"iowa" poems
It's Wednesday, April 2, 1997, at 12:00 PM
I took a Greyhound bus to Des Moines, Iowa
It was a six-hour profanity demon hellride
At 6:00 PM, the Greyhound bus arrived at the Des Moines bus station
Two of my music fans picked me up and drove me to Fort Dodge, Iowa
Hell Greyhound bus ride
Hell Greyhound bus ride
Hell Greyhound bus ride
Hell Greyhound bus ride
At 2:00 PM on Friday, April 4, 1997, I went on a radio show joyride
I whipped out my Technics KN3000 keyboard and sung four rock songs on 88.1 KICB
At 6:30 PM, I rode with my friends to Knights of Columbus for sound checking
At 9:30 PM, I got up on stage and sung twenty rock songs in front of 200 rock fans
Hell Greyhound bus ride
Hell Greyhound bus ride
Hell Greyhound bus ride
Hell Greyhound bus ride
At 11:20 AM on Saturday, April 5, 1997, I caught the Greyhound bus to Chicago, Illinois
The Greyhound bus left Des Moines, Iowa at 11:30 AM
It was an eight-hour profanity demon hellride without music
At 7:30 PM, the Greyhound bus arrived at the Chicago bus station
I then got off the intercity bus and yelled like a stupid fool
Hell Greyhound bus ride
Hell Greyhound bus ride
Hell Greyhound bus ride
Hell Greyhound bus ride
Kinkos, it's the new way to office
Jan 23, 2014
Jan 23, 2014 at 10:27 PM UTC
lips become cherry red when I cry
and chasing cars hurts from my ears
down to my toes
because it was never wasting time
I almost killed my jeep battery
(forgot to turn the lights off)
drinking coffee to Iowa cornfields and a resurrected yearning
maybe I'll leave (I want to)
--LA, Paris, Austria, Versailles, Rio, Carmel, Amsterdam, Mumbai--
I'm audacious and arrogant--much too proud of
my flaws
leaving would be easy: intoxicating
like caffeine
stars
fear
laughing kisses
but staying means home and English and standing out like a sore thumb (a beautiful one) in public
and the people I deeply love
(and need) I can admit that now
so I'll watch the Capri Sun orange sunset
once again tonight
and try to intoxicate myself with
cornfields, sassy 8th graders, my beautiful examples of true love, ADD, bashful boy,
and pieces of the world
on my body
Apr 6, 2015
Apr 6, 2015 at 1:36 PM UTC
Time travel to Dallas days. We were sitting in your Acura Legend. Your face veiled, my eyes watery from the smoke, I know I hate tobacco now.
"Tom, teach me how to write poems, like yours."
"Okay but tell me first, Katie.
What are you running away from?"
We were close to home,
just sound without meaning,
a kid’s drawing on the refrigerator.
So the answer never differs:
I’m not running away, I’m running towards.
I don't remember, do you,
when poetry turned into dictionaries of devotion.
It was the language of tenderness you taught me,
my extinct mother tongue.
To love the ordinary was suddenly easy.
Those memories
the warmth of you
make it hard to imagine
that you are buried
somewhere in Iowa.
Here, read my dictionaries now:
page after page,
in hundred variations:
„Please come back to me“
and
„I will always long to bargain your soul for mine.“
That little toy airplane, the one you gave me
when we were kids,
still stands on my nightstand.
This time it is my turn to teach,
teach you about the cruelty of freedom.
Feb 12, 2019
Feb 12, 2019 at 5:49 PM UTC
innuendo sushi is usher asking Sienese disowns shown plops aside ask dud
NCOs debs downwind UBS mayo Iowa. Laos Nissan seis *** so enemies Sandusky snails used iOS somehow Owen haikus eye owl ensues diss worsens skinned unique.
ushers witted hub woman's newish naval cavity sis wish lend USB
[rage typing doesn't work with auto correct]
Aug 2, 2013
Aug 2, 2013 at 11:54 PM UTC
I woke up too early.
It was still dark out.
I tried to read some
Hunter S. Thompson, but
it made me thirsty,
not a drop in the
place.
I wish I were in
Puerto Rico.
A few nights ago my
girlfriend and
I got into it.
She bit me and
scratched my face.
We were drunk on
wine from Argentina.
