"stamford" poems
"See they come, post haste from Thanet"
See they come, post haste from Thanet,
Lovely couple, side by side;
They've left behind them Richard Kennet
With the Parents of the Bride!
Canterbury they have passed through;
Next succeeded Stamford-bridge;
Chilham village they came fast through;
Now they've mounted yonder ridge.
Down the hill they're swift proceeding,
Now they skirt the Park around;
Lo! The Cattle sweetly feeding
Scamper, startled at the sound!
Run, my Brothers, to the Pier gate!
Throw it open, very wide!
Let it not be said that we're late
In welcoming my Uncle's Bride!
To the house the chaise advances;
Now it stops—They're here, they're here!
How d'ye do, my Uncle Francis?
How does do your Lady dear?
3.7k
Let's go grab the money
Hidden in the Christmas Tree
Shoppe mason jar with the
Frosted stencil designs,
Ornate and resembling flora.
Let's take that money,
The three separate wadded
***** of once crisp
Green pieces of paper
That somehow reach the
Arbitrary total of one
Thousand, three hundred and
Twenty dollars and
Fifty lonely cents.
Let's take that 1,320.50
And go see the desolate
Stretch of sprawling
Humanity deferred between
These hiked peaks and the
Dangerous mountains
Separating the west
From the rest.
Let's go there!
Let's go there!
We'll make it across,
Be sure of that,
Be sure of nothing
But that!
Let's use the remaining
Seven fifty
To buy some
Seven Eleven sustenance
To have while
We walk backwards
Down backroads edged
With the encroachment
Of the wild back into
Negative space some
Long-ago engineer
Carved and paved.
Let's tell the driver of
This beat-up
Time-worn down
Overcast grey
Buick LeSabre
That we can pay her
Ten dollars to replace
The juice necessary to get
Us back to our sick aunt's
House in Poughkeepsie.
At the gas station
We'll tell her to stop
Real quick
And hope she leaves the
Auto to go
Pay the schlup at
The teller's booth
And jack the beater
And hope we won't
Have to bolt
Again if she doesn't.
Let's call my cousin
And find out who will give
Us four hundred dollars for
The stolen used parts store
And take that four hundred
And buy:
Two (2) greyhound tickets to get us
Back to our ****** apartment
In Stamford: 64.50 American
Three (3) damp-bunned flimsy
Beef patties glued between
Pieces of government-issue
Yellow American cheese
With all the fixins we please: 3.24 American
One (1) zip of dried out
Seeded and stemmed breaks
From the boredom of
Our own conscious
Processes: 120 American if lucky
At least eight (8) servings
Of amphetamine based
Pressed little buttons
Of confused energy: 200 American
One (1) bouquet of
Red yellow and oranges
Mixed on the petals of
Your mother's favorite
Species: whatever's left American.
Oct 2, 2012
Oct 2, 2012 at 12:40 AM UTC
Visitors pass from empty bed
to empty bed, like Royals,
silently soaking up the dread
atmosphere with remote respect.
Examining clipboard histories,
rehearsing their medical soaps.
Volunteers answer questions,
the front line troops in trying
to raise our war dead back to life.
Have a care John Willie was not
just a private, not a number,
nor a diagnosis. He was
a person and a brave soldier.
Old photos frame soldiers' pains,
they're wearing posterity masks,
hiding feelings and memories
that lurch back again and again.
Jan 16, 2016
Jan 16, 2016 at 10:35 AM UTC
Cash, card and mobile, please.
Had his hood on and made a tough
Face of some sorts as he flashed
What looked like a blade, only
Smaller. *Sorry, mate. My phone
Is in my hotel room, my money is
All somewhere between my kidneys
And liver, but I have these two
Fists, and I'm losing my girlfriend as
We speak, so PLEASE come closer
With that pathetic excuse for a knife,
So I can use it to pick what's left of
Your heart from my teeth after
My anger is vented.
I don't care if it's Islington;
Did you hear about the Viking at
Stamford Bridge? I'm back.* Don't
Ever mug a Norwegian.
Don't ever try to mug a Norwegian.
Don't ever try to mug a Norwegian
Poet. I still have £200 in
My pocket. And a tongue as sharp
As anything I've ever been
Threatened with. Boy.
Jun 14, 2014
Jun 14, 2014 at 10:09 PM UTC
How did you find your faith?
did you stumble upon it
was it discovered on a beech
was it heroically sought after
in the fissure of a breach?
Did you ever lose faith?
did a great expectation dwindle
was a deep held trust betrayed
did a dear friend disappoint you
ubiquitous suffering and dismay?
Where did you find it?
in the grandeur of a sacred place
in the contours of a beloved face
in the splendor of anointed grace
as balm to salve a deep disgrace?
were you riding a subway
or floating on a pink cloud
were you kneeling in a church
were bombs exploding loud?
was it the embrace of a lover
was it a crisis of deep plight
was it a soul stirring chorus
did you lose an awful fight?
in the glory of a painting
dripping petals of a desert flower
the majesty of mountain glaciers
a surging river filled with power
Could you lose your faith again?
If you did, would you know how to find it?
Where would you look if it happened?
How will you know its faith when you find it?
What does faith feel like?
What do you do when you got it?
What do you do when you get it?
How do you know you got it when you get it?
How do you know you get it when you got it?
Or are you formally faithless in a formal sense?
