Wednesday, January 06, 2021

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
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.

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for poetry, of course!