keep it simple

"Don't be fooled by the moonshine. The night is young and the night is ours. I can see you are wary. I can see the goosebumps beginning to crawl down your arms. They trickle past your elbow like Plinko chips and I watch with disco ball eyes as if a $10,000 slot sits above your middle knuckle. Don't be scared. Trust me when I say I will protect you. Trust me when I say I love you. Don't be fooled by the moonshine. Don't ever give up on a night like this."


cliff weber (Santa Monica, CA, 1986)

third floor view

The garage in my backyard
has a hole in the roof.
Leaves and rain
fall in September.


ronald steiner (Butler, PA, 1976)

upon close inspection

Tree rings reveal
good wet years,
dry cold droughts,
and fires, and births, and death.


ronald steiner (Butler, PA, 1976)

a love affair

"The poem is a love-affair between the poet and his subject, and readers come in only a long time later, as witnesses at the wedding. But what would the ideal witnesses—the ideal public—be? What would an ideal public do? Mainly, essentially, it would just read the poet; read him with a certain willingness and interest; read him imaginatively and perceptively. It needs him, even if it doesn’t know that; he needs it, even if he doesn’t know that. It and he are like people in one army, one prison, one world; their interests are great and common; and deserve a kind of declaration of dependence"


randall jarrell (Nashville, TN, 1914-Chapel Hill, NC, 1965), excerpt from the lecture Poets, Critics, and Readers, delivered at the start of his second year as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress —currently Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry—, October 1957, as quoted in 'Randall Jarrell in Washington', an article by Peter Montgomery published in the Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Volume 10.4, Fall 2009

premeditations on separation

"The Tulips have had their moments"
Margaret Atwood






Neither of us
knew if we were doing it right,
setting fire to each other
becoming a stirred pile of ash.
Your brain inside of mine.
Your brain wanting to multiply
mine trying to divide
back to base.
 
I’ve been thinking in numbers.
50 percent of unions break in ugly yelps
So in 30 years,
I am half likely
to be her.
Going through her attic
reading letters on mold and time.
Letters you wrote to me--
that is, if you were to start writing me letters.
 
I would have been a mess--your mess
Now a clean mess--
and leaving a wounded spool of hills.
I will be done killing you—too many times to count
You’ll be tired of dying.
 
Neither of us
know if we’re doing it right.


morgan eklund (Iowa City, IA, 1989)

dog behind bars

dog behind bars
doing time
gathering sympathy
from passers-by
black, young, strong
confused
sad
a patio is his prison
a patio where another dog lies
quiet, tired, numb
been there longer
knows better than that
but knows as well what he is
what he has become

the black, young one
longing for freedom
gathers sympathy from a girl, street lads
a smile brings light
a pat brings joy
silence brings everything back
as I, the poet writing this verses
get a glimpse from afar
riding the bus on an empty stomach
fiddling with issues from long and behind
an instant captive
riddled by the moral of the story
setting my problems aside
wondering who the dog is
who is actually in prison
what the odds are
of living in fantasy of freedom
or knowing better, lying stiff and numb
a dog minus the sympathy
another dog behind bars


james pendleton (Bordentown City, NJ, 1979)

levine on upbeat poems

"I can’t believe this guy Barr is a poet, because I don’t think a real poet would think in that way. When a poem comes to you, you’re not going to say, 'Oh, no, this goddamned poem is just too mean-spirited.' You’re going to run with it."


philip levine (Detroit, MI, 1928), answering the question "I wonder if you agree with John Barr, the president of the Poetry Foundation, who, with the help of a $200 million endowment, has been trying to popularize poetry by encouraging poets to write more upbeat poems" in an interview published in The New York Times Sunday Magazine with the headline Philip Levine Still Knows How to Make Trouble, November 6, 2011