The Poets Corner

and THE CREATIVE MIND

Here is a poem about an experience with the vine Terence brought to Hawaii.
08/27/07 - Submitted by Mike Hoffman

We Are Each Other

Gathering, in a safe cocoon
The little death, Mother of Our Hearts
Weaves her way
Into every cell
Permeating and probing
It's OK
To weep when you plant
It's your funeral.

Seeing to the molecular
Breathing beautifully, deeply
Trembling minded sound
Wave upon waves
Magic melodies
Doing psychic surgery
Brimming, behind our eyes
Overflowing, into our Heart.

The source of knowledge
The magnificent elegance
Embodying principles
Of creativity and love
She is with you now, and forever
As we carry, each other
Out into the world.

Thank You, Terence
mike h

Here is a poem I wrote for Terence Mckenna and Dr. Tim...
08/13/07 - Submitted by Mike Hoffman

Thank You

Thank you T. man
Thank you Dr. Tim
You picked up the ball and ran
With courage, abandon, and love
We will never be the same.

What you left us lives on
Gently nudging us along
Popping up in strange places
Assembled behind our eyelids.

You passed the ball on to us
Many are picking it up
Running like hell on the edge
Urgency pushing us along.

The irony of novelty sets the stage
As we sail on this vast ocesn
In our little skiff you once sailed on
You now roam the lines of the genetic machinery
Ancestors among us
Dust in our eyes.

The final breath
The last event horizion
What happens then
I don't know
A sublimely preposterous gargen party?
Only a wish, perhaps,
But everyone invited.

Submitted 04/24/2007 by Bob Boldt...

Florence Agonistes [1.]

Forward to the poem:
After the recent Supreme Court decision to uphold the 2003
Partial-Birth Abortion Ban went down, I dug up a fragment of a short
story I had begun over a year ago. It dealt with the reflections of an
older woman who remembers the time before Roe v. Wade and the back
alley butchers who were too often the only recourse for a woman with an
unwanted pregnancy. In my time I had nursed a couple of friends
through the aftermath of these barbaric procedures. Luckily none of
them died. I have often wondered where so many of these women who had
experienced the bad old days were now and why so few of them have had
the courage to speak up against the current madness.

Your name is Florence Swift
You are sixty-eight years old today
You and your husband have just visited the grandchildren
For the second time this year

You no longer remember
That distant gray October afternoon
When you stumbled into to the waiting cab
For the long ride back to Skokie
Your dress and coat stained
You left blood on the seat
Hoping the cabbie would not notice
He knew

Now you ride through Christmas streets
And watch the young girls
With their cell phones rushing to parties
A sadness you cannot understand
Tugs at you like something not fully swallowed
Stuck in the limbo of the not quite conscious.

Was it Dante who claimed that aborted babes went to limbo?
Your church no longer admits that
That place exists anymore
Its map will likely rest in cold storage
In the Vatican basement
Along with the statue of St. Christopher [2.]
And the old terracentric planetariums.

In the city of Florence on yours and John’s honeymoon in 1963
You visited the celebrated poet’s house
Pausing to gaze for a moment
On that famous bust near the entrance
Your eyes questioned his
As if to ask “Did you make it all up?”
The poet’s deep spheres, remained set in their reverie.
The tour guide and John’s impatient look
Got the Florentine expatriate [3.] off the hook
With an exhortation to
“Move along”
Dante might have said the same to you
Florence in Florence
“Move along. Move on”

“Is this digression going somewhere?”
You ask yourself as the bright season’s lights
Blur in the windshield
Moist with melting snowflakes

At the stoplight a young girl hurries past
That look
Familiar
Darker than the others’ distracted holiday angst
Familiar

Then it comes finally into consciousness:
Yes
That reality is coming back again.

Bob Boldt

Notes:

[1.] The word Agonistes, found as an epithet following a person's
name, means 'the struggler' or 'the combatant'. It is most often an
allusion to John Milton's 1671 verse tragedy "Samson Agonistes," which
recounts the end of Samson's life, when he is a blind captive of the
Philistines (famous line: "Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves").
The struggle that "Samson Agonistes" centers upon is the effort of
Samson to renew his faith in God's support.

