English Major

Back then they’d step out of their story

Their novel, their play, their poem and

Speak to us, deal with us. We knew them

And they knew us, where we were, where

We were going. We were quick to quote

Them when it fit. We’d nod when we saw

Their relevance playing out in front of us.

Being an English major in the 60s gave us

The material we needed to deal with the 60s

And the world it was making for us. We were

A crowd in a world of crowds. We had years

Of wisdom playing out in what we read and

What we heard in our classes. Shakespeare

And Milton, Becket and Ginsburg, Heller

And West – our lists were impressive and

Seemed endless. What else did we need to

Face what was coming at us? Years of it and

A life bolstered by it. What could go wrong

With this? Everything that could go wrong

Of course, went wrong. And all of it seems

Flimsy now – and turned out to be just that.

Where did all the 60s English major go and

Where did all that wisdom sneak off to?

                   Dreams

They show up in my dreams

People from my past, pass by.

Some silent, others saying

Things I remember them saying

Back then, safely in the past.

Some go by, seem familiar, but

I can’t recall their names. They

Are background figures, passing

By in my dreams like they did in

My past. Dreams do that these

Days, present places and spaces

Filled with characters that made

My past what it was, part ceremony

Part show, part story. They came in

In real time and now get their cameo

Appearances in my dreams. There’s

No explaining when and why they are

There in that dream on that night. I

Try to connect them to my present

But they fit uncomfortably, even if

I stretch things, connect some piece

Of my present to my dreamed past.

No they’re separate now, out of control

Playing my life out in these stray bits

Of my time.

                Joker

Been telling the same joke

living that same joke

For a long time now

Minutes of it and years of it.

Been laughing at my joke,

Even after I heard that one

About only a fool laughs

At his own joke or jokes

And I’d be foolish enough

To laugh aloud, join in

The general laughter

All around me.

Been a street clown

A circus clown

A stand-up comic

Part Laurel, part Hardy

One of the three stooges.

I’ve chuckled and guffawed

Been chuckled at and guffawed at

Been the butt of many jokes

And played the punch line

For all of it.

Lao Tzu’s Admonishment

Lao Tzu admonishes

Tsk tsk tsk

Buddha wags

A finger at me

Yet I am delirious

In my trishna

Avidya! a damned fool

Samsara the relentless

Loop is inevitable

An incessant carousel

From my first breath

Delicious! I devoured

The myriad creatures

Spellbound by maya

Suffering is our nature

To cling to reign over

Our humdrum days

To make sense of

Our futile obsessions

The persistent chaos

Swirling about us

Regrettably a few

Noble Truths will

Remain (blissfully)

Beyond my grasp

You see there is love

Quite a conundrum

And I want I desire

My beloved her

Lips hips breasts

Her easy laughter

Though the embrace

Is tragically temporary

Therefore screw you

Lao Tzu and then

I eventually apprehend

As Buddha smiles.

Lazy Sage

A lazy sage

Chuang Tzu simply

Acquiesced what’s obvious

All is chaos – broken

Then Siddhartha tossed

Suffering into the mix

(Gee thanks a bunch!)

Despite this wisdom

The sagacious formula

I learned helplessness

I was an inevitability

The nervous little dog

In the shock box

Will Dad bring home

Milk eggs hamburger

This time – next time

Auto health life

(Drive carefully!)

Will Mom be hauled

Home by the cops

Or locked up – how crazy

This time – next time

Will she disappear

With my little sister

Will she launch jelly

Jars at our heads

After seeking predictability

Reasonable assumptions

I now recognize mayhem

Now much too wary

Too vigilant to love

Suspicious of optimism

Heart races stomach churns

In obsessions and compulsions

And now the old augur

I also surmise

There’s only futility in

Solving our predicament.

Silence

I will happily remain silent, lips sutured, sealing ancient,

festered wounds (though hapless impulses tug at stitches),

my tongue a giddy atrophy, old car in its garage. I’ll not

wag or lash it anytime soon.

I know this silence, a wide horizon, an ocean, a silence

nearly as deep as magma sputtering beneath

the Laurentian Abyss. Awed by sublime, I only teeter

at its precipice, a wanderer in a Romantic’s painting.

I search my shelves for adequate locutions, attic, cellar,

spare room, to fit rather than buy a new articulation.

But my attempts remain clumsy, lumbering obstacles

so long as obsession hinders my intent (My mind

a fence row, nettles, burs and briar strangled in barbed wire.

There. There now.)

Does silence abide the absurd or pass unencumbered,

whistling through my ribs, wind through an abandoned

house? As the Buddha, a monk, I shall loosen my grip

on petty clamor, what’s futile, samatha, tranquility,

my singular desire.

This silence is (and I shall listen without interruption)

a breeze whispering through pines just outside

my window; the lulling murmur of phoebes hopping

and pecking across the yard;

the trillium pushing noisily though mayapples and loam;

with the morning sun, apple blossoms opening one by one.

I shall regard each arrival, each pink bud,

each white explosion.

This silence is (Though much too sentimental, I’ll try again.)

that warm afternoon, lolling in bed, when there’s nothing else,

when I apprehend, galvanic skin to skin, lip to breast,

I love my lover, when words are ludicrous.

David Sapp, writer and artist, lives along the southern shore of Lake Erie in North America. A Pushcart nominee, he was awarded Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Grants for poetry and the visual arts. His poetry and prose appear widely in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. His publications include articles in the Journal of Creative Behavior, chapbooks Close to Home and Two Buddha, a novel Flying Over Erie, and a book of poems and drawingstitled Drawing Nirvana.

“I Will Wait For You”

Poem by Doug Holder, inspired by a painting by Gieseke Penizzotto Denise

sunflowers

gold petals

a bit of

haberdashery

for a bluebird

of happiness

whose heart

and no doubt,

feathers

flutter

to be swept off

by her angel-winged

lover.