The coffee I’m
drinking doesn’t taste
right.
I wish I were in
Puerto Rico.
In the wee hours of
the morning
I decided
to shave my head.
It took four razors, but
I finally got the
job done.
I looked in the
mirror,
and a stranger peered
back at me;
a head like Gandhi
and a face like Marciano.
I wish I were in
Puerto Rico.
Yesterday
my girlfriend and I went
on a shoplifting spree.
I stole coffee,
a couple of books,
a hat, denture glue, and
a **** ring.
She’s a much better thief than
me.
She took
razors, two tapestries, laundry soap and
trash bags, makeup, shampoo
and coffee that doesn’t taste funny.
As the sun gently
kisses the horizon
and begins to bathe
Iowa City in golden light,
I wish I were in
Puerto Rico.
Tomorrow morning
I have to be in
court.
A month ago I stole
some wine and got caught.
My day of reckoning has
almost arrived.
I should just get a
fine that I will
never pay, but
with these things,
one never knows.
The judge could be
hung over or constipated
or worse yet, he could have
read my poetry.
I really wish I were in
Puerto Rico.
Mar 2, 2023
Mar 2, 2023 at 7:14 AM UTC
Sweet Earth, each molecule of me has come from you.
Sesame seed, broken into amino acids and calcium,
became my tiny bones; bananas, potassium,
the cells of my brain.
If we could trace each atom back, we'd find
Kansas, Iowa, Ecuador, Spain.
And further still, through unimaginable millennia,
these same atoms --the very same-- were flung from a supernova,
only to recombine, here, on Earth.
"Of star-stuff, are we made." Carl Sagan said.
And then (when I'm dead)
the same in reverse:
the atoms' slow dispersal:
pulled in by roots, washed by rivers, melted in magma,
blown, finally, to smithereens by the exploding sun....
Star-stuff, once again, become.
Aug 1, 2017
Aug 1, 2017 at 2:33 PM UTC
Breathe and breathe and breathe for me
I’ll breathe and breathe and breathe for you
This world
This life
The love and happiness
All in your eyes
Breathe and breathe and breathe for the best of things
Breathe and breathe just breathe for me
Read and read and read its right
Think and think keeps me up all night
The words that push and push with every sight
I’m going blind from the thought… alright.
So breathe and breathe and breathe for me
We know I sure as hell cant do it decently
I’ll breathe and breathe and breathe for you
I can’t get enough of this green
Sight all filled with blue
Open my eyes- open to you…
Just another night, no sleep in slight
Bad rhyming ****** me off
But this music is soothing
And I get so inspired thinking of life
Breathing is so hard
Holding me back
To many people around
Only two can share solitude happily
In the best of company
How the cool air rest upon my skin
Delicate and white never known what sun is
Soothing, breath is still missing
From my lungs only retrievable from love…
But that is far, now close enough for now
All there is, is hope
But hope is held in God, if you believe in him
What a lie of course you do
I see it you just need to speak it.
Maybe think about the breathing for once.
Easy to forget when its not a loved one.
Yes I did that and yes I did this.
But I did it cause I obsess just a little bit.
I don’t care just move out of the way,
Please pilot,
I’m done with the west, fly east for me.
I wanna see the stars that you can never see in New York City
I wanna be in the limits of the devils play ground
With you holding one hand
Jesus gripping the next
Who cares if I sound crazy?
Every great artist had their thing
I can admit I’m rambling
With incompatible ridiculousness
But it’s true to say,
I can’t breathe today
When I can never breathe
Can’t breathe until this life grants me with a touch
And the **** tree’s will always be
**** Iowa.
It’s only in between.
Jun 30, 2010
Jun 30, 2010 at 6:50 AM UTC
You probably think this poem is about
Lisbon, Portugal, where women
dangle your imagination like
a necklace of sun-dried
currants. No,
Lisbon, Iowa, a town twenty-two
miles removed from the 21st
century, where I stopped
for coffee, flipped eggs
and a place to ****
on my way home
from god what a day;
a man ordered a plate
of Rice Krispie bars
and tea—shuffled
his wallet for ten minutes,
made me nervous
like he was on
Thorazine;
it was the last
time I visited
Lisbon.
