More Pad Disasterpieces For National Poetry Month

 
Lookie, lookie, lookie there's poems on my cookie. Look what else I found while down at my folks' place in Grand Ronde. Oh...I guess I didn't tell you I was down in Grand Ronde. I went down there (or here) early Tuesday morning, on the 12:30 AM bus, to do a job for my father & sister in the new business down in Salem and ended up locating more bad poems I wrote when I used to be an Oregonian. The previous post on the stream of thought flowing through my head in 1988 were also found down here. I also went to an open mic and performed poetry to an unresponsive audience in Salem. I think I understand why the city is a desert of creativity or why theater failed there. But that is another story. However, blessedly, on Friday, I'll be back home before three pm and I can't wait to go contra dancing too. Also, I am taking back a bunch of old theological papers I wrote while at Linfield College and George Fox University to keyboard up.

I found a whole series of these "pad-boys" dated between August 15 & September 2, 2001. These protopoems are like snapshots of my head (I have a poem tittled In My Head, which is actually good; the only good one from 2001) in the days leading up to September 11 when America more officially became a police state. Let's see for this one below, I am lamenting or reflecting on a love relationship that blew apart in 1996. And thank the maker (may Shai-Hulud wipe this desert waste land clean of ancient tears) that I no longer am consumed with grief for what was not meant to be. I think 2001 was also the year I got chased by a pack of Chiwawas; I must have written about that absurd event  too.

Smell of Amber

It would have been better had she died. Then I’d have finality. Absolutely no hope she’d ever take me back.

I remember the pleasantries now: kissing her for the first time on Mt. Zion under the sky; the taste of her body; her heart beating into my ear; the feel of her skin, hot, against mine; her amber perfume wafting through the house; seeing her essence through her green eyes.

Imagining her in another man’s arms isn’t so bad now that she’s been married five years. Sometimes she comes to me in my sleeping dreams. She’s distant. Far away. Talking to my mother. Mostly ‘bout me.

At least her visitations aren’t painful. They’re not altogether pleasant either. Thank the maker there not of our last night together. Tasting that man she cheated on me with through her parted lips.

Yes, I remember her eyes and her amber perfume.