Poems & Songs
Poem for Fish Crew
This is a poem or a spoken word.
It requires only that you listen, and for me to speak and be heard.
Down in the valleys, at creek bottom,
the brush and the bushes present their special problems.
We fight through or around, over wet rocks and slippery ground.
When we make it to the top of reach,
it is hard not to screech
with screams of excitement.
Between the steep banks and full of life greens,
we can finally breathe.
But, like Kobe once said, “job’s not finished!”
Though, fortunately, it mostly is.
We label and take photos and when we walk back down,
we stay focused, counting wood and chasing shadows
of logs beneath the surface.
Sometimes I sleep on our long drives, other times I think of more popular rhymes.
Ones with double entendres and exact syllable counts.
Ones like:
My PIBO so integrated like Newton,
My chain so icy, it be lookin' Aleutian.
My beans is black, no spices, no cumin.
Yellin’ out numbers, no problem, no Houston.
Do you hear me? Yeah, that’s good elocution.
Great data, no problema, sin confusión.
Come August, I spend my days in the office,
attempting to answer questions from callers
who hate when I am honest:
“I don’t know, can I put you on hold?”
I hotspot to my laptop but mostly I pray and hope God knows.
Truth be told, there are moments in there where I lose hope,
Moments where it feels I’ve taken the wrong road.
In the end, though, I do know the night is darkest before the dawn.
The hardest lessons, my father tells me, are the ones self-taught.
Or so I thought; don’t crash your bike seems pretty simple, internal or not.
Anyway, what I mean to say, if I mean to say anything at all,
Is that I’ll forget about the data from each transect interval,
but, when the day is done, and summer closes into fall,
But it will be hard, or impossible, to forget y’all.
some Questions (from Frost and me)
do you see what i do?
will you smile if i do?
when autumn comes and the golden wind reveals itself, will you catch the glimmer in my eyes as you once did?
if energy is eternal, how long will you hold me under your spell?
when jess williamson sings that "hell is a real place", i will agree for i have been, but then is heaven real too?
and so i ask you... beneath the yellow maples softly set with snow, when your path diverges, which direction will you go?
might you spin a yarn, stake one end and venture down untrodden walks toward death?
or no? for knowing how way leads on to way, i'd be hesitant to say that you'd be back again.
Poem for Spring
White petals bursting,
Stretching out from long winter slumbers,
waving as you pass.
Spring is here! They cry.
I jump
I scream
I shout
At last! Shadows and golden hues
Again on egg-white walls.
And joining the purple crocuses
In fits of joy, my tears do fall.
Time and Space
I don’t know what to tell you. No, I don’t know what to say.
Just lie down at my feet, and sing for all those who have prayed.
Moonlight on the water, moonlight on your face.
Dying here tomorrow, and still dying here today.
I’ll be reaching for your hand, while you yell I am insane.
Crying by myself, crying all alone. Screaming out for God, while tears are falling from my nose.
Too much time and space for me and all these worldly things.
Too much time alone for me despite all the peace it brings.
Go tell it on the mountain, where freedom never rings.
If He is always watching, always taking notes,
Should we live for Him? Or is it all a joke?
My bed is slowly creaking with the hymns of yesteryear.
Your Father is in Heaven, drinking a tallboy of Rainer.
When he calls down to you, will you listen or will you shout?
I no longer hear the music, only the simple scream of doubt.
I want to love them all the same, I want to love them all the while.
I want to tell them all these things, honest as a child.
Do they hear the music? Do they still sing along?
Is their death a quiet one? Should I mourn them with a song?
Too much time and space for me and all these worldly things.
Too much time alone for me despite all the peace it brings.
Go tell it on the mountain, where freedom never rings.
If He is always watching, always taking notes,
Should we live for Him? Or is it all a joke?
a Day in Paris
I wrote ten haiku
just for you; reading them now,
tell me, will they do?
Disembark distressed,
sleep disrupted, then stolen.
On the move again.
Bananas, peanuts,
pictures snapped from frozen hands.
Tabouli for lunch.
Bolted metal chairs.
Sitting, watching, thinking: I’m
freezing all the while.
I long for sun and
warmth and golden rays of you.
Send some if you can.
Phone halfway charged up,
back to the City of Love,
hungry for it all.
Beggars here resigned,
stomachs on wet stone, no signs.
Coin(s) in empty cups.
Under gelid sky,
marching the Champs-Élysées,
fucking Christ! I’m cold.
Feet feeling every
cobblestone through my worn soles,
a weeping willow,
the Eiffel Tower
bathed in gold, I think of you.
And of your warm soul.