Mr. B’s Phonograph

Posted on July 30, 2018 by sputterpub

vintage

One day when I was ten and in 5th grade,
the teacher spun a record for us all.
I can’t remember what the needle played,
but I can see the phonograph – a small
appliance on a table in the sun.
The lesson was particularly good:
We only needed ears, but everyone
was looking where the record-player stood.

And maybe that’s the reason I don’t use
my eyes as much as many, or it might
be compensation for how I’d refuse
to wear my glasses, but I don’t work sight
when walking like I exercise my ear,
and sample with my skin the atmosphere.

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Lies

Posted on July 26, 2018 by sputterpub

language

I didn’t get it when I was a kid.
I still don’t understand or recognize
a culture that insists I act as bid
by portions of a book that sanctifies
barbarity, selectively ignored,
composed by no one holy to advise,
and edited by others to afford
imperious behavior and disguise.

Demanding every pregnancy proceed,
without a care how fare they after birth,
is clearly wrong. No deity decreed
it so, I know, within or over Earth.
Why do we speak? I’m starting to believe
our kind developed language to deceive.

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FMV

Posted on July 24, 2018 by sputterpub

250px-Out_of_ink

There’s no Fair Market Value for a poem.
Equipment isn’t needed to proceed.
It’s folk-art that can be composed at home
and won’t pay, so I won’t pay you to read.
With so few viewing every chosen word,
I’d be a fool to dwell too much upon it.
I’ll never feel the fame, and it’s absurd
if I expect attention to this sonnet.

That leaves me free to ply my pen with themes
that find no eyes to tickle or offend.
So I can write with dash, or to extremes,
except my focus frames and won’t extend
beyond the span a toddler’s arms comprise,
twice-weekly stocked with wonder for my eyes.

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Averse

Posted on July 23, 2018 by sputterpub

250px-Out_of_ink

Less confrontational than you’d expect,
considering her New York origin,
trained early with impatience to reject
the banal and the bland, and play to win,
she moves and speaks so fast you’ll think her tough,
but she will pull her punches every time.
She tried defiance young, more than enough,
and learned to cast aspersions into rhyme.

Pay no attention to her visage now.
Those brows and lips don’t mean to signal crit-
icism; she can’t mask her face, and walk.
Her judgment is acute – she reckons how,
but opts for subtle and appropriate;
she places slaps in lines of metered talk.

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Bayarea

Posted on July 19, 2018 by sputterpub

weather

“I feel a little guilty,” someone said
to me last week, “because I don’t attend
events this place is famous for. Instead
I stick to home, avoiding traffic, spend
my weekends in my yard, my neighborhood,
my livingroom.”
I boggled at his words.
Yes costs are high, and entertainment’s good,
but I contend his guilty claim’s absurd.

Nobody lives here for the games and shows.
And while we’re graced with great topography,
the secret every San Franciscan knows
is we enjoy benign humidity
and temperature; our blessing and our pride
is weather that invites a soul outside.

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Sot

Posted on July 17, 2018 by sputterpub

booze

I want to like her but she drinks too much,
and isn’t near as fun to be around
as she must think she is. She’s apt to touch
me needlessly, repeat herself, expound
on criticisms victims overhear,
embarrass me and shame herself of course,
while steadily refusing to appear
contrite, or learn, or even feel remorse.

She’s rarely well and searches for a cure
in homeopathy and supplements.
She blames her sorry state on wheat, or thinks
the newest virus theory is for sure
the cause of her disease – that’s her defense:
it blocks her from regarding how she drinks.

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Inspiration

Posted on July 16, 2018 by sputterpub

250px-Out_of_ink

“You oughta be a lawyer,” Mama said;
“the way you always argue” she would add.
She meant no compliment, but sought instead
to quiet and suppress me. Even Dad
who seemed to like me aimed to modify
my passion, my exuberance and voice.
“Don’t shout,” he would admonish. “You should try
for better self-control. It’s your own choice.”

So I confronted less. I learned to screen
my judgments and complaints more than they thought.
Alone I threw some hangers and I cursed.
Within my room, I nurtured harsh and mean
ideas, and over time my theories wrought
in poetry conveyed my best and worst.

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Myriad

Posted on July 12, 2018 by sputterpub

human_locomotion

The sages say it takes ten thousand hours
for someone to acquire expertise.
While talent may be there at birth, the powers
in success require practice to increase.
And though you’ve walked since you were one year old,
your average steps per day have been so few,
you’d have to live a hundred years, all told,
to ambulate with skill the way I do.

But everyone knows how to walk, you say,
if they have working legs and hips and knees.
I disagree. I’m out there every day,
and have to dodge the zombie-strollers. Please
ignore my words on driving. If I talk
of love don’t listen. I know how to walk.

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Dowager

Posted on July 10, 2018 by sputterpub

gray

I never thought my mother’d be alive
this long, the way the woman used to smoke.
She’s slowing down at 90, but she’ll drive
her car to stores nearby, until the stroke
of 3 when the commuters clog the streets.
Returning what she purchased yesterday
gives purpose to her mornings. She repeats
her words in every evening’s call, the way
she always did, if I’m to tell the truth.
She’s not demented but she has condensed –
the traits that drove me crazy in my youth
are just more obvious performed against
a narrowed backdrop, faded arid beige,
and vanity’s the anthem of her age.

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Bad Driver

Posted on July 9, 2018 by sputterpub

goofy_car

You’ve always been unfocused when you drive.
It can’t be blamed on age or your disease.
The wonder is you’ve managed to survive
with jerky hands and eyes. Activities
requiring close attention never suit
your empathetic gifts for social good.
I’d rather never ride with you. My route
is bus or train or walk a neighborhood.

But yesterday I took the shotgun chair
and let you drive me home, and when you cut
that walker off who softly told you how,
I couldn’t reassure you you were fair.
Perhaps I should have sealed my lips and shut
my mouth, but you should give up driving now.

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