[2.] Despite his removal of his name and feast day (July 25th) from the
calendar of saints in 1969, devotion to Saint Christopher remains
popular among Roman Catholics.

[3.] Dante Alighieri was exiled from his beloved Florence. He was
condemned to be a perpetual expatriate. If he returned to Florence he
could be burned at the stake. Dante still hoped late in life that he
might be invited back to Florence on honorable terms. For him, exile
was nearly a form of death, stripping him of much of his identity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante#Exile_and_death

Submitted 04/11/2007 by Bob Boldt...

Song of the April Fool

By Bob Boldt

“Whan that Aprille, with hise shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heath
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne
And smale foweles maken melodye
That slepen al the nyght with open eye-
So priketh hem Nature in hir corages-
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunturbury they wende”

Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1343 –1400) From Canterbury Tales

Lover of the devious
The hoax
And celebrator of the artful deception
I rarely pass an April’s first
Without some fool’s taking-in.

Today, there being no lack of this daily feed
Abundantly spread for friends and fools alike
I choose to make no new fraud
To add to that abundant store
But prefer instead to be this April
Behind those holy and profane
Pilgrims
Who brave the early spring storms
On the road to Canterbury.

Reading those song like rhymes
That sprung so joyfully from Chaucer’s heart
I find myself again at one
With all seekers of
Delight
Love
Healing
Forgiveness
Redemption
Ecstasy
Fornication
And
Adventure
On that road to Canterbury.

We who in our time have lost
Not only the connection to
The hurtling of our planet ‘round
The brilliant fire
That so rules worms and kings
But also any traffic with the preternatural
That is why this year
I pilgrimage back to the source
Seeking it in Canterbury

As our ancestors
And even our simian uncles knew
When future paths are blocked
By torrent and avalanche
It requires us to find older courses
That lead to green pastures
And maps that guide to ways
That reaffirm the roots
From which creation springs
And the clear sure voices of the gods.[1.]
Reluctantly we turn from
The superhighway and follow the
Barely legible sign that points
To Canterbury.

This magical pile of stones
Rests in gothic repose
In the center of a town of
Less than 50,000 souls.
Still the hub of modern pilgrims
Who drawn like floating
Grains of iron to the magnet’s core
File half in wonder
Half in idle curiosity
Beneath the cathedral arches
In Canterbury.

There they marvel at the meddlesome priest’s
Foully martyred blood[2.]
And meditate on Augustine’s [3.]
First footfalls seeking
The pagan foundation tracings
Among the buttercups and the marigold
Surrounding the city of the new god
Of Canterbury

This pilgrimage is no retreat
But a gathering in
Of all that has been lost
In the mad rush for the
Distraction and constipation of
Power
Conquest
And
Greed
That now would make the earth a dung heap.
We pass beneath this
Architecture of praying stones
Not as a shuddering refuge
But as a doorway
A leading prospect that lies before us
A dedication to our lineage from
Lucy of Africa
To Lucy in the sky [4.]
We repose our pilgrimage beneath these stones
Not as a sanctuary so much as
A querencia [5.] from which to launch a
Future for our exalted little band of apes
Our holy duties done
We retrace our pious tracks
Back to a world transformed
By our pilgrimage to Canterbury.

Footnotes:
[1.] According to Julian Jaynes, “The Origin of Consciousness and the
Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”. consciousness, as we know it today,
is a relatively new faculty, one that did not exist until as recently
as 2000 B.C. To ancient man, God was not a mental image or a deified
thought but an actual voice heard when one was presented with a
situation requiring decisive action.
http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf043/sf043p18.htm

[2.] St. Thomas Becket (c 1118 – December 29, 1170) was Archbishop of
Canterbury from 1162 to 1170. He is venerated as a saint and martyr by
both the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Church. He engaged in a
conflict with King Henry II over the rights and privileges of the
Church and was assassinated by followers of the king in Canterbury
Cathedral.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Becket

Henry’s exclamation "Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?" is
said to be one of the earliest examples of plausible deniability and
was interpreted by the assassins as an irrefutable, if indirect, royal
command.

