Tag: Poetry

Time

mrperkinsLeave a comment

pocketwatch

Funny thing about time isn’t it?  We enter time  from eternity and then return to the infinite when we are done here.  In time are all born, and we all die.  Also, here in Missouri the Indian people lived before the time when white men came and drove them out.  I knew I was Native American on one side of my family, but was surprised to find out, from a surprisingly detail genealogy, that I was native American on both sides. I am 1/16th to the tribes reckoning, and they think I  had a great grandmother who was “full blood” but they couldn’t prove that at the time. 

These poems are from the time in my life where I was searching the nooks and crannies of my Native American relations. Time for some poetry with a little Indian flair!

My Death Song

as I face death
I ask You 
the Great Mystery
grant me the kindness
of no fear
that the final moments
are not seized by terror
but grace and good will
with someone to hold my hand
that is not paid 
to be there
and that my relations 
come quickly 
to greet me as I
step out into
the next journey

Going to Water

(based on the practices of Cherokee Medicine Man Rolling Thunder)

my favorite way
to go to water
is when it is raining lightly
just above a drizzle
then the water is more powerful
the medicine quicker
as the current foams white
upon the higher rocks
in the small creeks and streams
that are common here in Missouri
you wade shoeless into the water
and face downstream
then will pray to the Great Mystery
that the water will carry away
the debris 
I like to raise my hands as I begin
but that is optional
just watch the ripples and currents
carry your burdens away 
leeching the salt 
from you wounds
you will feel
the water pulling away
what you don't need
Advertisements

A Picture & Two Poems

mrperkinsLeave a comment

UntitledPoetry, at least in large part, is about the sound.  Years ago I started a poem that consisted of words that just felt good when you said them.  They are also words which are a bit dusty from lack of use.  That is the first poem.

The second poem is about the semi innocence of youth.  Awkward moments learning the dance of love, feeling your way through, and around, relationships.  I am still kinda working on that.

As, is so often the case with this blog, the photo has little to do with the content. Or does it?

 

 

Words That Feel Good to Say That You Do Not Get to Say Often Enough

Thingamajig
Fandango
Scintillating
Imbroglio
Magnanimous
Thingamabob
Gizmo
Gargantuan
Geranium
Whirligig
Lollygagging
(this is a work in progress)

Sixteen

In the yellow incandescent light
of your back porch
we were semi innocent

Memory Lane

mrperkinsLeave a comment

windowMemories are windows to the past but sometimes the view is out of focus, and you are not sure what you are looking at.

Here are two poems from adolescence.  A sometimes painful, but ALWAYS interesting time.

 A History Lesson

my grandfather
always had a storage building someplace
which he filled
with all kind of miscellanea
always on the main street
in deserted, dying, downtowns
where the rent was cheap
in little towns that refused to die
but would not grow either
just shrivel down

the last was in Sturgeon, Missouri
in a building that had housed
a funeral home
that had left
some of the equipment behind
including a tilting narrow stainless steel table with gutters and drains
as well as other macabre
before that
the storage building was in Clark, Missouri

General Omar Bradley
was born just outside of Clark
a small town
of about 300 people
we drove there one day to visit
that storage building and
retrieve something or other
he had squirreled away there

as we drove into town
we passed a bum
who probably looked older than he was
because of that weathered look
drunks and homeless get
dressed in white dungarees and ragged white t-shirt
walking alongside the road
my grandfather waved at him
from the front seat
of his dark Olds Delta 88

“Fuck you.”
was all the guy said
my grandfather laughed
one of those soft big bellied Buddha laughs of his
He said: “That guy used to be the best house painter in the state.”
I asked:
“What happened?”
he answered:
“He became a drunk.”
as if that said it all

which it did

I think about that day
a surreal scene
which I replay in my mind
the thing I remember most is the laugh
a Zen koan chuckled rather than a spoken Jesus parable

Grandfather’s laugh was
an acknowledgment, a resignation,
with a dash of rancor directed toward something inside himself as well
with which he wrestled
but would not name out loud

The Little White House

there was anger there
in that little white house
and the scent of the household
was unfamiliar to me then
such that it took
many years to realize
who was responsible
what went wrong
when it started
how the clammy hand
of helplessness
held everyone down
such that some resigned
others raged
or went AWOL
and then you fought free
like a wild animal
that chews their own leg off
mad to escape the trap
there was anger there
in that little white house
but the odor was of fear

Things I Carry Into the World & One More Poem

mrperkinsLeave a comment

I wanted to share a link with you and decided to tack on another poem.  The poem is about global warming and was written on 12 Auguest 2012 during a pretty hot summer.

