poems

poet         Joe Watson

Feral

She asked, "Do you feel like a new soul

or an old one?

Do you recall any past lives?"

I took a deep breath.

"No." I replied.

Not human, anyway.

I do remember the pack at my heels

running Reindeer down the slopes of an ancient glacier.

I was canine-

dark and full of fangs.

There was moonlight on my Sumatran stripes,

paused motionless before the spring.

A young buck sensed my feral momentum.

I was feline-

shady and whiskered.

Wherever the moon was

you could take it as the last pass.

it's all just murk and dreams

conjectures no more real than smoke

or mirrors.

This is a new soul, not used before.

The signs of wear are your own.

An Arbitrary Notion

a figment off course

I'm walking on eggshells,

but they are my own eggshells

my nose knows

contretemps

county dumps

got to ride it out

and see where it goes

So if you hear an arbitrary notion,

what will you do

will you compare it to the other?

Will you confer with him?

He loves to give advice

THE EDGE

There are two ways to walk the edge

one is a static freefall

a chronic fandango

caused by too much pickled ego

a love for the bud

a sidestep away from being connected

left alone while still young

left at the altar while the bride throws rice elsewhere

caught in a trap which looked like love at first

but turned out to be mere obsession

and as the years pass the edge becomes a haven

because the real thing you are living is so dismal

and the part of you which

looks out for you says

"this can't go on."

But it does.

So when you take this radical departure from reality

you'll see the edge as normal and invigorating

even as you lose touch with

everything you have ever known

and you convince yourself

as you bless and blame

act out and upon.

You will hit bottom.

So you can hide down there in the muck

slide along the bottom feeder

cancel your pass to wherever you may have wanted to go,

and notice

that out on that edge there is plenty of company

a codependent army to waltz off the brink with.

The other edge

starts with you saying

I'm tired of these meager footholds

this cliff is too slippery

and I have a strong desire

to jump.

I jump.

Off the pity pot.

Off the blame and accusation and the failure

to accept my part

in this collapse, this lapse

this preventable lamentable laughable

ploy, that I am using.

You can stay on the edge

and reach out.

You can stay on the edge with a safety net.

You don't have to wind up alone

at the abyss.

I look back from my spot here

my edge reservation.

I see the looks of doubt on the faces of those

who confront this change

and see the enormity of it,

yet also realize it is the simplest

easiest thing they will ever do.

So they put it off.

Fall by degrees.

Edge procrastination.

You can spend years here too.

My reading light, my torch

my glow at the edge

like a sun for the journey

a star for the future

a piece of all of us

available

anytime

edge illumination.

May I please?

Big Muddy

I've floated

slowly spinning

down your deep curves,

under a halo of stars

on moonlit summer nights

not wanting to go home.

I've skipped stones

over your eddy's

My booted footsteps breaking the skim ice

on sand bars as big as football fields.

I was watched over

by wintering bald eagles

framed by the frozen sky

reddening at dusk.

I've seen you river,

wild at Ponca

left free all over your wide valley.

I've seen your birthplace at 3 forks

3 mountain streams uniting

to rush to Great Falls

which is neither great

or a falls anymore.

Here near home,

river city Omaha,

you are channeled, confined, sadly tame.

Yet, for me, you were my wilderness

my unsettled territory.

My city kid imagination

would not see the grain elevators

the marinas and the barges.

In my mind you could still be the river

that beckoned Lewis

enchanted Clark,

the Indian river which flowed past

a thousand council fires,

and the lookouts

of long lost America

A NEBRASKA POEM

You write well, pilgrim

Thanks Matt

bizzness often equates dizziness

if de peoples in a tizzy

that's my stock in trade

got to take the whizzy

off the bow, in bit of shade

pickin with fizzy

no better way

riverboat, concrete floats

the tune still can take you away

to nights up at Sherman

the reservoir lights they glimmer the northern lights and the Milky Way turning the night

to a starry splash the trot lines and poles with a bell on the tip, the stink bait which once knocked

a friend of mine ass over teakettle

out the back of a jeep approaching the Chutes

when you can see the stars from horizon to horizon

that big sky bowl, Perseid meteor shower going on

the bell rings and it's a 20 pound snapper

chops our sticks like matchwood

playing music at the Turtle Races in Erickson

a sandhills ramble, canoeing the Dismal on a completely dismal day

people getting soaked and scratched on barb wire

the next morning Sunday the weather is perfect

and fellow campers (including your uncle Tom whoshowed up with Chet at 3am after driving up

from Omaha when the bars closed)

soak up the sun and give me a hard time "we just had to go yesterday."

