Take My Words

B.Z. Niditch and his kayak

Massachusetts

HUMAN ERRORS
—B.Z. Niditch

Life suddenly seizes us
surprising our intellects
on a great spring dawn
when a demonstration
of peaceful inquiry
suddenly causes
dad's lab
to go awry
with another human
illusion scrapped for,
that even a Ph.D. dad
does not know best,
we unexpectedly realize
every project
has its no-faults.

There could be
a worse scenario
in our universe
when water rises
at the home harbor
and a poet forgets
to fully anchor his kayak
on the small island
from a quiet peninsula
we give way to doubt
even after the floods  
when the all clear sounds
along the beach.

When recording
a new music composition
and a raspy mechanical flaw
on the tape is effaced
by my human error
we cannot believe it.

Or when bad memory
clogs our computer
or something
from a residue of opacity
overloads by not thinking
of fixing the hard drive.

By not clicking
the camera off
left out in the back yard
eaten up by sunshine
now with only dark lines
as scintillations emerge
on my photos
is not in black or white
but a grey camouflage
defying all our conceptions
simply by our flaws.

___________________

MISTAKES
—B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA

Every error
can create terror
every mistake
may produce
a human earthquake,
even in a crowd
one may spin
your motor scooter
out of control,
you vent
with natural fervor
not making
your life very proud
when as an adolescent
you plowed over the gazebo
near a fireworks display,
with too much speed
in a James Dean way
puncturing your tires
after a wildly dumb deed,
in a pool of spray
at the footbridge bay
I need a human touch
to control my auto desires
on a holiday.

Truncated

—Photo by D.R. Wagner, Elk Grove

CREATIVE IN ABSENTIA #1
—B.Z. Niditch

Rounding these words
in a memory of solitude
we discover a universe
in our graffiti scratches
on a city's unclenched walls
throbbing with a kid glove
of half speech
unfolding what answers
and renews
in our absences
those thousand voices
in a palette's drawing
of an indifferent time
forfeiting every exile's
green identity card
with our prose exhuming
in our alphabet appearances.

__________________

POE'S NIGHTMARES
—B.Z. Niditch

Nightmares held Poe
on the bed for hours
in an amnesia of frost
expecting a wellspring
of snow not dead flowers
that he needed to share
with boll weevils now lost
in a beetle juice of fear,

he suspected evil
to take over his despair
and cover his chest
yet awakens in the morning
on his writing chair,
from his long rest,

with his notebook
he composes by heart
a harvest of verse
as he departs
from his closet door,
like his beloved raven birds
with a wordsmith nest
of unrehearsed poet lore.

_____________________

AT THE ISLAND
—B.Z. Niditch

Just as you are
waiting for me
at the port of call
after a night
of James Dean films
a sea gull catches
our red eyes
which fail us
at the usual
home harbor
at first vessel light
crumbling in
our wearied faces
in dawn's sunshine
we taking off
our motorcycle jackets
near the shore drive
our black boots
on gluey seaweed
by the open waters
unlocking the kayak
over the bridge
soon to be absorbed
by ripened shadows
of waves' undertow
in the tidal basin
watching the fish
nose dive below us
near the cargo ships
bringing in pink salmon,
Maine lobsters and squid
launched on schedule
hearing sailor sounds
by the sea voices
from the mainland
cry out between meshes
of the waves frenzy
veined with shade
from the light house
encircled by shore birds.

_____________________

Today's LittleNip:

SPECTATOR
—B.Z. Niditch

Take my words,
the angel said
during a retreat
and then your solitude
will be forever
in a wellspring stupor
of consuming creativity
over alphabet zones
on a hundred horizons
with a fiery fever
unmatched by any image
as a countless witness
to favor and fervor
more perfect
than a forever stamp
sent on time
and then the angel
with coiled white hair
waved and departed
in the cool night air.

______________________

—Medusa

Priest

—Photo by D.R. Wagner