Rodak's Writings: Curtain Call - a poem

 

Curtain Call

 

Revealed

at the end

as a piece of shit –

worthless.

‘Buked and scorned

by a succession of three

lovely wives.

I would not be

lying now

if I told you –

it’s tough

to make a poem

out of that.

Rodak's Writings: Simile - another poem

SIMILE

I am pinned like a bug
by existence:
forgotten display
in a dark, locked room.
A trace of light seeps
around the edges
of black shades by day.
I sometimes hear footsteps,
distant voices down the hall.
But these things do not affect me.
Once a mobile being,
my stiffened wings are now
crisp as the flaking pages
of an ancient tome.
I am but a metaphor.

Rodak's Writings: An Ode to the Pandemic

What This Fresh Hell Is

                          All things must happen

                          left to right,

as your sight

now guides your mind,  

finally to fall off

the dexterous edge.

Thus the scorching sun

is Satan’s wand.

The prevailing breeze

is the Word of God.

The Ground of Being

smiles down on the virus:

Left to right

the ‘Rona rules.

Rodak's Writings: a Poem for Easter

HOLY WEEK, 2020

Drones hum above,
peer into baby buggies,
searching for clues.
Far below, the bug rages,
millions cringe in dark corners,
masked and abandoned,
watch as men truck the bodies,
gouge the parks for mass graves:
it’s just like the Nazis,
but without the bad press.
Still, tomorrow is Easter--
eat some chocolate and listen:
the sun also rises;
He is Trending;
chill out.

Rodak's Writings: Ruminations

The following three paragraphs were jotted down, perhaps at different times, on an old spiral-bound notepad that was lying around on a card table that I have in my home office. The second of the three was later used in a poem which I will include at the end of this post. 

These jottings are presented here without revision:

____________________

The essential thing about me, he said, is that I never gave a flying fuck about nature. Living on a cold, dead rock suits me just fine.

___________________

I dress in rags because I don't have to. If I had to, I would go far out of my way not to.

____________________

Nobody seems to realize how old I am. I've always looked young. Since I've gotten old, this has resulted in my receiving comments that I have allowed myself to take as flattering. When I was a young man, however, I usually felt my youthful appearance allowed my elders and/or superiors, to take me less seriously. But now, here I am: closer to 80 than to 65 --well within an age group where many are dying, or already dead.

______________________

Last Gasp

The soul is tried,

the jury still out.

On the empty street

a windblown Times

pursues the man

as if to bite.

Later, at home,

the poisoned air

lounges on his plate,

dares him to dine.

I am not hungry, he lies.

I wear these rags precisely

because I don’t need to.

So throw the key away, he cries.

Just, please, let me breathe. 

      

Rodak's Writings: Last Rites - a poem

Last Rites

The slim, laughing girls,

the elegant, agate-eyed women

whom I loved and desired

but never was permitted

to know, much less touch,

come to me now, each alone.

She straddles the stare

of my ancient, fallen head.

Bare feet seductively frame

bone-caged memories,

incarcerated dreams.

The maddening fragrance

of her undeodorized, ‘sixties sex

sifts down like spices sprinkled

on roasting flesh in the Creator’s kitchen.

I thirst, I cry. Wet me, please!

Finally now, at least bless me with that.

Rodak's Writings: Another Poem I Don't Want to Post on Facebook

Prevention Lines

If I say

I have lost everything,

I will soon begin receiving

lists of things

I still have.

If I say

these remains

are insufficient,

I will soon be told

to get help.

If I get help,

I will soon be asked

how long I have felt

this way.

Since I lost

almost everything,

I will answer.

Rodak's Writings: a Painful Poem

If, Not When

If only I can

get you wondering

what it would be like,

despite all the speed bumps

and Do Not Enter signs

on this one-way toll road,

I will have won

some kind of dubious

and Pyrrhic victory.

Rodak's Writings: An End-Stage Poem

And Suddenly You’re Old

The records of your fuck-hungry youth

don’t spin anymore.

The eyes of young women you encounter

are the eyes of an alien race:

They make a brief taxonomic evaluation

then quickly move on.

The eyes of old women demand payment

of some long-standing debt,

for which you no longer have the currency

to satisfy.

You have watched your father --

who taught you how to swing a bat,

who taught you the words you now employ

to curse your failing body -- die without warning,

on a day that began as routine.

Then time becomes a crushed and soggy tissue,

disgusting, no longer of use.

And suddenly you’re old.

Rodak's Writings: An Orphaned Poem

I'm pissed. The first thing I posted on Facebook yesterday was the poem below. I was very happy with it. I waited all day for it to get any response at all from my FB friends. Twenty-four hours later it has still gotten none. So be it. I can play that game too. 

So, nobody--here it is again. At least on Rodak Riffs I don't expect any response:

After Duran

Finally the body says, “No mas.”

“Long enough have I endured
these constant, nagging, pains,
only to allow your ridiculous mind
a rosy cave in which to cower.

“Return you now to Platonic realms.
Or simply dissipate like the angry clouds
of a summer storm.

“I will lie me down
and let the birds, or the worms,
or the oven’s flame,
clean up after all that was substantial
during this mundane interval.

“To rot is to rest:
Disintegration is the only promise
Existenz can keep.”

Rodak's Writings: Some More Bitter Verse

Advice

So, you think you can break my heart?

Well, maybe you can,

if first you are able to pick up

all the scattered pieces of it

and then work some kind

of jerry-rigged Jesus act,

to make it whole again.

But, honestly, I’m too old to feel much.

Best you go break a heart

that’s not already been broken.

I’d hate to see you

do your voodoo

for doo-doo.