Nov 4, 2016
Nov 4, 2016 at 10:32 AM UTC
It's the week of Giving
Thanks, and I'm thinking
Of the magical place of
My Dreams, the
Dream-state I existed
In my childhood.
Google maps is SCI-
Finite, and does this place
Justice like a squid
Quoting Revelation 1:
9 - the Island of Palmos.
But at least the squid
Was half-right -
Middle Park Lagoon
Had an island.
It wasn't just the little farm
Pond full of alligator snappers,
And indelible fish (carp, anagram:
Crap)
It was the surrounding woods,
The Leopard Frogs I could not
(And really didn't want to)
Catch. It wasn't the shoe-
Stealing muck-mud, the
Barely-4-foot deep water.
It wasn't Duck Creek flowing
Next door, flooding often,
Its waters spilling into the
Waters of the Lagoon, depositing
And withdrawing wildlife
At will.
It was my escape-pod in the
Mysterious Spaceship Earth
That was 1968-1984, for my Dad
Ed Scheck, was Supt. of Parks
And Rec in Bettendorf, Iowa.
He oversaw all the parks, the
Pre-Waterslide-Pool, the Bike
Trails connecting Davenport
To its bro/sis city.
My Dad had to work a lot
And me in the park was like
Me visiting Dad.
The Lagoon frozen when we
Had Iowa winter, and a very
Popular place to skate. I think
I loved the Lagoon more frozen
Than liquid. At night, I would
Cut through the houses on
Fair Meadows Drive, listening to
KSTT-AM blasting on the speaker
Attached to the light pole.
It was the scariest part of my day,
That little freezing trip from
Lagoon to Home.
And about the best.
In 1979, at sixteen, I applied
For employment with the
Parks Department, and that
Meant summers working at
Palmer Hills Golf Course.
And, winters, supervising
Middle Park Lagoon.
I got to skate out on the
Ice, the ice that would turn
To the watery body I loved
Most of all, and miss, to
This day.
From 1968 (5) to 1984.
The math doesn't add up;
Magic has no columns that
Add up at the bottom, because
Magic is bottomless.
Nov 23, 2014
Nov 23, 2014 at 10:09 AM UTC
It was in Rome
You guys got the table(cade,nevin)
So we stood there
Till you asked us if we'd like to join
Sure I said so
awkward first cause you somehow look like Ryan Gosling(no you look better, RG has never been my type)
Blue eyed boy from Iowa
Strangely enough, my bedtime T-shirt says Iowa hawkeyes
We talked bout beer ,Shandy, Greek islands ,Prague,Bristol and Iowa. Why should I know?
then you turned to me
Hey, fun fact, do you know the British first sounds like American?
Why should I know?Why did you say so?
But that was the most intimating thing on the table.
Strangely enough, you only asked my name when you left, and everything was left in Rome.
Apr 20, 2015
Apr 20, 2015 at 3:36 PM UTC
RED barns and red heifers spot the green
grass circles around Omaha-the farmers
haul tanks of cream and wagon loads of cheese.
Shale hogbacks across the river at Council
Bluffs-and shanties hang by an eyelash to
the hill slants back around Omaha.
A span of steel ties up the kin of Iowa and
Nebraska across the yellow, big-hoofed Missouri River.
Omaha, the roughneck, feeds armies,
Eats and swears from a ***** face.
Omaha works to get the world a breakfast.
2.2k
(For S. A.)TO write one book in five years
or five books in one year,
to be the painter and the thing painted,
... where are we, bo?
Wait-get his number.
The barber shop handling is here
and the tweeds, the cheviot, the Scotch Mist,
and the flame orange scarf.
Yet there is more-he sleeps under bridges
with lonely crazy men; he sits in country
jails with bootleggers; he adopts the children
of broken-down burlesque actresses; he has
cried a heart of tears for Windy MacPherson's
father; he pencils wrists of lonely women.
Can a man sit at a desk in a skyscraper in Chicago
and be a harnessmaker in a corn town in Iowa
and feel the tall grass coming up in June
and the ache of the cottonwood trees
singing with the prairie wind?
2.1k
Often, when I'm on the
streets, decaying in *****
degradation of the soul,
I go under the bridge and watch
the ducks.
Sometimes I talk to them.
They don't talk back.
