Poetry Window Poem of the Week

Introduction to our poetry window, featuring for the next year the selected poems of Johnny H., an East Village poet currently waiting for a publisher. We like his work and are sure that many of you will as well. The poetry window is a real window, at the front of our store. The poems are in a well lighted place and can be read at any time. Not a bad destination if you can’t sleep at night. You can send comments to poetjohnnyh@yahoo.com     Poem of the week:

                 Worries

It seems they are always searching
Looking for the right size opening
To push their way through.
Search as they may
Even sighting relief
In the canopy above
What looked like blue sky
Was only a plug.
They move on
Peer talking, nail tapping
It keeps them lubricated
Waiting for the opportunity.

The following poems are Poems of the Week from our archives of Johnny H poems:

     

     Shelves

In our lives
We pass by
Giving little thought
Simple grey photo of Uncle Ed
Aunt Camilla
Standing there together
Dust on dust
Could it be we move through
Just watching the motes?

A visitor will ask
Who is that and what is that
Anachronistic novelty
On the shelf below
A crest of gold
A family shield
I ask them back
Anachronistic
Time which brought this here
Will pass along with it.
One day the final mote
Of our family name
And yours too
Will waft away.

Long ago
Swimming up from dark to light
We told ourselves
You must leave this house
Discover who you are
Seems longer ago,
Perhaps the irony of it,
Coming back late at night
Not bothering to turn on a light
Walking past.

 

          In a Heartbeat

When I last saw a naked girl
She was wearing a holter monitor
I asked her what it was for
She said for her EKG
So what am I supposed to do?
Nothing, it’s automatic.
I told her eyes that I was not.
It’s for my fibrillation, she replied,
Would you like to feel? 

        Other People

There are people
Who make life seem so easy
You see them at fairs
Walking about in proper dress
With proper children
Not a spot of mustard on anyone.

Their desk was next to yours
Both at school and at work
Always so calm.
Calm is an allotment
Some people are faster than others
They used it up long ago.

On the plane
Seat 11C caught the eye
Of the sharpie across the way
And she started talking to him
Just like in the movies.
You saw them together at baggage
And at car rental
Not a Biscoff crumb
Along their fronts.

Your children act ungrateful
They only give you love.
The dog likes to walk in the rain
And wants to be blow-dried.
When you’re all worn out
He rests that big muzzle on your lap.
The wife
You have 25 years
With the same person.
Sometimes you feel her looking at you
You remember back to day one
And the first minute.
There are poems you write
Forgetting why you started.

 

           Creep

I have a flash-bulb memory
Of the creep at the side-show
Inside the dunking booth
Rolling down off his perch
And ripping apart the chain link
The water spilling forth
The water itself reaching the crowd
Well before the creep
The crowd scattering
With creep smiles
Still wearing on otherwise perfect faces
Me grabbing up my terrified kids
Booking it toward the subway home
Feeling the hot creep breath
Up and down my back
I did not say anything to you
I yelled to the air in front of me
I was in sympathy
For you and your predicament
Your life-long struggle with inner sloth
Your undiagnosed spectrum syndrome
The ones who said the words
Are the ones you should be chasing.

 

    Rectification

How can I be inspired
By she with no loose ends
Leaving me here at Pluto’s side
To divine and probe
And turn to muddied words,
What spills from the tea press
After a long night.

Tomorrow eve
Beneath the sheets
Negative to positive
I will be sure to charge you
Jolt you back to musedom.

 

     Adolescence

Mark the calendar
Count down the days
Till the tree reaches your window
For your escape.
In the meantime
Bake bread
Bake extra for the world
For the world will judge you
Believe me when I tell you
No one can resist
Shrouds of rye
Taking over the street
They will be waiting to see
Just who that may be
Working the controls.

 

      State Park

Human gaze welcome
With conditions
At the Other’s gated nation
3 buffalo in a 3 acre pen
A waft of human breeze
Meets a simmering wave of heat
Jumpstarting the apparitions
Tilt forth to cross the Serengeti
Visions of marshmallows.

Wave crashes in at the tourist stand
Buffalo rock back and forth
Stop sideways, flatten.
Two dimensional shadow pelts
Walls of dusty knotted hides
Subdue the infiltrators.
A point of ultra dark, a side eye,
A ruminating iris
Looks not at the bag of Jet-puffed
But at you.

Tourist gleeful shouts
The door of acceptance is wide open
Even the chain link is but a door stop
You have the perfect bath soap,
Have practiced a lathering tune
Seneca comes to mind
Your master has the same power over you
As do you your slave.
Love
You comb the knots out from your mind
One marshmallow at a time.