First the video. I used this video today in class.  It shows how the angst, wonder, and energy of youth can turn into something pure and good.  It is, well, hopeful. I really like it, and I hope you enjoy it too: Link to video Things I Carry Into the World on Vimeo.dsc_0164

You might have noticed that one of the young men in the video is reading Langston Hughes.  I love Langston Hughes and finished his anthology about a year or so ago for the first time. Langston Hughes was originally from Joplin, Missouri.  I live in Missouri. I don’t know if his home is still standing. I am still trying to confirm or deny that.   At any rate, his anthology was something I sipped on and cherished like a fine apéritif one saves for special occasions.  A little bit here, and a little bit there.  You sip and savor good poetry. I think I will start reading it again.

Maybe I should do a series on Missouri poets?

The photo is of Kara, our beloved dog that died about three years ago, and Ricardo, our  irascible, yet affectionate, rabbit who survives.  We just cleaned out his cage.

Here is the poem.

Heat

so now we have become
powerful enough
to cook the earth
like a stew we who
are dangerous
adolescents finally
having our fingers burned from
playing with fire after
having indulged in every
decadent whim no matter
the consequence as we
turned up the heat
on the very pot in which
we most now boil up
our inconvenient
truth having damned the natural order
of things the ice at the polar party has
been melted away with
the hot air of rhetoric and
the burning steam is
a smoke signal to start
the new migration of
the rich to the
newly temperate zones where
they will homestead and
history will repeat
with one more land
grab trade with the natives offered
up cheap trinkets for
foul deeds as
the cavalry
overwatches with their
drones overhead to
push the dispossessed back to
their reservation of
the man made hell
consuming for themselves the
dried fruits of our labor

 

Two Poems: Sleep & After the Flood

mrperkinsLeave a comment

riding-the-mule

What is reality?  In some ways sleep is just another form of reality, and consciousness and unconsciousness commingle.  It gets slippery and we loose our way. Trumpism is an example of what can indeed happen here. How surreal is it to see a Donald Trump sitting in the Oval Office?

When reality shifts, after the flood, there is a rebuilding.   I am from the Show Me State, and we are as stubborn as mules. There will be another day, and in the meantime it is at least, well… interesting.

Here are the poems, and later next week some poems of protest as well as defiance:


Sleep

sometimes when I am awake
I sleep
sometimes when I sleep
I am awake

seems as if
I cannot
make up my mind

or perhaps

I have made this bed
and the decision
to lay in it

I am awake
sometimes when I sleep
I sleep
sometimes when I am awake

or perhaps
it is the other way
around

After the Flood

during the deluge
all you could do was
close the hatches
weather it out
wait for the sun
which would finally come

then one day
after the flood
the dove
did not come back
the waters withdrew
and the finger of G-d
wrote against the sky
using a prism of light
a sign for us
to start over
to begin anew

everything
that happens now
comes from then
so we are all
after the flood
children of survivors

The Last Poem

mrperkinsLeave a comment

Among other things I will be previewing poems from my new chapbook  After the Flood. As the good book says “So the last shall be first, and the first last….”  So it is here.

The Last Poem

who will write
the last poem?

will anyone read it?

perhaps it will just remain
behind
abandoned as
an unread artifact
that will never be
recited
or, for that matter, rejected
by editors – a defacto still birth

for this last poem we should hope
it has the élan
to be composed
in pica or elite
typewritten
with mechanical keys
rhythmically striking
a staccato tatoo
a bell sounding
at the end of the line

or better yet
written with a freshly sharpened
yellow wooden pencil
with that schoolroom smell
scribbled on real paper peppered with shavings