The Sharper the Berry

Mark Pawlak

Nose out of joint, City Slicker ?
Blown a gasket, Hot Shot ?
Fit to be tied, Arty Farty ?
Going through the roof, curtain raiser ?

Sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you.

Can't put the toothpaste back in the tube, Clever Dick ?
Chewing nails and spitting tacks, Front Runner ?
Got your knickers in a knot, panties in a wad, Sexy Thing ?

Every rose has it's thorn.

Popped a vein, Man-of-the-World ?
Rubbed the wrong way, Lean-and-Mean ?

Worse things happen at sea.

Worked into a lather, Bold-as-Brass ?
Blood at a boil, Dressed-to-the-Nines ?

It's not the end of the world.

Tomorrow is another day, All-Wind-and-Piss.
It's always darkest before the dawn, Bottom-of-the-Heap.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel,Thick-as-a-Brick.
Behind the clouds, the sun is shining, Back-to-the-Wall.
After the rain comes a rainbow, All-Work-and-No-Play.
Midnight is where the day begins, Beats-His-Meat.

Chin up ! With visions of redemption,
walk against the crowd, Down-at-the-Heels.

If you can't enjoy your own company, how can anyone else,
Drama Queen ?

Everyone might hate you, but at least you're still alive,
Button-Pusher.

Comments : Just started dipping into an absolutely delicious anthology of American Poetry - expect a lot more poems to be posted this month. This one was mean, nasty, random, funny, cynical and I loved it.

Note : Brilliant tongue-in-cheek comment by poet follows :
When I happened upon a list of well-worn cliches, I found it to be suggestive of a greeting card, which prompted me to splice and arrange the phrases to make this poem. I hope to interest Hallmark in my handiwork and perhaps, in this way, to supplement my meager income as a poet.

The Prime of Life

It was, in truth, an eager youth
Who halted me one day.
He gazed in bliss at me, and this
Is what he had to say :

“Why, mazel tov, it’s Asimov,
A blessing on your head !
For many a year, I’ve lived in fear
That you were long since dead.

Or if alive, one fifty-five
Cold years had passed you by,
And left you weak, with poor physique,
Thin hair and rheumy eye.

For sure enough, I’ve read your stuff
Since I was but a lad
And couldn’t spell nor hardly tell
The good yarns from the bad.

My father too, was reading you
Before he met my Ma,
For you he yearned, once he had learned
About you from his Pa.

Since time began, you wondrous man,
My ancestors did love
That s.f dean and writing machine
The Aged Asimov.”

I’d had my fill. I said, “Be still !
I’ve kept my old-time spark.
My step is light, my eye is bright,
My hair is thick and dark.”

His smile, in brief, spelled disbelief,
So this is what I did;
I scowled, you know, and with one blow,
I killed that rotten kid.


Comments : Read the poem in a collection of stories by Asimov titled ‘ The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories’. Couldn’t stop grinning as I went through the poem. This poem is for all the cheeky young whipper-snappers I know. :-) Zen

Notes : First Published in the Magazine Of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1966, the original title was ‘I’m in the prime of life, you rotten kid !’. Edward L. Ferman, editor of F&SF, shortened that to ‘The prime of life’. It is also part of a collection of stories by Asimov titled ‘ The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories’.

The Blue Mountain

By Henry Lawson

Above the ashes straight and tall,
Through ferns with moisture dripping,
I climb beneath the sandstone wall,
My feet on mosses slipping.

Like ramparts round the valley's edge
The tinted cliffs are standing.
With many a broken wall and ledge,
And many a rocky landing.

And round about their rugged feet
Deep ferny dells are hidden
In shadowed depths, whence dust and heat
Are banished and forbidden.

The stream that, crooning to itself,
Comes down a tireless rover,
Flows calmly to the rocky shelf,
And there leaps bravely over.

Now pouring down, now lost in spray
When mountain breezes sally,
The water strikes the rock midway,
And leaps into the valley.

Now in the west the colours change,
The blue with crimson blending;
Behind the far Dividing Range,
The sun is fast descending.

And mellowed day comes o'er the place,
And softens ragged edges;
The rising moon's great placid face
Looks gravely o'er the ledges.

Comment : This article in the Mint today included the last two paragraphs of ‘Blue Mountain’ by Henry Lawson. I read them and was hooked. When I tracked down the poem, I liked the description of the stream even more.
- Zen
Follow this link and this one to read some bleak and cynical poems by Henry Lawson about the difficult life in Australia a hundred years ago.

