"potomac" poems
596
When I was small, a Woman died—
Today—her Only Boy
Went up from the Potomac—
His face all Victory
To look at her—How slowly
The Seasons must have turned
Till Bullets clipt an Angle
And He passed quickly round—
If pride shall be in Paradise—
Ourself cannot decide—
Of their imperial Conduct—
No person testified—
But, proud in Apparition—
That Woman and her Boy
Pass back and forth, before my Brain
As even in the sky—
I’m confident that Bravoes—
Perpetual break abroad
For Braveries, remote as this
In Scarlet Maryland—
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N. N is for neurologist.
What does the neurologist say?
“Nothing seems to be wrong.
Your net recall seems normal.
You seem to remember most nouns and the news.
Nothing serious,
No need to worry.”
I don’t quite remember driving here.
This is Bethesda, right?
And your name is…?
P. P is for psychologist.
The P. is silent.
So is the psychologist.
I talk and talk.
My energy level is high today,
even though I got no sleep last night.
I want to write a poem and run a partial marathon.
I love people.
People are so beautiful.
“Only connect,” said E.M. Forster.
Am I talking too much?
How does that make me feel?
Just great! Not like yesterday,
when I wanted to jump into the Potomac
from Key Bridge.
P is also for Potomac.
The psychologist speaks.
I need a new pill.
E. E is for endocrinologist.
What does the endocrinologist say?
“Eat. You’re an enigma.
You are losing weight.
We don’t know why.
We’ve checked everything
and can’t find evidence
of enemies in your endocrine system.
Enjoy some eclairs, eggplant, eggs benedict.
Life is short, endulge!
Hopefully not too short.
O. O is for oncologist.
Oh.
Oh oh.
Mar 14, 2019
Mar 14, 2019 at 11:22 AM UTC
As the sun sets in the west
And the sky turns a fiery red
The city of Washington comes alive
With a beauty that cannot be said
The monuments and buildings stand tall
Against the colorful sky
Their majesty and grace on display
For all to see, some with a watery eye
The Potomac flows slowly by
Reflecting the glow of the sun
And the people of the city
Are caught up in the beauty, one by one
It's a sight to behold
This beautiful sunset in DC
A moment to be cherished
And never forgotten, forever and one.
Dec 2, 2022
Dec 2, 2022 at 10:26 AM UTC
As the blue moon climbs over the Potomac River,
I lay my tired body down next to the planted field.
Momma tells me that I’ll turn 13 tomorrow; my birthday wish….to be free
Like brail, the scars on my back speak to the humility in my life.
My dog Jip lays beside me and with a warm tongue conveys everything will be fine.
It’s the early fall here at Georgetown University
My name is Cornelius, Cornelius Hawkins and I write these words so you know my plight.
Here with me are my father, mother and 2 yr old sister.
We toil the field from dawn to dusk…the salt herring and cornmeal give us strength.
And my hands are forever clinging to this rosary and I pray God will hear my prayers.
I can’t begin to tell how afraid I am each and every day.
I try not to dwell on our strife and struggles, but day dream of downright happiness.
My family and our ancestors before us have been confined to slavery for 200 years.
Momma always says “There is no slavery, just ignorance”.
I hold her words near and dear to my heart and I never give up hope for a better life.
Apr 20, 2016
Apr 20, 2016 at 2:08 PM UTC
Until tonight they were separate specialties,
different stories, the best of their own worst.
Riding my warm cabin home, I remember Betsy's
laughter; she laughed as you did, Rose, at the first
story. Someday, I promised her, I'll be someone
going somewhere and we plotted it in the humdrum
school for proper girls. The next April the plane
bucked me like a horse, my elevators turned
and fear blew down my throat, that last profane
gauge of a stomach coming up. And then returned
to land, as unlovely as any seasick sailor,
sincerely eighteen; my first story, my funny failure.
Maybe Rose, there is always another story,
better unsaid, grim or flat or predatory.
Half a mile down the lights of the in-between cities
turn up their eyes at me. And I remember Betsy's
story, the April night of the civilian air crash
and her sudden name misspelled in the evening paper,
the interior of shock and the paper gone in the trash
ten years now. She used the return ticket I gave her.
