Poem-a-Day for 2006

Poem-a-day ran for nearly 2 months 2006 (includes the last mailing, 23 Feb, which included a lot more poems than usual) -- before I left for extensive study. Here are the poems sent out in 2006, but never put on the website:


Downstairs she's saying
"No...no...NO!" What's that
cat doing now!
_____

"Wait--what's that
in her mouth! Don't let her in!"
Sorry, cat.
_____

I want to write about something else,
but you are such a lovely cat!
___________________________

Farewell, farewell, two-thousand-five;
And look at us – we're still alive!
We're here! We're here! (You DID arrive?)
I guess we didn't drink and drive.

It's way too soon to wax prolix
About our new two-thousand-six
Yet poets can – we have our tricks,
So Bards, prepare to wield your Bics!
_______________________________


A study of data obtained
from black boxes recovered
after fatal plane wrecks
has revealed that among the final
thoughts of each person killed was:
"O no! I just KNEW this would happen!"
______________________________

To fight the growing pollution of dreams,
we must establish stricter standards
for nocturnal emissions.
_________________________

Deadline:
Issue is
or
Issue ain't.

[Note: Takes off on a song some of you may not remember that features the words "Is you is or is you ain't my baby?" Clinton, asked that question, replied that that depends on what "is" is.]
________________________

Our congressmen are doing their best
to combat AIDS by ensuring the trustworthiness
of condoms with frequent
rubber checks.
________________________

Impatient in-patients
strapped in institutional beds:
Safety belts for bumpy dreams?
___________________________

Not everyone loses from war:
Many a fine lady walks
in booty with the knight.

[Note: This poem is simply a take-off on the opening of one of Lord Byron's best known poems: "She walks in beauty with the night."]
__________________

With the newly crowned molars,
my teeth don't meet right,
just a fraction of a millimeter off,
but barely room in this wide world
for both me and that fraction.
________________________

Octopun

You moan at my pun,
bold fingers grope for my ribs,
and I'm caught in your ten
tickles.
_______________________

Is abortion ever justified?
All the time,
loudly.
_________________

The old pond.
A candidate jumps in.
Sound of splashing.

Autumn.
On a bare branch
sits an old candidate.

[Note: Two nonsense "haiku" that make little sense unless you know that these are simply classic haiku in which the word "candidate" has replaced the word "frog" in the first and "crow" in the second.]
___________________

On the sunny step
a furry egg hatches:
Out peeps head of cat.
___________________

Plastic is disagreeable stuff:
In our driveway this gray rainy day
the bright blue garbage container
disagrees.
_________________________

Meow?

Funny how a poem
(like a house)
comes to life
when a cat
peers out of it.
________________

Youth

Youth is poems
entitled "Love" and "Spring" and "Pain"
and "Youth".
_____

This poem is untitled,
but when it gets old, out of respect
you may address it as Sir.
_____

He pours his words into the mike, hoping
if he pours in enough, they will overflow
into our ears, then overflow them,
a few drops reaching our hearts,
but the microphone is bottomless.
__________________________

Bare branches frame
odd bits of sky:
blue stained glass.
___________________________

Trees are strong, but gentle,
growing so slowly that anything alive
has time to move out of the way.
_______________________

Why do sperm in their millions
flock to near-certain death? Something
eggs them on.
______________________

Experts say life begins
when a little spurt meets a little egg.
That's why there are so many
egg-spurts.
_______________________________

"All's fair in love and war."

No, the Nuremberg Trials limited war.
Now only obsessed lovers can claim
"I was only following orders."
_______________________

Switching his head back and forth
as if trying to erase a message
left on the sweat-stained pillow.
Why hasn't she come home?
____________________________

A Slippery Slope for Eyes

Low cleavage: Two ardent mountaineers
accept the challenge, clamber up,
then slide back down the shadowy slopes,
can't make it back up...must!...can't...
Whew! Lifted to safety just in time
to meet her eyes!
____________________________

Best not to play with sex
until you've grown up.
And even then
we don't know if it's safe,
since no one has ever
grown up.
___________________________

On The Danger of Being There

Sex has always been dangerous.
You might learn more
than you want to know.
You might be known.

