6 Tankas 021816

Like a tipped milk pitcher, or juicy fruit,  Tankas are fresh, today, only good in the season they are writ in.

 

 

6 Tankas 021816

 

Our grass has returned,

Snow quickly melting away

On a warm day, yet

No crocus shoots through the mud,

My two lips wait for Spring

Amaryllis blooms,

Pink antebellum hoop skirts,

Let me lift your hems

To know if girls walk on legs

Or on pistils may you glide?

Gay flowers are burnt

Under the brilliant Sun,

Cheated out of Spring

I could not bear next Winter,

Nature owes us all this much

House finches chatter,

And not near the feeder now,

Squabbling over nooks

Under gutters, in the bush,

Though more cold weather’s to come

 

Town Square, the Mayor,

We all bow as she walks by,

Imperturbable,

Until the mockingbird swoops

With sharp bare claws at her hat

Pancakes on Tuesday,

Ashes Wednesday at noon,

Mardi Gras headaches,

Pretty girls, keep your shirts on,

There’s more to come than cheap beads

 

 

 

Advice from Uncle Ken

The picture used here is from 'Ohio Impromptu,' a Samuel Beckett play I saw off Broadway in 1983. In it a man sits beside himself speaking of youthful things he can't reconcile.
It is not the inspiration for what follows, I just thought it apt to use. Beckett won't mind, he died years ago and so has no regrets now.

Advice from Uncle Ken

When I was 17, elders told me of life,
  My aunt, my parents friends, did advise me kindly,
"Son, study something that will make you a career,’
"Save while you’re young, have kids while you’re young, and marry,"
  So much begrudged advice I now wish I’d taken,
Would I could return and meet me, at 17…?
  "Hi, I’m Ken, related to you in the future,"
  Then "May I give you some advice?" And tell him,
"Uh, thanks Uncle Ken from the future, I'll do that,
  Just as soon as my teenage hormones decrease to,
  Like, where yours are, Grampy." And I’d walk away,
I can’t fault the kid, I did the same at his age,
Thus youthful follies become our folie’s a’deux,
In the evening we’ll soon call our second childhood

The Junco

I think I've posted another poem called 'The Junco' somewhere, but after seeing them outside this morning it just seemed easier to write another one than to bother to look that up.

The Junco

...is not a bird
  who abides in cold snows below
  or the gray skies above,
He is of them,

Watch,
  they are calved of snow and sky,
White snow jumps
  atop skinny twig stilts,
Sooty clouds then condescend to cap them
  with their ethereal fingerprints,
Drawing on them faces and
  shadow fluttering wings to blow about with,
They are incipient Winters’ will incarnate

Yes,
  summers find them up the hills,
  in secretive nesting flocks where
Cool squeaks and icy trills define
  the boundaries of migrating Falls’ destiny
  and warm Springs’ brooding hatch

Between which comes mid-Winter,
  when blizzards chill all ill,
For then you find them
  at your window sill,
Shelling the sunflower seeds you just put out,
  for the care of seasons birds,
When the sight will melt your icy heart,
   for who minds should Winter take some too?

Pretty Girls

As a guy I felt kinda awkward posting this one.
But you know, when you think about it, well, really, yeah!

Pretty Girls

Had I been smarter in High School,
  I’d have stayed with you,
We’d have gone to local colleges,
  commuter dating on weekends,
  getting married after graduation,
I’d find a job at IBM or in the packing plant
  like most guys from our class,
Where after work there’d be time for my writing jones,
And on weekends or after you got home from work
  you would sew dresses and trade patterns
  with your coven of stitch ‘n bitch girl friends,
Then once every few months we’d stage a fashion show,
So you and they could parade like you love,
And I could enjoy all those boldly colored bolts
  artfully complimenting all those legs and arms and breasts and hairdo’s
  and Oh My God! That jewelry !
And this all because I realized,
  I love it when pretty girls dress up

Next, together we would have had a daughter
  who would sing Disney tunes
  over and over again in her kiddee car seat,
On her way to birthday parties, or to romp in school plays,
And on weekends or after school,
  she’d wear a pink princess dress with panty hose fairy wings,
  waving a magic tinfoil star wand,
And you and I, we would just overload on
  the precocious altruism of a moppets mind made manifest, 
And all this because I realized,
  I love it when pretty girls dress up

