"huckleberries" poems
My face tells me nothing. Not nothing but nothing useful,
the complications of ageing humorously but not how to avoid
injury.
Permanent injury is a now popular cliché. At this age any injury
could result in pneumonia, pain in bitterness for your peers,
your jury.
What a headache I have! And never forget injury provokes
at best only pity. Friends are merely friendly, they belong to the
majority.
They forget your name and so should you, who are you? Even you
don't know for sure. In relation to community, no change was noted in
the
registry.
Still, man's mercy, economy's ecology, there's some joy in being small,
some joy in staying strong, and keeping death before you without
perjury.
Unsafe to run the wind. A big stick might hit your head. Then
the hip and heart and head will hurt, all three. Un-
fortunately.
I like a strong wind. Dangerous to go out in. As a fire or flood.
I like the way we are at risk, not a risk-averse weasel. A carnivore,
very hungry.
Pay money, take chances. Yo's an elegant contraction of you.
Cool. Message from street to board: mongrels rule. Democracy or
tyranny.
Scared to die? Why? Take appropriate measures, descend through
meditation. Be empty, rest. And to your friends and sons be as
gravity.
Tired of death. It's what it is. Let's play sports, have *** kayak
to the huckleberries, fish for marvelous fish, live a wonderful life, give
generously.
Done blowing, O wild wind? Not yet? So be it. I lay my head
in your felt hands. The motion of the branches, evolutionary branches,
are my
guarantee.
That's all folks, 7:30. The sky is clear, the crows are out. The clouds
are with my mood commensurate. I should shout, having lived
prodigiously.
Aug 11, 2015
Aug 11, 2015 at 10:38 AM UTC
Oh Ophelia,
My Sweet, Ophelia
She who tastes like huckleberries
and smells like wild cherries.
Oh Ophelia,
My Sweet, Ophelia
She who loves to bathe in the lagoon
and dry in the mid sun afternoon.
Oh Ophelia
My Sweet, Ophelia
She who could not bear her fathers death
and took her last breath.
Oh Ophelia
My Sweet Ophelia
She who drowned in her lagoon
and the earth shall never hear her tune.
Oh Ophelia
My Sweet Ophelia
She who loved deep
and now she is asleep.
Oh Ophelia
My Tragic, Ophelia.
She who is incapable of her own distress
and I, must confess.
Oh Ophelia
You, are Tragedy.
Apr 10, 2020
Apr 10, 2020 at 7:48 PM UTC
Moby **** geometry, physics.
Study every subject everyday.
Homework is an indicator of future success.
Success is not necessarily happiness but it helps.
Freedom is to formulate your own definition of success.
Happiness is an imaginary tree, its own reward, and a fact.
Facts and fiction may be memorialized in memos or found in dreams.
The story starts thus: Each summer the honeysuckles and the
huckleberries . . .
The web is that extra brain we've all been dreaming of having.
Like jumping 4 meters or flying without a plane.
To fly like that must one first have homework?
Some say yes, some say don't. It depends on how you vote.
Happiness is what happens when everything that happens
Fits the time perfectly and it's all out of your hands.
Not exactly. You don't let go of the steering wheel while driving fast in
the passing lane.
You look left and right and check your blind spots.
Homework is an introduction to everything you're not
And all you do not know. It's supposed to help you learn to know where
you want to go before going where you have to go.
Otherwise you end up on Ulzana's raid
Bleeding, without a bandaid.
All the achievement in the world won't relieve your loneliness
Or satisfy your ****** longing. What girls are like behind their eyes.
Survival, procreation. That's all there is to love.
But the loved one is the one who can be trusted with your life.
Whether Christ or your wife. The Muslim moms.
On my walk in the woods I come to a sitting spot
Above a small gorge cut by a stream through hemlocks.
Here someone has left a statuette of the Buddha and the flags you see
Flapping in the wind at sky funerals.
This is a pretty good place to sit quietly and think about homework.
Sep 9, 2017
Sep 9, 2017 at 7:14 AM UTC
It's already hard enough to say anything accurately
without further obfuscating and camouflaging the soul.
