Miami Heralds
not far from his dugout of flies
and Red Man spittle that softballers chew.

If there's no get up by morning, well,
he can sell roses at five pm
for the missus to a shirt and a tie
after he walks to Dade County Clinic
for the meds he won't pretend to swallow
for Sundance Kid, two bucks a tab,
who will drive him back in his B-mer
with Pillsy, Sally, and Toothless Fred.

He'd rather look like an ant, he says,
with a black plastic bag on his back
in which he tosses cans and bottles,
thankful it's mostly aluminum
he stows away from the clumps of chew
while swallowng two Lorazepams
to help him sleep in his dugout
by the infield that looks like a desert.

 

[greenmountaineer]

A Metaphysical Question

What remains, all said and done
when there is black after the sun
goes down?
Is the man in the moon dead?

Do planets make noise when they spin?
Is there music there?

If there's a soul, does it have ears?
And does it drink nectar,
or was some Bacchanalian
poet drunk on his words?

And what about the nose
that knows the scent of perfume?

I pray there is touch
happily ever after,
for if not touch, what then of love
unless there is no sense to it?

 

[cherries_on_snow]

Intent and consciousness webs beyond the island of self. Most astrophysicists accept that there are multiverses. Certainly, we are both more and less than we imagine.

Thank you for the engaging poems. You are a very talented poet.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Intent and consciousness webs beyond the island of self. Most astrophysicists accept that there are multiverses. Certainly, we are both more and less than we imagine.

Thank you for the engaging poems. You are a very talented poet.

Thanks, c.o.s. My favorite line from Shakespeare is when Hamlet speaks to his friend, Horatio, who fancies himself a philosopher, and says "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

 

[greenmountaineer]

Teatime with my Clowns

My words are clowns with soft plastic hammers
that slapstick silly their clown master’s brain
whose tongue is pig latinate when I take
oast-tay and ea-tay with Doink and Chuckles
because, I’m afraid, we all would agree
it’s possible-im-tay to say what we mean.

So I will compose my hog-tied rhymes
and mostly merrily go round and around
with Thalia whose mask is upside down
says Melpomene who all the time whines
whines, whines.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Yazdegerd’s Nightmare

Yazdegerd, your enemy rots
today on the fields of Vartanantz,
but be not salacious with your spoils,
washed, perfumed, and stripped at your feet
as they weep defeat in your tent.

Fear the drone of Ahriman’s demons
that chant a dirge in Drûgâskan,
the deepest pit of hell.

Your wife awaits you at the gate.
Arise! Away! Release your chattel!
Else there be nursed from eggs that you stain
souls of their fathers in those of your sons!

 

[greenmountaineer]

Azadah Used to Live in the Bronx

Last summer she baked like a goose,
but the hovering clouds in Paktikā
are as cold as gunmetal casings
from the latest empty celebration,
but not as empty as Delaram was
who jumped head first in the Gomal
after she took her burqa off.

Baitullah just sat there, drinking his tea,
and swore "we'll kill them, Brother,
Insha'Allah," while brushing dust
and horse shit from his pantaloons.

Azadah thanked Allah for Pine-Sol
entering-quote-the powder room.
She feels like she's going to puke
she says to herself in English,
just like Auntie Rizzo would say it
who made gelato for the neighbors

last year on the Fourth of July
when she told her fireman son
"Anthony, open the hydrant
so the kids can put their swimsuits on!"

The best she can say of her burqua
is that it covers her feet
on a cold day in Paktikā
as she squats where there isn't a seat,
telling herself it’s just to keep warm,
moving a finger, looking for love.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Karol

The woman had been robbed, she said,
so he chose a wooden plank as bed
while winter was fast approaching
the foothills of the Carpathians.

In a fetal position he slept,
his head on a knapsack of underwear,
his overcoat woolen and warm

while his bedroll was sold for seven zlotys,
a tankard of ale, and tavern parodies
of naïveté that didn’t weigh
on him.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Nancy from Iowa

The night spits out Big Daddy Slick,
living on the edge and liking it,
watching out for LA dick cars
when not asleep in no tell motels.

Heaven on earth is crystal meth
but hell is a brimstone fist
for fair-skinned Nancy from Iowa
still in the tub as the sun goes down

to give the appearance she's as clean
as rose colored farm girl cheeks
in the blood red neon reflection of
Rooms by the Night or Week.

Nancy wants to go back to the farm
to smell fresh bread from the oven,
walk down roads where the tallest
building is Mr. Thurston’s silo

but with ten bucks in tight fitted jeans
that scream come hither for happy hour
she won’t go back when the only way
she can is by means of the street

 

[greenmountaineer]

Lola in Valdosta

I named my baby Sequoia
because I had wanderlust on my mind
where paper mill pine tar droplets
rain upon the Suwanee.

Minimum wage is what you get paid
two paychecks away to fix my Chevy
and drive to heaven through a tree
with Sequoia in California

who will get her license next year,
maybe best to wait til then,
and Cousin Hanna in Little Rock
maybe can get us waitress jobs
to get us to California.

 

[greenmountaineer]

The Cabbie

Boss said I didn't have to speak Spanish,
corner of Grote and Seventeenth Street,
just had to drive them to Allentown

in Maggie, my checkered lady,
who helps me drag drunks out of bars
when the missus calls the boss at midnight.

