"bahia" poems
You grew up
on the side of the road,
between sidewalk cracks,
in backyards full of
tall bahia grass,
pushing aside their
stems so you could
find the sky.
You grew up
beneath the sun
and out in the rain
and under every
booming thunderstorm
an Alabama summer
could throw your way.
Dogs ran through you.
Men, too, trampled you
but you sprung back up,
rumpled, but still bright,
unbowing, even when
they said you were just
a gangly **** that no
one would find beautiful.
(I found you beautiful,
because your face was
the sun, and I find it
everywhere.)
You grew up.
You had to grow up,
grew white and fragile
and one day the wind
came for you and
carried you away.
Fly far.
Oct 18, 2011
Oct 18, 2011 at 6:21 PM UTC
Sitting here hoping you miss me
Cause things ain't been the same
Since that good for nothing city slicker
Keeps trying to give you his last name
Rolling into town
Like a brand new Cadillac
Well I'm here to tell you mister
I want my baby back
He may take you to far off places
Places we could never go
Like over there in Georgia
Where you could visit the streets of Rome
Or take you to a romantic dinner
With candle light just you and he
Toasting you by the riverside
In Paris, Tennessee
You can drive a world away from here
In his fancy sports car like it weren't nothing
Clinking your bottles of Lone Star beer
High stepping it out in Dublin
I even here tell he's taken you
To the sunny shores of Naples
Way down South in Florida
Something I was never able
But can he take you out frog gigging
Or catch fireflies in a jar
In all your worldly gallivanting
Don't you miss the way we were
Has anything he done for you
Been as sweet as chewing on a piece of Bahia grass
While standing in an open field
Watching the clouds blow past
Or listening to a Whippoorwill
Sing out it's nightly song
On the front porch you and me swinging
To it's rhythm all night long
Don't give a hoot about places he takes ya
That's about all I gotta say about that
After all this highfalutin society traveling
All I want is my baby back
Aug 19, 2014
Aug 19, 2014 at 8:00 AM UTC
Masculinum Hyppeastrum,
monstrum;
the man eating
botanica,
the endlessly flowering plant,
had enough of me.
Went to sleep,
or worse,
he perished.
I must have said something nasty
about his size;
doesn't flower anymore,
all dried out,
doesn't do a thing,
his onion is weeping.
Christmas roses,
as I call the girls,
lost the will
to live.
All my,
previously green, flora
is pointing her leafless finger
at me.
I've done nothing,
that's the problem.
I forgot all about my green plants;
the environment is wrong,
there is too much acidity,
and that's my fault.
I will search
under the garden snow
for snow drops,
I left to themselves
two years
February,
my snow tears.
For colour,
I have lemons and limes,
green and yellow;
sitting on a traditionally,
blue, hand-painted
Chinese china platter.
River Yangtze
is still running through my mind.
Chai,
Lemon tea and lemonade.
~
Author Notes
*Flowering plants from Bahia : Hyppeastrum sp.
From the 1970s, many plant novelties from Bahia
came to light with the expeditions carried out
by Howard Irwin and collaborators
of NYBG (USA) and by Raymond Harley
from RBG-Kew (UK). This provoked a renewal
of interest, among botanists, in the flora of Bahia*
(3-1-07)
Oct 14, 2010
Oct 14, 2010 at 3:43 PM UTC
You will discover that there is a problem.
However, the errors are bad. Your happy
prostitutes are the light of Israel.
30 km from the Kibbutz Magdido.
What is surprising is the Greek language.
Yes, I can say that it can not be done.
Girls, girls, girls? Pros and Oregon mean?
Youth 1 LC who makes prostitutes,
What are you doing, what is it? This network
service when this happened.
This is the third part of it. *****
and her daughter The girl, a girl? Great
revelation The Oregon program at the airport.
That was Bob King Pine's problem.
from Osaka T companies; Joshua is based
In the words of San Ignacio de Independiente.
