Poems found on Mom’s Computer
OF AGE
You’ve come of age in the age of migrations.
The board tilts, and the bodies roll west.
Fanaticism’s come back into fashion,
come back with a vengeance.
In this new country, there’s no gravitas,
no grace. The ancient Chevys migrate
west and plunge like maddened buffalo
into a canyon. Where the oil-slicked geese go,
no one knows – maybe the Holland Tunnel
because thy take it for the monstrous turbine
promised them in prophecy. I brought you
to this world, and do not regret it.
The sky’s still blue, for now. I want to show you
an island where the trees are older than redwoods
ever since Prospero turned them
into books. You’ll meet him when you’re ready.
For now, though, study this list of endangered
species: it’s incomplete, of course, since all
species are in some danger nowadays.
This is the country I bequeath to you,
the country I bequeath you to. You’ve come
of age, and you’re inheriting the whole house,
busted pipes and splintered deck and all.
This is your people, this, the mythic West
your grandparents wished to reach, and reached.
The oceans surge, but the boat is up on blocks.
There’s no America to sail to anymore.
--Amit Majmudar
New Yorker October 16, 2017
Sauté pork and add the veggies
Sauté pork and add the veggies
Add the garlic, cook ten minutes
Add to lentils, add to ham bone; add the bay leaf, cloves in cheesecloth,
Add the cayenne! Got no cayenne!
Got paprika, salt and pepper,
Bring to boil, reduce heat, simmer.
Did I say that this is summer?
Simmer, summer, summer, simmer.
Mop the floor and suck the finger.
Mop the brow with old potholder…….
Tastes like mud the finished product.
Looks like mud, the finished product.
Consistency of mud the dinner.
(Was it lentils, Claiborne, me?)
Flush the dinner down disposal.
Say to hell with ham bone, lentils,
New York Times recipe.
Purchase Campbell’s. Just add water.
Concentrate on poetry:
By the shores of Gitche Gumee
You can bet the banks were muddy,
Not like Isle of Innisfree.
--Carolyn Kizer
Died October 9, 2014, aged 89
Dulce et Decorum Est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
— Wilfred Owen
Did I Miss Anything?
Nothing.
When we realized you weren't here
We sat with our hands folded on our desks
In silence, for the full two hours
Everything. I gave an exam worth
40 percent of the grade for this term
and assigned some reading due today
on which I'm about to hand out a quiz
worth 50 percent
Nothing.
None of the content of this course
has value or meaning
Take as many days off as you like:
any activities we undertake as a class
I assure you will not matter either to you or me
and are without purpose
Everything. A few minutes after we began last time
a shaft of light suddenly descended and an angel
or other heavenly being appeared
and revealed to us what each woman or man must do
to attain divine wisdom in this life and
the hereafter
This is the last time the class will meet
before we disperse to bring the good news to all people
on earth
Nothing.
When you are not present
how could something significant occur?
Everything. Contained in this classroom
is a microcosm of human experience
assembled for you to query and examine and ponder
This is not the only place such an opportunity has been
gathered
but it was one place
And you weren't here
— Tom Wayman
Music Jokes
ALLREGRETTO
When you're 16 measures into the piece and realize you took too fast a tempo
ANGUS DEI
To play with a divinely beefy tone
A PATELLA
Accompanied by knee-slapping
APPOLOGGIATURA
A composition that you regret playing
APPROXIMATURA
A series of notes not intended by the composer, yet played with an "I meant to do that" attitude
APPROXIMENTO
A musical entrance that is somewhere in the vicinity of the correct pitch
CACOPHANY
A composition incorporating many people with chest colds
CORAL SYMPHONY
A large, multi-movement work from Beethoven's Caribbean Period
DILL PICCOLINI
An exceedingly small wind instrument that plays only sour notes
FERMANTRA
A note held over and over and over and over and . .
FERMOOTA
A note of dubious value held for indefinite length
FIDDLER CRABS
Grumpy string players
FLUTE FLIES
Those tiny mosquitoes that bother musicians on outdoor gigs
FRUGALHORN
A sensible and inexpensive brass instrument
GAUL BLATTER
A French horn player
GREGORIAN CHAMP
The title bestowed upon the monk who can hold a note the longest
GROUND HOG
Someone who takes control of the repeated bass line and won't let anyone else play it
PLACEBO DOMINGO
A faux tenor
SCHMALZANDO
A sudden burst of music from the Guy Lombardo band
THE RIGHT OF STRINGS
Manifesto of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Violists
SPRITZICATO
An indication to string instruments to produce a bright and bubbly sound
TEMPO TANTRUM
What an elementary school orchestra is having when it's not following the conductor
TROUBLE CLEF
Any clef one can't read: e.g., alto clef for pianists
VESUVIOSO
An indication to build up to a fiery conclusion
VIBRATTO
Child prodigy son of the concertmaster
sent by MJ Luetgert
Japanese Maple
Your death, near now, is of an easy sort.
So slow a fading out brings no real pain.
Breath growing short
Is just uncomfortable. You feel the drain
Of energy, but thought and sight remain:
Enhanced, in fact. When did you ever see
So much sweet beauty as when fine rain falls
On that small tree
And saturates your brick back garden walls,
So many Amber Rooms and mirror halls?
Ever more lavish as the dusk descends
This glistening illuminates the air.
It never ends.
Whenever the rain comes it will be there,
Beyond my time, but now I take my share.
My daughter’s choice, the maple tree is new.
Come autumn and its leaves will turn to flame.
What I must do
Is live to see that. That will end the game
For me, though life continues all the same:
Filling the double doors to bathe my eyes,
A final flood of color will live on
As my mind dies,
Burned by my vision of a world that shone
So brightly at the last, and then was gone.
--Clive James
Spring And Fall: To A Young Child
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
—Gerard Manley Hopkins
KEYS TO THE DOORS
for Eilidh
I loved your age of wonder: your third and fourth
and fifth years spent astonished, widening your eyes
at each new trick of the world
-and me standing there,
solemnly explaining how it was done. The moon and stars,
rainbows, photographs, gravity, the birds in the air,
the difference between blood and water.
In true life? you would say, looking up
and I would nod, like some broken-hearted sage,
knowing there would be no answers soon
to all the big questions that were left, to cruelty and fear,
to age and grief and death, and no words either.
And you, like me, will sit and shake your head.
In true life? Yes, my sweet, strong daughter, I'm afraid
there is all this as well, and this is it: true life.
-Robin Robertson