When spirit goes naked,
cruelty, alcohol and eye-glazing lust
offer inadequate protecton:

Hard to keep yourself
completely out of it.
Even alone in bed,
like one badly burned by a hot stove,
you may be ambushed
by the tenderness
of your own touch.
______________________________

A campfire scares
wild things away;
City lights keep the stars
at a safe distance.
_________________________

Willingly being in approximately
the same place at the same time
involved in similar motions
makes for all the intimacy there is:

Close order drill on a parade ground
creates comrades who will charge
machine guns together. The brief
co-motion of sex leaves strands
of attachment years & hate cannot snap.

Luckily we have bodies to hold us apart
these few inches--if they do...
_______________________

It's not solipsism,
for the world we share
is one motif threading through
this world I weave,
always coming in on time
like each instrument
to the conductor's lightest
caress of air -
of its own free will,
not compelled,
but charmed to agree
because I am
such a fine fellow.
_______________________

"I'm happy to say
I think, therefore I am."
Frankly, Rene,
Does anyone give a damn?
_____

Hell has philosophy too:
I am, therefore screw you.
_____________

And where does God enter into things?

Nowhere,
for God is that which,
when it considers it has entered
into things, considers that it is
no longer God, and when it considers
it is thoroughly and irreversibly
in things, considers that there is not
and has never been a God.

And being God,
as it considers,
so it is.
________________________

Don't jump to

contusions.
_______________

"NOT Responsible for articles
Lost or Damaged" -
as in "Apple day keeps
te doctor away"?

[Note: The lost articles are the "an" and the "a" in "An apple a day...". The damaged article is "the" (missing its "h") in "...keeps the doctor away". Oddly enough, besides being a silly pun on the word "article", this poem has a small point to make, but only for those who keep up with poetic fads. One of these is the idea that poetry must be very parsimonious with words (for example, the word "very" would be cut), and that includes cutting out articles to the point where the poem reads a lot like a telegram sent by someone short of cash. This is true of much modern free verse, but also crops up in formal verse, where the poet sacrifices articles to fit the beat, and even more among haiku writers, trying to cram stuff into 17 syllables or fewer. Thus, much poetry should be prefaced by the warning that begins the above poem.]
________________________

So long as there are homeless
among us,
we are among
the homeless.
________________________

Oh no!
My left brain has eaten
my right brain -
It's just
unimaginable!

[Note: I wrote this after reading one article too many about how imagination depends upon the left brain. (What did we use, I wonder, to imagine these brains?)]
______________________

The race is ON!
Which medicine cures the most symptoms?
Stuperin blows away headaches, sore
throat, stuffiness, heartburn and
midlife crisis. But Utoprin does
all that PLUS serves you coffee just
the way you like it AND gives terrific
backrubs! So for total relief of almost
everything, take Utoprin, because
Utoprin is even better than YOU are!

[Note: This was written a around 1994, but still seems relevant.]
_____________________________

"Organic matter"--an oxymoron almost.
This old pond is clotted with stuff
becoming life, life becoming stuff,

hard to say which is more disgusted
by the motley transaction; matter,
I think, muttering "Yuch! Life!"

for life endangers it by reminding it
who it is, this last resort of life,
trying not to be life, not to be
OF life, in hopes of lasting forever

(which, however, only life does)

like a child playing hide and seek,
crouched in the shadows,
chanting to himself silently
"I'm not here! I'm not here!"
in hopes of being invisible,
unfindable.
______________________________

New!
Giant Cheerios for
cereal rapists!
____________________

All the Pelicans
walk like Grampa.

A pelican sits down
further than you expect,
as if deflating.

Across the bay
Groucho eyebrows rise and fall--
a pelican lifts off.

[Three short takes on pelicans. The last one compares the up-and-down huge wings (seen from behind and at a distance) to the up-and-down motion Groucho Marx used to make with his eye-brows - while bobbing his cigar in his mouth and leering. The oddest thing is to glance to one side while driving across a causeway and notice a Pelican flying along side, eyeing you with his perpetual smile, looking like a feathered pterodactyl.]
_________________

Just as the laugh-track assures us
inanity is hilarious, so each day
the newspaper persuades us
"the world" is real.
_________________

"Stop mothering me!"

No one says, "Stop fathering me!"
We all know how to mother
but how is fathering done?

This begins early:
Mother is surrounded by coaches -
Doctors, nurses, relatives who tell her
bear down, relax, eat this, drink that;
and when the time comes, her body
tells her exactly how to mother,

while father paces up and down,
an ancient joke, not sure
what to do with himself.

