People
Long after the family was asleep, my father would put on his eyeglasses and mimic the moves made by grandmasters Bobby Fischer and Garry Kasparov on his own chess set so he could study their strategies. My father never finished ninth grade.
In gray and leathered eld,
The carpenter’s day is spelled,
By the brilliance of the crackling hearth,
And the sixty-four squares,
He tries with might to chart.
From King to King (The Rodney King Story)
A friend asked me to help her with a school assignment: Write a poem in the style of e.e. cummings. For some reason, I chose Rodney King as my subject. (She got an A.)
Bloods.
Crips.
Fighting for an identity on the streets,
Fighting for a leader long lost.
Ruling their turf with sticks and stones,
Yearning for that society, to them, unknown,
Raging, hating, set to explode.
Pigs.
Cops.
Upholding law in the asphalt jungle?
Crucifying justice at a baton’s whim.
Lying, twitching, a victim to The Man,
Unknowing, persecuted because of his tan,
Now the new King, thanks to an amateur’s hand.
I saw a picture in a magazine of a scowling old man holding a transistor radio up to his ear. He was sitting on a porch in a beat-up chair with a flag behind him. My interpretation: He’s a diehard baseball fan.
From April to autumn his team has erred,
Yet little from his threshold has he stirred;
A charge of static pressed to his ear —
An oak of faith in his rickety chair —
Across the way he still doth stir.
Not sure how I arrived at this topic — a young sculptor must create a favorable likeness of an overweight king — but I’m glad I did. I’ve always loved the opening line: “O’er the marble, his wedge doth wend.”
O’er the marble his wedge doth wend,
Scudding by the force of his mallet;
‘Round his blade his fingers doth bend —
(Calloused the grip of an artisan’s hands,
Who eschews the oils of the palette.)
On this semblance keyed for the throne,
Set asunder by his Master,
Slaveth he for fairness in stone —
(Concealed the King’s unflatt’ring folds,
Encased in a tunic of white alabaster.)
Had the privilege of seeing Olympian Paul Wylie about an hour before a performance. He was alone, deep in concentration, and not nearly as happy as he appeared on the ice a few minutes later. That got me thinking …
I
Shrouded in secrecy — alone,
Atop the hall.
All a-hush;
A time to withdraw.
Cloaked in darkness — watching,
The crowd filter.
A murmured hush;
A time to envision.
Draped in silence — list’ning,
For the cue.
A hushed voice;
A time for greatness.
II
Bathed in light — holding,
A dancer’s pose.
A pipe’s tone;
A time for poetry.
Steeped in motion — churning,
In-the-round.
A cello’s song;
A time for grace.
Doused in speed — slashing,
The snowy stage.
A trumpet’s blare;
A time for flight.
III
Soaked in sweat — awaiting,
The critic’s hand.
All a-rush;
A time for judgment.
Show’red in praise — basking,
Midst the crowd.
A rush of flowers;
A time for joy.
Wrapped in ice — hidden,
Behind the curtain.
A rush of pain;
A time for reflection.
Thomas Veale (The Legend of Dungeon Rock)
I always wanted to write an epoch in the same vein as "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" or "'Twas the Night Before Christmas." Did oodles of research for this one … fascinating story. Ladies and gentlemen: Thomas Veale!
Learn more about the Thomas Veale story.
‘Twas a lowborn Lynner, who it is reputed,
Took twenty stripes for his thieving of pewter,
From the well-favored lair of Salem’s Gershome Brown,
A consid’rable man cross the seafaring towne.
Veale be his surname, Thomas to his mother,
Who the townsfolk imputed as their robber.
A sanguineous chapeau he showily did wear,
Lopsidedly perched like a fox-terrier’s ears,
To strategically cover an embattled left eye,
And ringlets of curls as dark as the night.
Convinced that his whipping was surely in vain,
Veale did enlarge his scurrilous game;
Shortly thereafter, ‘bout half sixteen hundred,
He stormed to the seas to take to his plunderage.
With teeth clenched like irons, and brows pursed in folds,
He snarled at the wind that snapped the crossbones.
From one ketch to the next, his crew wrangled riches —
To and including those rightfully British;
Yet Veale suffered ne’er a nervous man’s twitches,
Argh, these spoils outshone his younger day filches.
Then one autumn, at their Cap’n’s behest,
Veale’s sloop a-shoaled down the river Saugus;
Away from the vessel four seaman did row,
With sugar and rum and riches in tow.
The thickets of Lynn they proclaimed their stead,
As tales of the parrying pirates did spread;
But soon as their garden showed lifebuds of Spring,
Down came a mandate from the murderous King:
“So our waters might be Free of Pyratical Fear,
Vengeance need be Levied on Veale the Buccaneer!”
Anon three were caught, napping in a glenn,
And shown to the gallows of bloody England;
Yet there still breathed a fourth who did employ the Woods,
To humbug the hounds, as but the Cap’n could.
A home walled with stone he was force to concoct,
Deep in the darkness of ol’ Dungeon Rock —
A mountain of ore so enormously vast,
One hundred feet high, as the legend is passed!
Down in the chasm he gingerly would crawl,
Salting away until his belly did growl;
So, in need of an article to barter for food,
Leather and buckles he bounded ‘to shoes;
Tap … tap … tap … echoed through the caverns,
Like rumours of the treasure of the walls of the taverns;
A mystery cobbler with an appetite for pillage,
A makeshift barrow he wheeled about the village,
To trade his wares for a morsel or crumb,
Ladled between his two battered thumbs.
