Galaxies On Fire

 

—Poetry by Bob Boldt, Jefferson City, MO

—Public Domain Photos

GOOD EVENING! GOOD EVENING! 



 

Imagine dollars in my hand 


meaningless as November leaves.


Money, like all the precious, leaves first. 


None would prefer freezing 


over the warmth of the last flaming Bible.
Rudderless, captainless, shipless, wreck, 


I wander like Tyrannosaurus before me,


watching his fiery, July 4th slow-motion descent. 


“Whoa!” they exclaimed in whatever bellow they blew.


Surely the sign of a better tomorrow.
How strange it is to awake laughing, 


hung on the same skeletal rack Socrates abandoned,


body broken and tethered by time and gravity. 


Let me see, again that face I kissed so darkly 


beneath the streetlamp where scorpions scattered.

 



Bougainvillea arborea breaths within my nostrils 


memorialized the night we lost the last,


precious Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe


rail spike and had to use your stiletto heel


to complete the crucifixion.

 

 

 

 

THE GREAT JANE MUDD PAINTED MY PORTRAIT
AS IT RAINED OUTSIDE IN COLUMBIA, MISSOURI


Before she turned on the light, the splatter on the studio’s 


rain-clattered skylight gave the room the appearance of 


an aquarium.



 

Jane’s quotations from art history were pinned everywhere,


wallpaper clipped from the pages of art magazines and 


old postcards from Paris. Vermeer’s maid gazed 


on Dora Maar. Picasso ogles a Lautrec dancing 


to catch a sidelong glance from Paul Gauguin. 


They made the small studio


seem both crowded and vast.



 

Spanish Guitar music drifted down the courtyard.
Sitting is a lot like meditating. I felt the chair, let my eyes become
a stereo blur, and breathed.
A million images of famous portraits rambled through my head
while sitting there for my portrait.

Two hours later. Like a barber finished with her haircut she called
me to the other side of the easel to inspect her work.

Jane looked at me. I was looking at the portrait.
I was tearing up.
Seeing that likeness in the drying brushstrokes that rainy afternoon
in Columbia was as close as I ever came
to seeing myself through someone else’s eyes.

 

 

 

 

SCREEN SAVIOR 

 



Watching star beams float over and around


mushrooms in a pastel forest of soft, silk soil,



 

I was, for a second, maybe less, in my parent’s 


living room listening to “Captain Midnight” 

 



at the start of the war that could kill me.


The repeating Moorish carpet pattern



 

was gently punctuated by airy flotsam


shining like star beams in the slanting, August rays.

 

 

 

 

WAITING FOR THUNDER 

 



Ages, my ages ago, I lay awake, 


feeling Mother’s starched sheets 


between thumb and forefinger, 


my incredibly distant big toe 


imagined the monster beneath my five-year-old’s bed. 


I understood somewhere between brain and breastbone 


the full push of the terrifying, infinite universe.



 

Later in chaste sheets, I slept tuned to cosmic AM. 


Sounds I imagined coming from the hearts of 


extinguished radio transmitters, light years away.  


Those haunting, static waste-frequencies 


I envisioned through the four-inch speaker 


on hot Naperville nights


were as vivid to me as galaxies on fire!



 

Now I drowse four flights up while the Burlington and Northern 


rumbles between me and the Missouri River.


Faint perfume of diesel and the scream 


of distant wheels on steel break natural as water 


beneath the darkening window. 


Across the river a lightning flash 


signals back from limestone cliffs.
Thousand one.
Thousand two.
Thousand three.

___________________

Today’s LittleNip:

Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.

—Thomas Gray

___________________

Welcome to the Kitchen, Bob Boldt from Jefferson City, MO: Filmmaker, artist, retired commercial film producer with an abiding appreciation of all the wonderful people and occurrences in his life. Bob pursues community organization, still and video production, and various artistic endeavors. Our collection of SnakePals from Jefferson City is growing, all of them fine poets and most congenial, indeed. Welcome again, Bob, and don’t be a stranger!

___________________

—Medusa

 

 

 

Bob Boldt

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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