2024/04/09, Hanoi, remembering Beaver Place Road
“If you lived here
you’d be home now”,
the sign read.
But I did,
and I wasn’t,
for all those years.
Temporary storage for
my things, my dreams.
A place to sleep
(perchance to dream)
More home when
you were there.
Otherwise just a
shelter,
the trains marking the hours
through the dark nights
waiting for it to be
home again.
I stopped in Amsterdam
on the way to Edinburgh
expressly to see you.
Took the flight
with the absurdly long layover
so I could
take the train to Centraal
and walk the streets,
cross the canals,
smell the flowers,
to where you waited
among the sunflowers
and almond blossoms,
around the corner from
Paul’s room.
You drive a black horse,
a white horse,
across the Poughed Fields
while Vincent
paints you.
Did you talk to him?
Did you wonder what that
strange Parisian was doing?
But …
apparently I was supposed to buy a ticket
online.
So I’ll have to ask you
all these questions
another time.
or …
Contemplation on the difficulty of writing poetry on demand
Words flow like …
What doesn’t flow?
Cliche: Molasses
More imaginative …
Traffic on circle 4 at
about 5:38
on a Thursday
when you just want
to get home
Like …
Honey left on the shelf
for a few years
until rediscovered as part
of a whiskey sour recipe found on Reddit
then set in hot water
to slowly
return to the right
golden hue – no more
sugar crystals
Flow like …
that last drop
of Grey Poupon
clinging to the corner
just out of reach of the spoon
when I just need
a little more for my sandwich
The words flow
July 4
S-Tree Campground
Sand Gap, Kentucky
Under the emerald canopy
time stretches
like salt water taffy
Attenuates
Funny word, that, attenuate
At Ten You Ate
Seems longer ago
I make a note
to look up attenuate
and make sure I’m
using it correctly
Prompt from @WkendWordsmith
delicious, menus, employee
You order the clams
because they are local.
Also because they are delicious,
you say.
She and I enjoy the crab,
from far, far away,
also delicious.
The menu says “market price”
and we don’t ask the employees
how much, because we know
we will order it anyway.
The tradition fulfilled for
another year.
Working from http://www.agodon.com/uploads/2/9/4/3/2943768/writing_prompts_by_kelli_russell_agodon.pdf for daily writing prompts, here’s day 1.
The prompt: 1. Grab the closest book. Go to page 29. Write down 10 words that catch your eye. Use 7 of words in a poem. For extra credit, have 4 of them appear at the end of a line.
High Bridge Road, Some time in September, 1991
I sit quietly
in the middle of the deserted field
the tick of the metal cooling
the moment frozen,
silent
Silence amplified
to the point of being
almost deafening.
The engine block steams
as the toxic fluids
spill on the grass,
the anger drains away
The telephone pole, upright,
shorn off
inches from the ground
sways gently, suspended from the wires
conversations uninterrupted
Yesterday was simpler
It usually is
But you cannot go back
to the unbroken,
the unwounded,
put the oil back in the pan
So, I sit
waiting
waiting for the past to be
unbroken
waiting for the future
to come slamming back,
as the engine cools,
the coolant seeps into the soil
For St. Patrick’s Day, and for Poetry Friday, here’s Green, perhaps the best poem I ever wrote:
Oh, and here’s me reading it, too, over here: https://drbacchus.com/green/
Green
Dec 5, 2007
My favorite color?
Well, the question lacks context
and therefore meaning.
My favorite sky is
sharp aching blue,
the kind of blue you can
cut your fingers on
until they bleed into
and African Sunset
and plunge into a
deep purple African night,
with the diamonds of
faraway worlds scattered
like the dust thrown up
by the passing herds.
My favorite sea is
gray-green-blue stormy
swirling seaweed churned
from depths beyond imagining,
the sky a reflection of a
reflection of infinity,
winking back at you from
a million million miles down.
My favorite earth is the
dark maroon red brown
of the Maasai clay
brittle and cracked
under the Tsavo sun,
gummy sticky under the
monsoon rains
sweeping up from Victoria,
thundering past on their way
to green the highlands,
glisten on the tea leaves,
pound the coffee flowers
from their branches,
and drench the faces
of the beautiful children
running around in what
God dressed them in,
laughing and shouting
in a language I will never know
but that sings fluently
in the memory of my heart.
So, you see,
the question is unfair.
As well ask a man
to choose one food
to live on forever,
one wine to drink,
one song to sing,
one painting to gaze at
for all my days.
But if I must choose,
I choose the green
of the Kericho fields,
stretching to the horizon,
the beginning and ending
of my world.
The green of a
1952 Ferrari Barchetta,
with its greedy grinning grill
sucking in the wind
of a winding Italian mountain road
tires squealing around the corners,
flashing past a
sleeping countryside
content to be stuck in a simpler time.
The green of
the foothills of Ngong,
acacias and baobabs
clawing at the
dark, angry sky,
promising threatening delivering rain,
the hills singing to my heart,
come and walk our paths,
come and feel the
wind tugging at your hair
come and
lay on your back and
watch the clouds dance
across the sky,
dance from one end of the sky
to the edge of the world,
where the
blue falls back once again
into the red dust
of the far Mara horizon.
The green of my voice,
singing across the years,
telling my stories to
the attentive ears,
the deep green eyes
of the friend of my heart.
Macavity: The Mystery Cat, by T S Eliot
You taunt me,
box 1 of 2.
What, and where
is box 2?
Is there even a box 2?
Is there any relation
between the utterly random
assortment of junk in you
to the cornucopia
which is box 2?
Ah, box 1
half of an unknown whole,
kept, I think, only to wait
for your long lost sibling,
languishing, somewhere,
waiting for you.
Endnotes
She didn’t want
to send invitations.
Why invite people you know aren’t going to come.
Seems a waste.
So her Daddy’s daughter.
It’s traditional,
says Mere,
People like to know.
She didn’t send invitations.
And now she sits,
easy to find with her purple hair,
in a mob of her classmates
awaiting a short walk,
a slip of paper,
the endnotes of this chapter
that she doesn’t really need to tell her
that the next one has started.