[3.] Augustine (not to be confused with the more famous Saint
Augustine of Hippo - 354 – 430 CE) was the first Archbishop of
Canterbury. he was sent to Ethelbert of Kent one of the Merovingian
kings by Pope Gregory the Great in 597. Ethelbert himself was a pagan,
but allowed his wife to worship God her own way. Probably under
influence of his wife, Bertha, Ethelbert asked the Pope to send
missionaries. The church of Canterbury was built on a site sacred
since Roman times.

[4.] Lucy - Australopithecus afarensis Female 3.9 to 3 million years
ago discovered in Ethiopia on November 30, 1974, near the Awash River
by anthropologist Donald Johanson and one of his students, Tom Gray.
Both were on the hot arid plains surveying the dusty terrain when a
fossil caught Gray's eye; an arm bone fragment on a slope in a gulley.
Near it lay a fragment from the back of a small skull. As they looked
further, more and more bones were found, including jaw, arm bone,
thighbone, ribs, and vertebrae. They carefully analyzed the partial
skeleton and calculated that an amazing 40% of a hominin skeleton was
recovered, which, while sounding generally unimpressive, is astounding
in the world of anthropology. Usually, only fossil fragments are
discovered; rarely are skulls or ribs found intact.

The skeleton AL 288-1 was nicknamed Lucy, after the Beatles song "Lucy
in the Sky with Diamonds", which was played repeatedly on a tape
recorder at the camp as they celebrated all night after finding the
first bones.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_%28Australopithecus%29

[5.] “In Spanish, la querencia refers to a place on the ground where
one feels secure, a place from which one’s strength of character is
drawn. It comes from the verb "querer", to desire, but this verb also
carries the sense of accepting a challenge, as in a game.
In Spain, querencia is most often used to describe the spot in a
bullring where a wounded bull goes to gather himself, the place he
returns to after his painful encounters with the picadors and the
banderilleros. It is unfortunate that the word is compromised in this
way; for the idea itself is quite beautiful – a place in which we know
exactly who we are. The place from which we speak our deepest beliefs.
Querencia conveys more than “hearth”. And it carries this sense of
being challenged – in the case of a bullfight, by something lethal,
which one may want no part of.
I would like to take this word querencia beyond its ordinary meaning
and suggest that it applies to our challenge in the modern world, that
our search for a querencia is both a response to threat and a desire to
find out who we are. And the discovery of a querencia, I believe,
hinges on the perfection of a sense of place.”

Barry Lopez, The Rediscovery of North America, p39-40

Submitted 03/22/2007 by Bob Boldt...

O sweet spontaneous
by edward estlin cummings

O sweet spontaneous earth
how often
have the
doting fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
poked thee

has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy
beauty

how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and
buffeting thee that thou
mightest conceive
gods

(but true
to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover
thou answerest
them only with
spring)

Submitted 03/12/2007 by Duende...

CRACKED

Why seek when it's all there
whispering to us, caressing us
singing exhuberance...
Why deaf ears?
Why the concretized contenance of one so weary, confused?
Cast off the feigning shadow of doubt
Don't we know?
Do we want to be so callous, pretending?
Does the effigy still keep us seeking?
Only seeking, never wanting to admit
its crutch is crippling,
its support anchors our horizon
keeps it at bay
always so far away, so far away
The unknown beckoning, but just a phantom,
a shadow that lacks a form
Something so very safe
Contemplate the the zenith from above
What is there?
Enough!
The guru has fattened and laughs
The child has had enough of the torment
Weep and sing now
dear ones,
Hold forth the holiest of horrors
in the face of convention
Celebrate the tiniest wing,
the most delicate movement
It is worthy.

Submitted 02/19/07 by a listener who goes by the name,
YouAreMe...

you fill my heart with joy
you give my mind rest
you rise at just the right time
to light a fire in my chest
7 stars are set ablaze
the infinite 8 now come too gaze
home at last intent we pray
the work is done
9 to the power of 9 angels
in love they come

submitted by Bob Boldt 12-06-06

Foreword to the poem

I came to write the following poem as the result of viewing some of the
films of Stan Brakhage. I had my own career as a producer of
experimental films beginning during my days at the School of the Art
Institute of Chicago (1962) and in one form or another continuing until
the present day. The main influence Brakhage had on my own work was in
his experiments of direct work on film (painting, scratching and
pasting directly onto the surface of the film itself.) Frankly I am
happy the influence was not long lasting as Brakhage probably
contracted bladder cancer as a result of his exposure to the aniline
dyes he used to color his films.