I can smell welfare a mile away,
boarded up storefronts, heaps on the street,
no laugh lines in the brown eyes I see

in a wheelchair staring at me,
a limp sixty pounds I'm guessing, at best,
without the shirt, the pants and the Keds.

So I go to pick up the lady's kid
who's a dead weight with arms and legs.
She knows enough to say "José,"

and me I says "no sweat, Lady"
as I strap him into Maggie's lap
to drive them up the Interstate

on the way to Allentown
among the slag heaps that span these hills
of Pennsy a scat dirty brown

like diapers they're gonna put José in:
"He's sleeping. Don't wake him.
He's shitting. Go change him.”

She doesn't speak English but knows the sound
of a meter running; "no sweat, Lady,"
I says and turn Maggie around

meter off, the boss owes me time
for burgers, two cokes, a shake for the kid
before Mom and me leave Allentown.




Through the years I must have edited this poem six ways from Sunday as the saying goes. Using only a little poetic license (I wasn’t a cabbie, but a social worker with a government car) I took María and José along with their pastor to a residential care facility where José would spend the rest of his life. It was a cold, but sunny, afternoon in November. José spent the trip napping on his mother’s bosom.

María was a demure young woman. As we drove back in the dark, I could barely hear her crying in the back seat, a sound I will never forget.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Miss Jones

Miss Jones is a home economics teacher
who hangs up her coat after school
as slowly as Mother gets out of bed
whose sheets are as yellow as the canary.

Margaret recalls her once hot body
that could have been pierced one night in Miami
while waiting for Sue, her roommate in college,
whose HUNGRY HEART burned under her skin,

but BORN TO BE WILD stayed in the needle
blue because Margaret's soul was white
as the mattress pad she bleaches each night.

The doorbell rings. It’s him! Tweety sings
like a love bird in the living room
where lights are dim, a beer's on ice,
and a frosted glass, narrow in the middle,
awaits William’s thirsty fingertips.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Wrap Around Porches

Bobby Hamilton was as black as
Bunne's Lane public housing was
whose street lamp glass shattered on sidewalks
where he delivered The Evening News
to ripped screen doors dogs could jump through
if ever dogs were allowed.

Bobby knew how to fold each paper
twice as fast as I ever could,
and none of them ever fell apart
when he threw them for Duke to fetch,

and Bobby always laughed at the jokes
I said Dad told at dinnertime
with Sunday's pot roast and chocolate ice cream
I promised he could come to some day
where houses had the finest porches
that wrapped around Sycamore Street.

 

[greenmountaineer]

September 1, 1969

Since the Birds of Baltimore
dumped on pinstripes all year long,
now I like to watch the Mets,
Shorty's Bar, Far Rockaway,
with blue collar working stiffs,
baseball babes who know the score,
even whores with their tricks.
All are faithful after all.

Seventh inning, guy comes in,
"Breaking news! says "CBS!"
until a Bronx cheer razzes him.
"Ho Chi Minh is dead is all"
makes a painted lady pause.

Two men out. Duffy's up.
LA’s winning 10 to 6.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Johnny Podres

Johnny Podres could rub a baseball
smooth as a baby’s bottom.
He came back and rode in the VIP
fire truck welcome home parade,
a hero in the ‘55 Series,
who otherwise would have worked the Moriah
mines where veins today are empty
as the pews in church on Sunday.

Listen! You can almost hear the drills
in the hill too small to be called a mountain,
too hollow with its ashes to ashes
dust to dust left on the floor
in this one horse town when the horse went down.

But the ballpark diamond still has grass
that’s mowed by Mr. Weatherbee
where I saw the Jeffords boy
who says he’s going to be the next Johnny,
throwing curves into Gary Smith’s leather
mitt as soft as a baby’s bottom.

 

[greenmountaineer]

A Short Schematic on 9/11

We almost canonize the dogs that grieve
their dying masters’ final days in bed
with wag and whimper measures of relief.

The robin will regurgitate the dead:
small bugs and earthworms with the sole intent
to nourish nestlings eager to be fed.

And as to us, what may we represent?
While some would kill the guiltless to acclaim
their God, there too was Joe or Jane, hellbent,
who knew the souls within, if not by name,
to be delivered. Then the towers went.

 

[greenmountaineer]

..............................

 

[greenmountaineer]

.......................

 

[greenmountaineer]

Blessed Are the Poor in Dade County Clinic

Big Ronnie, who served in Iraq
and never came back, watches the sun rise
in the red, white, and blue of his eyes
on the corner of Oakland Park Boulevard
where Ronnie sells Miami Heralds
not far from his dugout of flies
that swarm around Red Man spittle.

If there's no get up by morning, well,
he can sell roses at five pm
to a shirt and tie for the missus
after he walks to Dade County Clinic
for meds he won't sell to Sundance Kid
who offers a ride in his Lexus
with Pillsy and Toothless Fred.

He'd rather look like a black ant, he says,
with a black plastic trash bag on his back
in which he tosses aluminum cans
he stows away from the clumps of chew
while he swallows two Lorazepams
to stop the rat-tat-tat in his head.