A scolding snout
Inflated head
Shoots a braying stem
Peace treaty
Puffy treats
Fire water
Peyote
Grassland spirits
Epigenetic change
“As it affects the American Buffalo”
Gloria mundi on furry billboard
An advertisement
A bicentennial celebration,
The one eye the dollar bill eye
Certainly why not a state park
For a commemoration.

 

     Alone Nest

Loneliness is not an island
Nor is it a book.
It is not something that sneaks up,
Descends on you overnight,
Follows you home from a party.
It is not the absence of people.
Even when your dog dies, that is something else.
Loneliness did not start at age ten
Or when you left for college.
If you want to know loneliness,
One day, wearing a headlamp,
Track down a bat
Sleeping on the ceiling of a cave.
He is hanging there in the dark
Next to others hanging there.
This was predetermined.
They were born to hang.
If you feel lonely
Confront it
Welcome it home,
Party or no.

 

      Lemon Tree

Where did you come from
Lemonade stand?
Who are your children?
What a fabulous idea
Two stools and a board
A flowered cloth
Flowered lemonade.
This is the future, they say
And you are already there.
Five cents, I certainly shall
Freckled cookies
Still warm, you say.
I will take two
Yes, a napkin please.
How did you choose this tree
Of all the trees everywhere?
You say it chose you
I believe this true.
What tree would not want
The future beneath its leaves?

 

       Searching the Dust

I wish I could say
You will make it to adulthood
You and you and you
I wish I was better
At knowing.
Unfortunately
I can only issue prescriptions
Fair to tell you
That do unto others
Is weak to say the least.
I am more likely to tell you
Do not become addicted
Keep your eyes open
And your ears hearing
Gather others with you
Create
Do not be afraid
To see and hear the truth
The answers are not in there
They are out there.
Though the problem of man
May not have a solution
Realistically
It will never be solved
Within yourself
Within there is no without
Without is from where you came.

 

                       Toaster Poem

They said this was going to be easy
That you could write a poem about a pop-up toaster
Maybe that is because they were sitting at the table
Trying to think what to write about.
Not me I tried
The toaster kept going in and out of my head
I don’t think even if I had one
That I could write about it
Or any kind of shiny object

Sitting there.

Call me Cassandra if you like
That my abilities lie
In seeing around corners
And sneaking up on subject matter
And bopping it on their heads
Taking muskrats home
And frying in old fashioned skillets
And presenting to you

To savage.

One day I will lie in bed
At the nursing home
And look around
For something to apprehend
And listen to Fox News
And sniff over at my roommate
For material,
Savor (better: savoir, to know) the pale peas,
Pet the stuffed animal they gave me
And hope that someone

Brings me a toaster for Christmas.

 

                     Betweenness

A butterfly flapping its wings
In the nineteenth century
Is what brought us here today
To repose side by side
And together share
The news that your pregnancy test
Was positively definitely
The bluest blue it could be.

When we repaired
That palimpsest day
To the cafe
In the Metropolitan Museum of Art
To discuss the Romantics
We did not know
That your love of Coleridge
And mine of Wordsworth
Would be the perfect clash
To give rise to the Modern
The following weekend.

Our discussion
Of how great it is
That poetry no longer rhymes
Or at least doesn’t have to
Was an excellent segue
Out of any preconceived notion
That I should have to impress you
Or you me.
And so from there on out
We began the simple process
The natural one yet so often elusive,
That To and Fro
Call and response
Always part of the natural world
Bird to bird
Bird to flock
Cell to cell,
And in the best of times
Human to human
You to me
And me to you
The highest social state of man,
Called betweenness,
For lack of a word.
It’s something one should try with his neighbor.

That day in the Met cafe
We could not have been further apart
Had one god laid claim to you
And another to me.
However,
There was a hum,
A primordial air,
I can hear it now if I try,
On the bus
On the way home.
It was not the bus
It was not me.
I rode home that day
A long chord playing in my head
That did not shift to another
For one whole week.

I have more of the song now
And so do you.
Mine is always here.
The chords may shift,
At times seem weak
Certainly it ebbs and flows.
Our species is one of thought and act
That’s just the way we are
Instinct is fallow at our side.
There is a time, though,
When we connect
That changes all of it.
To you out there
The luckiest of us
Knowing the same delight
From day to day
We announce forthright
Our miracle to you
Between us we have another.

 

                        Just Another Story

They were children together
Boylike he ran over her doll with his car.
She tried not to cry.
He helped to prop up Suzie
She forgave him and blamed the car

And stopped taking rides on the bumper seat.

 In school, she sat in the back of the class
He told the other boys
I know her from our block on Main Street
The last row is quiet

She likes poems.

At sixteen
She was the first to get her license
Eyes on the road

Listening as he told her where to take them.

At twenty he visited her dorm
She fixed food on a hot plate
A simple recipe
He thanked her

She was pleased to watch him eat.