Signed,
Trying to Keep the Faith
Music Selection:
George Michael, Faith
Art Selection
Caprichos
Francisco Goya
101098
Stamford, CT
jbm
Jun 26, 2013
Jun 26, 2013 at 12:58 AM UTC
The moralist is playing again,
bleaching your hair
is an unspoken uniform,
with so little soul
acetates don't get played.
New words gets bandied "plebs",
but without the de-rigueur Corduroys
or navy blazers,
we are all be tarred
with the same brush.
Meanwhile the coach exhaust fumes
abnegated our pilgrimage to Stamford
and we all now agree we
lived beyond our means
in exiguous Britain
Sep 27, 2012
Sep 27, 2012 at 5:24 PM UTC
I am 20 1st Avenue
Just as I am also St. Albans Drive
Old Stamford Road
Whitney Avenue
and a little Albermarle
But 20 1st Avenue is where I learned
How to make snow forts, big ones
and pillow forts that filled a living room
It's where I saw that if you plant a little tree
and hang around long enough
that you will have a great big tree
that drops black walnuts
So that you can caution your kids kids
that the walnuts can turn your skin black if you're not careful
It's where I learned what a Woolworths was
and that they sold plastic army men
with mortars, radios and M16s
by the bag for a dollar
nobody wanted the mortar or radio guy
Its where I learned what a honest to God toy store was
and because of that,
who Mr. Potato Head was.
It's where I learned about nuts
still in shells
and how to open them
with a crank nutcracker
or a little hammer
and how to get the meat out
with a lobster pick.
But most of all I learned
what a grandma was
that old people could be great fun
that they knew cool stuff
that they might allow you to do things your parents wouldn't
and that they could keep secrets
then finally
that they weren't forever
but their shadows in your life
were.
Jul 30, 2017
Jul 30, 2017 at 8:32 AM UTC
Does it matter how the flames began
to creep about and up the stairs?
A mansion on the Waterfront
with seven people sleeping there.
A scaffold on the Second floor
signified that restoration had begun.
An Ember carelessly discarded
burst forth to threaten both old and young.
When firefighters approached the scene
They saw the mother attempt to save
her children on the second floor.
but tongues of fire drove her away.
Her contractor had likewise tried
to save the girls who slept upstairs.
He had two nearly in his grasp
when they both panicked and ran away.
The girls’ grandfather came the closest
to saving one granddaughter dear
He brought her to a window seat
and tried to get her in the clear
but choking smoke and his weakened heart
brought his attempt to end in tears.
A mother weeps, uncomprehending,
as water hoses douse the flames.
Both her parents and her children dead,
and her home a smoking, ruined frame..
Sophocles, the attic poet
called man a thing of “breath and shadow “.
Too long a life can be a curse
A life too short, a cause for sorrow
Dec 27, 2011
Dec 27, 2011 at 10:21 PM UTC
And so the song flows -
a messy trace of barbiturate haze,
the song flows,
tinged with a red-eyed, cathartic
sort of sparkle about it in the dark,
like the backalley streetlamps by my window
at one in the morning.
July 1st-
I take a step outside, climb to the roof.
My eyes swell from the sunlight,
glasses steam up from the heat.
I have no need for lifting my *** off these sheets anymore but to write.
Manhattan rooftop, why did you have to betray me?
There was a time when
you were the glistening silvertoned backdrop to all of my surreptitious loves
as I sat on you,
idly humming jazz,
peacefully watch the go-and-come
of the synagogue pouring into the
streets below,
pitifully bemused
at the concept of dejection.
You once gave me a view of opportunity,
and ever-alert, always-foreseeing eyes that could have seen all the way to the buildings of Stamford.
Now I'm eighteen and terribly myopic.
What at all at this point is to exist
with implacable certainty?
Manhattan rooftop,
Tell me that
solipsism is the universal truth,
then I will not feel as alone.
Jul 1, 2018
Jul 1, 2018 at 11:54 PM UTC
The truck was crushed and dented
Almost beyond recognition
When the county boys reached the scene
(Though, as one of the deputies remarked,
Having seen the vehicle tottering around town
For virtually all his born days
Still ain’t much worse than when it started)
Apparently having slid off the Stamford Road
Then down the embankment
Where it had made an unhappy embrace
Of a utility pole near the old Ulster and Delaware tracks,
A rather unhappy ending to what had been
An arguably equally unhappy existence,
Though old Doc Benner had surmised
The junkman had probably been dead
Before the truck had made the shoulder,
Or so he had said at the graveside service
(He being one of the three or four in attendance
Feeling that one who’d been a common thread
In the existence of so many for so long
Should not go without some commemoration
In this already frayed-at-the-edged little town)
And he remarked that the old man had once told him,
When the doc noted the old saw
That one man’s trash was another’s treasure,
*The main diff’rnce ‘tween trash and treasure
Is just a matter of expectation*,
And it would have been most poetic if,
After the reverend’s perfunctory hand-off to the Almighty,
The clouds had broken and a thin shaft of light
Had fallen upon the junkman’s stone,
Or perhaps a gentle rain commenced
To heal the disturbed sod,
But the skies remained a slate-gray truculence
As the sexton’s ancient pickup tottered away,
The ropes and shovels tossed higgledy-piggledy
Under an ancient and somewhat watertight old tarpaulin.
May 10, 2021
May 10, 2021 at 3:46 PM UTC