Stan Brakhage (January 14, 1933 – March 9, 2003) was an American
filmmaker. He is regarded as one of the most important experimental
filmmakers of the 20th century.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_Brakhage

Homage to Stan - The Lament Of An Ancient Experimental Filmmaker While
Watching Stan Brakhage’s Film, Dog Star Man

I walk past the junkyard wherein
My old projectors lie -
Not one filament still intact.
Is it true that nothing is ever lost -
That a beam of light once released
Will quicksilver out
To the farthest reaches of the universe?

And what of all those scratches on film?
The crude five-frame cuts of
The snow-littered woods in February
The stock footage of sunspots
And hacked arms of Vietnamese children
My girlfriend’s pussy
And my own pubis
Shot as if from a lunar lander.
All these images have evaporated like
Time-lapse clouds across the sky
Long since assigned to dumpster
And to flame.

My frames are as lost
As the projectors
That once passed the light
Through my obscure schemes
Where the only thought was to shroud
With even more incoherent language
The interpretation of dreams.

We struggled to be scorned by the squares
As if a universal language was some sort of curse.
Now that our images have been transmogrified
By the priests of MTV, and Levi Strauss
How will we ever be understood
Even by ourselves?

Bob Boldt

submitted by HempPennants 12-04-06

In the blink of an eye.

My open third eye caught in full stare,
watching creation unravel.
My lungs breath in a breath of air,
upon which my thoughts will travel.

Thoughts give rise to shape and form,
And in the light we're born.
Recreating what we what we see,
fashioned from mythology.

Yet even in myth, there are threads of truth.
Upon which we raise our youth.

Fun and games and tight rope rides
hell and heaven on each side
On the thread we walk the line
upon the holy number nine.

In our communion with each other,
the holy truths we rediscover,
a common light we all can see,
beyond our own technology.

We are the children of mother earth.
The sun our god who shines a light.
Our life they choose to give us birth.
On threads of hope we take flight.

I watch the spirits static blue light,
weave the threads of our insight.

In the blink of an eye.

Cynicism is unfounded. fear is bad habit. Joy is fascinating. Love is an act
of creative genius. Pleasure is our birthright.

submitted by HempPennants 12-01-06

The Cremation of Sam McGee
by Robert W. Service

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennesse,
where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam
'round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold
seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he'd often say in his homely way
that he'd "sooner live in Hell."

On a Christmas day we were mushing our way
over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold
it stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze
till sometimes we couldn't see,
It wasn't much fun, but the only one
to whimper was Sam Magee.

And that very night, as we lay packed tight
in our robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o'erhead
were dancing heel and toe,
He turned to me, and "Cap," says he,
"I'll cash in this trip, I guess;
And if I do, I'm asking that you
won't refuse my lsat request."

Well he seemed so low that I couldn't say no;
then he says with a sort of moan,
"It's the cursed cold, and it's got right hold
till I'm chilled clean through to the bone.
Yet 'taint being dead-it's the awful dread
of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair,
you'll cremate my last remains."

A pal's last need is a thing to heed.
so I swore I would not fail;
And we started on at the streak of dawn;
but God! he looked gastly pale.
He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day
of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all
that was left of Sam McGee.

There wasn't a breath in that land of death,
and I hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that I couldn't get rid,
because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say:
"You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it's up to you
to cremate these last remains."

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid,
the trail has its own stern code,
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb
in my heart how I cursed that load!
In the long, long night, by the lone firelight,
while the huskies, round in a ring,
Howled out their woes to the homeless snows-
Oh God, how I loathed the thing!

And every day that quiet clay
seemed to heavy and heavier grow;
And on I went, though the dogs were spent
and the grub was getting low.
The trail was bad, and I felt half mad,
but I swore I would not give in;
And I'd often sing to the hateful thing,
and it hearkened with a grin.

