May B-day Poem 2018

Finally! I worked on this one for  . . . maybe four months? Still not sure I "got it right" but I tried. If nothing else, it IS the longest B-day poem for myself that I have ever written. Did a little research too where I discovered Nicolaus Copernicus. Something in common I have with a historical genius . . . sort of. So, here it is. Needed four pics to get it all in there. Anyway, Happy B-day to me! P.S. If you want to read it off the pic, you can click on it to make it larger . . . if you need to. 

Septuagenarian-ism

“I’m but a shadow

a single moment

stretching Its legs out

as far as It can before

the candle goes dark”

*Pamiątki  

Alive inside a dream, it seems. A sugar memory

a touch, oh, that touch, I remember those scratches,

those brutally long nails strolling between my thighs.

It’s late, so very late, deep within a summer’s night

a hint of sadness swirling in the dark crevasses,

a silent moon spying on us, the sheer, white curtains

waltzing to the sounds of a cool morning breeze

and that crazy-ass black cat draped across

the far end of the mattress . . . yeah, that’s

what I recall . . .

Seventy years . . . almost.

Can barely see myself through the steamy mirror.

But I’ve no desire to step from the warm shower

and wipe my reflection dry, why should I?

Large canyons, the cracked, waterless river beds,

the great craters that time whittled into my face?

No need to visually confirm the devastation,

I know it’s there as it has always been there

like that damn cat, watching me with its unblinking eye.

My right hand is cramping . . .

broke it nine years ago

while mounting my mountain bike. I swung the right

leg over the seat a bit too manly and BAM!

over the top of the whole damn thing,
my entire bodyweight slamming into

the open palm, smashing the hand I write with

into the gravel driveway. A nervous Allsup's cashier

stuck his head outside the double doors, “Dude!
are you alright, MAN! You hit the ground . . . hard!”

Hitting the ground . . . hard, day after day

from the first moment gravity grabs hold.

That’s what living is.

Nicolaus Copernicus (February 19, 1473 – May 24, 1543)

Renaissance-era mathematician, astronomer, Spoke five

languages: Latin, German Polish, Greek and Italian.
Formulated a model of the universe
that placed the Sun at the center
of our existence . . . the church was pissed!

I feel his ghost tap me on the shoulder.

Seventy years old . . .er, almost.

Still breathin’ if only barely.

The legs still work—if only barely— but theycomplain a bit
during the winter months, the summer’s heat, whenever it rains.

The heart still keeps the time in concert with the rhythm

that the good nurse prompted into my DNA with her sturdy
open-handed slap to my bare ass. I still feel the bruises
every time I sit down in a hard-back chair.

@ Art Walk, April 13, 2018

A Mystery Kid, a demon, a big smile on his gremlin face.

He hands me a business card and then POOF!
disappears into the crowd:

“YOUR FATE IS IN YOUR HANDS

Readings by Lena
Palm & Tarot Card divination
Rated #1 in OKC”

“Hey, David look at this.”
“What is it?”
“Palm reading!

 Hold the card up so I
can take a picture of it.”
“No.”
Why not?”

“Because you won’t
take it back!”

“Yes, I will! Just hold . . .”
“NO, you won’t take it back

and I’ll have to throw it away!”
“But—’
“No! I won’t touch it!”

Knowledge of the future?
I’ve no use for it. Neither does David.

To me it’s like jumping to the end
of a good novel just to see

how it all turns out.
Where’s the fun in that?

May 23, 2018

This is THE day, “the big day”

as my sister would say.
I wake up, I think, my eyes open, Yes,
I think they do. The “BEEP, BEEP, BEEP,”
the coffeemaker nudges me out of bed,

the smell of coffee beckons me “Come drink,

come drink me all up, all this stimulating caffeine

all that electricity sliding down your throat.”

Dawn waits on my consciousness

to notice that daylight sits awkwardly
on the dusty windowsill. It has no reason

to be hasty, to slow down or to speed up.

No place to go. It never gets old . . .

I may dance a bit with both broken hands

stuck inside my robe’s dirty pockets,

my bony legs knocking together, Dancing, YES!

Dancing an old man’s version of an Irish jig,

a country reel, or perhaps a Scottish strathspey!

“Oh, my!” the knees will plead, “we’re not ready
for that!”

