Pandemicomium

—Poems by Tom Goff and Michael H. Brownstein
—Public Domain Photos

PANDEMICOMIUM
—Tom Goff, Carmichael, CA

The inbox crowds and crowds with intimate
Yet socially distanced words. Hint, whisper, touch,
Color, plus voluble precipitate,
The residue of warmth we tender, such
As both to allay and heighten clinical
Ghost apprehensions from our muscle realm;
The screenshot glass reminds us, what we call
Virtual drink comes test tube. Overwhelm
Friends we cannot, while swept by tides in-spirit,
So cluttered with idea-debris, we quail.
Flotsam, no reagent pirate to clear it
From our mindstream, lest we forget we fail:
Imperfect in our capture of all threat,
Confident, in how we spread our ragged net.

IN DEEP, MR. FROST?
—Tom Goff

We watch seawater, nearby; far;
Connoisseurs of roiling waves
Shocked against rock, up over sand bars;
Froth, where it laves, huge cylinder caves
That coil, snarl, crumple reduced
Like oranges pulp and skin once juiced.
You query our need for scrutiny?
Ask the gray cat whose bowlside vigil
Means eyeing orange fin-flicking glee,
Her stare her feline sign and sigil.

ORPHEUS, HEAD
—Tom Goff

Bacchantes who parted
his throat from his shoulders,
no more subtle than boulders.

Still, did they not do
later poets a favor?
Any moral to savor?

This great poet,
all mind, all head,
drifting on downstream,
singing down rapids,
long since dead.

At least
body’s about where it ought to be,
downward down
with or without
Eurydice.

ISOLATE ENERGIES
—Tom Goff

Come forth in spirit, you,
out of your houses.
Don’t exit physical
houses, but come out
astral, all ectoplasms.
Live, though encaved,
not like folkfalls enchasmed.
Mount directionless wheels,
pedal swift Pelotons,
tread your stair climbers,
unmothball your NordicTracks.
Prove more than your skeletons.
Reach, stretch for spirit realms.
The material underwhelms?
Master the spiritual
pieces of discipline.
Progress is ritual.
With isolate energies
measure up to the wax
rubbed into Daedalus wings
or applied to your skis
meant for the fresh-powder freeze.
We must go underneath?
Then be now your hurtlings
downward that strain at knees
all the way downslope.
Gnash fiercemost where sickness lusts.
Bite down on spiral gusts
caught with your teeth.

 “A bit of beauty even in a lot of ugly.”

A FLOWER GROWS IN BUCHENWALD
—Michael H. Brownstein, Jefferson City, MO

The flower growing from the dead tree trunk
let out its color, breathed, opened itself to light.

Life is like that. A bit of beauty even in a lot of ugly.
The men worked around it, admired it, spoke to it.

Cruelty is not a human trait. Yet cruelty exists
and the cruel men did not destroy the blossom.

Later, in shacks too cold, too dark, too sick,
the men talked of the flower, their surprise and awe—

even in a place of darkness with the bad taste of bile,
if you look hard enough, there is an example of humanity.

The flower did not last, but the men did, and the cruel men?
They ran in the end—bullies always do—and the men behind

glorified in the memory of the flower, grew strong,
took back their lives, married, raised children, and grew stronger.

WE WILL MAKE IT TO ISRAEL NEXT SPRING
—Michael H. Brownstein
 
You dug vast graves,
You buried the dead.
You prayed for forgiveness,
You lived and lived.

The truth is your spirit
Expanded, your soul
Gained volume, your
Life not a why me
But a we will survive—

As a people, a people
Of power, prosperity, poets—
A steel welded strength.

___________________

Today’s LittleNip:

Does anything in nature despair except man? An animal with a foot caught in a trap does not seem to despair. It is too busy trying to survive. It is all closed in, to a kind of still, intense waiting. Is this a key? Keep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go.

―May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude

__________________

Our gratitude to Tom Goff today for his smooth poetry, and to Michael Brownstein, who is celebrating Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day, which was actually yesterday) with two poems. Thanks to both of you! For news about Yom HaShoah, celebrated this year online, go to www.bing.com/news/search?q=Yom+Hashoah+(Holocaust+Remembrance+Day&qpvt=Yom+Hashoah+(Holocaust+Remembrance+Day&FORM=EWRE/.

For upcoming poetry readings and workshops available online while we stay at home, scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

__________________

—Medusa
 

 —Public Domain Photo

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
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