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge,
and a derelict there lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice
it was called the Alice May,
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit,
and I looked at my frozen chum;
Then "Here", said I, with a sudden cry,
"is my cre-ma-tor-eum"!

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor
and I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around,
and I heaped the fuel higher;
The flames just soared, and the furnace roared
such a blaze you seldom see,
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal,
and I stuffed in Sam McGee.

Then I made a hike, for I didn't like
to hear him sizzle so;
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled,
and the wind began to blow,
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled
down my cheeks, and I don't know why;
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak
went streaking down the sky.

I do not know how long in the snow
I wrestled with grisly fear;
But the stars came out and they danced about
ere again I ventured near;
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said,
"I'll just take a peep inside.
I guess he's cooked, and it's time I looked".
Then the door I opened wide.

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm,
in the heart of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile,
and he said, "Please close that door.
It's fine in here, but I greatly fear
you'll let in the cold and storm-
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee,
it's the first time I've been warm".

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee

submitted by Bob Boldt 11-11-06

BERNSTEIN:
You're pretty young, Mr. -
(remembers the name)
Mr. Thompson. A fellow will remember
things you wouldn't think he'd remember.
You take me. One day, back in 1896, I
was crossing over to Jersey on a ferry
and as we pulled out, there was another
ferry pulling in -
(slowly)
- and on it, there was a girl waiting
to get off. A white dress she had on
- and she was carrying a white parasol
- and I only saw her for one second and
she didn't see me at all - but I'll bet
a month hasn't gone by since that I
haven't thought of that girl.
(triumphantly)
See what I mean?

- Mankowitz/Wells - Screenplay Citizen Kane

A Passing Vision Amidst a Sculpture Installation
Dirksen Federal Plaza, Chicago, 1978

The smudged sun had set
Coloring the cloudless urban sky
A deep indigo-blue.
It cast no light on the plaza below.
Ark welders’ blue flashes threw
Gigantic shadows of supernatural forms
High against the Dirksen Federal building
And the sculptors’ tungsten work lights
Cut warm circles of activity:
Like Neolithic campfires
In the mild Chicago night.

Artists agitated with the buzz of schedules
And heady dreams of free spaces
To be filled
Hurried about
As if for tonight only
Their Muse
Was the Mayor of Chicago.

Calder’s warm dark arches
Giant as a pregnant church
Presided over the workers below
Ferrying oversized panels
Of wood, fiberglass and aluminum across its plaza
Like ants bearing booty to their hill.

I hurried across a chaos of pipes, tool boxes and cables
Toward my friends and the sculpture we were building.
As I approached a gleaming obelisk
Its high dark surface burnished to invisibility
I tripped over the snaking veins
Of a welder’s hose.
Recovering I looked up
And saw the girl.
High atop Kubrick’s column
She sat in a magnificent full lotus
As if suspended twenty feet in the air.
Had a god placed his chess queen there?
Above the chaos of noise and work lights below
She seemed to inhabit a transcendent sphere.
Not a dark hair was disturbed by the spring breezes.
Nor did a rising or falling breath
Beneath her magnificent breasts
Betray this goddess’ mortality.

I stood for a moment transfixed
And then hurried on to my friends
And the work we were building.
Like a beatific vision of transcendence
Imprinted in my brain
Her image presided over my consciousness
Then, now and forever
As motionless, timeless and unfazed
As she was for those magical thirty seconds
When my eyes held her fast.

Bob Boldt

submitted by Hemp Pennants 011-06-06

A Riddle, A Joke, An Anagram.