Years later mother says,
"I can't do anything with that child.
You'll have to talk to him"--and father
grits his teeth, hems and tries
to remember what his father
would have done, and remembers
a huge man gritting his teeth
and hemming.
_______________________

You keep telling me the same jokes;
sometimes I feel I'm at your wit's end.
_____________________________

Just Missing the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame

THE WHOM!
Among their near hits:
"She Loves You, Yes, Yes, Yes!"
"I Cannot Get Any Satisfaction" and
"Lie, Lady, Lie [Lie across my big brass bed.]"
__________________________________
Note: Since I wrote the above, "WHOM" fans from the 60s have deluged me with additional information about this little-known group. It seems their performances were attended by mobs of politely applauding high-school English teachers. Occasionally older teachers would swoon to "Now I ask you confidentially, isn't she sweet?" They usually opened with a bluesy number called, "It Isn't Necessarily So." They also did a rousing cover of "I'm Just a girl who cannot say no". Their career was nearly cut short when, on a road tour, their VW van skidded into a field and overturned. However, they all survived to write another almost-famous song inspired by the accident: "Roll Over, Beetle Van!"
______________________

Note: Thanks for all the additional data you sent me about "The Whom". Thanks, Jim, for reminding me of the huge near-hit, "Thomas", and thanks, Luther, for reminding me of the following:

And who can forget their incredible prolonged drum solo on "In the Garden of
Eden", or the phenomenal mouth-harp riffs featured in their classic "I have my
mojo working"?

Yes, who could forget "I have my mojo working". (Actually, that was a later cover of the group's own recording, very hard to find now, "I have my more-Joseph working.")

I forgot to mention that one reason for their obscurity is that they were about a century ahead of their time when they, early on, discarded their guitars and became an all-accordion band.
_____________________________________

It's a feminist masterpiece...I mean
mspiece.
___________________________

Someone asked me for clarification of my poem about the feminist "mspiece". I thought you might be interested in my explanation - especially the second paragraph of it:

"Ms" is the preferred feminist way to address a woman (instead of "Mrs." or "Miss"). "Master" is a male term. The female equivalent is "Mistress". "Mrs." is short for "Mistress". Thus a feminist Masterpiece must be a Mistresspiece or a Mrs.piece, but for a feminist, "Mrs." is a no-no, so it must be a Mspiece.

Similarly, "Men" is not OK as a word for "men and women" (as in "All men are created equal"), so feminists prefer "Persons" ("All persons are created equal"). But "person" contains "son", a male, so a strict feminist might object even to "person". It has occurred to me that a strict feminist might object to "woman" on the same grounds (it includes "man) and prefer "woperson", but since that includes "son", a VERY strict feminist might prefer "woperdaughter" to "woman". Foreseeing this danger, some feminists change "women" to "womyn".
_______________________________

Way over there -
blue hills;
way over here,
a mere dot -
my body.
_____________________________

Falling Asleep

Lying in bed hanging onto thoughts,
afraid to jump out into sleep lest,
after the slow count, there's no
rip cord to pull or, pulled, no dream
blossoms out to slow the fall.
__________________________


Self-portraits are troubling:
From the wall, someone peers at you,
saying, "You're not quite right..."

Note: You can get a sense of this by looking at some of the better-known self-portraits, such as Rembrandt's and Van Goghs. Rembrandt did about 70 of them over the years. From the painting (on the wall) it seems the painter peers at us critically or slightly worried or very intently, and we may take that personally; in fact, the painter is probably staring at himself in a mirror and comparing what he sees with the painting or with how he thinks he should look and maybe feeling critical of the painting itself or even the reflection in the mirror.)
____________________________________________________

Babies--such a deal!
You get so much out
for so little put in!
______________________

Kids sprint through the sprinkler,
their screams a chill spray.
___________________

Weary coach stops a shrill argument,
Little Beleagered.
______________________

The mind is a versatile machine:
Feed it wisdom,
and it grinds out prejudice;
from actuality, it stamps out
symbols. Feed it vision and it excretes
passions, from passion extracts
reasons; from beauty a moral,
from ethics shame. The human mind
can process anything we feed it.
No wonder we think we need it.
_________________________

On my fingernail
a tiny bee...
Where does she think she is?
____________________________

How cleverly the shadow adjusts
not only to the swing's faint motion,
but to its changing distribution of light
among thousands of helter-skelter grassblades.
________________________________

PRRMS
(Poetry Reading Repetitive Motion Syndrome):
My hands paralyzed
from polite applause.

