Tag Archives: poetry

Diego Maradona and the Impermanence of Memory

Diego Maradona and the Impermanence of Memory

Summer 1988

February 13, 2008

A ribbon of memories
tangled around his feet.
He sat, devastated, in a deck chair,
surrounded by a crowed of sympathetic
strangers. Pointing to the frames,
bleaching in the sun, recounting
the stories that they told.

And I, with the new-found focus
of I’ll-never-see-this-again, wallowed
in the stories of this failed
photographer, pointing to the shots
he’d never have to explain
why he missed.

There, on the deck, Diego Maradona.
Yes, that frame, the hand of god –
the shot that proves it was his head,
not his hand. The shot the world
would pay millions to see.

But, due to a faulty door catch,
there it lies, ruined, in the grecian
midday, glinting off the water,
off the jewel-like islands,
off the perfect photos
nobody can ever contradict.

And there – that one – that’s me
with Diego. Di, I call him. He shook
my hand. I promised him a copy.

But now, now,

all gone.

His wife, sitting next to him, nods
her agreement. Or is she just sleeping?
We’re careful not to wake her,
just in case. Like him, like Diego,
we’d rather believe. And evidence,
sometimes, is just as inconvenient
when you have it as when you don’t.

Fishing Floats – a sestina

We had to write a Sestina in our poetry class, which was quite an ordeal. I don’t much care for writing forms, because they tend to feel forced. But I think this one turned out ok:


Fishing Floats
February 4, 2008

One from Paris, one from Seoul,
one from down in the Keys,
these strange glass globes,
once buoyed up a net on the waves,
but now find another life,
looking for an appropriate metaphor.

But I can’t find the metaphor.
I search deep in my soul
for the meaning of life
revealed by some mysterious key
brought to me over the waves
by a small fishing globe.

Around the globe
men ply their trade, without metaphor,
on the choppy waves.
Sustaining their body, not their soul,
seems to be the key
to these spheres – for life

requires work, and work gives life.
Each of these beautiful globes
were once the key
to a man’s work. That’s the metaphor,
I suppose. A man’s soul
bobbing on the waves.

And, of course, the wave
represents the storms of life,
which blow through our souls,
wherever on the globe
we live. But, by then, the metaphor
has been stretched beyond that key

point at which the Keys
are forgotten beneath the waves,
and the overtaxed metaphor
loses its tenuous grip on life.
On the far side of the globe
on the banks of the Han in Seoul

a fisherman knows that the key to life
is to keep casting the globes on the waves,
not pursuing strange metaphors for his soul.

The Man in the Moon is a Peeping Tom

Our latest assignment in the poetry class I’m taking was to get a tabloid newspaper, and write something inspired by one of the articles. Imagine the backstory. See where it takes you.

The Weekly World News ran an article about the Man in the Moon being a peeping tom, and I wrote the following:

The Man in the Moon is a Peeping Tom
Weekly World News
January 27, 2008

He watches, coldly, calmly,
as Maureen rises in the night
to bake cookies.
The soft white dough mixes
smoothly in the bowl.
He can almost taste the chocolate chips,
almost smell the rich brown aroma, as the oven
eclipses them.

Sees in through another window
the water swirling down the drain,
the steam rising
softly into the
moonlit night.
Janet caresses her lean,
milky white thighs,
gently rolling them
in bread crumbs for the potluck on Sunday.

Dr. Alfred Eisenstone,
of the Bowl Mountain Observatory
says he’s been watching
the phases and the faces of the lunar disc
night upon night,
these many years,
the 200-inch telescope
trained on the sky,
seeing what the moon sees,
urging the people of Flagstone
to pull their shades of a full moon.

And there’s Robert,
out on the deck to grill
a late-night burger, juicy
and dripping, as he takes
a long pull from the forbidden
beer, when he’s sure nobody
is watching.

Far above Flagstone,
Dr. Alfred is vigilant.
He knows what the man
in the moon is up to.
He’s collecting evidence,
planning for his tell-all
scientific paper.

He counts chocolate chips,
his knuckles as white
as the moon.

MEMORY

MEMORY
The Weekend Wordsmith this week reminded me of a tiny neglected cemetery on Nicholasville Road, right before Regency Center (heading North), on the edge of a parking lot. You can’t quite see it from the road. You could even park there and not notice it. All that remains is perhaps 4 headstones, only two of which are actually still legible.

And one broken stone on which the only thing legible is one word.

MEMORY
January 26, 2008

Stepping over the tumble-down
rock wall into the past,
the chill of the wind
chewing at our fingers
and noses, the urge
to move on and forget
resisted for just a moment.

A few broken stones,
all that is left to remember
these lives.

John died in 1885,
aged 46.
Martha Tull, a beloved
mother, departed from us.

And this one, only
MEMORY
and nothing more.

Our three score and ten,
and nothing more,
leaving only

MEMORY.

Back to school

Tomorrow, after being out of school for 14 years, I’m going back to school. Sort of.

I’m going to be taking ENG 352, Creative Writing – Poetry, at my employer. This is one of the benefits of working at a college which I’ve never yet taken advantage of. I keep meaning to, and then getting busy and forgetting.

I’ve often thought that, if I had it to do again, I’d be an English major. So this is, in a small way, my way of doing that. I’m really quite excited about it, although it’s also a little scary, going back to school after so long.

Notes In The Margin

Notes In The MarginI’m pleased to announce Notes In The Margin, which contains (almost) all the poetry I’ve written in the past year. I’ve removed a few of the more personal poems, so there’s perhaps as many as 10 missing from this edition, and a few others have been slightly toned down.

I don’t have any particular illusion that it’ll sell a million copies, but I do hope that a few people will read it, since it’s something that I’ve put a lot of myself into it. And I think that one or two of them are actually pretty good.

See also my other stuff on Lulu.com.

Old year’s resolutions

And so, the year draws to a close. Early this year, I made some resolutions, as did many people. And, like many people, I strove valiantly to keep them, and lost.

I did, however, write something almost every day, and end the year with just shy of 270 works of poetry, some of which are pretty good, if I do say so myself. I’ll be publishing them – most of them, anyways – on Lulu in a few days. And I wrote one short story, which I think is pretty good. I think I’m going to try to get it published – like, really published.

I took a lot of photos, but not every day.

And I read a lot, but spent the last half of the year on War and Peace, which I’m still only half-way through.

As for cooking, well, three out of four isn’t so bad.

I was also thinking this morning about whether it’s more important to me to make a bundle of money, or have lots of people read what I wrote. Since making a bundle of money seems to be nothing but a fantasy (I’ve sold a total of ONE copy of Trains.), and I really do want people to read what I’ve written, I’m going to make the PDF version available for free, under a CC, attribution, non-commercial license. You can get it from here.