Rodak's Writings: a Pome

Star Light, Star Bright

When things get very dark,

the fucking suckers say,

you can then look up

and see the stars.

Right.

There they are:

seductively twinkling

unreachable gems,

light dead on arrival,

celestial cockteasers.

But thanks for the thought.

Rodak's Writings: An Oldie Redux

A Good Friday/Easter Sandwich

This world is a room

perfect

to run screaming

from:

how do we

not?

How do we

abide,

straining to hide

the walls

under pictures

of pictures

of pictures of pictures,

venturing out

only to buy

furniture and frames:

sequentially cadenced,

staring through the sun

always

at dusty angles:

twitching under the moon,

gravid as windfall fruit,

in dreams

of an uncornered being

coiled ‘round

some polar secret

and vertical center:

yet chewing,

chewing and reflexively chewing:

How?

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Rodak's Writings: Good Friday - 3.30.18

Good Friday -- 3.30.18

Slouched below the gaslight,

we cast cynical shadows,

look down to question our nervous feet.

But the road is lost in dark irrelevance.

All that lies behind is time-altered or forgotten.

We are deaf to the call of any distant destination.

The word “home” no longer possesses meaning.

Some believe our God may be imprisoned there,

locked in an upstairs room

to which no survivor’s pocket holds the key.

Rodak's Writings: Two Songs of Resignation

Two Songs of Resignation

1.  Profile Deleted

I am sick

of my face, sick

of my tastes,

eroded by existence

on the abrasive surface

of this inconsequential

pebble, the banal

opacity of which

mirrors the clotted

vision of my fading

sight, the dying lamp

of my solitary soul.

2.  Gone

The warmth,

sometimes heat,

of your skin,

the soft hairs

twisting up

from its smooth

sparsely birth-marked

surface,

the muscles beneath

that contracted

or stretched in response

to my explorative touch,

the faithful bones within

Your hot skin

with its apertures,

their fragrances

and salt tides,

the non-gender specific

meeting of our mouths,

our twin tongues,

hungry, thrusting

the blank silence

of this room

the whispered resignation

of graphite on empty page

Rodak's Writings: Teleology - a poem

X

Teleology

It all comes down

to shit, to death.

The worms are oblivious

to the stench of reality,

Never having read

any books of wisdom.

X

Rodak's Writings: Enough of the New - a poem

X

Enough of the New

I shall soon be sharing my oldest poems

for they were songs of rage

and psalms of warning against

evil men with lust for power.

We must remember how the pen

was all we had in opposition.

((  In prior days we ate our Wheaties;

we played hide-and-seek

in lush back yards and made water

on the trunks of  trees like little dogs.

We coaxed the girls

to pull down their pants,

to show us what it was rumored

they lacked, while we giggled

like drunken elves, each little wee-wee

so mysteriously hard it hurt,

for we as yet had no release

for these confusing passions,

nor any notion then of how

those girls, grown knowing,

would so easily play us

in the power of their elements  ))

Venerable now, we are perhaps resigned

to this new world governed by our well-raised sons,

careful souls who walk above our nodding heads,

their competent feet shod in tender slippers,

as they check the locks and douse the lights.

I shall begin to share my oldest poems,

for we must never forget

how we carried our souls in our empty hats

as we made our desperate escape,

or were sent into terminal exile

by grown-up girls entrenched on angry beds.

X

Rodak's Writings: a Poem

X
X
All the world's wisdom

rests in neat rows
on my shelves,
inert,
its potential exhausted
by time's long lesson:

mind games
don't play on the street.
X

 X

Rodak's Writings: a Poem

X

 X
FRAGMENTS OF FUTILITY

I am an imaginary poet,
invisible product 
of unknown others 
who came before
and anonymously departed,
leaving behind them
no anxiety-inducing 
blueprints or lists
of commandments.
But this is not
a constant state.
I am at times other types 
of desperate being
with jury-rigged souls 
if any at all.
The poet notes this
on the unseen page.
He sometimes wonders
whether any of those 
other selves care
or benefit at all
from this arduously
feigned verbal angst.

X

Rodak's Writings: A Sonnenizio

X
Earlier today, I read the last poem in Kim Addonizio's excellent collection, "What Is This Thing Called Love."  In addition to providing me with hours of enjoyment, it also taught me about something of which I had been unaware: the poetic form called "sonnenizio." Addonizio defines the form this way in a footnote below the one in her collection, which is based on a line from Drayton:

"The sonnenizio is fourteen lines long. It opens with a line from someone else's sonnet, repeats a word from that line in each succeeding line of the poem, and closes with a rhymed couplet."

The idea of this appealed to me, so I decided to try my hand at it. I based mine on a line from "Sonnet 13" by John Berryman:

Sonnenizio on a line from Berryman

Beasts in their hills their tigerish love are snarling,

While in this dead valley I’m missing your love my lost darling.

Something stronger than love it was once brought you near me;

And once you were here it was love of your lips took me down

To the bed in my room where you taught me the love of your flesh.

Oh, how I would love one more time to drink from your mouth

And to love you again, fingers and tongue, north to south,

As you roll like a wave and sing my love deep in your throat.

I love to remember how I glowed as your bared your soft skin;

How you lay your limbs down on that bed for our love to begin.

Now love languishes lonely, long highways apart from your touch,

As I search for love’s power in words that fall harmlessly short

Of that powerful love I once felt in the clutch of your thighs,

As I lapped at love’s portal and drank your sweet form with my eyes.

                                           ***   ***   ***

According to Addonizio, another characteristic of the form was that it originally most often dealt with "the impossibility of everlasting love." So in that sense at least, I think I nailed it.

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