[Note: The operative word here is "polite", the correct adjective for far too much of the applause at poetry readings.]
_________________________
So often have people killed as bugs
what now we see were people,
that I hesitate to squash what now
we see as bugs.
_____

We hate most and try to exterminate
what eats our food, usurps our homes
and spreads our diseases: Each other.
_____

The neighbors hang in their gardens
scented plastic bags that fill up
with Japanese Beetles, clumsy bronzed
little samurai that clamber slowly
over the heap of each other and do not
escape. We hang no bag. They flit
and couple on our shrubs. Some leaves
are now only a threadbare lace of veins,
sketchy plans for leaves, but leaves
are left to us, and anyway most you call
weeds, and the beetles are prettier
and less greedy than bulldozers,
leaving at least the ideas of leaves.
_____

Lord, guide my feet that I step on only
evil ants.
_________________________
Even through the din of heavy rain
I hear motors, distant hiss of tires
grinding up raindrops.
_________________________

Trout leap into the air with such
obvious joy that we must catch them.
____________________________

Fairies have butterfly wings. Angels
have bird wings. If angels don't feed
on fairies, it's probably aversion
to sweetness.
________________________

What you eat has been killed.
Give more sentience than you take.
____________________________

I went out on a limb,
played with its toes and scampered back
to danger.

[Note: If a limb has toes on the "outer" end, there's more danger for many at the "safe" end, close to the trunk.]
_______________________________

I like the way her skirt ends
almost before her legs begin.
(Ahem)

[Note: a hem - of a mini-mini-skirt.]
___________________________

Poe liked his women delicate--
He couldn't stomach crudeness.
He craved a pale and chilly mate--
A touch sepulchritudinous.
_______________________

Do You Floss After?

"Our love-making was like brushing
my teeth." Yes! Sleep-glazed eyes
mirroring eyes as bristle after stiff
pliant bristle caresses the hot pink
gums, squeezing soft sweet stuff into
each crevice, rubbing back and forth
over the firm white teeth, penetrating
to the very roots, above, against,
behind, between, below, stroking faster,
faster!--rictus of spread lips shaking
with the thrust of it, breath tingling
with chlorophyl--O God! Don't stop! O
God! It's so CLEAN! Ahhhhhhh!

[Note: Someone used that comparison (lovemaking being like brushing teeth) to suggest the dullness of routine deadening sex. I turned it around, by imagining passionate toothbrushing.]
___________________________

And Adam knew Eve,
and that was the party
of the first parts.
_____________________

Shall we stay up for Koppel late
or turn it off and copulate?
________________________

Had the world but WHEE! enough & time...

[Note: A take-off on the start of Andrew Marvell's 17th Century masterpiece, "To His Coy Mistress": "Had we but world enough and time...".]
________________________________

Ideally when I say "I love you"
it thereby and by no other means
becomes as true as ever that statement
has been true. This would, of course,
apply as well to "I hate you"
or "of course", so it might be more fun
to say "icicles digesting sunlight"
or "a white cat running silently
across dry brown leaves".
____________________________

I am as unknown as glass or water,
rejecting all light or passing it thru
almost untouched, just slightly bent.
You see in me a distortion of yourself
or you do not see me at all.
_________________________

Election year: We exercise our right
to choose and find out how flabby
it has grown, how easily exhausted.
___________________________

Government is how all of us do
what each of us would be
ashamed to do.
____________________________

"Come this way," says the butler
and marches off stiffly,
looking slightly less ridiculous
because someone follows him.
__________________________

What makes us most uncomfortable
with human misery is the stupidity:
generation after generation people
playing the same old bloody games,
hatred begetting greater hatred
and no one saying "Enough! We don't
have to play this game!" It's like
having to watch the same stale
horror movie over and over, each time
screaming at the blithe teenager
about to open the grim door: "Don't
go in! Don't go in!"--knowing
she won't hear you.
________________________

How many missing in inaction?
______________________________

Leaking tanks endanger water supply as
fuels enter in where engines fear to go.
___________________________________

From where I sit, I hear traffic.
If I opened the door and yelled,
none would hear me. If anyone heard,
what could I say that would change
my neighbor's life? "Hello, how're ya
doin"? What mania makes me dream
the words I write here change the world?
_____________________________

Most of the world goes to bed hungry,
lacks time and energy to write poems
or read them. We are privileged.
We must write and read WELL.
_____________________________


Dean Blehert
dean@blehert.com, dblehert@verizon.net

Last updated: December 21, 2008