Your Poems

From Menletter April 2003

By Tim Baehr

Here they are, men. Thanks to the contributors. [Two things to note: (1) Yes, there are a few Baehrs here. They're subscribers just like the rest of you, and I'm putting in everything I received. (2) Although I asked for just one poem from each of you, the response was small enough to include a couple of poems Gary sent.]

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Griffith Park Before the War

By Lawrence Murphy

Heavy rains wash down the hills again,

Turning them a bright, vivid green.

Brilliant poppies spring into bloom.

The air is pure and nourishing,

Redolent of pine and eucalyptus.

A stiff ocean breeze stirs

The leaves in the trees.

The fabulous city sparkles:

Spires floating on a bank of clouds.

The desert sand starts to drift

Over the upturned palms of the dead.

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The museum director

By Alan Baehr

The museum director

passes through hall after hall

of her murdered children:

earthenware made

in the cradle of civilization

shattered in an instant

cuneiform tablets

silenced in pieces on the floor

and she herself

is shattered in an instant

silenced in pieces on the floor

a ghost mourning

her ghost children

In Baghdad

that was her home

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Don't I Know You from Sometime?

By Leo Horrigan

I don't care

About what you wear

The color of you

The length or the breadth of you

I don't care what hangs between your legs ... or doesn't

What protrudes from your chest ... or doesn't

I care about the essence of you

And I don't mean perfume

You are a pile of matter

But that part of you don't matter

The part of you that matters has no matter

And that's the part of you I have known forever

And will know forevermore

You see, you and I are only pretending to be strangers

Once we lift the veil, you will see

That we have known each other for so many lifetimes

There IS nothing new under the sun

Except these uniforms we wear

And it is but a sea of superficiality

That keeps you from me

Cross over it!

And we will dance the dance we have danced so many times before

We will stare deeply into each other's eyes

So deeply

Until we build us a bridge to eternity.

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The Garden Sundial

By Tom Baehr

I Count Only The Sunny Hours.

So the inscription on

the garden sundial reads,

discounting the clouded times,

the dark moments in our lives.

But snow falling outside my window

lacks form until it catches on

the black calligraph of branches

on the nearby trees, creating

a Yin and Yang of wholeness.

And the window, eye to the world by day,

darkens as the light fails until all it can do

is mirror my room, messy, cluttered,

but everything important within reach;

my haven from that very world.

There has to be a darkness, you see;

even the sundial relies on it, after all,

to mark the time across its face,

its very relevance depending on

the angled blade's shadow.

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The Running Board

By Gary Whited

Once, and only once, as a small boy

I saw light flash up from our small flesh,

mine and hers, the neighbor girl and me

delighted with the taut skin of our legs

tingling from toe to crotch.

"I'll show you if you show me"

carried our eyes and hands to all the best places.

Finally I showed her how mine worked,

peeing off the running board,

careful to stay in the car as we were told,

arcing my yellow stream into the forbidden grass,

where rattlesnakes worried our mothers.

Glorious and drunk with delight, we rippled in our skin

until I saw two heads rising from the creek

with my mother's body attached to one of them.

Her eyes filled with horror at sight of my beautiful arc.

A dark cloud filled the open sky, went straight into my body,

stunned the wild tingling still, as though a snake

had surely struck and poisoned this great garden.

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To My Son And My Daughter

By Gary Whited

Run my son,

run my daughter,

toward what is true,

toward what you really want.

If you stop, let it be

to look for what is so,

for what says its name

and shows its face.

Then go on running for your life

through all the places you love.

Run through my death,

a great door

that offers the love

inside grief.

Run through your own sorrow,

another door

that opens into more of you.

Keep running until your own happiness

surrounds you like a swarm of bees

that keep tasting your sweetness,

like a rainstorm that feeds

the rivers and the trees,

like a country

that you call home.

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My inner 20-year-old

By Tim Baehr

I've taken care of my inner child--

Done the necessary nurturing,

Made him feel safe and validated,

All that stuff. He's pretty much

On his own now, doing OK.

My inner 20-year-old, on the other hand,

Is still kicking around, causing trouble.

He's the one who grabs the keys

And says, "I'll drive." And then

Scares the shit out of me with

Jackrabbit starts and daring maneuvers.

Oh, and sometimes he plays music

Really loud, with the moon roof open.

My inner 20-year-old is the one

Who ogles the girls and doesn't seem

To care that what the girls see ogling them

Is a dirty old man pushing sixty.

Damn if he doesn't get the juices

Flowing, however. Party on, dude.

He's also the guy who thinks he can

Eat that fourth slice of pizza and

Stay up half the night and then

Try to sleep until he can have

A leisurely late brunch, eating

The leftover pizza cold, standing

In front of an open fridge.

Well, guess what, young Bucko--

We still get up at 6:00 a.m.

So we'll have food in the belly,

A roof over our heads, and

Gas for that little sports car

I bought you. Up and at 'em,

Big fella. Playtime's over.

For now. I'll let you out to play

About lunchtime.

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A weekend with Pablo Neruda

By Tim Baehr

Ricardo Eliezer Neftali Reyes Basoalto, boy with the kaleidoscopic name.

At thirteen you published your first poem.

At sixteen you became Pablo Neruda.

By the time you were in college you had fallen in love

with poetry, and dropped out to write more.

I dropped out for a weekend to translate your Twenty Love Poems

and your dismally affecting Song of Hopelessness.

Holy crap, you were still a teenager when you wrote this stuff,

and your images are as easy to follow as if you had traded in

your name for your vision.

As if I were reading an encyclopedia of love

through a kaleidoscope.

For hours my brain has spun with your words, your images,

your loves, your anguish.

What did you see? What did you feel?

What did I see? What did I feel?

Boats and bilges; pine trees, sails, nets; white and brown women,

naked and shining; leaves, wheat ears, songbirds; waves, seafoam,

lighthouses, shipwrecks; stars wheeling in the sky, clouds, mist;

hunger, thirst, amazement, drunkenness; uprooted trees, lonely

castaways, the grape harvest; long sea journeys carrying kisses;

abandoned piers.

There is a sweet melancholy about all this, not only about your

lost loves but about my total surrender to your vision, you

young anguished boy-man, spinner of impossible multicolored

threads, weaver of garments of language that shimmer

in the sun, glow in the starlight.

Your servant, lover of language, has tried to be both kind father

and midwife to the rebirth of the soul of your thoughts,

swaddled in foreign words.

If you can recognize even a few features of your offspring,

I will be happy.

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From "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Hopelessness"

By Pablo Neruda

Translated by Tim Baehr

11: Almost out of the sky...

Almost out of the sky, the half moon

drops anchor between two mountains.

Spinning, wandering night, excavator of eyes.

Let's see how many shattered stars are in the pool.

She makes a cross of mourning on my brow, and flees.

She forges nights of silent struggle from blue metals;

my heart spins like a flywheel out of control.

Girl from so far away, sent from so far away,

her glance sometimes flashes beneath the sky.

Grumbler, tempest, raging maelstrom,

walk across my heart without stopping.

Wind from the tombs carries off, shatters, scatters your drowsy root.

It uproots great trees on the other side of it.

Except for you, fair maiden, misty question, tall flower.

It was she who was fashioning the wind with illuminated leaves.

Behind the mountains of the night, white fire-lily,

ah, I can't say! She was made of everything.

Stabs of longing, you have cut open my breast;

it is time to follow another path, on which she doesn’t smile.

Tempest that buried the bells, confused commotion of storms,

why touch her now, why sadden her.

Oh, to follow the path that leads away from everything,

where anguish, death, winter do not lie in ambush,

peering out amidst the dew.