This was the rude **** of her; two planes cracking
in mid-air over Washington, like blind birds.
And the picking up afterwards, the morticians tracking
bodies in the Potomac and piecing them like boards
to make a leg or a face. There is only her miniature
photograph left, too long now for fear to remember.
Special tonight because I made her into a story
that I grew to know and savor.
A reason to worry,
Rose, when you fix an old death like that,
and outliving the impact, to find you've pretended.
We bank over Boston. I am safe. I put on my hat.
I am almost someone going home. The story has ended.
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There is no dusk in this city
penetrated by the raging Potomac,
Night just crams itself in and
rapes the day dry -
lays her flat against the horizon.
Mothers and children run for covers
and put each other to sleep;
in a few hours
harlots and nighthawks will do the same.
Sweet Siren
You are this city
Petticoated and pretty,
Cunning and stunning
Winking and blinking
Red
Yellow
Green
eyes popping open like sunken headlights,
Ready for the night.
I hear your wailing
red-flashed and flaming
like an open heart,
piercing the black with it's plea.
I feel your pulse-pumping red corpuscles
thrusting me deep into
lusting for things forbidden and hidden
Somewhere inside this neon wonderland.
Sweet Siren,
Sing your teasing tunes for me
Deliver me from your shelters and streets,
Where infidels and angels
Fall at your feet.
Sweet Siren,
Deliver me to the
Trembling shelter of your sheets.
Liars and their lies
roam this concrete jungle
begging for love and razors
and other disposable items.
You go screaming passed them though,
determined to save at least one numb drunk ***
in some rain cleansed back alley of vices;
only to fool your own conscience
with the lithium laced smile of charity.
Sweet Siren
Quiet your angry shrill to a hush
The tarmac and taxis are tired of us
And your princes and saviors have fled this town.
Sweet Siren,
It's time for us to burn this city down
And leave the ashes
For the thieves and the clowns.
Aug 14, 2013
Aug 14, 2013 at 1:58 PM UTC
THE DOME of the capitol looks to the Potomac river.
Out of haze over the sunset,
Out of a smoke rose gold:
One star shines over the sunset.
Night takes the dome and the river, the sun and the smoke rose gold,
The haze changes from sunset to star.
The pour of a thin silver struggles against the dark.
A star might call: It's a long way across.
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All the policemen, saloonkeepers and efficiency experts in Toledo
knew Bern Dailey; secretary ten years when Whitlock was mayor.
Pickpockets, yeggs, three card men, he knew them all and how they flit
from zone to zone, birds of wind and weather, singers, fighters,
scavengers.
The Washington monument pointed to a new moon for us
and a gang from over the river sang ragtime to a ukelele.
The river mist marched up and down the Potomac, we hunted
the fog-swept Lincoln Memorial, white as a blond woman's arm.
We circled the city of Washington and came back home four o'clock in the morning,
passing a sign: House Where Abraham Lincoln Died, Admission Cents.
I got a letter from him in Sweden and I sent him a postcard from Norway ..
every newspaper from America ran news of "the flu."
The path of a night fog swept up the river to the Lincoln Memorial
when I saw it again and alone at a winter's end, the marble in the mist
white as a blond woman's arm.
1.7k
Traveling (with Frost) down the lightly trodden path,
with shoed soles sauntering over thawed earth,
twisting down the narrow trail,
away from the prying eyes of tour guides—
Encompassed by flowery heads who mirror the sun,
who burst forth with fluorescent green necks
craning from the dirt,
delineating our path in cascades of springing splendor.
Sensing the ostinato of ambulant waters crescendo,
we soon break from the budding foliage—
To be greeted by gentle winds
and the lapping of placid waves
who break onto the languid shore
onto shoed and socked feet,
who sense holy ground and immediately
kick off their bindings—
To sink into the earth,
and gritty sand reaching up between toes;
the water deceptively inviting,
is greeted with delightful shrieks in its refreshing chill.
Secluded in our cove,
we gaze over the waters where to our right
rests a breathing reconstruction of the Dove;
we stand awed before these waters
both the settler and the native.
