Poetry Fridays: Volume 3

Four “Addresses”

by Peter Davis

POEM ADDRESSING BOYS, AGE 5

This poem can turn invisible and it can beat up bad guys! When people read this poem it is like a laser shooting bad guys right in the stomach! This poem knocks bad guys on their bottoms! And if you need a force field you can get one from Dr. Defense who lives in this poem and makes a number of bad-guy-fighting tools and weapons. Sometimes giant robot bad guys try to kill this poem by bopping it on the head, but this poem doesn’t allow that and sends ninjas and wizards out to reverse time and destroy the robots. Dr. Defense jumps up and kicks everyone in the face and he, like, flies through a window and then, like, this poem explodes!

POEM ADDRESSING PEOPLE WHO ARE TIRED,
HUNGRY, OR HORNY

These things can wait. This is a very good poem and you’d be very myopic to lose sight of this beauty simply because some of your baser needs are asserting themselves. I’ll keep this short, but you should exercise some control, okay? Stay with me here. Allow this poem to carry you beyond yourself, transcending your mortal flesh as you wed yourself with the potentially infinite.

POEM ADDRESSING PEOPLE WITH CERTAIN EXPECTATIONS ABOUT POETRY THAT ARE NOT FULFILLED IN THIS POEM

Change

POEM ADDRESSING PRISONERS

How this found you I don’t know, but this is a good event, a good omen. Not because it’s mystical or mysterious, but because you’re actually reading this poem and I have actually written it. I know that this poem is a sort of prison too, but it’s a much, much more beautiful one.

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The Darker Sooner

by Catherine Wing

Then came the darker sooner,
came the later lower.
We were no longer a sweeter-here
happily-ever after. We were after ever.
We were farther and further.
More was the word we used for harder.
Lost was our standard-bearer.
Our gods were fallen faster,
and fallen larger.
The day was duller, duller
was disaster. Our charge was error.
Instead of leader we had louder,
instead of lover, never. And over this river
broke the winter’s black weather.

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Lime Light Blues

by Kevin Young

I have been known
to wear white shoes
beyond Labor Day
I can see through
doors & walls
made of glass.
I'm in an anger
encouragement class.
When I walk
over the water
of parking lots
car doors lock-
When I wander
or enter the elevator
women snap
their pocketbooks
shut, clutch
their handbags close.
Plainclothes
cops follow me in stores
asking me to holler
if I need any help.
I can get a rise-
am able to cause
patrolmen to stop
& second look-
Any drugs in the trunk?
Civilian teens
beg me for green,
where to score
around here.
When I dance,
which is often,
the moon above me
wheels its disco lights-
until there's a fight.
Crowds gather
& wonder how
the spotlight sounds-
like a body
being born, like the blare
of car horns
as I cross
the street unlooking,
slow. I know all
a movie needs
is me
shouting at the screen
from the balcony. From such
heights I watch
the darkness gather.
What pressure
my blood is under.

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The Contrariness of the Mad Farmer

by Wendell Berry

I am done with apologies. If contrariness is my
inheritance and destiny, so be it. If it is my mission
to go in at exits and come out at entrances, so be it.
I have planted by the stars in defiance of the experts,
and tilled somewhat by incantation and by singing,
and reaped, as I knew, by luck and Heaven’s favor,
in spite of the best advice. If I have been caught
so often laughing at funerals, that was because
I knew the dead were already slipping away,
preparing a comeback, and can I help it?
And if at weddings I have gritted and gnashed
my teeth, it was because I knew where the bridegroom
had sunk his manhood, and knew it would not
be resurrected by a piece of cake. “Dance” they told me,
and I stood still, and while they stood
quiet in line at the gate of the Kingdom, I danced.
“Pray” they said, and I laughed, covering myself
in the earth’s brightnesses, and then stole off gray
into the midst of a revel, and prayed like an orphan.
When they said “I know that my Redeemer liveth,”
I told them “He’s dead.” And when they told me
“God is dead,” I answered “He goes fishing every day
in the Kentucky River. I see Him often.”
When they asked me would I like to contribute
I said no, and when they had collected
more than they needed, I gave them as much as I had.
When they asked me to join them I wouldn’t,
and then went off by myself and did more
than they would have asked. “Well, then” they said
“go and organize the International Brotherhood
of Contraries,” and I said “Did you finish killing
everybody who was against peace?” So be it.
Going against men, I have heard at times a deep harmony
thrumming in the mixture, and when they ask me what
I say I don’t know. It is not the only or the easiest
way to come to the truth. It is one way.