A paradox, A Conundrum.
The tea is steaping what's your problem.
Give I may ,
and if i may,
Carry it on to solve it The riddle

My cheeks are burning, my breath is short, tears are running down my face.
I compose and for a moment I am safe.
But then at last from ear to ear my jaw begins to ache.
I clench my fist and pound the earth for its more than I can take. The joke

Hemp Pennants The anagram

submitted by Stephen P. Mann 08-17-06

These are points of which I wander
Evolutions end, a thought to ponder.
We take this task upon ourselves,
and ask ourselves.
What is it we want the world to be?
what do we want our kids to see?
Let them learn and learn from them.
Imagination.

submitted by Bob Boldt 08-17-06

I AM RESIGNING FROM THE WAR

(A Slam Poem)

"They also serve who only stand and wait"

John Milton

I am resigning from the war

I am resigning from the Peace movement

I am resigning from activism

I am resigning from The Democratic Party

I am resigning from the Blue States

I am resigning from politics

I am resigning from voting

I am resigning from charades

I am resigning my membership in The Potempkin Village

I am resigning from The Children's Crusade

I am resigning from arguing With assholes

I am resigning from the Usual dispensations

I am resigning from angst

I am resigning from resignation

I am resigning from the Brotherhood of man

I am resigning from any hope for the future

I am resigning from the hope of world peace

I am resigning from the hope for a safe planet

I am resigning from resistance to evil

I am resigning from the search for Truth

I am resigning from the hope that tomorrow will be a better day

I am serving by brushing my teeth

I am serving by writing the birthday girl

I am serving by looking into the eyes of strangers

I am serving by doing nothing

I am serving by placing a dirty poem in a bottle

I am serving by leaving the TV off

I am serving by shutting up

I am serving by walking out the door

I am serving by watching that bug crawl slowly up my window screen

I am serving by standing and waiting

I am serving by discovering

Moment by moment

A rebirth of wonder

submitted by Bob Boldt 07-20-06

sea-turtle on the Bikini Atoll whose internal compass had become so befouled by radioactivity that, after a difficult deposit of her eggs, she began to head inland instead of out to sea. Finally, after reaching a point of complete exhaustion and nearing unconsciousness, she begins to gently flap her flippers as if dreaming of the sea. I have later found out that the whole scene was staged by the filmmakers. Nevertheless the metaphor of the condition of humanity in the atomic age stuck for me.

Mondo Cane

Lost world cry for lost me.

Guided only by dead faith and

Wondering home far from the free.

Compass that deflects the land

Does this Gate of Horn open to reality?

Do dying sea-turtles paw the sand

Dreaming they swim in the sea?

Bob Boldt

submitted by KEITH 07-20-06

SING

Sing out a song for peace sing out a song for joy
Till all the battles cease and no ones hungry or cold
I didn't think it could happen
I didn't think I could make much difference
But then the song said
Let the sound be your guide
Let the music heal your soul
That you may heal your friend
Let the love spread ever outward
In this great time of need
And pray it will be enough
To save us from ourselves

Goethe’s Oak by Bob Boldt 06/23/06

From Goethe’s oak
A sprig is sprouting.
Long dead
Its stump crowds the ruins
Of Camp Buchenwald.

Deep in the desiccated
Sap of its roots
The last molecule of DNA
Divides
Begins to stir and
Thirsting for the light
Climbs.

The dead have voices
We must heed.
They have seen the future
Through the glass of
A purer lens
Even
Than the one
Through which
We know our past.

To my dearest
Goethe
Who loved the light:
If you could
Have seen all
Your beloved oak
Has known
Would you pray
Never to return
In human form
But as a tree?

Robert Boldt

MIKE HAGAN: here's a poem i wrote on 3/17/03...before the iraq disaster was launched...don't usually write poetry but did for whatever reason back then...

never shared it so i figured i'd post it here...

o)<

mike

48 hours

in 48 hours we drop the bombs
in 48 hours we restore the calm

in two days time
we proceed divine
2880 resolves to nine

to honor the equinox
as life begins
a spring to war
the world chagrins

the angels cry
for free will's folly
oilsoaked blood
a dismembered dolly

and so it begins
we light the fuse
wherefore and why
not in the news

war for peace
this dark new world's order
look who's coming
over the border

in 48 hours the destroyers of life
their latest last battle
an end to the strife

and after they finish
the hawk and the snake
both dead in the road
here we'll plant our stake

in 48 hours

submitted by Bob Boldt 06-30-06

PRUFROCK IN HADITHA

One moment I fly on the wings
Of dawn over a Cornish beach.

Next I wipe the blood
Of a dead Iraqi child
From the edges of my screen.

Were even Virgil’s eyes ever meant
To move so effortlessly from
Paradise to Hell and back
In a mouseclick?