I might even sing this aging morning,

my gravelly voice crackling like rain against a tin roof,
or I might imitate a dying dog howling at his last train
or maybe I’ll bark at the countless ghosts that try
too hard to make me cry-out about the rude,
unforgiving nature of a nature that nurtures
youth and ignores the wisdom of that oak tree
that’s tasted time, sampled the bitterness
of each passing year

and has never given way to sapless tears

for its broken branches, and all those leaves

that have fallen to their death because winter
demands that it be so if for no other reason

than it pleases the tyranny of the season.

Crows gather underneath the elms outside

right before the day arrives and brightens

this dark mood I find myself indulging in.

**Renesans

(February 19, 1543)

Copernicus sat in his favorite, high-back chair
staring out the widow to the street below.

In the middle ages if you were lucky enough

to make it passed childhood,

IF you were rich enough, healthy enough,

and not a casualty of war or some other
freak accident, you might, you just might
make it to the grand old age of forty.

“Fuck!” Coper whispered to himself as he

slurped his morning coffee and watched

the last of the plague wagons roll by. “I’m

gonna live for fuckin’ ever.”

Nicolaus Copernicus had a massive stroke

four hundred, seventy-five years (minus one day)
before my seventieth birthday.
Nicolaus Copernicus, dead at 70 years old.

Another ghostly touch . . . this time

on the back of my neck.
                                      -By Woodie for his 70th B-day

*Pamiątki = Memorabilia

** Renesans = Renaissance

My Life in Film April 06,2016

I've been writing poetry on and off since I . . . can't really remember. Maybe my teens. Guess that's the time when you start feeling more like an "adult" and have something important to say about  . . . LIFE! But I didn't really get serious about writing until 2005 or so. Anyway, this is one of the first poems written during that time period. One of my favorites . . . for better or worse. 

My Life in Film

It’s way too early in the morning

for me to be up, but here I am

writing a poem, if I may call it such,

wondering exactly where I misplaced my life.

Funny, I thought I laid it on the night stand

next to my bed which I’m in the habit of doing,

but it’s not there…

Remember the movie

The Incredible Shrinking Man!

how little by little he disappeared

becoming smaller and smaller,

his voice turning to a whisper,

then to an even smaller whimper

until no one could hear him at all?

That’s me lately…

Not sure why, but my friends

don’t seem to see me anymore, or

maybe they see too much of me or

maybe it’s all in my head…

I do imagine things sometimes

that aren’t very pleasant, like

being eaten alive by flesh hungry zombies

while everyone I know ignores my cries for help…

They just turn their backs whistling that tune

from Snow White… You know, that happy

one the dwarfs whistle… before

they meet the title character…

Perhaps I watch too much television or

perhaps not enough…

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre!

Ah, now that was a movie!

A babe, a chainsaw, a psycho killer

wearing a mask made of human skin!

Tears come to my eyes when I think about it!

I find it difficult to watch a movie

without a large coke and a medium

popcorn by my side…. I don’t know…

it comforts me while I sit in the dark…. alone.

Could that be a fault in my character?

Woodie o7-29-o8 (rewrites o5-o4-13, o4-o5-18)

Saint Patrick's Day March 17, 2018

A Saint Patrick poem . . . which is not really a Saint Patrick's Day poem. Oh, well. I did try.

Saint Patrick's Day

Saint Patrick was a mighty man

the patron saint of Ireland.

With his staff from Jesus sent

he strode the Irish isles

in solemn reverence.

He drove the snakes into the sea . . .

He DROVE the SNAKES into the SEA . . .

Snakes on a Bus with Samuel L. Jackson

as Saint Patrick Holy-Man of Action!

That’s a movie I’d like to see.

“ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!

I HAVE HAD IT WITH THESE MUTH-

A-FUCKIN’ SNAKES

ON THIS MUTHA-FUCKIN’ BUS!”
Woodie o3-17-18

The Nothingness March 09, 2019

Free Thinker is a science thread on Facebook. Yeah, you heard right. There be science there on Facebook. Although don't much about astrophysics and understand little of what is on this thread, I do enjoy reading the heady ramblings of people far more knowledgeable about the universe than me. But every now and then a philosophical post I can understand . . . barely. This poem came out of a discussion on Free Thinker about reality and the philosophy of nothingness.

The Nothingness 

Extraordinary to see yourself outside your . . . self;

looking back into those eyes that you've never
really seen before. Counting each wrinkle on that
alien face, each scar that you never were aware of.
You look and you stare and you analyze and criticize
every nook, every cranny every blemish that time created.
There's a warmth gathering around that hole inside you
where nothing lives, where nothing feels like home, like all
that you are is that nothingness and that nothingness
is more real, more solid, much more than what they've told
you, all your life they told you, what reality is supposed to be.
A bare existence that glares at you through that self you've
never known. You have never known. It feels like butterflies
fluttering around the fire’s light, like the deepest end of the pool
where panicky legs keep searching for the bottom and find
nothing more than . . . than . . . and there's that word again . . .
nothingness. All there is, all there’ll ever be . . . nothingness.