Come to the Edge

By Guillame Apollinaire

Come to the Edge.
We can't.
We're afraid.

Come to the edge.
We can't.
We will fall !

Come to the edge.
And they came.
And he pushed them.
And they flew.


Comments : Brief, straightforward and beautiful ! When was the last time you flew ? :-) Zen.

Sea of Faith

By John Brehm

Once when I was teaching "Dover Beach"

to a class of freshmen, a young woman

raised her hand and said, "I'm confused

about this 'Sea of Faith.'" "Well," I said,

"let's talk about it. We probably need

to talk a bit about figurative language.

What confuses you about it?"

"I mean, is it a real sea?" she asked.

"You mean, is it a real body of water

that you could point to on a map

or visit on a vacation?"

"Yes," she said. "Is it a real sea?"

Oh Christ, I thought, is this where we are?

Next year I'll be teaching them the alphabet

and how to sound words out.

I'll have to teach them geography, apparently,

before we can move on to poetry.

I'll have to teach them history, too-

a few weeks on the Dark Ages might be instructive.

"Yes," I wanted to say, "it is.

It is a real sea. In fact it flows

right into the Sea of Ignorance

IN WHICH YOU ARE DROWNING

Let me throw you a Rope of Salvation

before the Sharks of Desire gobble you up.

Let me hoist you back up onto this Ship of Fools

so that we might continue our search

for the Fountain of Youth. Here, take a drink

of this. It's fresh from the River of Forgetfulness."

But of course I didn't say any of that.

I tried to explain in such a way

as to protect her from humiliation,

tried to explain that poets

often speak of things that don't exist.

It was only much later that I wished

I could have answered differently,

only after I'd betrayed myself

and been betrayed that I wished

it was true, wished there really was a Sea of Faith

that you could wade out into,

dive under its blue and magic waters,

hold your breath, swim like a fish

down to the bottom, and then emerge again

able to believe in everything, faithful

and unafraid to ask even the simplest of questions,

happy to have them simply answered.


Comments : Two things I liked about this poem. One, the sarcasm in the lines,' a few weeks on the dark ages might be instructive' and the whole imaginary construct in the dialogue 'yes, it is. it is a real sea.................... forgetfulness.' Second, the description of the sea of faith in the end, the longing to go back to more innocent time, to be able to believe in everything etc. - Zen

Longing and Wonder

By Myra Shapiro

“Talk to Myra you talk to the wall,”
Mama announced when I lived

so long in my head. Behind
my lids was where I fit.

O world, be small enough to hold me,
slow enough to let me swallow.

Maybe I belonged back inside her. Or
beneath the spine of a book. Maybe

among tall buildings to incubate
between their legs. The warm kitchen

was never for me though I wanted
to shine. Passion I called

the pressure wrestling underneath.
Yesterday, in an audience listening to

my first book of poems,
a full professor asked me : “Longing,

how is it different from wonder?”
Astonished, jack-lit as a robber

caught with the goods, I felt my eyes
struggle to withdraw - and then

in longing you close your eyes,
but in wonder you open them.

When those words went
ZINGing through the lovely room
You bet your sweet ass they opened.

Comments : Not only did I enjoy the story in this poem, I just loved the line 'in longing you .....open them'. :-)
Zen.

In the words of the poet :"I wrote 'Longing and Wonder' to hold on to a gift, to convey my happiness at receiving it : the words of the penultimate stanza. When they surfaced, I felt as wise as I'm ever likely to become. School situations have a way of tongue-tying us - what does the teacher want? - and there I was, a sixty four year old poet with a first book, being questioned by a University Department Chairman. When the answer came out of my mouth at the instruction of my eyes, book and body were one!.....The sensation was so good I, who love cities, had to shape it into something concrete."

Flare

By Mary Oliver

1.

Welcome to the silly, comforting poem.

It is not the sunrise,
which is a red rinse,
which is flaring all over the eastern sky;

it is not the rain falling out of the purse of God;

it is not the blue helmet of the sky afterward,

or the trees, or the beetle burrowing into the earth;

it is not the mockingbird who, in his own cadence,
will go on sizzling and clapping
from the branches of the catalpa that are thick with blossoms,
that are billowing and shining,
that are shaking in the wind.

2.

