Nostalgia Poems (1,152)

For Daniel

"Why do you
stripes
in you forehead,
Mommy?
Are you
old?"

Not old
But not so
young
that I cannot
see
the world contracting
upon itself
and the circle
closing at the end.

As the furrows
in my brow
deepen,
I can see
myself
sinking back
into that childhood
street
I walked along
with my grandfather,
thinking he was old
at sixty-three
since I was four
to my forty.

Forty years
to take
the road out,
Will another forty
take me
back?

Back to the street
I grew up on,
back to
my mother's breast,
back to the second
world war
of a second
child,
back
to the cradle
endlessly
rocking?

I am young
as you are,
Daniel-
yet with stripes
in my brow;
I earn my youth
as you must earn
your age.

These stripes
are decorations
for my valor-
forty years
of marching
to a war
I could not declare,
nor locate,
yet have somehow won.

Now,
I begin
to unwin,
unravelling
the sleeves
of care
that have kept
me scared,
as I pranced
over the world,
seemingly fearless,
working
without a net,
knowing
if I fell
it would
only be
into that same
childhood street,
where I dreaded
to tread
on the lines-
not knowing
the lines
would someday
tread
on me.

Daniel,
when you are forty,
read this poem
& tell me:
have we won
or lost
the war?


~SAS~

1969 Sugar Sugar by The Archies
1970 Bridge Over Troubled Waters by Simon and Garfunkel
1971 Joy To The World by Three Dog Night
1972 The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face by Roberta Black
1973 Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Ole Oak Tree by Dawn/ Tony Orlando
1974 The Way We Were by Barbra Steisand
1975 Love Will Keep Us Together by Captain & Tennille
1976 Silly Love Songs by Wings
1977 Tonight's The Night by Rod Stewart
1978 Shadow Dancing by Andy Gibb
1979 My Sharona by The Knack
1980 Call Me by Blondie
1981 Betty Davis Eyes by Kim Carnes
1982 Physical by Olivia Newton-John
1983 Every Breath You Take by The Police
1984 When Doves Cry by Prince
1985 Careless Whisper by Wham!
1986 That's What Friends Are For by Dionne and Friends
1987 Walk Like An Egyptian by The Bangles
1988 Faith by George Michael
1989 Look Away by Chicago

The skin of the sea
has nothing to tell me

I see her diving down
into herself,
past the bell-shaped
jelly fish who
toll for no one

& meaning to come back
In London, in the damp
of a London morning,
I see her sitting
folding & unfolding herself,
while blood
hammers like rain
on her heart's window.

This is her own country-
the sea, the rain,
& death half-rhyming
with her father's name.

Obscene monosyllable,
it lingers for a while
on the roof
of the mouth's house.

I stand here
savoring the sound,
like salt.

They thought your death
was your last poem,
a black book,
with gold-tooled cover
& pages the color of ash.

But I thought different
knowing now madness
doesn't believe
in metaphors.

When you begin to feel
the drift of continents
beneath your small poetic feet,
the sea's suck in each
atom of poisoned air,
you lost the luxury of simile.

Gulls call, broken shells,
the quarried coast

This is where America ends
dropping off
to the depths.

Death comes
differently in California
Marilyn stalled
in celluloid,
the fame stuck
& the light
burning through

Bronze to her platinum
Ondine, Ariel,
finally no one.

What could we tell you
after you dove down into
yourself
& were swallowed by your poems?


SAS

Black ship of night
sailing through the world
& the moon an orange slice
tangy to the teeth
of lovers who lie
under it,
sucking it.

somewhere there are palm trees,
somewhere the sea
bluely gathers itself up
& lets itself fall again
into green,

somewhere the spangles
of light on the ocean
dazzle the eyes,
but here in the midnight city,
the black ship of night
has docked
for a long, dark stay,
& even the citrus moon
with it's pockets of juice
cannot sweeten the dark.

then the snow begins
whirling over the Pole,
gathering force over Canada,
sprinkling the Great Lakes with sugar
which drowns in their deep black-cups;
it is drawn to the spires
of this wonderful place

& the flurries come
scampering at first,
lighthearted, crystalline white,
but finally
sucked into the city
as into a black hole
of space.

the sky is suddenly pink-
pink as in flesh; breasts,
babies' bottoms. night is
day; day is whiter than the
desert, the city stops like a heart;
bluejays dip & veer
& come to rest
under the snow-capped
water tanks
reminding us the
tundra of the soul
is always softer from
a booth inside the
coffee shop at
the edge of the universe.

SAS

My soul quickly tarries, spirit uneasy in sleep,
and stilled pen rest crooked upon the desk,
there is silence in the resounding echoes
of the memories becoming grotesque.

Yet upon the days birth I do wander,
fields of earthly scents confuse,
expansive blue oceans above
reflects lakes richest hues.

A sincere, sympathetic,
melancholy poet I am
waiting patiently,
impatient pen,

So the words
do now fade
as the pen
does fail.

Again.

~SAS~

Please don't let them poison you.
cheat and lie and make a crook of you..
Don't sell your soul..
Hold out for what you know, and what you believe..
There are children in your future and
cats and dogs and everything...

But right now you're throwing it all away..
for a wreckless game of russian roullete..
This is not the world you would have chosen
But sometimes you have to bite the bullet
And just suck it up and stay
Sometimes you have to cash in your chips
And let the cards fall where they may,,,

Don't let them lead you where you arent prepared to go..
You used to make up your own rules you used to steal the show..
There is nothing, you ever wanted that you could not attain..
You held the world in the palm of your hands and you can again..

Toss away your licence to kill..
you'll be killing everything..
You ever wanted.. portrayed and flaunted
Nothing left to win, nothing left to gain..