States, prostitutes and other foreigners should not
In other productions, Timmy with that. Matt J. J.
Matt, San Diego, Roberto. Sao Paulo, Brazil.
India, the women of Paul Bahia in Canada, in this case,
What? Satisfied with your finger? children, prostitutes and
daughters This feature is huge.
30 videos and bad ones. Sir, nobody is allowed
To be clean, after three minutes. More. Where 1
1 hour; girl? Oregon School of Girls? Northeast?
The Persian words are the most common. TO; except
for John in New Zealand. San Diego, CA,
In God's place, Robert. Apostol Pablo
It reminds me of an India, Robert Blake.
United Kingdom, Ireland, Ireland
Pakistan now. This will make the girls;
little girls
Oregon is a great resource for you
That the Lord has sent a letter to another.
The assistant has been sent.
Legislation to maintain it. second
use [Central Park] Carl Explorer
Many rockets under water.
Application The service and Google.
It is not connected, citizens are at the beginning.
Now imagine that this is just a real rock.
bring the impressions started
To celebrate homosexuals or whatever we are. the plumber
Heart stones and hydraulic system. CEO
control; due to the recent increase
The war movie of the goats, let's write in glory!
1 try this? I am welcome for more information.
Use some features at the top of the mountain.
This is what Robert says. But now
The hipocampus was born.
Nov 14, 2018
Nov 14, 2018 at 1:56 PM UTC
My passion lies on a distant shore, but like driftwood floats away,
Only to return to the beach again, for a moment, but doesn't stay.
But if I could put my hand on it, and pick it up to claim,
Would I still be so passionate, and behold it just the same?
And just like a sparkle in the grass, from many, many, yards away,
What I see from here is beautiful, and intriguing in every way.
Yet many times on closer inspection, things appear not so bright.
Like plastic hiding in Bahia blades, on a rainy, moonlit night.
And maybe I appear amazing too, to the one on the distant shore,
But if all the miles were finally crossed, would the interest still endure?
Why must we always take what we have,
And try to turn it into so much more?
And then in the end be remorseful when,
We can't put it back how it was before.
Oct 28, 2010
Oct 28, 2010 at 4:28 PM UTC
If you want to know how I spend my time
RC Cola and a Moon Pie
Chewing on a stem of Bahia grass
Just in case you feel the need to ask
Skipping stones across a glass top pond
Blowing wishes from a dandelion off the lawn
Living the country life all inside my head
Before I find there ain't nothing left
Chasing Crawdaddy's in a deep wood stream
Playing hide and seek in a pile of leaves
Cane pole fishing for that elusive Bass
All before Summer's put to bed
Catching Fireflies in their flickering light
Counting all the stars in the skys at night
Stolen Watermelon always tastes the best
That's the part that I'll never confess
Skinny dipping for a living in a mountain lake
Jumping out of planes in a barn of hay
Kids being kids being life fed
Just in case you feel the need to ask
Feb 18, 2017
Feb 18, 2017 at 9:22 AM UTC
Bahia,
I drown without waking from your dream.
Like silk you slide down over my eyes
and it is dark as it should be.
Should we,
before the dawning of demasiado,
tip toe accross the waves
to dance in the streets,
I believe you will have convinced me
once more,
beyond the shadow of doubt
cast by the swaying trees,
to sink in your arms as you sing to me.
Bahia,
dulce Bahia.
Jul 7, 2012
Jul 7, 2012 at 1:29 AM UTC
Dig
We were nearly back to the house
when the front end loader shattered
the silence and back filled the hole
drove off some vireos and cowbirds
amped up seven whitetail browsing
the pine break above Calusa Way.
American Spirit *******
a new moon **** of mouth
the operator feathered the lever
while gathered together we grazed
potato salad, deviled eggs, sliced ham, rain
from the Gulf over to Melbourne
soaking the operator’s boots
ducking into his pickup truck
for the long drive home to Pedro.