Then one Saturday, she’ll put on her long white gown,
  with the veil, holding flowers,
Standing before her best friends wrapped tight in fuchsia satin,
  all bound up with those too sizable silk bows in back,
Because she will have met a guy in High School
  who knew it doesn’t get any better than this,
Who didn’t keep trying endlessly to find himself,
  and who didn’t wait thirty five years to find you again,
And all this because he realizes,
   he loves it when pretty girls dress up

Pictures from Miami Beach

(On this one I offer no preamble or explanation)

Pictures from Miami Beach

It’s that time again, with the mid Winter sun
  high before the start of March,
When a friend of mine posts pictures from Miami Beach,
  on Facebook, for the friends that it may reach

 Blue water and well warmed sand right,
  aqua and coral art deco hotels left,
And bracketing the vanishing point
  he and his friend of the week, seated cheek to cheek,
Who, though charming, ought not be described as a girl

My view of this scene is modernity made bucolic by the internet,
So successful it brings to my senses that old olfactory memory,
  a reminiscent scent, which, despite the added hint of coconut sunscreen,
  takes me back to that one weenie, that one last late one, still on the grill,
Which overheated by old coals (rather than the Florida sun)
  is the last remnant memory of Summer’s July weekend cookout,

You know the one, while forbidden, the temptation rushes the blood,
  for if not overdone you know they are the tastiest,
Um-hum!
  and I’ve been there, had them, and not always between the buns,
Over the years I’ve gagged and choked down my fair share, and with relish,
  of burnt dogs, so alike the both of you in the Orange Juice sun,

Hello Miami Beach friends,
For from here in the isolation of my snow surrounded Waltham home
  I feel for you only envy,
Because, despite my straight Yankee views,
  I find, that like that last textured hot dog,
    I enjoy being well seasoned,
      and a little dark skinned too

4 Tankas 020316

Wrote these 2 days ago.
I've been appreciating medieval Japanese Tankas lately, in books given to me last Xmas. I'm still in the "Spring" section" (ancient Japanese always organized their collections by season, starting with the lunar New Year), which is when they went mental for Cherry blossoms. Hence the influence.
I could talk Tankas all day.

4 Tankas 020316

To see boughs blossom

Reminds me of your bosom

And lips I left home,

To know you are not here makes

The Spring Sun so cold and bare

　

Under the Moonlit Sky

White blossoms mock your wedding

Dress, hung on a rack

Without you in it, the Moon

Sees us both, and laughs, and cries

　

Here Spring blossoms bloom

So bold, their aroma floats

As a mist blown East,

I lay my kiss upon
It's cloud, so you may catch it　

 

 

 

White fruit tree petals

On Main street, the wind throws you

Careless in the road,
Makes you hustle back and forth
Like Rat Race Men who are numb

 

 

 

 

The Smoke of Seasoned Wood

You know that special friend you had in High School, who then after High School you thought you could have been a better friend for, and then like 35 years later you meet up with her again?
What would you want to say?

The Smoke of Seasoned Wood

Then I courted as if in among Fall’s fruiting apple trees,
  Where white and Spring pink blossoms, having bloomed,
  Once so twiggy and spare,
Then burgeoned as if to pop their bras,
  (Bras being arms, of course, in French),
And many bowed, ready at the word
  To unbutton their maiden yield

First, it was you, so round and red cheeked,
  Who fell first upon my virgin basket,
Had I mistaken hard cider for the sweet, 
  I could not have become more drunk,
For delirious were your lips, delicious your first kiss,

But I, mid the fruiting groves of these buxom debs,
  A lustful boy with care unchained,
Could not as should a faithful swain refrain,
  And I reached out for another’s bough,
And I careless tossed your love in vain

Since then the years have passed,
My orchards have all been felled for firewood,
  And as time has hung me in the smokehouse of regret
At long last by their seasoned smoke, am I cured,
Though I have known the cider of many sweet lips,
  Some fresh and cool, some hard, some craft,
The sweetest was your loving draught