The faces in the funeral pews are impassive, impatient
and the dead woman cares not what's said, isn't even present.
The poet gets innumerable do-overs, it's one of man's wonders,
revises his vision of his mother and plays her piano, posthumously.
Why not say it simply? Hers was a comity and a tragedy.
As are ours. And perform the history that surrounds us.
Are caskets boats? The ship of death rides Charon's waves
or perhaps on that solitary day you happily kayak to the huckleberries.
Is the deeper sadness incomplete achievement or never to have tried?
Any attempt to decide this question for others is to badly behave.
The pablum of Christianity, esp. the Catholics, re the after life
must be rejected. It's necessary. To be replaced by community,
perfection of the human project, nature's intelligent partner.
Dusty, sadly habitable houses along the funeral route, shapeless
people crossing themselves when ambulances or hearses pass.
I wanted to describe the sweetness of her life, how she was part
of the problem and part of the solution. How love and evolution
are passed like loaves from person to person down the generations.
Find the humor in the cholera. When my father died
he waved like a surfer riding a wave or a clown riding
an elephant out the circus tent. Mom follows the same law.
The many ways a spear can pierce a brave warrior's jawbone or armor.
Aug 11, 2015
Aug 11, 2015 at 4:44 PM UTC
You can be my pinewood forest
and I'll wander through your mists
ducking through
your hollowed out trees anytime
I'm your huckleberry
bushes growing
under your treetops
and you can eat my berries anytime
Recall that
huckleberries only grow wild
and so do I.
Jan 28, 2014
Jan 28, 2014 at 1:17 PM UTC
Five pennies make a nickel
oh to trade for giant pickle.
Deal a deal a shiny button
In exchange for slice o mutton.
If me be a little silly
Swap it out for *** of jelly.
And if I sound a great big ******
change it for some peanut butter.
Trade my outhouse by the moat
For a topped- off gravy boat.
And me plenty, many worries
For a plate of huckleberries.
Replace me dreams of good eats
For some REAL potted meats.
And me sad wants and wishes
For food filled up dinner dishes.
Trade roof forever leaking
For a bucket of fried chicken.
And faucet missing gasket
For a filled up picnic basket.
Barter socks stiff and holey
For a Mexican bowl of mole'
Swap a dish rag smells a funny
For a jar of good old honey.
What I'm saying I so poor
I just want to eat some more.
Be willing barter piece me soul
Ultimately want my tummy full.
Mar 4, 2025
Mar 4, 2025 at 8:18 PM UTC
I can taste the huckleberries ripe on the branches
stolen from the fairy garden in the early summer
when the ravens weren't looking.
I stole a lot of things as a child.
I stole the UV rays from the sun,
tanning my alabaster arms
and freckling my shoulders.
I stole winks from boys in my third grade classroom
while the teacher had her back turned.
And I might have sold those winks
to other boys
for an extra juice at lunch.
Maybe I committed petty theft as a young lady,
taking the air from someones lungs,
******** in their light-bulbs and
blowing a fuse.
I'm a thief,
taking the light from their eyes
and the bullets from their guns,
I stole smiles
and never gave them back.
Dec 12, 2013
Dec 12, 2013 at 4:12 AM UTC
deep in the blackwood
beside yellow skunk cabbage
a jagged spectre
stands astrde a tiny stream
twixt ferns and huckleberries
its twisted thorn covered limbs
looking cruel and alien
they gesture menacingly
and they win the argument
so i make a wide detour
and think how appropriate
that this bizarre armored plant
be called devil's club
Jul 1, 2016
Jul 1, 2016 at 12:46 AM UTC
Mom loves the huckleberries
Picks ‘em up in the mountains,
Says it’s her therapy.
Swear she can sniff ‘em out like a bear,
Got a snouzer on her or something—
Always knows where they are hidden
But she says,
“Dad guides me.”
Always thought that was funny,
But he loved those hucks
Almost as much as his kids.
Maybe that’s why she goes up there…
To say hi,
Hang out with Dad,
Pick some berries,
******** about life,
Tell him his girls are doing just fine.