I could no more have waited than the man in the moon

Charlie's cabin at Big Mac, going out to the middle of the lake on the 4th of July in his tuna boat

watching 100 miles of coastline

campers all around lighting their fireworks

a circle of distant fire

sputnik spinning by

over our muddled heads

over the schools of white bass which practically jump in your boat

till the class passes by

the old man and the inland sea

now shrunk to a shadow of it's former self

the old buildings of Lemoyne poking out from the receding sea floor

undisturbed these last 50 years, the human folk moved up the hill

home of bobbers and treble hooks

on a cool morning in Ash Hollow

I heard a big cat growl

watched the turkey buzzards soar, pretended they were my kites

invisible string

magpies fighting over a coyote kill down the ravine

pictured the wagons windlassed down the hill

the Sioux warriors camped looking across the valley for buffalo herds

all the millions of travelers on the Platte

french trappers to Billy Suburbia in his wind star van

are we there yet?

standing on top of the butte above fort Rob

thinking of that winter night when the Oglala nation

lost it's spirit warrior

checking the water on a float below Valentine

hiking above Indian cave when the Autumn leaves blaze

playing a wedding reception in Fairbury at the Country Club, making out on the 18th green

acting the fool at the Zoo bar in Lincoln

watching a doe start out in front of me, luckily changing her mind as we leave Dead Timbers

and always back home to Big O

if I had a nickel for every time a friend told me

"JW, if you lived in Nashville/// Austin, Oklahoma,  Arkansas, Memphis

you would make it big"

the music biz

is what it is

I'm not going anywhere

I like Omaha brash, growth spurts, KC envy, the old neighborhoods, knowing folks everywhere

you go

the ethnic complexity, the fat cats and the down home working stiffs

Louis bar down on the corner, on the bus line

it only takes a minute

I only have to hit the river road to escape

my childhood wilderness, Dodge and Hummel

the barge path to the north of the lake

takes you almost to Surfside

the oaks high above the rock quarry

"Dang- are those monks down there around the fire?"

DECISIONS

This one was a caution;

Should I be angry with you

for your cavalier dismissal of my work-

or should I

(If I want to spend time with you

even though the things which brought us together

now keep us apart)

attempt to keep up with you in your dissipation?

And stay when we've gone past reason?

Should I collect your relics,

file what you could have told me once,

upon a time?

Do you still sift through

that which is now insignificant,

through time or neglect?

I hope you still get those brief glimpses of clarity,

I hope I get to see you, seeing them.

But that road is long.

Those times are gone.

I no longer know what we are to each other.

So I let it go.

Best wishes.

Giving

I take it upon myself

to invest in knowledge,

acquired; and so-

Divest

To the winds

To the roiling clouds

To the fence posts

To the brother at  work

Who doesn't want to think

Of anything beyond

Pleasure and stupor

To the grave land asphalt

Fields white and fields green 

Escaped from the dream book

In the dead of the night;

trees still in late summer anticipation-

I'm in the half dream place.

(which I am told can be entered at any time-

like a doorway)

Light breeze from a window fan

caresses us both

as our Lord enters.

Far off in the corner of the dreamscape

I feel fluttering dark wings, scattering.

He explains salvation

in a way I may forget in the morning.

The lessons, fortunately,

go on nightly.

Through this joyous repetition

I am reborn.

Ashes

We watched the centuries

from the dark edges

of the border camps.

afraid of the fire.

Our fear of the light

left us blindly groping

along the bottom.

The Ark is sailing.

Shadow

Or, the Halloween visit of the tap dancing anti-mime.

I was the shadow of literature,

a mere shadow of my former self,

Having no weight or breath.

It was not for lack of trying,

only this shift in gravity.

I try to shun  this preoccupation with the trivial,

the dismissal of the spirits.

I note the saturation of the mundane.

Literature wears it's heart on it's sleeve.

Let the poetry go back to the streets.

Take the blinders off.

A slam-- what does that mean?

Take care of the poetic needs of the competitive,

Societal propagandists.

By all means take care of the poetic needs

of affluent kids whose parents shell out 10 big ones a year,for the sheepskin.

Take care of the poetic needs of the the guy

with tenure, a tweed coat, and the Volvo.

Don't forget the poetry of the Honky tonks.

The backsliders and blue collar schmucks.

All drinking and roaring with wild angels-

give them some damn poetry.

Whether they like it or not.

Cast this shadow again.

It's not just

since some renaissance.

Go back to the poetry of King David.

A canticle.

Where does your solace and inspiration spring from?

Examine this.

Is it praise? Or triviality?

Done

Perhaps it is only vanity,

that tells me to leave the warts on my poems.

Perhaps I can't let go,

because I have learned to let go

of so many other things.

In the end,

since I have always had mixed feelings

about the sharing.

