Posted on by EAT

Boxcars

During my early 20s I was friends with a man who was also one of the staff who worked at the last residential home I lived in as a teen—not long before I ran away. I was still pretty feral in those days, so I eventually ended up damaging the relationship beyond repair and never saw or heard from him again.

But before this happened he passed on a piece of wisdom to me during a time when I really needed to hear it that involved a new way of looking at and dealing with my thoughts—seriously dark thoughts and intentions that absorbed a great deal of mental space in those days:

Boxcars

A steel-bell clamor echoes through the air
in time with frenzied flashes warning red;
the long arm of the crossing gate is down;
behind it boxcars rumble down the rails.

Some are old, the corrugated frames
bleed rustic patterns through the faded paint.
Some are new, unblemished angles gleam
the colors of a harvest fresh from field.

The doors gape wide, revealing vivid worlds
that move within the spaces as they pass,
each one reflecting back a hope, a fear,
a grim regret, a powerful desire.

The spacious confines beckon one by one—
the broken promises, the lasting doubts,
the things that could have been, the grand designs—
the vengeful plans that ache within the heart.

The cars move slowly—such that if you ran,
you could with little trouble hop aboard
and there within the confines of a thought
be carried off away to who-knows-where.

Nearby a tunnel opens to a plane
of deep uncertainty; it is from here
the many cars emerge to clangor by
and disappear around a far off bend.

I’ve been here many times throughout the years,
the way ahead obscured by vagaries
that mesmerize the mind with strange allure
and goad the impetus to jump aboard.

Sometimes a car would pass reflecting back
distorted visions holding such appeal
the urge to run and climb aboard would quell
all sensibility and self control.

Then suddenly I’d find myself within
a lucid fancy on that train of thought,
so thoroughly immersed in reverie
I soon lost sight of where I was or went.

And drifting through the shadows of a dream
of what could be or what there might have been—
or some depraved indulgence deep within—
I found myself displaced from all that is.

And only after hours, days, or weeks
would I regain my senses and return
to where I was before I leapt aboard
whatever fancy lured me from my path.

But through the years I’ve learned to let them pass,
allowing each to come and each to go
until once more the way ahead is clear,
the red caboose diminishing from view.

What he told me was simple: Instead of denying or rebuking the thoughts that troubled me, allow them to come, and then allow them to go—like the boxcars on a freight train at a train crossing. Let them come; let them go. Don’t hop on and get taken for a ride.

It took a while—many years in fact—but I worked at it and gradually got better at this practice. It helped a lot when I one day realized that the process of rebuking and trying to deny the thoughts and feelings that troubled me was also a form of hopping aboard.

Posted on by EAT

The Painter

I have known Heinz since the early 2000s. We met on a poetry site and discovered we had some common interests. Though we have known one another for close to 15 years, I only recently discovered that in 1982, he lost his third child to a tragic accident. If I had learned this before having a child of my own, this may not have hit home. But as a father with a toddler of his own now, I felt tremendous, wrenching empathy for him and his story. It’s a horror every parent hopes to circumvent, period. With these heavy emotions present, I offered to write a memorial poem for his son, Benjamin, and he graciously accepted.

The Painter

for Heinz & Maureen Scheuenstuhl
in memory of Benjamin Patrick Scheuenstuhl
April 1, 1981 — September 7, 1982

I think you would have been a painter, son,
for though you only dreamed through nineteen moons,
you filled my days with color—every one—
and though a lifetime later I still mourn,
the vibrancy of all you were remains
refracted on the canvas of my soul,
reflected in the artwork of my mien.
Your strokes of laughter still adorn the holds
of memory with pigments bright and bold.
The accent of your curiosity
still decorates my thoughts, and still consoles
a grief that burns with black ferocity.
Your masterpiece, with all its wrenching hues
of joy remains enshrined within my heart.

This was an incredible challenge to write. In fact, I had written it near to completion three times before I decided to scrap the idea and try another angle entirely. In the end, I finally decided on this metaphor, explored in the form of a Spenserian sonnet, my 3rd.

Posted on by EAT

The Old Pain

My sister has commented in the past that I seem to be most drawn to reading and appreciating poetry that deals in some way with the subject of death. Perhaps. Some of my favorite, influencing poems are “Sunshine,” by Robert Service, “The Legend of the Organ Builder,” by Julia Dorr, “The Last Man,” by Thomas Campbell, and “Derelict,” by Young E. Allison. Each of these centers solidly around the subject of death in its own way.