You still recall, sometimes, the old barn on your
great-grandfather's farm, a place you visited once,
and went into, all alone, while the grownups sat and
talked in the house.
It was empty, or almost. Wisps of hay covered the floor,
and some wasps sang at the windows, and maybe there was
a strange fluttering bird high above, disturbed, hoo-ing
a little and staring down from a messy ledge with wild,
binocular eyes.
Mostly, though, it smelled of milk, and the patience of
animals; the give-offs of the body were still in the air,
a vague ammonia, not unpleasant.
Mostly, though, it was restful and secret, the roof high
up and arched, the boards unpainted and plain.
You could have stayed there forever, a small child in a corner,
on the last raft of hay, dazzled by so much space that seemed
empty, but wasn't.
Then--you still remember--you felt the rap of hunger--it was
noon--and you turned from that twilight dream and hurried back
to the house, where the table was set, where an uncle patted you
on the shoulder for welcome, and there was your place at the table.

3.

Nothing lasts.
There is a graveyard where everything I am talking about is,
now.

I stood there once, on the green grass, scattering flowers.

4.

Nothing is so delicate or so finely hinged as the wings
of the green moth
against the lantern
against its heat
against the beak of the crow
in the early morning.

Yet the moth has trim, and feistiness, and not a drop
of self-pity.

Not in this world.

5.

My mother
was the blue wisteria,
my mother
was the mossy stream out behind the house,
my mother, alas, alas,
did not always love her life,
heavier than iron it was
as she carried it in her arms, from room to room,
oh, unforgettable!

I bury her
in a box
in the earth
and turn away.
My father
was a demon of frustrated dreams,
was a breaker of trust,
was a poor, thin boy with bad luck.
He followed God, there being no one else
he could talk to;
he swaggered before God, there being no one else
who would listen.
Listen,
this was his life.
I bury it in the earth.
I sweep the closets.
I leave the house.

6.

I mention them now,
I will not mention them again.

It is not lack of love
nor lack of sorrow.
But the iron thing they carried, I will not carry.

I give them--one, two, three, four--the kiss of courtesy,
of sweet thanks,
of anger, of good luck in the deep earth.
May they sleep well. May they soften.

But I will not give them the kiss of complicity.
I will not give them the responsibility for my life.

7.

Did you know that the ant has a tongue
with which to gather in all that it can
of sweetness?

Did you know that?

8.

The poem is not the world.
It isn't even the first page of the world.

But the poem wants to flower, like a flower.
It knows that much.

It wants to open itself,
like the door of a little temple,
so that you might step inside and be cooled and refreshed,
and less yourself than part of everything.

9.

The voice of the child crying out of the mouth of the
grown woman
is a misery and a disappointment.
The voice of the child howling out of the tall, bearded,
muscular man
is a misery, and a terror.

10.

Therefore, tell me:
what will engage you?
What will open the dark fields of your mind,
like a lover
at first touching?

11.

Anyway,
there was no barn.
No child in the barn.

No uncle no table no kitchen.

Only a long lovely field full of bobolinks.

12.

When loneliness comes stalking, go into the fields, consider
the orderliness of the world. Notice
something you have never noticed before,

like the tambourine sound of the snow-cricket
whose pale green body is no longer than your thumb.

Stare hard at the hummingbird, in the summer rain,
shaking the water-sparks from its wings.

Let grief be your sister, she will whether or no.
Rise up from the stump of sorrow, and be green also,
like the diligent leaves.

A lifetime isn't long enough for the beauty of this world
and the responsibilities of your life.

Scatter your flowers over the graves, and walk away.
Be good-natured and untidy in your exuberance.

In the glare of your mind, be modest.
And beholden to what is tactile, and thrilling.

Live with the beetle, and the wind.

This is the dark bread of the poem.
This is the dark and nourishing bread of the poem.

Comments : A friend recently gave me an anthology of the best American Poetry from 1999. Idly flicking through the pages, the line ‘Welcome to the silly, comforting poem’ leapt out at me – I had to follow to the next line and then the next to check whether the first was meant to be self-deprecatory, sarcastic or plain statement of fact.
Thoroughly enjoyed the images of nature ‘ the red rinse flaring out of the sky, the feisty moth flaring one last time as he burns in the flame, of the mother bearing the burden of a life heavier than iron.
Loved the imagery of a poem as a flower and as something cool and refreshing. This part of the poem reminded me of ‘Ars Poetica’
- Zen.

About the poet : A celebrated American poet, she won the Pulitzer in '84. Her book, 'New and Selected Poems', earned her the National Book Award for poetry. Her most quoted poem is 'Wild Geese'. Love her descriptions of nature and the natural world - ‘Peonies’ and ‘Summer’ are very close being a series of haiku.