My apologies. Life has arrested the week and made podcasing too diffucult. I will return on Monday, April 2nd.
email: p3podcast@mac.com
phone: 70 425 Poems
11c: Like Art
Midtown, Late March
Nestled amongst the spires and scurrying
like ants
for another hour, at this hurried
pace, they who can’t
stop or rest, who in their haste for success, courier
around deli sandwiches pent
up in paper bags with their worries
until someone, like art, who meant
this morning to select a shirt where nary
a fold didn’t wend itself this way and that,
passes, and like dumb bass to a lure
they hook around to sneak a gander,
stop dead in their tracks (single or married,
like serfs or kings, unevolved or gents),
something inside them hurries up
to stop and gawk, be it from the walk, the fold, the tent
shaped furrow flowing back and forth, the rare
site of red cloth, as to a bull. The ants
can find nary
a reason to wake in this city. Still can’t.
But perhaps for her.
–
email: p3podcast@mac.com
phone: 70 425 Poems
Episode 11a: This Be the Verse
Today’s poem is “This Be The Verse” by Philip Larkin
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phone: 70 425 Poems
Episode 10c: “The Walking Tomb”
by thom ingram
Awoke one morning,
one morning from sleep,
my bloody eyes stoned
and reaching for the light
For the light that hid
in shards from the thin
and stuck lids of my eyes,
of my bloody stoned eyes.
I was buried, buried you see
beneath a pile of stones
piled atop of me, each
with its gritty face facing me.
On each stone, on the face
of each stone, the name
of a person or place, a year
or a date or a quote.
And each quote, each name
weighed down, its face
facing me, shards of light
fighting to find me.
In the blurry mirror
and down the foggy road,
all day at work
these smothering stones
The ghosts of things
I wished and lost,
the people I’d wronged
and lies I told.
All day I tried to see
the world in front of me,
but each time a voice whispered
or spoke, a stone would glow.
And each time the dark girl
with the quirk in her lip would laugh
or brush back her soft hair
and half smile, a stone would glow.
All day I tried to brush aside
the gritty contours before my eyes,
all day I tried to tell someone why
I was acting, and feeling so alone.
I went to bed that night
still unable to see, still
taking stabs at the light,
at the now cold, artificial light
and that night dreamt of spring days
in wide open fields, of the beach
and the heat, and sailing on a sea
that had never seen a stone.
Then a lighthouse on the shore
with a single beacon,
warning me to keep away
from that which would drowned me.
Then the next day nothing,
No stones. Nothing so vibrant
or visual. But a deep feeling
of being kept; captive, separate, alone.
–
email: p3podcast@mac.com
phone: 70 425 Poems
Episode 10b: The Ceaseless (or Senseless) Din of Repetition
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phone: 70 425 Poems
Episode 10a: Lament of the Winds (of the Winds)
Today’s Poem is Lament of the Winds by Archibald Lampman
email: p3podcast@mac.com
phone: 70 425 Poems
Episode 9c: By This Age
If one believes pentagon
copies: birth certificate,
early enlistment request,
divorce proceedings, letter
of reprimand, court filings,
an honorable discharge,
you lived multiple lifetimes
of agony, of heartbreak.
What have I done, but love one
woman, wake to countless, still,
childless mornings, slept late
on weekends wasting away,
staring out windows under
endless, concussive free skies.
For all the pentagon knows
I was born to you, enrolled,
as ordered for selective
service, each year paid taxes
and wait now for my social
security, for a note
which will list the location,
but no cause for which I died.
–
email: p3podcast@mac.com
phone: 70 425 Poems
Episode 9a: How much I will miss you…
Today’s Poem is “Susquehanna” by Liz Rosenberg
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phone: 70 425 Poems
Episode 8c: Thunder and the Green Leaf
Undone by the rumblings
in the distance. Unimpressed
by countless raindrops pelting,
felled from the sky like bullets,
bombs from airplanes over Nam
in videos from before
childhood, whole forests
set ablaze by politics
and logger’s trucks. Someone said
the Amazon were the lungs
of the world. Somebody said
the shrinking forests had more
to do with global warming
than those noxious emissions.
But out on this lifeless branch,
this one leaf, grown green despite
its apparent loneliness
and locale, when the rains come,
hung in peace, giving, easy
to bend, allows the ammo
to fall near unimpeded
to the ground and perks back up
for another round. It’s how,
in practice and in theory,
the sapling grew big, bending
and yielding, how the oak
grew tall, and how, when this branch
jutted out where no others
cared to go, it was allowed
to grow. Always singular,
reaching towards the sun, palms up
and warmed, catching what water
and what wavelengths most passed on.
Loved, though seemingly alone.
email: p3podcast@mac.com
phone: 70 425 Poems
Episode 8b: “Punch the Bruises”
An interview with Sara about writing as a form of therapy
email: p3podcast@mac.com
phone: 70 425 Poems