“Sunshine” follows the final thoughts and feelings of a man whose wife has died as he himself succumbs to the same ailment that took her. “The Legend of Organ Builder” tells the story of a young man who wins fame by building a legendary organ that plays of its own accord. He arrogantly abandons his bride, believing she betrayed him and years later, when he realizes his mistake, returns home from abroad just in time to attend her funeral—during which he himself dies. “The Last Man” sets your mental vision on the remains of a dead Earth where the last living human speaks to the setting sun, knowing full well that he himself is soon to follow. “Derelict” leads you across the deck and through the holds of a derelict ship where all hands have perished during a mutiny, ostensibly triggered during a bout of drunken revelry.

So maybe it is no wonder that I find myself drawn to the subject as poet.

The Old Pain

There are too many anniversaries
that haunt the days and years as they go by
and all too many treasured memories
that stir within the old pain to a sigh.

This is the day we met, the maple leaves
that flourish by the driveway, then as now,
were sunset red and swaying in the breeze,
dancing down to dress the walk below.

We paused amid the fumes of regular,
eyes locking for a moment like a spell
was cast between the rooftops of our cars,
enchanting us into a mutual thrall.

By time this maple tree had filled its crown
with lush green cover, we assembled all
our friends and family, and made a vow
to watch as one its colors fade and swell.

The months that followed blurred to a montage,
of salient years, each moment lived in full—
then all at once the sheen of that mirage
dissolved to barren sheets of salt and soil.

The call came in the evening as the sun
sent slanting shades of light across the play
of leaves that only barely had begun
to bob out infant hands in tremulous sway.

Your splintered bones lay tubed to life support—
I just assumed long hours kept you late.
It never once occurred to me your heart
beat faintly in the latexed hands of fate.

I raced to reach your side, to touch your hand,
to seek some indication from the staff
that you would be okay, your golden band
would not become a pendant cenotaph.

But then the surgeons came who strove to hold
your spirit tethered to your heedless form.
They bade me sit—my limbs grew weak and cold
as they explained your limbs were merely warm.

The lightning storm of self behind your brows
had lost its charge—the person that you were
no longer lived within the clay, and now
the clay was all that lived, and nothing more.

For months I hovered near and watched your eyes,
your cheeks, your hands, your every subtle curve,
for any sign that you were still inside,
alive in some mysterious reserve.

But there was nothing, just the rise and fall
of ribs responding to the steady drone
of air pumped through a plastic tube to fill
your lungs that would not function on their own.

Your bones were mended, lacerations healed.
The nurses kept the pressure sores at bay.
For all of this, your soul could not be hailed
back from the stars into that quiet clay.

Insurance coverage tapped and savings gone,
there was no choice except to make the call.
The doctors came—with somber denouement
you were declared as unrecoverable.

I held your hand in both of mine. Machines
were gently disconnected. Line graphs
that danced desultory rhythms on the screens
lost all expression to an air of grief.

To think it happened only blocks from here,
close enough I might have heard the sound
of metal smashing, sirens speeding near
to lift your shattered body from the ground.

To think that as the surgeons cracked your chest
and opened up your skull to free the blood,
I watched the evening news, reclined at rest,
and snacked on crackers in a tranquil mood.

It’s fitting, then—I guess—these maple leaves
turn red as gore around the time we met,
a keen reminder that our vivid lives
lay at the mercy of an unguessed fate.

This is the day we met, a day of cheer—
or so it was a million years ago.
Your ashes dream throughout the tireless years
above the hearth—a ghostly afterglow.

Maybe I use poetry to in some way explore and seek understanding into the concept of death. Maybe the inevitable has so occupied my thoughts since I was still a toddler that it only comes naturally to me now. Maybe it is the one thing we all share, no matter what. Even if there might be some immortal among us, walking through the ages observing our histories, he too must eventually die as the sun expands and incinerates the upper mantle from of our world. Death is something every living thing has in common. It is a bond we all share. So, then, is tragedy, loss, and finding some way to live and move on.