Not even a splinter of a shadow left.

Woodie o4-28-17
(rewrites o3-o9-18)

Resist March 08, 2018

Poems come and go from the thought (like wind) from the soul (like fire) from the ever present desire to mean something. Doesn't matter what or how much or how large a thing . . . to mean something even the size of a splinter is rare, beautiful in its naked shape.

Resist

Stand

as long as you can.
When your legs give out,
fall to your knees.
When your knees collapse,
slam face down
into the ground.
When you’ve tire of that,
stand up, ready yourself
to fall again . . . and again.
Woodie o3-o8-18

Almost Cut My Hair March 03, 2018

Again, a poem that got lost somewhere inside the secret closets of my flash drive files. It meant something when I wrote it. At least to me . . . I think. Probably something to do with politics. Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter are mentioned in there somewhere . . . along with the Kent State Massacre, May o4, 1970 . . . and me getting old . . . well, nothing new there. I guess with all that's going on with Gun Control, more school shootings ("young people speaking their minds/Getting so much resistance from behind . . ." -Stephen Stills), and the NRA looking to go a round or two with teenagers fed up with being murdered while studying math, theatre . . . well, this small poem seemed appropriate. {smiles} P.S. If you want to read the poem off the art work, AND it's to small to read, just click on the picture and you should get a larger version . . . 

*Almost Cut My Hair

. . . my long hair bothers me . . .

a dirty red symbol of rebellion and—
dare I say it—youth.
Worn-out now, thinned to string now,
more of a theory now,
slowly evolving, dissolving into a winter,
a winter it will never recover from.
The spring no longer sings to me.

What’s left of it, my hair,

spends far too much time this morning
tickling my nose, and my ears and high diving
off the top of my head into my coffee cup . . .

I must be getting old, or older, or something.

Last thing to go?
The childish addiction for coolness.

These days I favor comfort over 

sweat pants feel more at home
around my expanding waste than blue jeans.
Beards are out, too messy a thing,
a goatee remains but merely as a cover-up
for the saggy skin below my chin . . . chins.

No cause to march for anymore,

to fight and scream for . . . anymore.
Black Lives Matter! White Lives Matter!
It’s all just vacant noise to me ‘cause
matter just doesn’t matter anymore.

The news . . .  weary, dreary tabloid vomit

mouthed by trained canaries,
melting one into another . . . short clips
of weeping widows and angry fathers
and store-bought politicians  
banging impotent fists against the podium . . .
for as long as the cameras continue to stare at them.

Everyone raging these days, everyone shouts

so loud that the world has gone deaf.
Fingers wagging in the stranger’s face
like a babysitter scolding an unruly dog,
“Bad, doggie! Don’t drag your ass     
across the carpet . . . Bad, BAD, doggie!”

Kent State

not even a bloody memory anymore.
The stains wiped clean . . . time . . .
such a diligent, thorough housekeeper.

Where’s Janis, and Jimmy, and David C,

faint echoes now whimpering
from iPods and CDs
or whatever the hell
they call those damn things.

My past . . . vague glimpses of acid trips

and drunkenness and cigarettes
and girls with flowers in their eyes . . .
Made it through another war
not much different than the other wars to come.

I’ll keep my hair long for as long

as it cares to stick around.
Maybe some years from now

I’ll notice it . . .

tickling my nose, my ears

and high diving off the top of my head
into my coffee cup . . .

And I’ll wonder why I never got it cut.

Woodie o9-o6-15
(rewrites o3-o2-18)
*Song: Almost Cut My Hair
written by David Crosby

Machine Head February 28, 2018

Went to the movies and experienced Annihilation. A flawed but definitely mind blowing experience about the evolution of living beings.

Machine Head

The marching machines,

the clacking, metal against metal

that study humdrum of grinding gears.

They’ve tamed the lion

roaring at our brains;
the blood in our veins

drying up, reduced
to a muddy slosh
thick on our tongues.

We are ending where we began

we are tumbling like the rain that

once fell in democratic abundance
upon the shattered skulls of the dead.

And all the while the machines rejoice;

they march and march and march on
as if they had a choice.

Woodie o2-28-18