Poetry - Why Must There be Iambs?

Iambics are the sky through which words fly
Formations sweeping all five seasons across
In order royal and in right service to
The aspirations of all noble youths

For verses built without a careful plan
Fall but as clutter on a wasted page
Their meanings and intents broken apart
And lost (like sophomores between each class)

Free verse is only an unanswered why:
Iambics are the sky through which dreams fly

Make Hope America and Again Great Change

Slick runway haircuts and bribery gowns
Armoured tank-mobiles and gun-guarded walls
And condescending slogans that mock the poor
Just like those once-every-four-years flannel shirts

They investigate each other back and forth
Always holding hearings but never hearing
The sigh of a waitress counting her tips
Gas for her twenty-year-old Ford Focus

The Party-proud sneering at her trailer park
Where dreams live only on cable tv

All Change at Zima Junction

For Yevgeny Yevtushenko, 1932-2017

Everyone changes trains at Zima Junction
Changes lives; nineteen becomes twenty-one
With hardly a pause for twenty and then
Everyone asks you questions you can’t answer

And then they say you’ve changed, and ignore you
The small-town brief-case politician still
Enthroned as if she were a committee
And asks you what are you doing back here

And then you go away, on a different train:
Everyone changes trains at Zima Junction

“I went, and I am still going.”1


1Yevtuskenko: Selected Poems. Penguin,1962

Poetry of the Occupation

“…trained in the politics of the day, believing the great new system invented by a genius so great that they never bothered to verify its results.”

-John Steinbeck, The Moon is Down

Political poetry occupies the streets
Brakes squealing to a stop before an idyll
Squads of inclusive wordtroopers disembark
Into our souls to force submission and love

Armed with warrants and inquisitions
The bills of indictment already drawn
Needing only a tap upon a screen
To serve in the office of a signature

And sensitive to death the personal life -
Political poetry occupies the streets

A Meeting in the Parish Hall

To the arrhythmia of mostly futile clicks on a hand-held gadget

No food or drinks in game room can someone
Please get the lights no not there over there
PowerPointlessness uh-oh can someone
Please get the lights okay I’ve got it now

Uh-oh oh wait these slides are all mixed up
Can someone get the lights again okay
I’ve got the sound now hospitality
Ministers what does “Eucharist” mean

Foam-cup coffee penitential folding chairs
No cell phones please dear God why am I here

Yevgeny Yevtushenko died today.  The Penguin Modern European Poets edition of YEVTUSHENKO: SELECTED POEMS was the first book I bought upon returning from Viet-Nam, in the airport in San Francisco.  That paperback is on the desk beside me as I type.

"Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and make perpetual Light to shine upon him."

Yes, Lady-in-the-Back-With-Your-Arms-Folded-in-Disapproval

“Excuse me.  Excuse me.  Could I ask a question?
Okay, I’ve got a question actually I’ve got
Two questions okay maybe it’s one question
I don’t mean to interrupt or anything

“Ha ha but sometimes us old folks don’t understand
So well ha ha but about what you said about
Just now what was it oh yes now I remember:
When I was young back in the stone ages

“Ha ha we were taught one way and right now
You’re telling us this way and that’s not right…”