POETS OF AUSTIN
(for Thom and the gang)
Just keep writing, just keep writing
the results are not for us to know
Just keep sowing what you sow
Nobody holds it against Johnny
that all the apple seeds didn’t grow
Tag Archives: Poetry
PINCHER CREEK ALBERTA
PINCHER CREEK ALBERTA
Mid June and Cowboy Poets back in town
voices hoarse from long winters silence
And a thousand and more are here to hear
for the poets have been listening all year
Listening to the cattle and the coyotes
and the Northern Lights at nights
And they have been reminded
and being reminded they remember
and remembering they come here to remind
And just listening we remember
and unwind
BUD McKAGUE
BUD McKAGUE
You can’t take it with you
they all say
And I believed it
till today
But that was gold
and crowns and
worldly glories
Bud beat those odds
he took his stories
(Bud, who knew and could tell more stories than anyone collapsed and died last year shortly after getting a standing ovation at Pincher Creek)
THE POET LAUREATE AT NINETY FIVE
THE POET LAUREATE AT NINETY FIVE
The new poet laureate is ninety five
he’s been working on his demons
for a long long time
Six weeks before the poet was born
his father burns his demons out
by drinking carbolic acid in the park
Mother burns father’s pictures
forbids mention of his name
Young Stanley finds one in the attic
and asks about the man
She tears the picture to shreds
without a word
and slaps him hard
six decades later he still felt the sting
Bright boy gets scholarship to Harvard
okay but forget about teaching classes
these were not the days when a Jewish boy
could teach their ivy league asses
Marries a poet, move to honeymoon farm
she disappears never to be heard from again
The new poet laureate has had plenty of pain
each day he wakes as a poet
not a man of ninety five
still seeing everything new
still glad to be alive
MARY OLIVER
MARY OLIVER
Of all the poets I admire
only one did I envy
How she could take us all on her journey
remind us of the wild beauty of our lives
and the soft animal of our bodies
It is disowned parts of us I know
that we hold too high or low
And yet I wanted to go where she could go
This year in the merry month of May
on a trip in search of other things
a book I didn’t know she’d written
in a town where I didn’t know she lived
I hung five days like her hummingbird
on the green wheel of its wings
Her flowers were my food
her town became my town
her dunes became my dunes
Sip by sip on that Cape Cod shore
I began to envy her less
and love her more
And that pretty green stone
I was taking with me
I threw it back into the sea
KURT
KURT
I am sure that the life
of my dear friend’s brother
held great meaning for a great many
He will be missed
My poems will miss him
He would take them down
into the greatness of his being
wrap them in music and meaning
and sing them back out to the world
I am sure that Kurt touched many people
in ways they have not been touched before
nor will ever be again
My poems join in the mourning
for that touch
ELBOW ROOM RAP
ELBOW ROOM RAP
Poems know where they come from
My poems grew up in the wide open spaces
soft rolling hills and prairie lakes
You can lay a word down here in places
that no one would step on in ten years
My poems mostly come on gentle
and soft and safe like that
But
when my poems
come to the big cities
and the buildings start leanin in on them
(and now fallin in)
and the air gets thick with cars and people
my poems, I say my poems, start to panic
They start to talk
in short / hard / words
they flail around in all directions
they want to be rap poems
they want to be jackhammers
they want to be machine guns
they want to be big horns
They want to aim their decibels
at all those Jericho walls
and they want them down
they want them down
right now
THEY SAY
Gimme some space
get outta my face
THEY SAY
gimme some space
get outta my face
THEY SAY
I need my place
gotta have someplace
I need my space
gotta have some space
THEY SAY
You can’t see me
gotta turn it up
THEY SAY
you can’t hear me
gotta turn it up
MY POEMS SAY
HELP!
POETRY AT BERGEN
POETRY AT BERGEN
If Austin is the Athens of America
Bergen is the Austin of Holland
Sunday afternoon
reading in seven languages
Feeling the difference
Harsh precision of the Dutch
If you could understand the language
you would understand the poem
Russian
The power of
a shot of cold vodka
and survival on the steppes
Afrikaans
Dutch rubbed smooth
by the soft hills of Africa
Latin
Still the mother of language
singing through her children
Spanish
Music of Lorca
moving your body as you listen
French
Dark musings of Rimbaud
a shrug in every verb
English
The fish does not see water
but there was food everywhere
IN THE BEGINNING
IN THE BEGINNING
Small town doctor
tired and out of sorts
resenting a 3:00 am delivery
and snapping at his helping nurse
Stands little in awe of the first born son
come to save the ranch
One wonders if the promise of a poet
would have outweighed
his desire for his bed
ANNA
ANNA
Could a drop of blood
from the pen of Anna Akhmatova
enter my blood
that I might write with a deeper red
A husband falls to the firing squad
a son in prison for no greater crime
than carrying his father’s name
Seventeen months at Leningrad prison
she waits in line each day for word of life
mid screams of those who learn of death
She has been a poet for thirty years and more
woman in line asks, “can you describe this”
she becomes a poet now