I cannot believe the angels
Of a creator god
Ever crafted nerves in patterns
Designed for such a diet.

Today I wept to see a real sunset
Over a lush summer-green
Missouri landscape.

I knew it was real
Not virtual
And yet I also knew that
Beyond those clouds
A world away
Real men, women, children
Who had never in their lives
Wished me ill
Were emptying out their life’s blood
In my name
And for my sake.

I will only know of them
On my small screen
Feeling their virtual pain
And my virtual shame.

submitted by Bob Boldt 05-01-06

"March 27, 2006 Monday Dream 6AM"

Within a small cracker box theatre

One of LA’s little insignificant dramas is playing out

Carla

Who thinks that having once delivered an ounce of smack

To a junkie in Tarzana has somehow qualified her

For kingpin status in the hip California drug underground

Is holding court

With close-cropped, black hair

And ostentatious gestures

With her oversized cigarette holder

She is performing

Before a small group of pathetic sycophants

She thinks of her self as Raymond Chandler material

When she is actually pure Robert Altman.

submitted by SHEB 05-01-06

message of introduction from SHEB

Mike
I heard your talk on the intelligence of the heart: excellent
so....important.
it seemed as if you were warning humanity for the second time.
I felt it was not the first.
I knew I was right about your intelligence.
thank you dear brother.
I have enclosed a poem
which encapsulates your speech
thanks for everything!
O

"I desire wisdom and my heart seeketh to find understanding. I am smitten with the love of wisdom.... for wisdom is far better than treasure of gold and silver... It is sweeter than honey, and it maketh one to rejoice more than wine, and it illumineth more than the sun.... It is a source of joy for the heart, and a bright and shining light for the eyes, and a giver of speed to the feet, and a shield for the breast, and a helmet for the head... It makes the ears to hear and hearts to understand."

"...And as for a kingdom, it cannot stand without wisdom, and riches cannot be preserved without wisdom.... He who heapeth up gold and silver doeth so to no profit without wisdom, but he who heapeth up wisdom - no man can filch it from his heart... I will follow the footprints of wisdom and she shall protect me forever. I will seek asylum with her, and she shall be unto me power and strength."

"Let us seek her, and we shall find her; let us love her, and she will not withdraw herself from us, let us pursue her, and we shall overtake her; let us ask, and we shall receive; and let us turn our hearts to her so that we may never forget her." (7)

Ozymandias’ Foot
By Bob Boldt submitted 04-15-06- with apologies to Percy Bysshe Shelly

I think of its owner.
I see him
Carefully tending it
Pruning the nails
Scrubbing between the toes in the shower
Generously powdering it and its twin
Before dressing to meet the day
Remembering how he stubbed its big toe one joyous wedding night.

This foot was loved as was its owner.
Now useless as an old tire
It lies
Embarrassed and naked in the raging street
Until the battle ceases.
Perhaps in a day or two
It and its dog-chewed, remnant Tibia
Bare as a shattered exclamation point
Will be lovingly returned
To the house where it once stood.

Traveler, contemplate all that remains of this once proud man.
Look upon what a miraculous machine was suddenly undone.
Wonder on the sad truth that we are all just
Such a one as this
Left hanging by a tread to be cut so sharply
So casually
So meaninglessly
By bomb and missile
Grenade and shell
Discarded, boundless and bare
Trash in the Iraqi sand.

I would like to have this foot for my very own.
I would place it
In all its glorious, ruinous, decomposing splendor
In a monstrance lined with satin
Red as the blood that deserted its veins.
My own two feet would gladly do the service of bearing
This holy relic
Up the steps of the Capitol in Washington.
Reverently removing the covering of this unique trophy
I would loudly proclaim to the assembled joint session:
“This is the foot of Qzymandias.
Gaze upon your work and despair.”

Ah! but verses amount to so little when one writes them young. One ought to wait and gather sense and sweetness a whole life long and a long life, if possible, and then, quite at the end, one might perhaps be able to write ten lines that were good. For verses are not, as people imagine, simply feelings (those one has early enough) -- they are experiences.