Doug Holder…

Board of Directors of the New England Poetry Club

Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene   http://dougholder.blogspot.com

Ibbetson Street Press  http://www.ibbetsonpress.com

Poet to Poet/Writer to Writer  http://www.poettopoetwritertowriter.blogspot.com

Doug Holder CV http://www.dougholderresume.blogspot.com

Doug Holder’s Columns in The Somerville Times https://www.thesomervilletimes.com/?s=%22Doug+Holder%22&x=0&y=0

Doug Holder’s collection at the Internet Archive   https://archive.org/details/@dougholder

THE TWELVE GRAPES OF NEW YEAR’S EVE

The twelve grapes are wishes and desires

All full of seeds

But not hair.

There are brutes and animals

Who swallow them whole

Even with tails.

Today is New Year’s Eve

Even in the farmyards

Where the main hen

Has stopped laying eggs

Because Uncle Kiriko’s rooster

Has not come to see her

And has gone off on a tangent

To gather nests

Or to visit new lands

Where the hens will crow again:

-The rooster has come

He will not leave.

There is a mountain woman there who tells me:

-Sir, there is nothing like the mountains.

Beginning to comment:

The old year is going away

A disastrous year

Full of evil and hatred.

Even Nature itself

Has shown itself cruel

To the most defenseless

Leaving the savages and murderers

Rampaging in their ways

Playing at making war.

My granddaughter married a donkey

Who was self-employed in a butcher shop.

They went to the wedding mass

And the groom, without any consideration

She fucked the priest.

This coming New Year

I suspect it will be the same or worse

The only thing left safe is:

The grumbling

The scolding

The screwing of the neighbor

And fucking whether you want to or not

That is mandated by the Law of God.

One year after another

They are all the same.

They cannot be patched

Only the bag for Peace is patched.

-Daniel de Culla

2024:  HIPPOS & HURRICANES

You know that things are dicey when the year’s

bright spot’s a pygmy hippo named Moo Deng—

“bouncing pork”—the star of Thailand’s zoo,

who teethes on knees of those who try to feed her.

Incumbents lost elections round the world:

South Africa, India, U.K., and Japan.

We gained Trump’s trademark comeback– touting plans

for buying Greenland, making Canada

a State. Sounds crazy, but deporting hordes

of immigrants from factories and farms

is not a sane move, either. Nor are tariffs. 

We lost outstanding people: Jimmy Carter,

100–year-old humanitarian;

the Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh; stars Maggie Smith,

Kris Kristofferson, and James Earl Jones;

Nikki Giovanni, black-arts poet;

TV’s fitness guru Richard Simmons.

Putin’s foe, Alexei Navalny, died

in an Arctic prison cell, while war goes on

against Ukraine, the country Putin covets.

But 2024 was rife with war—

Civil War in Sudan; in the Middle East,

Hamas attacked and Netanyahu bombed

hospitals and workers bringing food 

to starving Gaza. This war, no one wins.

Autocracies in key countries grow strong—

China, Russia, North Korea, Iran.

They sell each other weapons. Partners, now.

Our planet’s climate keeps on heating up.

The largest, longest river in the world,

the Amazon, is starting to go dry.

The hottest year on record’s ’24.

To cap it, add a hurricane or ten. 

Helene’s the Atlantic Ocean’s special gift.

Flooded Spain and US southeast coast.

Perhaps life’s better on another planet?

NASA’s Perseverance targeted Mars

in search of living microbes under ice.

And on the moon, Japan landed a SLIM *

softly, nose-down;  solar-powered success.

Research these days is robot-run, just like

in science fiction. Fiction, now, is fact.

Artificial Intelligence, called AI,

leads medical breakthroughs. That’s a happy plus.

But guardrails aren’t in place, and people fear

AI, unchecked, could trash our daily lives. 

So here we are. Now 2024

is in our rear-view mirror.  What a year!

What’s next? More of the same? Hippos and wars?

Or will Trump stir up chaos, just for fun?

* Smart Lander for Investigating Moon

Not Really

I sat under a cherry tree 

writing love songs.

Not really, but what if I did?

Your heart, my heart, our hearts 

vowed to be together.

Not really, but what if we did?

We held the moon in our hands,

picked daffodils in the rain.

Not really, but what if we did?

One magic moment we kissed

and vowed our love was true.

Not really, but what if it was?

*

Dying to Live

I am no flower.

I am not thin enough.

I am dying to live

in a photograph.

Years later, you at

my side, in a photo,

what a lovely thing,

a smile on our faces.

Such splendor and

beauty in the back-

ground. I leave this 

world this old photo 

from a happy time.

I stick out my tongue 

and puff out my chest

as a ghost. My white

hair, far from radiant.

Where have my eyes

gone? Where is my 

flesh. I hide even if no

one is looking for me.

I am all bones. My

skeleton hand shakes.

My soul is long gone

from this earth. The

finality of life leaves

a ghost facsimile,

an oxidized monster,

which time no longer

waits for.

*

Sleep Talking 

I speak for much too long

without pause in my sleep.

I speak without filter when 

we are apart in my dreams.

In my daydreaming days is

where you kiss me at last.

It is all I want on days the

streets are wet with rain.

Quivering on snowy days

like a grape on the vine, I

freeze up again and again.

I wish for another dream

where you wrap me up

in your embrace. When

are you coming my way?

I cannot wait to see you.

Is it today or tomorrow?

I am wise to know it might

be too long of a wait. I

speak whole volumes of

nonsense. I speak it in

my sleep. I speak so much.

It must be awful to sleep

near me. One can only 

imagine. When I sleep 

I will spill my guts. I must

put my hands over my mouth.