When he went into the army
She took him to the bus.
They lost touch for years
She settled in with a man much like herself
In that he also read poetry
He was in law school.
Once she remembered the incident with the doll
And told him about it
What was your friend’s name he asked
The doll’s name was Suzie, she replied.

That kind of just stayed where it was.

Because she did not want to marry the lawyer
She moved on
Because she wasn’t enough in love with him
And her mother had died and left her the house
Several states away.
One day while baking
He knocked on the door.
They told me you had moved back to town he said
I just wanted to see.
He was seated on her vinyl kitchen chair.
I was worried that the war would have changed you
Please stay till the cookies are done
Longer, if you like
You are just how I remember.

You are too.

The war
It was a war.
You don’t have to talk about it.

It wasn’t you, anyway.

Each began a sentence
Do You Think
And could not finish
They realized it was the first time

Either ever had a problem with words.

Their towns were thirty miles apart.
On and off they saw people
Mates that never seemed quite right

Even with the usual forgivenesses.

He went to rehab and succeeded
She had a child with someone she did not love
One night, the child with a sitter, she drove past his house.
There was no car in the drive
It was the same night he drove by hers

And saw only the sitter’s Datsun.

When the child was a young woman
She mentioned Suzie
And told her the story.
What happened to the boy

What was his name?

There was a funeral
They both had to attend.
He was a pallbearer
She wept into a cloth napkin.
After the words he approached her.
I’m better now, he said.
I’ve always been on your side was her reply
Almost saying
Wanting to say
At your side

Not looking at him.

Several years went by.
When he became ill
And the doctors told him
She was the first one he called
She flew back from a visit with her daughter
Julia sends her wishes
How do you feel
Right now how do you feel?
Tell me first if you are staying
This time.

 

                  State Park

Human gaze welcome
With conditions
At the Other’s gated nation
3 buffalo in a 3 acre pen
A waft of human breeze
Meets a simmering wave of heat
Jumpstarting the apparitions
Tilt forth to cross the Serengeti
Visions of marshmallows.
Wave crashes in at the tourist stand
Buffalo rock back and forth
Stop sideways, flatten.
Two dimensional shadow pelts
Walls of dusty knotted hides
Subdue the infiltrators.
A point of ultra dark, a side eye,
A ruminating iris
Looks not at the bag of Jet-puffed
But at you.

Tourist gleeful shouts
The door of acceptance is wide open
Even the chain link is but a door stop
You have the perfect bath soap,
Have practiced a lathering tune
Seneca comes to mind
Your master has the same power over you
As do you your slave.
Love
You comb the knots out from your mind
One marshmallow at a time.

A scolding snout
Inflated head
Shoots a braying stem
Peace treaty
Puffy treats
Fire water
Peyote
Grassland spirits
Epigenetic change
“As it affects the American Buffalo”
Gloria mundi on furry billboard
An advertisement
A bicentennial celebration,
The one eye the dollar bill eye
Certainly why not a state park
For a commemoration.

 

               Waiting for Us to Leave

Should have packed she said
No time he said
What about the kids
They’re dead
I knew that.

What about the poets?
No need.  We have the poetry
What about the artists?
They died.
I mean the art.
Oh it goes on you know.

Why are they looking at us like that?
They are birds, they always look like that.
Like they are waiting for something.
Keep walking.
Hold your tongue.

 

                           Speedway

A yellow flag was out on the third race
When I noticed the family
Along the edge
Seven rows back from the walkway
They shared yellow popcorn
A container they had brought from home
A flour canister, red,
The square white lid sitting between the father’s
legs.
The lull got others to their feet
A stout couple with numbered jerseys
A lone old man with a railroad cap
The scarlet-cheeked woman with the apricot poodle
Who had said hi to me coming in
Thinking I was somebody else.
My partner nudged my side
Then glanced over at me
And followed my eyes
Asked me what I was thinking.
Nothing yet, I answered honestly.
What’s the yellow flag for, she asked.
I don’t know
Something on the track I suppose.

Just then the woman reached across the boy for
some popcorn
When the man turned to her
I saw that his hair was not a crew cut
But a flat top
A long ago hair style
One that marines and high school principals used to
wear
As did my stepfather
Who I had not thought about
In maybe forty years.
The yellow flag whipped away
And the green swung toward hell
The revving motors seemed to pause for an instant
Then the harmonic pitch of the moment
Birthed the rise of all,
Clanging life,
Like the judgement of an MRI machine.
The gasoline was sweet in the air
A one to three ratio
An evocation woke the loudspeaker horns,
The apocalyptic screaming
Echoing finally across the way
The words understood by everyone and no one,
Demonstrating the limitation of the human tongue.

