I had planned to do a part two with more instrumental pieces, but my heart is sad today. It is National Poetry Month and I had planned to showcase different poets off and on. I hope it’s okay with Jack that I showcase him today.
My stint in the local poetry scene was brief, but I enjoyed the time spent with these creative people more than I can say. I do miss some of the poets I got to know and wish I had more time for the readings. Now I’ll have to make time. It’s hard to make weeknights in the city with all the school activities. Galileo’s looks like a great place Galileo ::: Official Site :::
Hearing a poet read his work aloud, hearing the angst, the joy, the pauses… the sometimes, outright in-your-face anger this snarky writer gets all worked up over… there’s nothing like it. And they are a friendly, accepting bunch. I’m not much of a poet, but they encouraged me to get up and read until I finally did. I was so nervous that first night, I shook like crazy, read too many poems– a couple that shouldn’t have been read. Ever. I think I even scared away one of their long term members because she never came back to that location. (g)
The one person who never failed to encourage me, who each and every time asked me what I had to be afraid of was Jack Craddock. I only knew him about a year but his book of poetry, Faces, sits by my computer and some of the pages are smudged and torn from countless readings. They called him Grandfather Poet and he was still inviting poets to his house for critique sessions the last I heard. I went to a few of those critique sessions and I’m not sure when I enjoyed a writing session more. I have a few poems he really liked, one I published here under Anger Writing. He liked one of mine called Monolith– I’ll post it it another day. I had planned to start going to those sessions again. Plans to write more poems when I finish this writing project or that one. Life happens while we make plans, right?
I hope it would be okay with him if I shared some of his. You’ll see why I love his work. Picking two was nearly impossible. Jack died the day before yesterday and I know how much his family, the metropoets, are hurting right now. www.metropoet.com I knew him a short time, but because I read his work so often, I’ll miss him too. There will be a reading memorial in Hafer Park Monday. I’ll be there.
The Unclean Reign
Showers of words wash over me
But they do not cleanse.
They are the words of self-imposed limitations,
Hung up on the harshness of a brittle brevity.
They have ignored the brilliance of complexity
Disciplined into rhythmic patterns.
They rely on the smallness of minds
Locked into profane prisons.
How sad.
They feed on bones and ignore the fleshy meat
Of a language rich in endless metaphor and simile
That engenders endless chances at rhyme
For a never-ending time.
Harsh and cold and cruel,
Their images are so brittle
They cannot be softened with their acid spittle.
What prompts such thinking?
Of what are they afraid,
These vendors of obscenities?
Or is it guilt that fires mans’ curses,
Guilt that will not let them look into the mirrors
Wherein the soul looks back and tells the secret truths
That each of us would hide?
Or do they, like most of us,
Think they are thinking
When in fact they are but skimming the surface
Of what they see as a new thought.
And while all generalizations are false
I leave you with this one:
The majority is always wrong.
Black Butterflies Too Early
It was not yet spring but it was warm.
So warm that wild violets
Were already leafed in velvety green,
In contrast to the rusty brown
Of winter’s fallen leaves.
And the birds. Goldfinches
Had donned their courting colors
And it was not yet spring.
Such warmth, such responses,
Called to mind other Sooner springs
When nature’s conduct made new patterns,
When spring came funny those years,
Suddenly, on its own feet,
Not off the winds of winter,
No snow, no ice, little cold,
And with its coming came a raft
Of strange phenomena —
Dust, heat, blowing sand —
And I thought I was a child again,
In the thirties, in the Dust Bowl days,
When spring came funny then, too,
With dust and heat and blowing sand,
When the wells went dry,
When the fields flew away
In great, grinding clouds of grit,
Black and brown, blotting out the sun,
Grinding its way inside your houses,
You clothes, your minds, until
The think-gears came to a stop
And black butterflies, in their blue-dot wings,
Came too early and perished in the heat.