Yet far and wide accusations still stormed,
Of a man who once lived by the tip of his sword;
And with nary an oar to return to the fiord,
Sanctimonious he stood, a pirate “reformed.”
‘Til one day when the earth shook like thunder,
And layers of stone buried him under;
Boulders ‘stead of coral spelt his final doom.
Blocking the entrance, aye, sealing his tomb.
In Dungeon Rock Veale would rot, but not his sacred gold —
Guarded by the lack of a map to decode.
Now three centuries aft, not a coin has been lifted,
‘Spite the picks and powder of many a grifter,
Who frustrated o’er the years they enlisted,
Swear the sea-rover never existed.
But if ye dare take a walk today by the Rock,
At night when the hands strike twelve on the clock,
In water knee-deep you’ll be brought to a kneel,
By a haunting ghost sound so frightfully real —
The tireless tapping of pirate Thomas Veale.
Learn more about the Thomas Veale story.
When it comes to the skin tone of certain Anglo-Saxon women, my dark complexion pales by comparison.
For though her skin’s as ivory fair,
As a clutch of eggs
In the care, of
A snowbird’s nest of wooly flue,
With each glance I cast at her,
I face this unfair truth:
Against her shell,
I’ll always pale —
Though ruddy is my hue.
Philosophy
I saw a man balancing rocks on the beach one day. Each sculpture was about 10 rocks high. I asked him what they represented. He said, “chaos in order, man.” Just for kicks, I shaped the poem so it looks like it's balancing, too.
Whipping, the wind
snaps his frock,
The beach his canvas,
the earth his chalk.
Acts of balance he concocts,
Of jagged stones by th’ old cliff rocks.
At these statues, first I balked,
Yet here I stand in full gawk —
With wide wonder how they lock —
Cragged posts of misshaped blocks.
Marvels each of slant and jot,
Settling into time-worn slots,
Balanced on the perfect spot;
Suspect to the slightest knock.
Displaying mementos from one’s past can be a little dangerous. Best to pack them away and move on. Love the line: “A man’s past exceeds the coarse objects he files.”
[My aim’s not to rid every reminder,
But to clear tomorrow so I might aspire.]
With dampened cloth I wipe the mantel clean,
Where my childhood’s end for years hath been —
A circular motion in squares of sunlight,
Upon a-packing mementos archived.
See,
A pocketwatch passed down can comfort a child,
But still measures time counter-clockwise.
And photographs can freeze figures in frames,
But still black-and-whites yellow with age.
Lo,
Today I declare what long I decried:
A man’s past exceeds the coarse objects he files;
On a shelf of ash, in a box corrugated —
Yesterday’s kept best in the mind of the curator.
You can diffuse so much tension with just a smile. For some reason I chose a rift between ice fishermen as the backdrop. All kinds of fun wordplays here.
Standing on this pond of ice,
I think I’m going to crack —
Fencing with a friend o’er the line
That divides our rickety shacks.
Each man demanding his fair share,
Of where the catfish congregate;
Stout-bodied, scaleless, fish a-schoolin’
(Yet each other we did bait).
Then like a rusted anchor’s flukes,
I hooked his eye with a smile,
And rid the matter that encircled,
This well of pleasure undefiled.
It’s so much easier to sort out your problems at night, under the stars. Everything just seems much clearer.
On my midnight walk,
Through a field of bended reeds,
The sound of the sopping ground,
Kept me company.
Amid a muddied clear,
I stopped to rest on a thatch,
And did hear with straining ears,
A pheasant’s playful splash.
On my midnight walk,
With the wind I conferred, yea,
How to define God’s design,
To us it did occur.
For deep into the night,
The answers lay at our feet,
Waiting there for all to bear,
As the marmot curls in sleep.
A poem about the triumphant human spirit. Basically, the silver lining is always there if you look hard enough. This and "Swimmed" are as close to personal credos as I’ve written.
Someone drank my half-filled cup of water,
But look at what I’ve gained in the barter —
For this cup where hope sat once,
Now stands full brimming with none!
Calgonite, take me away! When all else fails, close your eyes and dream of someplace far away.
When I nod my eyes, ‘tis just o’er yon:
A faraway land engulfed by calm.
Not a single wasted word in this poem. About a person (me) assessing their life at the midway point … and approving of the report.
As I tread this life’s midstream,
Something blue occurred to me:
All my lavish boyhood dreams,
Hath faded to perfunctory.
And though a strict retrospect,
May deem my days part misspent,
Awash, I’m not, in regret;
For when I think of how I’ve lived, —
Lo, the less I’ve sank,
And the more I’ve swimmed!
I’ve always said that if they sold peace of mind in the grocery store, it would fly off the shelves.
If peace of mind sat square on a shelf,
I’d buy an entire loaf for myself,
So the next time I was running low,
I’d take stock in knowing where to go,
For another healthy slice of life.
Religion
Because someone wears a robe and lights a candle on an altar, they’re closer to God? Highly dubious on all counts.
I hear Him in the streams, where withered leaves quibble,
O’er the lapping of a selfsame ripple.
I smell Him in the fields, where husbandmen toil,
In furrowed rows of smoldering soil.
I see Him in the eyes, of the blinded who follow,
The passage of lambs into a slaughter.
And in the faces of hedonic denial,
Hidden by the brims of loose-fitted cowls.
I feel Him in the touch, of a cat’s prickled tongue,
Purging the wounds of its precocious young.
I sense Him in the air, when hope runs to clot,
And morning’s sweet dew has beaded to frost.
I taste Him in the bread, crusted in my chalice,
The body of Christ that doth regale us.
And in the pinot that pools in my goblet,
Anointing the throats of lepers who quaff it.