But disease and decay
Oh you'll come back again,.
sink and fall again..
but you are going
to be ok..

For as the sky turns dark and cloudy,
A bitter shade of grey...
Sunlight filters through blackened skies,
And takes the pain away..

And the rain comes down, and it cleanses everything..
And in the new day,
when it dawns on you,
gives you reason to stay..

And it will shake you up, and wake you up..
Melt all your fears away..

And you're gonna be ok..
Yeh you're gonna be ok,,
Just hang in there one more day..
One more day..
Banish clouds of grey.

Can you believe
your death gave birth
to me?

Live or die,
you said insistently.
you chose the second
& the first chose me.

I mourn you.

Is love the sugarcoated
poison that gets us in the
end?

We spoke of men
as often as poems,
We tried to legislate away
the need for love,
the back-seat sex
& earth caressing you.

Why did you do it in
your Mother's bed?
(I know, but also know
I had to ask.)

Our mother's get us
hooked, then leave us
cold, all full-grown
orphans hungering
for love.

You loved a man
who spoke "like greeting
cards."

"He pleasures me
well, but I can't talk
to him."

Poet, we share that awful need
to talk in bed. Love wasn't love
if we could only speak
in tongues.

& the intensity of unlove
increased until the motor,
the running motor could
no longer power the driver,

& you, poet, with miles
to go, would rather sleep.

Between the suicide pills
& giggly vodkas in Algonquin..
Between your round granny glasses
& your eyes blue as glaciers..
Between your stark mother-hunger
& your courage you knew...
you knew there was only
one poem, we all were writing.

No Competition..
the poem belongs to
everyone & God.
I jumped out of your
suicide car & into his arms.

Your death was mine,
I ate it & spit it out.

Now, I sit by the lake
writing to you.
I love a man who makes
my fingers ache.

His beard is disgustingly gray,
his eyes blue as the deepest ocean
& the amazing plum of his tongue
sweetens my brain.

He is like nobody since
I love him-
His manhood sinks
deep within my heart

I write to you off
somewhere in the clouds..
I tap the table like a spiritualist.

Sex is a part of death;
that much I know,
your voice was earth,
your eyes glacier blue,
your slender torso
& long American legs
drape across the huge
Midwestern sky.

I want to tell you
"Wait, don't do it yet,
Love is the poison,
but love eats death."

~SAS

sometimes, I find my self lost in a kind of chimerical bubble like the molokini-crescent-shaped-crater-maui-hawaii...,
I simultaneously see myself as the whole of it, or an infinitesimal throw of the dice, a frenzied ‘quanta-dance’,
my logical, empirical, and carefully trained mind is intentionally sent on sabbatical,
I find myself ‘rumba-ing’ to some melodious yet impudent refrain, of a fate yet amorphous, gyrating, driven yet unperturbed, the rumba being a vertical expression of a horizontal wish...[whatever the hay that means anyway, really??? lol, lol and lol again...]
I want to allow for a composite of diametrically opposing forces to, with wild abandon, give themselves over to this thing called:- verve or pizzazz, yet intertwined with élan, with a devil-may-care attitude of consequences..., embracing the jovial and the rakish..., leaving the lugubrious, responsibility-driven, caliginous, upright and uptight restraints of an ultra-disciplined mind behind, waaayyy behind...

oh, what sweet relief, oh what unspeakable joy, oh want wordless bliss that engenders...,
being one with the deepest passions,
being one with love,
being one with compassion,
being one with peace,
being one with eternity,
indeed, being one and in harmonious tune with the infinite...,
being One with Zero...

A Sea of Tears

The World is a sea full of tears

A no man’s land of troubled fears

Upon it’s roaring sea life’s journey

Striving upon tsunami waves high in the sky

To birth, to live, survive and ultimately die

Life’s adventures start at birth

The coin is tossed high up in the evolving sky

To be a no choice embryo

Developing into a amazing woman or a likewise guy

The World doth spin and we are tossed off

Makes one ponder ~ Why

Are we just one of Earth’s tears?

Created by the Pondering Poet

JimEee

lives bundled in boxes/
melodies of memories chime/

Dear Poet,

Where do I begin?
Now, moving in,
cartons on the floor,
the radio playing to bare walls,
picture hooks left abandoned
in the unsoiled squares where Monet's
hung proudly not so long ago.

Something reminding us
this is like all the other moving days;
finding the dirty ends of someone else's life,
a half eaten apple, melted candle wax,
lipstick stained "I love you" faded
on the bathroom mirror
things not preserved, yet never swept away
like fragments of disturbing dreams
we stumble on all day...

in ordering our lives, we discard them,
scrub clean the floorboards of this our home
lest refuse from the lives we did not lead
become in some strange frightening ways, our own.

We plan not to tolerate our fears- a year laid out
like rooms in a new house- our dusty wine glasses
rinsed off, vases no longer filled,
the bookshelves sagging with heavy
self-help books.

Seeing the room always as it will be,
we are content to dust and wait.
We will return here from the dark and silent
streets, arms full of poems and metaphors
eager to greet the spring and looking
for the good life we have made.

Yes, poet, now we plan, postponing,
pushing our lives forward into the future-
as if, when the room contains
us and all our treasured junk
we will have filled whatever gap it is
that makes us wander, discontented
from ourselves.

The room will not change:
a rug, queen Ann chair, or new coat of paint
won't make a difference:
our eyes are fickle
but we remain the same beneath
our freckles & suntans,
pale, frightened,
dreaming ourselves backward and
forward in time,
dreaming our dreaming selves.

I look forward, poet,
and I see myself look back.

I must close,
be well sweet poet,
be well and safe in your existence.

SAS