Huck heaven is what we say
When we find a good patch.
Can sit in there for hours…
Mom loves it.
Love this about mom.
Mom my rock.
Nov 12, 2015
Nov 12, 2015 at 1:33 PM UTC
Watching Homer struggle
to explain how a god wounded by a mortal
cannot die but may hereafter live with minor pain
and the humor when that god
complains to Jove that His supervision of His daughter
is inadequate and His Love too unconditional
while Diomed (or Tydides)
wreaks havoc on the Trojans and Hector
gives it back (in kind)
anatomically correct descriptions
of spears piercing jawbones (and groins)
sons without fathers hunting and fishing thereafter
alone. Written
amazingly presciently!
as a metaphor for Vietnam (our war)
forgotten consensually
as this generation slips lazily away
to Hades (or kayaks to the huckleberries)
where the lights are always blue, gentian actually,
supper's served at 4 and former adversaries
pass the heavy hanging time playing pinochle (and pool).
We're selling the house to pay the taxes.
Pallas Athena wars among the men
from the axle of her chariot
and Venus is injured by Diomed,
standing in the field of battle where she never should have been,
in her adorable hand.
What has this to do with Solomon in jail.
Not the Jewish king, a black American male,
same thing.
Your children can be failed at school and marched to war.
You can be taxed and sent to gaol for the honor of it.
anyone lived in a pretty how town.
We have no obligation
to perform the Iliad or read poems and even Homer
considers Achilles effete (compared to Hector)
and Odysseus is wrong even when he's right.
Therefore, modern man explores
the mathematics of circles in coordinate planes and their tangents
when (sooner or later)
the secret of warp speed is discovered
expansion of the species will be limitless and permanent.
Aug 11, 2015
Aug 11, 2015 at 5:09 PM UTC
1.
Sasquatch stalks
the Washington woods.
I lope through low-lying
bushes in search of huckleberries.
The purple-reddish stains on my fingers
are as real
as the grumbling in my stomach,
or the solidity of these mighty pines.
The “small rain” begins to seep
through the atmosphere.
It will not wash away my stains.
2.
I do not believe in Big Foot.
He towers, an outsized legend of the forest.
A Nessie of the woodlands.
A mythical creature created
to satisfy our impoverished imagination,
atrophied by the ever-encroaching
artifice and sterility of the human world.
3.
Soon, the mist turns to big rain.
Clouds blot out the sky.
Dusk turns to night, hours early.
Thoroughly soaked, I
will seek shelter alone.
4.
Mountain folk recite encounters
with Big Foot like happy-to-be-frightened
children around a campfire.
The scariest tale is always the next to come.
Twigs snap, branches break, pine cones are crushed.
We all listen, acutely alert.
5.
Gorged on huckleberries, I will sleep tonight
beneath the pines, solitary,
curling up safely in the contours
of a giant footprint.
I can hear the leaves hit the forest floor.
Dare I dream of conversion?
Dare I dream of belief?
Oct 4, 2018
Oct 4, 2018 at 3:35 PM UTC
A Set of fools , Carry the wake of you
6 Huckleberries red white and blue
Tried and true Making big waves just ripples in the blue Wake up in the Mirror , Father is that me or you
Jun 24, 2018
Jun 24, 2018 at 12:40 AM UTC
I was to catch her
in the rye
Maybe maybe
say goodbye
Alex stood naked
cloaked in orange
singing shivers
in the rain
We all know
how the story goes
So it goes
So on it goes
El Bib the acronym
To be read
back and forth
from end to end
Huckleberries
the river flows
down wrong paths
Big Jim he knows
I was the phoney
in the rye
A clockwork orange
in disguise
Dec 19, 2024
Dec 19, 2024 at 7:43 AM UTC
the worst dream --
a storm rolls in, all bolt-cold, fierce,
drowns our peat in what helps huckleberries
and your leaves unfurl
leaving me, root-bound bog butter
for some scientist to find
and you, so tall
Jul 24, 2019
Jul 24, 2019 at 2:34 PM UTC