(of this work)

I can take what good there is,

if any,

and, once finished, say; done.

And goodbye.

Grace St.

I sit on the slope

underneath that big Catalpa tree,

which used to grace the yard

of the first governor of Nebraska's mansion.

I watch the traffic and the clouds of dust;

roll down 16th street.

I stand on that sunny slope

with the warehouse door

only a few feet away-- wide open.

The din from the restless bears

inside the dingy cave,

filters out and mixes

with the sounds of the derelict neighborhood.

Acrid glue smoke pours out,

eye burning oils for the ghetto.

We are a ship with no rudder,

a print shop with no future

And no overhead.

My first 10 years was worth

1800 dollars.

My pension.

If you smash your hand in a press

you get peanuts or a pink slip.

Pride or a paycheck.

Enough

I've made enough rash statements

in my life.

So I take a moment and a deep breath,

to make sure I don't let go another one.

I've acted without thinking

enough times in my life.

So if I hesitate,

I'm thinking my action through.

I've drawn many conclusions

based on half truths-

So if I stop to withhold judgement,

it's not mine to make.

I've entered many low conversations,

and stayed;

I'll try to raise the bar

or leave

unspoken.

Prayer will suffice for times of doubt.

Endover

A friend said, "You should call your work,

incoherent ramblings."

He was bothered by not knowing

how many writer's there were on his block.

He say's, "You've always covered your tracks with a big smokescreen.

You're a chameleon, Ezra. A friggin' Pizmo clam."

In the end it turned out

I didn't like decadence well enough

to make a career out of it.

Couldn't go the whole nine yards.

So, no mo decadence row.

Just samples of you,

and vacations too-

many to mention.

Sage

I like the little rewards.

I don't push the envelope;

partial to the manual means.

Blurring and pushing,

incandescent.

Gravely, it may be,

changing habits

like channels,

the gist of it all

is just once and for all,

pushed to the side

Once again.

In a million unspoken ways

You've asked me to stay out of your territory.

I must decline.

Thank you for you invitation to underachieve.

It is something I do very well.

Just, not this time.

Sleep

It is necessary

to keep the mind beneath the low clouds,

close to earth.

To keep it from soaring

off into the stratosphere

of lost chances,

of conjecture and fleeting glances;

hopeless to recapture,

and too painful to consider without forgiveness.

So, sleep comes from low fogbanks,

not lofty flights.

I am wide awake at 3 in the morning,

after attending my own funeral in a dream.

Watching from above,

it is St. Phil's on a rainy morning.

The stranger's- why don't I know these people?

they walk under umbrellas through Mormon park

where hoboes sleep in the gazebo.

Lilacs are blooming- early May then.

Inside the church incense hangs,

and- finally a familiar face, the one who hung on the wall and the cross

in my fathers frame.

Panis Angelicus and Wayfaring Stranger,

haloed and waiting.

She

Said, "Work your Soaz muscle." My wife slash yoga teacher speaking.

I replied, "I don't have a so' ass muscle."

After living alone for so many years, there is someone here

who cares. Do you know what that means?

Not occasionally. Not just when it is in her interest. Not to gain something.

She just cares.

I felt the pressure that was created from all the yesterdays when things were withheld and

twisted and roller coastered to Hell and back-

learned to trust caring that was consistent.

Coming up that sidewalk night after night to

a smile. A girl who knew herself well enough to care.

Blending sweet and sour

mixing through the hours

smiles and sorrow

until the end of tomorrows

will there be furrows of pain?

As you lie there motionless

or will a radiance overcome life's shadows?

To leave the Savior's glow

the echo of a smile.

Revelations

Is it the first sign

of the impertinence of man?

Is it fire not ice?

instead of the instinct sensing

calamities

like the prophets of old,

testaments

man will conjure

into a future

100 generations

will not see.

In the desert a rose dawn swells

cross a northern sea

the question 2000 years later is still as impertinent

man cannot know

the mind of God

A. Picasso Bunny

is not for the meek

(large he is)

APB wouldn't let out a squeak

draw him with fangs

draw him with gristle

psychotic freaks?

pig and whistle

we've all got it in us

and art is it's feast

what's needed the most?

what's left for the least?

DEMON

Even when I had only just begun to suspect his prescence,

when he could be as unruly as he wanted,

and come and go as he pleased-

(usually through a trap door in my abdomen)

he thought he had the upper hand.

Unchecked and reveling.

I knew he was not hard to control,

but I was unsure I wanted him controlled.

I rather liked his results.

A friend shared an idea.

Make him obey.

Sit him in a chair.

Speak when spoken to.

Then if you're suprised (like I was)

at how little effort it takes to leash him,

you'll see how tenuous his power was.

poems_LT.htm