Posted on by EAT

i found God

Photos of Aylan Kurdi, the 3 year old Syrian refugee who drowned in the Aegean Sea off the coast of Bodrum, Turkey, have haunted my thoughts for several weeks now.

i found God

cradled in the pensive palms of earth,
his head rocked slightly in the gentle surge,
caressed by waves that murmured quiet prayers;
his arms lay pale and tranquil at his side,
his legs pulled partly up as if in sleep—
perhaps he slept, but he would never wake.

eyelids lightly closed on sunken dreams,
a cherub cheek lay pressed against dark sands;
and clothes that only hours before were filled
with flames of life and curiosity
now covered only stillness like a bruise,
a shroud still dripping fathoms’ worth of rheum.

peace was on his brow, immeasurable—
such contrast to the violence of his plight;
what circumstance would bring a child here
curled sleeping cold and graying on the shore,
his shrieks of laughter silenced to a sigh
caught strangled in the throats of passersby?

this is God, i thought, in all his glory—
we praise with words his name, then turn and plunge
him flailing in the dark of angry seas
until his strength plays out and every breath
is filled with brine—and sudden quietude—
just flotsam on the altars of the deep.

yes—i found God on the beach today,
the seagulls circled high above his head
and cried their long and steady mournful calls;
the people saw him and they knelt in prayer,
hands clutching at their heaving, hollowed breasts,
all hope of penance ripped from out their souls.

If fatherhood has given me anything, it is an incredible pain in my chest at the sight of a dead, abused or impoverished child. I see the eyes of my baby son in the face of every child. I’ve heard it said that God is revealed in the face of our children, in their innocence, love and wonder. If this is true, then there is no hope of salvation for any of us, for we are all responsible and we all bear the shame of such atrocities.

Posted on by EAT

Winter Relief

My hope was that I was going to be able to use this sonnet form to write a pen portrait of a man, possibly homeless, who during the winter ambles a ratty old bicycle down the avenues near where I work, dispersing bird seed to the fowl. He trundles along with a 5 gallon, neon orange bucket hanging from a handlebar. At various vacant lots, some of which are fenced in, he stops on the sidewalk and lobs great big handfuls of seed out across the gravel or asphalt. As he approaches one of the feeding places, the sky darkens with winged creatures, which land in a whirl of calls and flapping feathers. They are so used to this man that they let the birdseed fall directly upon them, bouncing from wing, beak and back.

I know nothing about this “bird man,” as I’ve come to think of him, save for the image of his moving among the streets in the dim light of dawn, arcing fistfuls of seed over his head and chest. His face is a mass of unkempt hair, his snow jacket old and held together with duct tape. His clothes are layered in tatters and crusted with dirt and debris. Yet for all his apparent misfortune, he has made it his mission to by some means acquire this seed and feed the city’s winged residents during the winter.

After a few weeks of trying to get the imagery in mind to bend to this sonnet form, I finally decided to give up and let the words and images find themselves. Sometimes the only way a poem gets written is to let go of the originating idea, allowing the words to choose and arrange themselves. Under such circumstances, the poet merely facilitates a process that was somehow already occurring, already waiting disembodied in the ether to find a channel into existence.

Winter Relief

The mourning dove lifts pale, majestic wings,
illuminating vacant, asphalt grounds.
A shadow moves amid the murmurings
of feathered creatures stirring all around
him as unsteadily he trundles down
the frozen sidewalks with an orange pail
suspended from a handlebar; the sound
of squeaking tires mingles with a gale
of pigeons, sparrows, jays that dance like hail
across a gravel, weed-strewn parking lot.
He stops and probes the neon depths to bail
a scoop of birdseed—harmless scattershot—
which, reaching back, he arcs above his head
to bounce among the birds with even spread.

This is my 2nd Spenserian sonnet. It was my intention to strictly adhere to the rhyme scheme for this second pass at the form, but the word pool was just too small for the b scheme, so I kept extending it until enough words became available to allow for a fairly natural flow of language and imagery. Still a partial rhyme by all accounts, since all four words share the “oun” phonemes.

Posted on by EAT

Flutter

She placed my hand here and there against her rounding belly, like a stethoscope feeling for sound. Then she exclaimed, “There! There! Do you feel it?” No, not at first. But a few moments later the universe sprang open before my mind and I saw clear to the ends of creation. All at once, everything changed—forever.

Flutter

She took my hand and opened up the palm,
then pressed my fingers flush against creation.
For several moments, all was warm and calm
as summer waters steeped in meditation.
Then all at once a fluttering sensation
lightly tapped and thumped against my skin.
Deep in my chest a sudden palpitation
responded to the motion of my kin
still swimming in the nascent dark within,
still coalescing from the alcheringa
and waiting for existence to begin.
And then it seemed to me what tapped my fingers
was more than life itself—but every hope
that ever strove to ascertain its scope.