It hammered the tin roof shed
out back where your tools
tarps, trouble lights, line trimmer
home brew insecticide in unmarked
milk jugs, old spark plugs
a lifetime of nuts, bolts and washers
huddled warm and dry on shelves
ball peened the tamped sand lozenge
on the ragged fringe of the silent ranks.
It’s hard to find even with a map
Calusa Way coiling through the bahia grass
flowing past stone faced theater goers
house lights up well past their final act.
Vireos and cowbirds
even the whitetail browsing
the pine break pay me no
mind down on hands and knees
undoing the honest work
of the operator, sifting handfuls
of sandy backfill for something
I might have missed.
Oct 19, 2016
Oct 19, 2016 at 7:27 AM UTC
To Drummond
And now, Carlos?
I had friends, I had family,
I had peace and love.
I just didn't have time
to remember all.
And now, Carlos?
I was son, I was grandson,
I was husband and father.
I just wasn't boy,
boy to live unhappy.
And now, Carlos?
I learnt to speak, I learnt to rhyme,
I learnt to grow up and see the world change.
I just didn't learn to live
as everybody expected to see.
And now, Carlos?
I was born in Bahia, I was born in Brazil,
I was born in America and in the world.
I just wasn't born in the universe
(and this has no meaning).
And now, Carlos?
I'm old, I'm grizzled,
I'm useless and I'm a poet.
I'm just not a child,
because I disobeyed the heart.
Jun 14, 2014
Jun 14, 2014 at 12:58 PM UTC
Dawn breaks on the quiet countryside.
The nightlife ghosts shuffle away to their daytime hideaways.
The strand of oak, bough of pine,
crevice of cypress.
The final inhalation of night.
The early bird janitorial crew wakes and makes sounds
to each other as the sun spreads across
the quivering Bahia yard. It drinks up the dewdrops
and straightens the fenceposts with kindness as it finds error.
The sun finds me, too, naked again, on the porch
and seeks to stretch my skin taught against my frame.
I scrape a toe callous across the brick of the porch step.
It is Wednesday the nineteenth.
It is 6:27am and I am grateful to be here.
As the morning mist unravels in the exhalation
and the crows set to work aerating the soil,
my attention drifts to the breeze and how I can nearly taste October on it. A red-tailed hawk observes this scene as well,
unbothered by the fettering mockingbird,
patiently waiting for the over zealous rabbit
or the confused field mouse to make itself apparent.
The girl in my bed routinely suggests coitus
on mornings such as these, with crispy autumn leaves drifting down outside the window. Which begs to be painted, white chips peeling in the dry fall air, but she says leave it --
she likes to pick them out of the flowerbed
after we ram the bedframe against the interior.
She likes to keep them.
Instead, this morning she’ll settle for bacon and eggs without much complaint. Although she will leer at me murderously
from behind her mustachioed cup of creamed coffee. She won’t tolerate my advances afterward, either --
insisting on her lateness, or mine,
or the cat pawprints
on the hood of her car.
She’ll hum through my comments
about the sunlight, the dew, my personification of the hawk.
She looks over the top of her phone when I mention ghosts, but happily returns to scrolling when she realizes I’m full of it.
And so, then, off we go.
Each with a bushel, and a peck, and a hug around the neck.
The quiet morning has been ruined. Although I tried, I failed to grasp it in its totality, failed to convey to you its extreme beauty.
It lies at our feet in shreds.
I know I will never have
a morning like this again,
not exactly like this,
and I’ve let it slip away.
Oct 19, 2022
Oct 19, 2022 at 7:33 PM UTC
Roaring walls of water and crazed foam
Stubborn gulls
A complete and eternal gray
sea bear bellows
Here life is rude
pertinacious
inexhaustible
Here life gives us hope
May 23, 2019
May 23, 2019 at 7:49 PM UTC