Some days, it's the only
beauty I can see.
I think and dream of
a different world.
A land without
brutal lunacy.
I can handle madness.
It's the wicked,
smiling hatred that I
can do without.
The Iowa River beckons
me to come swim-
float blissfully to heaven.
But I know better.
Katie and Perry drowned not
far from where I sat.
It's usually at this time that
I'm fresh out of bread for
the ducks and I have milked the *****
bottle for all it's worth, that a
warm blanket of a thought comes to
me- I need help- go to the hospital.
I stumble my way there,
sometimes by ambulance.
I go through nightmarish withdrawals.
At around the third day, I get a
laptop from the patient library.
I catch up with neglected family
and friends, then I try to write.
The first four days, my mind is
like a smashed snail.
But usually, the magic comes back.
The muse kisses me gently, and I
put the shaking pen to the paper.
I can order whatever food I
want between 6 am and 8 pm.
I discovered years ago that they
have phenomenal cheesecake.
So when I'm able to eat, it's the
first thing I order.
My withdrawals are deadly.
Diastolic blood pressure
numbers like 103,109.113.
So they give me Ativan.
It helps tremendously- Ativan and cheesecake.
**** the muse's **** then more
Ativan and cheesecake.
If I'm lucky, I'll turn out a
poem or two-like this one right now.
Jan 24, 2021
Jan 24, 2021 at 10:58 PM UTC
There once was a queen bee from Iowa
Who had opinions of her own persona
Her subjects weren't a happy crew
With her self praising points of view
The egotistical queen irked her subject's spleens
Apr 26, 2013
Apr 26, 2013 at 6:42 PM UTC
I'm back in the psyche ward again.
It's my home away from home,
next to jail and the emergency room.
I sat under the bridge the other night.
It was January, and extremely cold.
I was jonesing for a drink—I knew what I had to do.
I had only been out of jail for a
couple of days for another public intox.
I narrowly avoided going back to the can today.
My nut-job girlfriend said,
"Why don't you get us some wine? " "Sure, " I said.
Shaking and sick, I walked a mile to
my favorite store that I steal ***** from.
I arrived, and had a bad feeling, but I
don't pay much attention to feelings anymore.
In and out is always the plan.
A bottle of chardonnay down the front
of the pants, and one in the coat.
I thought I had it. I was wrong.
A customer saw me and snitched me off.
I went with the manager to his office.
A cop showed up shortly afterwards.
I engaged the store-guy with talk of literature.
It turned out he was an
English major.
I wrote down the title of my book,
and slipped it to him. He put the paper
in his wallet. He told the cop that I was very cooperative.
Instead of taking me to jail,
the cop gave me a citation with a
court date on it, and let me go.
Sometimes, providence smiles on me.
On my way back to the apartment,
I was already planning the next store to hit,
I needed a drink.
The cop, from the store, pulled up along side of me,
and said,
"Your girlfriend called, she said she didn't
want you at her place anymore.
All your stuff is in front of her door."
I felt like I'd been run over by a rhino.
The cop said,
"I'll give you a lift, jump in."
When I arrived, there were two loosely
packed bags of clothes weighing around 100 pounds.
There was no way in hell that I could
have carried all that crap eight miles to Iowa City.
I grabbed a back pack, and stuffed it with a pair
of jeans, two shirts, my writing, and a copy of Don Quixote.
I went outside and waved to the cop, then headed towards town.
I finally made it back to the bridge.
I waited to get the nerve to make
my next move—steal wine.
I did it, and with no cork *****
I opened it with a broken ink pen.
I'm not complaining, it was the needed elixir
and it went down like nectar of the gods.
I drank it quick, it was three degrees out.
Life had to change.
This was getting real old.
Feb 19, 2021
Feb 19, 2021 at 12:35 PM UTC
Pradip marks the slow disappearance of faces in the market,
unknown yet familiar and thus important to the senses,
for our eyes crave continuity, comfort reassuring that time,
even time that robber par excellent, still provides some comfort
to our souls, in its own way, even the faces of strangers in familiar places are road markers, bookmarks, that even the known unknown offer a measure of solace, as we traverse the old familiar places
of daily life.
it must be remedied. some of you know that I make not idle promises,
that my promises to be there are effected, for I am affected by the
repair of the world in little, measurable manners, so the iCal calendar
modified with a Visit Pradip++, a new addition…
and on the way there
are few more exotic places where poetry grows that
will require some
layover visitations…
only time in its theiving secretive ways stands between me and
you denied grasping arms, taking the measure physical of a
beating heart
and river-wide smile,
maybe even I’ll practice with a trip to
remote foreign places, which they speak
the languages of poetry too,
Snake River, even Iowa!
olp/n.n.