This is my first attempt at a Spenserian sonnet. I’ve used strictly rhyme for the end-line scheme, which is ababbcbccdcdee—fairly involved and challenging. On the d lines, “alcheringa” and “fingers” rhyme, technically, since rhyme occurs between accented syllables. However, I did want to use more a conventional rhyme here since this is my first Spenserian sonnet, but there aren’t many words in English that have disyllabic rhyme with “alcheringa”, and this is the word—along with its extended meanings—I really wanted to use here. I plan to write at least ten Spenserian sonnets over time since I find the form to be very interesting, but I imagine that in the end very few of them will rely strictly on rhyme to complete the scheme.

Posted on by EAT

Wither

I think it’s always been in my nature to fill in the blanks when I take notice of an unusual situation or activity. I’ll create all manner of scenarios to explain what I just saw and accept one from among them as reality until more information proves otherwise, information that may never manifest. What inspired this poem is simple; I saw a man around 50 tossing out some nearly dead plants. Then my brain went to work and created a story around it.

Wither

I’m tired of trying to keep these plants alive.
The leaves are few; they haven’t bloomed in years.
I’m weary from watching branches pale and die
that once would greet me with vivacious cheer.
Perhaps somehow they sense that she is gone,
my fragrant rose who swayed such vibrant hues;
perhaps they’ve lost the will for living on
without her touch—a touch that fell like dew.
I’ve tried to care for them as once she did,
to keep them green and rioting in bloom,
but all my work has left them nearly dead—
instead of blossoms, growing mostly gloom.
    I guess it’s time to toss them out—and mourn,
    for she is lost and never will return.

This is my 11th Shakespearean sonnet.

Posted on by EAT

The Bridge

My favorite metaphors are the ones that don’t tell you what they are. I know what this metaphor is, but would it really help you to appreciate the poem to know it before hand? Not sure, so I’ll wait until after. If you want to know, you can continue reading after the poem. If you don’t, then don’t read beyond the poem.

The Bridge

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.

The bridge is the function of memory, the far shore and the city thereon is the past, the sea is the gap between then and now, and the fog is the effect of time and age on the process of memory. The lanes being closed have to do with the age of the bridge and the fact that traffic from the city travels only in one direction, toward the observer of the past. In my case the past—my childhood in particular—is a dark and dismal place full of anger, confusion, and thinking errors.

This is my 8th Petrarchan sonnet.

Posted on by EAT

The Manuscript

I once came across a poem by Robert Service titled “A Hero” that really struck me. While in that poem the subject resolves to kill himself before succumbing to the urge to act out, I thought I’d try putting a poem together that looked back over having prevailed over such a demon. And I know such people are out there.

The Manuscript

His story lies completed on the desk,
  printed up in Times New Roman font,
  stuffed within the gape of small black jaws
opened up so wide it seems they’ll break.
A ream of cover letters, neatly stacked,
  all set to be dispersed in search of alms,
  awaits the manuscripts as they are drawn
from off the output tray to be critiqued.

He knows beyond all doubt it will be published,
  that it will be awarded highest praise,
    for it reveals his journey through a darkness
that nearly swept omnivorous destruction
  through countless lives across his span of days—
    and how he slowly learned to curb his demons.

This is my 7th Petrarchan sonnet.

Posted on by EAT

The Boulder Climber

My “shift partner”, as they’re called where I now work, is an avid boulder climber. Now, these aren’t the boulders that might jump to mind when you mouth the word in your thoughts. Oh no, we’re not talking those waist-high gray things that might roll out onto the highway in the rain or those head-high bits of granite you might find near a stream bed. No—By “boulder” these particular climbers mean these great big lumps of stone that loom up over your head by as much as 50 feet.

Since my shift partner talks so much about boulder climbing during the wee hours of the night, I thought I’d try my hand at molding the little-known sport to a metaphor and see how that goes.

The Boulder Climber

She is the first to climb this route through life,
  to feel her way through all its nuances
  to where the summit slopes and vanishes
away from view above the concave cliff.
The way ahead is sheer—without relief;
  she reaches, probes, and feels for blemishes
  within the rock to serve as purchases
from which to make her way through bruise and chafe.

Patience is the key above all else
    to moving gracefully from hold to hold;
  she contemplates an overhang, then leaps
  to grab a ledge beyond her body’s reach;
    her feet swing free, but then she hooks a heel
and muscles past the crux to higher realms.

This is my 2nd Petrarchan sonnet. My first was part III of “Coming Together”, which was also a synthetic ode.

Posted on by EAT

Aftermath

One more in time for the second anniversary of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan. There’s not much more to say.

Aftermath

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.

This is my 10th Shakespearean sonnet. The other poem written on this subject a couple of weeks ago was “Stirrings”, also a sonnet.