For the sake of a single verse one must see many cities, men and things, one must feel how the birds fly and know the gesture with which the little flowers open in the morning. One must be able to think back to roads in unknown regions, to unexpected meetings and to partings one had long seen coming; to days of childhood that are still unexplained to parents whom one had to hurt when they brought one some joy and did not grasp it (it was a joy for someone else); to childhood illnesses that so strangely begin with such a number of profound and grave transformations, to days in rooms withdrawn and quiet and to mornings by the sea, to the sea itself, to seas, to nights of travel that rushed along on high and flew with all the stars -- and yet it is not enough that one may think of all this. One must have memories of many nights of love, none of which was like the others, of the screams of women in labor, and of light, white, sleeping, women in a childbed closing again. But one must also have been beside the dying must have sat beside the dead in the room with the open window -- and the fitful nosies. And still it is not yet enough to have memories. One must be able to forget them when they are many and must have the patience to wait until they come again. For it is not yet the memories themselves. Not till they have turned to blood within us, to glance and gesture, nameless are no longer to be distinguished from ourselves -- not till then can it happen in a most rare hour the first word of a verse arises in their midst and goes forth from them.

Come, my songs, let us express our baser passions.
Let us express our envy for the man with a steady job and no worry about the future.
You are very idle, my songs,
I fear you will come to a bad end.
You stand about the streets, You loiter at the corners and bus-stops,
You do next to nothing at all.

And I? I have gone half-cracked.
I have talked to you so much that I almost see you about me,
Insolent little beasts! Shameless! Devoid of clothing!

But you, newest song of the lot,
You are not old enough to have done much mischief.
I will get you a green coat out of China
With dragons worked upon it.
I will get you the scarlet silk trousers
From the statue of the infant Christ at Santa Maria Novella;
Lest they say we are lacking in taste,
Or that there is no caste in this family.

Wild and fearful in his cavern
Hid the naked troglodyte,
And the homeless nomad wandered
Laying waste the fertile plain.
Menacing with spear and arrow
In the woods the hunter strayed ...
Woe to all poor wreteches stranded
On those cruel and hostile shores!

From the peak of high Olympus
Came the mother Ceres down,
Seeking in those savage regions
Her lost daughter Prosperine.
But the Goddess found no refuge,
Found no kindly welcome there,
And no temple bearing witness
To the worship of the gods.

From the fields and from the vineyards
Came no fruit to deck the feasts,
Only flesh of blood-stained victims
Smouldered on the alter-fires,
And where'er the grieving goddess
Turns her melancholy gaze,
Sunk in vilest degradation
Man his loathsomeness displays.

Would he purge his soul from vileness
And attain to light and worth,
He must turn and cling forever
To his ancient Mother Earth.

Joy everlasting fostereth
The soul of all creation,
It is her secret ferment fires
The cup of life with flame.
'Tis at her beck the grass hath turned
Each blade toward the light
and solar systems have evolved
From chaos and dark night,
Filling the realms of boundless space
Beyond the sage's sight.

At bounteous nature's kindly breast,
All things that breath drink Joy,
And bird and beasts and creaping things
All follow where she leads.
Her gifts to man are friends in need,
The wreath, the foaming must,
To angels -- visions of God's throne,
To insects -- sensual lust.

Sifting through the broken shields

And shattered glass, and crumbling bones

And wading through the living dead

To watch them writhe and hear them moan

A moment passes by unknown,

Their timeless eyes upon my throne

My children crying all alone, oh when will you come home,

The enemy hides in the branches,

Deadly, like a broken heart

Silently he makes advances,

Angry, callous, tasting vengeance

Rising up like death beside us

Waiting till he has advantage,

Laying dormant like a virus

Honour me with violence,

Their missile strikes were met with silence

Never running, never hiding

Even as the sky turned violet,

Turn and fall to find me smiling

Conscience clear,

Yet changing like the sea,

May Hell open its gates to those who oppose me

The opportunity has arisen,

You awaken to find yourself broken and ashamed

The perfect prisoner

I show you the truth and you ignorantly react,

Altered, confused, mesmerized by the mirror,

Your anger now a problem

Your instincts now a weapon

Sanity lingers in front of you

Like a Rainbow,

Permanently just out of reach.