poetry

DonMexlar

Poems

Published Poems Here:

Hot Springs December 30

Under the three quarter moon’s luster

Driving east, it’s Hot Springs, Arkansas

It’s the second to last day of the year

My child sleeps in the back

Handel’s Messiah plays on the New York classical station

I’m thinking about my lover’s knee;

It’s the apex of a pyramid,

Her shin and thigh the sides,

Her toe curls and her calf muscle bunches,

Her torso’s a sphinx,

Limestone paws digging into me, the sand beneath

My reeds blow in river wind

Now Nile, Now Mississippi;

Fifty tenors’ wet lips praise God;

“Reject him, despise him,” they mouth in eager English, reducing my mystery;

The glass pyramid in Memphis on the Mississippi says

“Bass Pro Shops” at the top and at first, of course, I judge this;

Grand contemporary hubris to recreate

Grand ancient hubris then spoil it with naming rights;

But as I lay pretending to sleep through slitted eyes watching my son’s

Breath slow into sleep I think deeper about “Bass Pro Shop”

Fishing is USA man’s door to meditation;

He gatherer of food, He in his industry, His chastity, His devotion,

Maybe the hooks in the fish in ‘The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop

Were from the Bass Pro Shop; “The Fish,”

A story of conflict and hatred and resilience and experience and wisdom and color

Maybe not the greatest story ever told

But every culture tells its own story best

Bass Pro Shop, Top Golf, When we re-create we honor the creator;  

We did it, we killed Christ;

Jew and Roman working together in beautiful harmony,

Of course G-d is d—d, that was the whole point;

We had to kill Him, Of course that’s what we would do to Him;

He needed to come down here and see how it feels;  

And Christ did not want to be buried in a pyramid,

He didn’t insist that we slave for a generation to build Him one

But we’ve done it for 200 anyway;

If He showed His face down here, instead of three-quarters bright above

Ozark lakes as the year ends

After the tree dries out

After the house grows still from anticipation and anger;

From one too many fights when we’re cooped up in the house together

Every love can grow stale and expire

Even though I watched your eyes smiling in your long coat on the corner

Of Tenth Avenue outside some steakhouse after I saw Lou Reed in the crowd

And couldn’t wait for Lou Reed to get out of the way so I could see your face

And it was cold when we walked to the Empire State Building in January

You don’t know how to dress for winter, you’re from Texas

You’re always late and I’m always early

And I used to tolerate it but toleration isn’t a foundation for everlasting love

The heavy thud footsteps of an Arkansas man above my child’s bed

When Love dies we are just killing Christ again, which is what He wanted

I didn’t know that in performances of Handel’s Messiah everyone knows to stand when they do the iconic “Hallelujiah” part at the end (which is the only iconic part)

In my opinion; I am a man who wakes each day eagerly grasping for his morning Bach 

 

I Am Not A Robot

Choose the parts of the picture that is stairs;

The steps themselves, concrete with plaster

Lit by Mediterranean hue, clearly, are stairs;

Is the wrought iron balustrade, twisted baroque

By hands with forgotten concerns,

Part of the stairs?

What do you believe? Who told you what to believe?

Someone told me that if you look at the thing you’re afraid to say

You will find the thing that holds power over you.

And do the stairs end at the porch, sunny lit inviting us to sit

And chat about Gaza or your crush or a Smashing

Pumpkins song we once enjoyed as younger people, breath

Mixed with rain wet air watching cloud stuff maneuver

Over the Appalachian range to finish a long continent’s journey?

Have I proved, yet, that I am human? Where does one thing end

And another begin? We are separate like a child from its mother

And in death we will reunite in God and I merely wish to gain

Access to my bank account so I can get the routing number to

Avoid the $1.99 processing fee to pay the water bill and I promise

I am not a robot and now I see I have taken too long

And so I will select all images with motorcycles and begin again.

Made on mmm