Dec 19, 2023
Dec 19, 2023 at 9:34 AM UTC
pasty white ghosts haunt
the corpse blue cornfields of Iowa
whispering wisps of smoke
shimmering shadows of the past
setting the pace for the rat race
that is the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election
senators billionaires doctors
frauds liars fools
campaigning for selection in an
archaic and outdated
form of governance
witness the spectacle
the orgastic worship
of solipsistic oligarchs
bloated by their own
sycophantic rhetoric
it's just another form
of all-American
entertainment
each orator's charismatic adage
froths forth from a
throat like a grave
pragmatism throttles hope
as we stoke the fires of
self-indulgence and neglect
the fact that we acquiesced
as another deceiver stole votes
we're choking on placebo pills
every ballot cast is another act of apathy
escapism pleading vainly for a
savior to rescue our sick society but
these hands didn't evolve so we could
collect a representative to lead us
blindly into one fiasco after another
these fingers penned
humanity's symphonies and
these calloused palms have
toiled for years under an apathetic sun
we learned to make love
using our fingertips and
with these fists
we could chart a new path
but only if we raise them in
defiance
our only chance is leaderless resistance
Feb 1, 2016
Feb 1, 2016 at 12:05 AM UTC
In Africa the lissome eucalyptus leaves
Sharply ovoid, a washed celadon,
Turn their silvery backs, yield, bend with
The promise of on-coming rain.
You taught me this
Sign, this tree-voiced prediction, long ago, among
The tenderly sloping, densely viridian hills
And heavy, somnolent, rolling fogs of Iowa.
And so, I turn my back. I yield, oh, how I yield.
But, you didn’t foresee, didn’t know
How, much later, my heart would
Flake and flay
How great sheets of myself
Would peel, would fold
Would slough off just like
The bark, the back of those massive whitened eucalyptus trunks, you
Didn’t, couldn’t foretell how this long union
Scars, clings, sinks so deep, tattoos itself so that eucalyptus-like, despite
Repeated rain lashings, leaf bowings, droopings and sun decimated leavings
My heart, my soul sheds, molts, reforms, renews itself and just as those
Sharpened leaves arch and curve and arc and sway
So I bend, I turn, I give in, I give in
To the chafing wind, to the scouring hurt, to
The on-coming African
Rain.
Sep 3, 2014
Sep 3, 2014 at 9:18 AM UTC
I am so sick of this smog,
(And the plane has only just landed).
Gray and gold, it smothers the city;
I already miss cotton-ball clouds
In a sky that is blue, just blue,
Floating.across flat green fields filled
With yellow-topped corn and spindly windmills.
The flatness is immense here,
But clotted with a wreck of suburbia,
Boxy ranches and sudden apartment buildings.
Instead of a harvest, the backyards are filled
With cement and fetal-curved swimming pools.
Every bit of it looks about to crack
Under all this weight.
The palm trees that used to look exotic
And spark my mind with other people’s sold memories
Of India, Siam, and Hollywood,
Are now tacky, too tall,
Hovering over the highway wall.
They look like a locust infestation.
Even the white windmills
Seemed more benign, their blades
Whipping around and around
As if they were ready for a fight.
Ten months is too long for LA,
But it would probably be too long for heaven, as well.
So when I settle for good,
It will be in a house
With a winter view of the river,
A highway drive from the city.
This valley, though sometimes empty, is filled
With both silence and cement,
Sunshine and snow and thunderstorms,
And the only house that matters,
With a winter view of the river.
Jul 4, 2011
Jul 4, 2011 at 5:06 PM UTC
As a boy growing up in rural Iowa
I thought love was curve of neck,
tone of voice, hang of breast,
thick of hair, length of step,
temperature of hand, hue
of skin, size of soul;
I still think so.