What gods were praised on these lands,
and in these woods,
and in these skies,
and in these waters?
And on March 25, 1634,
in the promising onset of spring,
what had they to sing in the calm airs
as the settlers crossed the threshold of the Potomac?
She whispers,
“Funny how the water appears green on the shore,
and clear on the river.”
--St. Mary's City, March 10, 2016.
Mar 10, 2016
Mar 10, 2016 at 11:48 PM UTC
Four score and seventy one years ago,
fifty thousand men, in blue and gray
divided, became one, in red united
to consecrate the ground where we
now stand. From the Shenandoah
Valley, and the Potomac banks they
marched, and fell at Cemetery Hill,
Little Round Top, and Devil's Den.
But on this day, they rise to give
meaning to their sacrifice; they leave
behind their sabers and their musket
rifles, their cannon silent, their battle
done; they rise in peace at Gettysburg,
they rise at dawn with the morning sun.
May 26, 2014
May 26, 2014 at 7:05 AM UTC
THE BRIDGE says: Come across, try me; see how good I am.
The big rock in the river says: Look at me; learn how to stand up.
The white water says: I go on; around, under, over, I go on.
A kneeling, scraggly pine says: I am here yet; they nearly got me last year.
A sliver of moon slides by on a high wind calling: I know why; I'll see you to-morrow; I'll tell you everything to-morrow.
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I have this
theory about
irony, tyranny
and irrational
national emergencies
you see, when
the foul wind
blowing south out
of Washington DC
fails the smell test
but compares well
with, say, ********
cat **** radioactive
batshit contaminants
but, hey, try any
old way, you still can’t
iron any wrinkles out
of the fact that what
lies in the murky bottom
of the Potomac
our leader drinks in
also flow through
the faucets to sink, then
down the ********
of our so-called democracy
and into the lagoon
down on the links
of Mara-a-Lago.
Feb 17, 2019
Feb 17, 2019 at 10:00 AM UTC
Is your heart still wild;
I wonder,
as fog silently lifts off the Potomac.
I am not sure when
the rains started,
but the noise
falls into the fog.
The district seems sleepy,
and I am tired too.
When is it time?
When did the food lose it's taste?
When did adventure
get replaced by routine?
Feb 22, 2016
Feb 22, 2016 at 12:46 PM UTC
It’s a forever New York out there,
with high rise chimney tops
and siren's scare
that wakes the birds from their sleep.
It’s a endless Chicago beyond the roofs,
bitter and fierce;
wrap up warm let not
the ice penetrate and pierce.
It’s a waiting Washington way over there,
where the ***** tubes of the
Potomac, Anacostia meet and kiss.
It’s my land where every day
is a day out.
No one holding you back
telling you that you can’t walk about.
Apr 6, 2013
Apr 6, 2013 at 2:58 PM UTC
I lay in my bed in a dark lonely room
With a combination of last nights makeup and pure gloom
Hair-sprayed tangled hair and coffee breath
Replaying the day of your abrupt death
My loneliness dwells
And although my face tells
A story that no one can believe
Of a mother-daughter bond
That went terribly wrong
The day God called you to leave.
I lay in my bed in a dark lonely room
In Potomac,MD
A long way from home
Where I used to roam
Making memories with my angelic mommy.
I wish I could tell you all about how my life has changed-
Since you went away
I just couldn't stay
In a house that's still in your name.
I lay in my bed in a dark lonely room
Of a house filled with people who don't know
The struggle I've gone through
To get where I am and to get closer to you.
These are my memoirs of a dazed and confused
Eternal optimist who feels neglected and abused
In hopes of one day leaving this dark lonely room.
Oct 20, 2013
Oct 20, 2013 at 2:34 PM UTC
Last night, I took a twenty dollar bill from my drawer
the last one
marked it with my words
in thick, black ink
grabbed a tack from the desk
and went wandering the alleys and backways and sideways of my town
scanning for the right spot
the right time
And alone on Cumberland, across from Potomac
I found a pristine telephone poll
sprouting tall and straight from the asphalt
like an urban redwood
Took the knife from my belt
the tack from my teeth
BOOM
BOOM
BOOM
and I walked away, heart pounding
hoping no one heard, no one saw
leaving the twenty hanging there like jesus
like a sign
in thick, black ink
asking,
"What do you REALLY want?"
