Error message

  • Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type int in element_children() (line 6429 of /home4/haitisch/public_html/poetry/includes/common.inc).
  • Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type int in element_children() (line 6429 of /home4/haitisch/public_html/poetry/includes/common.inc).
  • Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type int in element_children() (line 6429 of /home4/haitisch/public_html/poetry/includes/common.inc).
  • Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type int in element_children() (line 6429 of /home4/haitisch/public_html/poetry/includes/common.inc).
  • Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type int in element_children() (line 6429 of /home4/haitisch/public_html/poetry/includes/common.inc).
  • Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type int in element_children() (line 6429 of /home4/haitisch/public_html/poetry/includes/common.inc).
  • Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type int in element_children() (line 6429 of /home4/haitisch/public_html/poetry/includes/common.inc).
  • Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type int in element_children() (line 6429 of /home4/haitisch/public_html/poetry/includes/common.inc).
  • Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type int in element_children() (line 6429 of /home4/haitisch/public_html/poetry/includes/common.inc).
  • Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type int in element_children() (line 6429 of /home4/haitisch/public_html/poetry/includes/common.inc).
  • Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type int in element_children() (line 6429 of /home4/haitisch/public_html/poetry/includes/common.inc).
  • Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type int in element_children() (line 6429 of /home4/haitisch/public_html/poetry/includes/common.inc).
  • Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type int in element_children() (line 6429 of /home4/haitisch/public_html/poetry/includes/common.inc).
  • Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type int in element_children() (line 6429 of /home4/haitisch/public_html/poetry/includes/common.inc).
  • Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type int in element_children() (line 6429 of /home4/haitisch/public_html/poetry/includes/common.inc).
  • Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type int in element_children() (line 6429 of /home4/haitisch/public_html/poetry/includes/common.inc).
  • Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type int in element_children() (line 6429 of /home4/haitisch/public_html/poetry/includes/common.inc).
  • Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type int in element_children() (line 6429 of /home4/haitisch/public_html/poetry/includes/common.inc).
  • Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type int in element_children() (line 6429 of /home4/haitisch/public_html/poetry/includes/common.inc).
  • Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type int in element_children() (line 6429 of /home4/haitisch/public_html/poetry/includes/common.inc).
  • Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type int in element_children() (line 6429 of /home4/haitisch/public_html/poetry/includes/common.inc).
  • Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type int in element_children() (line 6429 of /home4/haitisch/public_html/poetry/includes/common.inc).
  • Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type int in element_children() (line 6429 of /home4/haitisch/public_html/poetry/includes/common.inc).
  • Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type int in element_children() (line 6429 of /home4/haitisch/public_html/poetry/includes/common.inc).
  • Deprecated function: implode(): Passing glue string after array is deprecated. Swap the parameters in drupal_get_feeds() (line 394 of /home4/haitisch/public_html/poetry/includes/common.inc).

Copycat

I can’t help
noticing that
many of my poems
slavishly imitate
Charles Bukowski’s
only without the
fighting
fucking
boozing
Beethoven
or any
of the other
interesting parts

Walkers

Comfortable in their skin
They move with certainty
Across the crowded room
Across the square
Across the meadow
Into the woods

Everyone a different pace
The narcissist and the neurotic
The manic and the moderate
The tall and the short
The stout and the slim
The old and the young

Comfortable in their skin
They move with certainty

Sketch on Saturday afternoon, McKay's Taphouse

"Sketchy," the bartender says to me
Of the two men who came in
And asked if he had a restroom.

Sketchy, they were not customers
They were drug users, sellers, purchasers
Looking for the privacy of someone else's locked door

I watched them in the mirror from
My stool at the bar, indirectly
They were sketchy, mere impressions

Of men. Not fully formed
Lines in the vague shape of
heads and bodies, coats and jeans

In and out and moving on,
Back to Mac's Motel or the Bay City Motor Inn where
They are staying, or one of them is anyway.

The other might be living in a tent under the bridge
Where women run with jogging strollers,
Expensive bikes pumped by spandex legs fly past.

Different sketches made with different pencils
None of them impervious to eraser
If the artist has a change of heart.

Yard work

Today it was chainsaw and branch cutter;
tomorrow, the chipper.
We inventive apes
prefer well-controlled violence.
A chain neatly following an ellipse,
a pack of greyhounds
coursing after the electric rabbit,
metal for muscles and all teeth.

The long-handled clippers
cleverly lever force
down to a few scant inches
of cold steel blade—
a bird-beak magnifier,
tree-bone slicer.

We like these machines,
breed them in endless varieties,
fill the shed with them,
the garage, the basement.
Carefully crafted,
each with its singular purpose.
We choose among their verbs:
cut, clip, saw, chop, chip.

Wielding tuned power
makes an ironic prayer
against the descent of
that horrific violence,
unhinged and raw,
of chaos.

Blue Moon Tavern, Fifty Years Too Late

I drink alone,
Invisible as a ghost,
Irrelevant as a poem.

I thought I saw you just now,
But it was my reflection,
I am unrecognizable in reverse.

Difference between a poet and
A drunk? About an hour.
That's a joke, there's no difference.

Roethke and Hugo, be my guardian angels,
Keep my beer from spilling,
Guide my pen tonight.

Pages

Subscribe to Write More Poems RSS