—Anonymous Photos
THE PLUMBER
—Joseph Nolan, Stockton, CA
He was illiterate
As well as
Mute and deaf.
He had no idea
What he needed or wanted
Or how to get it.
He was stumped.
He became a plumber.
No one expects a plumber to be all that happy.
It’s easy to slide through life
Unobtrusively as a plumber,
Wrenching pipes until they stop leaking,
Unplugging plugs in tubes.
Nobody likes this kind of work
And they’re willing to pay pretty well
To get someone else to do
Their shit-work for them.
You might even make enough
To put a couple of kids through college,
If you play your pipes right.
It doesn’t take much imagination.
But when your kids are asked
What their father does for a living,
They usually blush and say,
“He fixes things that flush.”
__________________
GARAGE SALE AD
—Joseph Nolan
Crap for sale,
Tons and tons of crap.
How do you know it’s crap?
Because I’m trying to get rid of it, that’s why!
If it was good, I would keep it,
Except, maybe, if I did not have room for it.
So, you can come to take a look
And find out if it’s crap or overload.
Anyway, even if it’s crap,
You might find something you like.
Some people like crap. That’s how I
Ended up with all this.......
Well, you get the idea?
NO MAN OWNS HIS OWN WEALTH
—Joseph Nolan
It’s very hard to freeze
At seventy-two degrees,
But it can be done.
Just as any winner’s winnings
Can easily be unwon
If he stays in the game.
Everything’s up for grabs
Once it’s in the pot.
Many a winner
Has gone cold.
The lesson’s old—
Old as time itself:
No man owns his wealth.
_________________
DARKNESS
—Joseph Nolan
Darkness
Betrays the light
Once more.
Inside the night
We pray
The safety
Of our homes
To stay,
Until the
Break of day.
Outside,
Wind howls!
We hear dogs
Are barking,
Or are they wolves?
Running loose
With drooling jowls
Up and down our streets
Hoping for some savory treats?
Darkness is for fear
And fear for darkness!
What doesn’t kill us
Still may take our lives;
We fear the dark.
Darkness means
We’ve lost the light
And with it,
Vision’s sight.
We dare not run
And know not
Where to hide
From creatures of the night.
SAND WHITE AND TREES PALM
—Caschwa, Sacramento, CA
I, standing tiptoe
still no taller than its base
must yield to its height
fronds whisper warnings
that dangerous fruit above
won’t melt like teardrops
around each tree lies
sand so white it blinds the sun
ruins the selfie
toes in sand wiggle
like fingers trying to solve
combination locks
yonder a hotel
with lower temperatures
at higher prices
_________________
HYPOTHETICALLY
—Caschwa
Just saying, if you knew I had
autism and you witnessed me
sit down at the grand piano and
faultlessly play some Chopin,
you would admire the beauty
of the music and applaud the
player.
Then if I were to stand up and
faultlessly recite some wonderful
poetry that you immediately
recognize as being your own,
you’d be right on the phone calling
your intellectual property attorneys
to file a suit for damages.
START HERE
—Caschwa
If poetry were a board game
with a setting earlier than ten
thousand years ago, when the
Ice Age was still around, we
could use chocolate kisses as
markers and they wouldn’t just
melt away.
Or back it up even further to
the last Geomagnetic Reversal
and the rules for the game would
vacillate in more ways than we
had yet learned to measure or
master.
But here we sit edging away from
four straight years of drought,
challenging real estate developers
to perk up interest while marketing
deserts and landfills as if they were
still highly attractive, lush, green,
oases.
I rolled a lucky 7, which put me on
the space marked “Bodies of Water”
showing a picture of a cover girl
model, captioned with pertinent
statistical figures announcing the
estimated percentage of water in
a human body.
My marker just melted!
GAME OVER.
____________________
BIG AND BIGGER
—Caschwa
I used to have a lot of ideas
some truly great, some quite small,
some never getting spoken,
others working well though broken
and then I learned about
EPIPHANIES!!!
and ever since that time I have had
no ideas at all
no time for that
head too big for hat
DEBATE IN NAME ONLY
—Caschwa
Red: What we have here is a slave revolt that
poses a dire threat to the American way of life.
Raise your American flag, raise your Confederate
flag, wave the Constitution like a flag, and rejoice
in the 2nd Amendment freedom to rally with your
guns and put down that damn revolt!
Blue: What we have here is a whole administration
that is failing to serve the people. Elect me, I will.
Undecided: There’s nothing good on this menu,
let’s order out Chinese.
____________________
Today’s LittleNip:
THE SHOE-SHINE
—Joseph Nolan
The damp, dark black
Of shoe-shines’s sheen,
Reflect’s the sweat
That drips
From brows
Of brought-up-mean
And friction’s power
To rub the moon
Into dried-out leather.
____________________
Our thanks to today’s contributors as we move into August, with its hot nights and hotter days. Speaking of which, Sac. Poetry Center will host Hot Poetry in the Park tonight at 6:30pm [note earlier time] at Fremont Park on 16th & Q Sts. in Sacramento, featuring Brandon Leake and David “And Yes” De Mola, plus open mic.
This Tuesday, Poetry Off-the-Shelves poetry read-around meets in El Dorado Hills at the library on Silva Valley Pkwy., 5-7pm. Suggested topic is “out the window”, but other subjects also welcome.
Wellspring Women’s Writing Group meets on Thursday from 11:30-1:30pm, using prompts to generate poems, prose and journal writing with Sue Daly at Wellspring Women’s Center on 4th Av. in Sac. And on Saturday, Sac. Poetry Center will hold its Second Sat. Art Reception Sac. Poetry Center, 5-9pm, featuring artist/poet Heather Judy. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about these and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.
Speaking of Sue Daly, she has started a newsletter called "Plug Into Poetry" which lists workshops and readings happening in our area. If you ask nicely, maybe she'll send you a PDF of it. Write to her at jtwnana7@gmail.com/.
Sue’s newsletter inspired me to do some housecleaning on Medusa, particularly on the “More Food for the Brain” section of the green column. I’ve resisted listing workshops in the past because they sometimes come and go, but we have so many in our area these days that I decided to take the plunge—with the caveat that, if you show up and they aren't meeting, don’t be mad at me.
I’ve also added a few features, subtracted a few, changed a few… but I’m nowhere near done, so we’ll see what the future brings. I have NO intention of changing the daily diary, the cream-colored column with each day’s feature in it—other than to comment that I’m still darned proud of two of the links at the top: Publishing, and Poetry Traps, and suggest that we ALL read them now and then. Those ideas were culled from many years of experience and pain suffered by poets all around, and, as such, they reflect a certain amount of helpfulness.
And hey—if you see mistakes, please let me know! I would indeed appreciate it!
—Medusa, celebrating poetry!
Don't forget our Seed of the Week: Palm Trees and White Sand.
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.