 

                            The Easy Way

Thirty years later
You are still whispering
The thirty year old problem
To one another
And only at night.
Considering this,
There is no chance
It will ever go away.
Instead, the two of you
Will open the blinds
The waning mornings as well
And let the light grow
Into your faded room
Instead of peering out
Like you would have
Were you not so afflicted.
In your favor,
You will let that light in
Because you have to,
Because you have the little bit of hope
That you can return
Blessed by the Anunnaki
To thirty years and a day
And pick up your destined rhythm.

A different thirty years,
One in the world,
Might have had you, say,
Divorcing like normal people,
Torn apart by the customary winds
That afflict the rest of us.
Or you could have had children
Or who knows,
You might have stayed together
In that common universe
And had people over for dinner,
Sitting in your parlor
Pulling rows of puzzle pieces,
The sky to the ground at the horizon
As you throttled not down, but up
And headed for an old age of peace.

So here you are,
And no one knows you exist
Except for the tax people
Who still ring your doorbell
And maybe a clerk at the corner store
If there has been a consistent one
Addressing you over the years
As you pick up whatever it is you need
To supplement your garden
And the chickens
Long descended from the pair
You had when you began
Your concealment
Over an issue
That would have passed by
Like the blackflies and aphids
Sneaking past your chickens,
Had you the fortitude…
No, not that,
But the simple acceptance
Of a fate that would blend
As all fates do
Into a diminishing
Sense of importance.

But it is the grit of mankind,
The lack of which,
That caused you,
She and he,
Whispering,
To take the easy way
And travel your ramp to eternity
In the presence of another
Whose only existence now
Is a mirror for you.

 

Upon Climbing Mount Zion

We stood toward the rear.
Pairing was mostly attitudes
The proclaimed master hikers setting out first
The last to leave, the introverts
Which put us somewhere in the middle.

Pushing through the early grade
Carrying our walking sticks
Under crook’d elbows
Our anticipation fed by the forest sounds,
As were our thoughts,
Coming and going with the breeze.
We were early Greek thespians
Opening to one another
Until we were no longer partners and wind
But ingredients
Baked in our pursuit.

The stream flowed for a time into the mountain
Moving with us as we walked,
Changing though
Different moment to moment.
It had carved the road bed below
Long before there was a road
Long before there was an Appian Way in Rome
Or Natives here, or engineers.
The water at last begged its leave,
Directing toward a lighthouse somewhere
With no boats to warn.
The flow and jettisons babbled at us for hours
As streams do, their’s being the original language,
Our own puny words apprehended
During the last seconds before midnight
On a hypothetical clock.

Small rodents and amphibians taunted
Flicking across our path
Sometimes illusional
The delusion our own
Humility will center you.
One was but a glint in the sun
Another was a black shadow

Sodom faded from our thoughts
The path turned with the rise of the mountain
The sun was not keeping up with the dew on the bushes
Earthly scented leaves reached out
We were on and off
Refreshed and bothered.
Were we an invading force
Given a tourist welcome?
We tried but could not decipher the chorus.

The leaves were several shades of green
Bright to dark
On occasion a man-made color would flash through,
People who had spent the night
Or many nights
Were coming off the mountain.
What was it like,
The passage back?
Incongruity led into insane thinking.
Was it possible for one to remain at the top
And cite human necessity
Over the wash of a rescue copter?
Who are we, anyway?

The grade began its assault
One found oneself ceding more and more.
Our voices withered,
Yielding respectfully to the resident quiet.
Our sticks thrashed lightly at the brush
The air was thinner,
The cool of elevation staying the sun.

We struck upon an odd cement path,
Wide and long,
Washed white yet dark
Our feet seeing the texture,
Our eyes refusing,
Trying instead to fill in for fallen trees.
We had been warned
By the descending
To prepare ourselves
For the insult to the mountain
By men and mules before us
To prove that we as well as nature
Were carvers of roads
Herbaceous stems worked cracks at the edges.
We pushed on with animal minds,
Feeble atonement.

We drew a map which included the sun.
Our plan, having been the summit,
Evolved.
Below us the valley had spread across the planet,
Green and mist as far as we could see.
No more towers on the horizon,
No more scars anywhere.
Our consensus arrived on a high note,
Though not sure what the song meant,
We slowed and considered.
I am not certain who first made the suggestion
Or the reason.
Pointless to try the summit today.
Just ahead was a ledge right for our tents.
We walked there and sat for a long time.

The valley hollowed in the setting sun
Our own fire was brief,
To warm our food.
Change affected each of us
We spoke quietly
And waited for answers,
Which came from one another
Or just as easily the woods,
A thrashing about,
The Calypso of this hill
Unable to grant us refuge.
It was that of which we spoke
As well as the valley.
We went back ten years
Then thirty
The whole of our lives.
As children we had been anxious
And had never understood why.
We realized that all men and women before us
Had been anxious as well.
It was with that reckoning
We decided to forgo the summit
And in the morning
Return to our kin and deeds.