Sep 6, 2016
Sep 6, 2016 at 10:12 AM UTC
A farmhouse in Iowa
Eight people killed with an ax
The killer never caught
These are just the facts
It happened a hundred years ago
On that fateful night
All killed in there beds
didn't put up a fight
They say the place is haunted
Go there if you dare
My wife and I are ghost hunters
Not easy to scare
We decided to spend the night
No one there but us
What would happen next
I'm reluctant to discuss
Voices of children talking
Are some of the things you'll hear
Objects levitating off the floor
Can give you quite a fear
I'm seeing things
I couldn't believe
Are my eyes
Trying to deceive?
Unseen entity
Tugging on my shirt
Starting to get worried
Don't want to get hurt
Everything I told you
Is honest and true
We spent the night alone there
I wonder would you?
May 30, 2016
May 30, 2016 at 8:38 PM UTC
So That Others May Live
My son and I go down to the beach today
And lay claim to a small square of sand
Where we ***** a blue plantation of shade
Inside a red umbrella city founded by dermatologists.
Slow cooking like a pair of pork chops basted in SPF 30
He reads a Jack Reacher novel, myself the LA Times
Occasionally, he looks up from his book and shares a passage:
How about I show you the inside of an ambulance?
The girlfriend his from Kentucky has never been to the beach
She is ensconced in the best chair eating watermelon
Reading poetry by Rupi Kaur god bless her
She should have the best seat if she’s reading poetry.
People form Iowa and Minnesota you know the ones
In the parcel of sand between us and the ocean
Have lain towels and blankets far too near the tide line and
Come noon we enjoy their Midwestern diaspora to higher ground.
We body surf in waves that are bigger than they look
He wears the right fin and I wear the left
I bounce off the bottom and get my *** sand papered
Then tumble into him like a forgotten dollar bill in a wash machine.
In the parking lot laughing and spitting salt water
I pour a bucket of sand out of my wetsuit onto the hot asphalt
And realize it will never be this way again and it won’t
The lines in his face a perfect nautical map of the future.
Jul 18, 2017
Jul 18, 2017 at 12:31 AM UTC
When I was little,
Like, between 8 or 11-
I used to wonder,
Standing with the fiery Iowa
Sun slowly blistering my shoulders;
Where does the time go
When it flies away?
And if time sometimed
Slowed, stopped, stood stock-
Still, why could I not
See its feet?
If...
(When)
I was 8, 8 years from Mom's
Belly, where was 9 for me?
Born: Thursday, May 9, 1963.
So, I can do the rudimentary
Addition: 5/9/71, I'm exactly...
8. 2 weeks from 3rd grade being
Over. Happy. Birthday. Presents.
Cake, ice cream, a baseball game
To hurry to, Teddy, we'll open
Your presents and have cake when
We get home from the ballgame.
Ugh. Baseball. All I'm going to be
Thinking obsessing about is what
Lies beneath colorful wrapping.
Time has a special
Bitter flavor when you hope and pray
The ball won't be hit to you, ever.
Baseball is full of confused time-
Time scurrying and rolling away from you
In the form of a stupid large white stitched
Ball that delightfully challenges you to be
Quicker than it - Time then languishing,
Elongating, becoming the torture of impatience
Trying to stand in line and wait with that
Virtuous virtue that time ever mocks.
So it's the next day, and I'm 1
Day past 8. I'm a clock, then?
I stored memories of 2, 3? Years
Ago? And I stored scars, dumb
Ideas materializing as real
Blood, pain, stitches, howling...
Did I store time inside my
Mind, heart, left knee, right
I didn't know. Life is often
Too big a concept to really
Grasp when you're eaten
By 8 mosquitoes.
And time slows down to
A scaly crawdad claw
That won't let go of your
Left pinky finger.
I thought, as I rode my bike
Down the middle of the street,
What about next year? 5/9/72?
Ninth birthday? Where did that
Day live? Was it millions and millions
Of miles Earth had to travel to line
Itself up clockwork-universe style
With the time that spun, tilted, and
Pushed the earth through space?
What if I died? Did the time
God gave me go back to Him?
Like I was a human library of congress
Book to spend a short amount of
()
And then be returned to my
Original Owner?
Nov 17, 2013
Nov 17, 2013 at 3:55 PM UTC