I feel like a fraud.
Aug 12, 2013
Aug 12, 2013 at 11:53 AM UTC
Marshmellowed white clouds
Over Potomac, hover
Melting sunset show
Jun 7, 2012
Jun 7, 2012 at 1:20 AM UTC
Sunday but no bells yet,
we'll get them later and
a sermon from the Padre.
I have an opinion on his opinions
his minions do too,
my opinion turns the air so blue
he thinks it's the sky
his minions do too.
But he's harmless enough which religion and
biblical stuff is not usually so.
I pass go and
collect
two hundred
one hundred for me and
the remainder for the
offertory.
And it's the monopoly
that'll topple me from this
****** thorny crown.
Sunday may be or not a lot of good,
I'm always open to suggestion and
willing to question
should
the need arise.
Jan 17, 2016
Jan 17, 2016 at 8:56 AM UTC
The gravel of the driveway shifts under my shoes
While I lift my eyes to the horizen, like the evening before.
The sunset never waits for me, but I pretend it will.
I've always been a dreamer, but that's not news.
Not of any consequence. A pipe dream.
The night will come when it will come.
I guess I'll get used to that someday,
but for now the sun is sinking over the potomac.
It scares me how the shade can make me numb.
Hold on to the light. Catch the very last beam.
With the passing of day, night steals in.
Suddenly, every ghost on every corner is you.
Whenever a shadow falls across the street it's you.
I try to call out, but don't know where to begin.
I can smell you in the rain. A pipe dream.
But there is nothing on the street for me to find.
No eyes, no hair, no smile or warm touch.
In fact, there's nothing much to be seen at all.
I breathe in deep; the victory of a calm mind.
The sun sets over the potomac. Catch the very last beam.
Aug 19, 2011
Aug 19, 2011 at 12:09 PM UTC
Somewhere in the office complex
There is a cult
That dances in circles 'round a fire no one set
Staring at the flame
They scream in chorus,
Chanting the words
In absentium of forest,
No sacrifice of birds
But they are really quite tame people
Unlikely to be chosen by the devils
For their work
I suppose that they just want a contact
In the Underworld's Potomac
Where the devils lurk
And their families at home know nothing;
The memos have told them nothing;
Their deception is quite complete.
No one in the office complex
Uses any salt
The only use for Wi-Fi is for recipes
For the potions that they claim
Give enemies their curses
Render useless locks
Until someone reimburses them
For all their clocks
But no one has it in their job description
To sell hallucinogenic prescriptions--
Well, at least, not quite
Everyone lists lies on their resumés
But none of them know anyway
If their pays are right
The one thing that they dream about
The escape they dream about
Is the ritual every Thursday night
No one quite knows
What they do in there
Pitched percussion;
Tufts of hair
Investigators
Have drawn a blank
At astral projection;
After that, they sank
The newspaper read that the members of the cult
Are all dead now,
But in the building where they once worked
One hears the echoes
Of spells sung in chorus
Of dances and words
The verses of Horace
The faint scent of herbs
Dec 11, 2019
Dec 11, 2019 at 8:46 PM UTC
It’s the battle of Baghdad all over again.
Shiite versus Sunni, it’s them against them.
The push for a Caliphate exacts a high toll.
ISIS marches on the capital and, I fear, heads will roll.
On Potomac’s fair shores the politicos dither.
Are we going to help or just let Iraq wither?
We created a vacuum too big to ignore
And ISIS has filled it with ****** and gore
The blood of the innocent washes the streets
as the Iraqi government stares at defeat.
Feckless, our leader, abdicating his role,
is making a putt on the seventeenth hole.
Was it part of his plan to incite revolution?
Is he evil or clueless? What is the solution?
Does he take a position not based on a poll?
We have paid, blood and treasure, and heads ought to roll.
Jun 16, 2014
Jun 16, 2014 at 9:27 AM UTC