—Poems by JD DeHart, Chattanooga, TN
—Anonymous Drawings
2018
Gains and losses, this moment
of looking backward, worried
that, like Lot’s wife, I will be made
salt in a moment.
A cold snap, the feeling of new
travels. Yesterday is as one-hundred
years ago,
each year, something peels away,
replacing past harms with divine
trust. We move forward, press on,
through mud and through grief,
through the disappointments of others
we thought we knew and the victory
of knowing ourselves a little better.
Dear one, we had to say goodbye
last year, a farewell that led to some
new greetings. Is the loss of a family
pet enough to inspire a verse?
Apparently.
And what then of the new year,
where we will uncover more, shedding
the children we were, putting
on new faces—no, we will only know
more details about the features
we already possess, the path,
our plans, our present reborn hope.
STAMPER THE INVENTOR
He's invented the great underwater apparatus
It allows us to converge
Make our way across the canal
Up the inlets
Invading new lands
sweet noble imperialism
His great feet tread new ground
Bridger, his assistant
Makes all the necessary connections
Applies the patents
as weapons of war run down the chain
unhook and then find their way
into the hands of the power-hungry.
(first pub. at Exercise Bowler)
THE MESS
Life is messy, the wise sage.
Teaching is messy business,
so I picture spills in each seat,
a slight overlapping of intention.
They are lips and thoughts, ever
so subtly out of place, pushing
and resisting, attempting to secure
a foothold, a place in the world,
to move the Archimedean earth
even with a surging tide of inquiry.
(first pub. at Pyrokinection)
NAME IS NOT
Do not call me the cardboard one
or mistake me with the guy
lumbering across the hall,
swinging his well-intentioned yardstick.
Look at my face closely, I beg them,
do not simply see me as representation
of the title on my desk, a cartoon figure
casting all the projections of prior experience,
but a real flesh figure, blood being,
pulsing and variable, with a name and purpose.
(first pub. at Pyrokinection)
SNAKESKIN
I was shed like snakeskin,
left in the dry sun with no water,
no sweaty palm to rest on my aching
blistered back. Small crabs began
to scutter across my new flesh.
I know the feeling of being hollowed,
cast aside, and disregarded.
This is why I do not go to parties
unless they are small and I know
most of the people there.
(first pub. at Pyrokinection)
I DON’T GAMBLE (2)
Yes, it's true, I used to play
at being. Maybe a bit more than I do now.
Justifications and jokes. Excuses
mingled with my self-doubts.
Now, I don't gamble. Not
even a little. My risks are placed
in the best of faith. I'm not the boy
I used to be. But probably still
a boy in many ways.
I've lived enough to know the swallow
of a full moon, the contentment of a grassy
yard in the yellow light of winter. The silence
of a room I expected to be a din.
To know it's not blame or opinion
I seek, nor to make a name. I fashion
my life out of the fabric of the day,
noticing and noting.
__________________
Today’s LittleNip:
A bridge of silver wings stretches from the dead ashes of an unforgiving nightmare to the jeweled vision of a life started anew.
—Aberjhani, Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry (www.amazon.com/Journey-through-Power-Rainbow-Quotations/dp/1312194111/).
__________________
—Medusa, with thanks to JD DeHart for today’s fine poetry!
—Anonymous
(Celebrate poetry!)
(Celebrate poetry!)
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