Poetry: Mary Oliver

WILD GEESE

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Mary Oliver

Poetry: Arthur Smith

Two favorites from Arthur Smith's older collection, Elegy for Independence Day (1985). Smith has a new collection out now: The Fortunate Era, his first collection since 2002. Perfect timing since Elegy for Independence Day was the last I had left to read.

THE SILENCE IN VIRGINIA

I found silence in Virginia,
A covered bridge.
Shrubs crowded
Most of the road, and branches
Hummed in the stream.
Fireflies surfaced and were gone.
I sat on the damp bank breathing
The green air, watching the evening
Fan out from the trees.

Above the birches, a nighthawk
Sliced through the dark rounds,
And I was carried
Back to those memories
Of us walking a new way, hand in hand,
Of how I left you in the fog
And drove all night,
And how, outside Oakland,
A Salt Lake station burst
Through static.

In the silence, I wept
Simply and heavily into my hands,
And my shirt rocked in the dark.
You were in the car above me, waiting,
And we were both alive.


NAP

Waking at dusk, the room

On not letting go

By Tyler Avery Barnett

Whoever said,
"a poem is no place for an idea"
is beautiful;
but I'm not in the mood.

I want my ancient timber back.
I want my views smog free.

**More poetry on Reluctant Chauffeur here** 

The Dive

by Tyler Avery Barnett

He runs towards the surf
pulling off his noose tie,
ripping at his clothes.
He dives naked into a wave,
leaving behind beach umbrella and
tie, caught in a bush,
blowing in the wind.
He becomes the ocean,
the waves breaking
on the backs of dolphins,
uncountable pieces
breathing through the gills
of a million wild creatures.

Father, protector, he nurtures the world
and flows in the veins of a billion thirsty children.

**More poetry on Reluctant Chauffeur here**

New Mexico Diner

by Tyler Avery Barnett

So what? I borrowed a wheelbarrow
a few nights before
leaving for Hollywood
and decided not to leave
a forwarding address.

A pain,
always paining me
with stories of God
and gays destroying
America.

I breathed through my mouth until
the county border and after, spent 24 years
forgetting that wheelbarrow in the pines.

**More poetry on Reluctant Chauffeur here** 

Poetry: Phil Garland reading "Why Do Bears Eat Flowers"

As a wedding gift for my wife and I, friend and best-man, Phil Garland, created the poem (slash metaphor slash sentimental sketch slash whatever it is): Why Bears Eat Flowers. Here is an audio recording from our wedding of Phil reading. Enjoy!




Here is Phil's bio copied from the Raven Book Store site:

Phillip Garland was born and raised in East Tennessee and educated at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. He currently lives in Lawrence, Kansas and is an MFA Candidate at the University of Kansas,  His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Pith Magazine, Volume One Brooklyn, Red Lightbulbs, Map Literary, and Parcel.

Still here, still writing

By A.B. Samien

The beach wanted to tell the old woman and her
sandals left on top its dune
of nakedness and moving a million
years under the stars and water.
But, so brief the time,
it remained silent and felt her
toes through receding waves; the
shells she rest on railway ties to dry.

Banana Flavored Giant Orange Peanuts

I haven't been posting my writing lately because I haven't been doing much of it. Here however is something I wrote for/about Lindsay and her disturbing taste for a certain type of...

Banana Flavored Giant Orange Peanuts
by a.b. samien

She likes nasty sweets, circus peanuts, but
I let that slide because of the way
I feel here in the audience, sitting. Her hand
rests on my knee, her fingers
brush epidermis stretched over patella and
whatever else. I do not know the words.

I choose not to imagine her orange stained tongue,
teeth grinding rubbery plastic,
lips parting to accept that horrible candy
in the same way I ignore thoughts of
her past lovers.

Her fingers still rest on my pant leg and
the details of the room somewhere
else with the words from the voices
on stage that now, no longer mean…
For I mean only to take her outside,
to wrap my arms around her,
nasty circus peanuts and all,
for as long as she’ll let me.

Before dark

He twists to fly the silent
speeding machine. Rides in the
evening, in love with his shadow, a
phantom brother, coat flapping like
a cape, twists to fly.

-Tyler Samien (2009)

F-111 Aardvark

by A.B. Samien

Like that time I came home to find slugs
in the shade of mama's concrete steps,
dressed in uniform,
with little American flags,
burning, coated in salt.

like "Eighteen today, dead tomorrow,"
like "Draft Beer, not boys,"
"Fight the VD, Not the VC."

like the time I flew up the green mountainside
looking down to see my shadow so small,
a cross on the ground
so distant, like your rearview rosary
that night I followed you
because I wanted you back,

and found so much more.
Like clearing that green-topped ridge and
seeing it,
to pull the drop right on and watch
the melting villages with their upturned faces.

Like the old house I bought
with all the decaying bones of once beloved
laid to rest in tissue boxes littered feet below,
dog and cat, fish and rat, mouse, hamster and snake
all since replaced.

You had promised me you'd wait
and you meant it then.
but, yea, it was such a long time.
and no, you aren't making me feel any better
but I'll say you did.

Felt like walking to the edge of the pier, leaning forward,
and dropping my alarm clock from both hands.
Like sinking ringing to where light is dark
and dark is a vacuum ballad,
until my lungs burn fluid and
all I breathe sings truth.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The F-111 was used by the US Air Force beginning in 1967. F-111s were used by the Air Force for tactical bombing in Vietnam. It was unofficially known as the “aardvark” until its retirement ceremony in 1996 when the name became official.

Nepenthe

By A.B. Samien

Let me kiss away your sorrow
Let me kiss away the pain
Across your lips down your neck,
let me kiss you once again

Feel these words like my smooth skin
under your fingers
Feel the love I have for you
Gently.... gently now....
let it go

---------------------------------------------
Found this on a cd from a few years back.
Nepenthe is a drug of forgetfulness mentioned in Greek mythology. Literally, it means "the one that chases away sorrow." (Wikipedia)

Barefoot on Vinyl

By A.B. Samien

I like opening the refrigerator
in the middle of the night,
in the dark,
without a shirt on.
Navel even with that third shelf, I feel like a god
selecting foodstuff worthy for my consumption.

I reach my naked arm into the fridge,
pour myself a glass of milk,
thump my chest like the hairy ape-god,
spoiled, over-privileged American I am,
and go back to bed.

Obtaining Suburbia

By A.B. Samien

Mom cried out,"But It's you I love!"
while dad punched holes in the walls,
like periods on his angry silent sentences,
then left,
to sleep at the office again.

I remember-
"don't tell your sisters,
but someone was shot up the street."
Dad bolts the door and hides the front page.
I was 9.

Now they leave the garage wide open,
even when they go out,
the doors unlocked,
because things are different in Pennsylvania.

They live in a circle
where everyone knows everyone's name
and everyone's car,
and everyone's dog,
only under the shade of a nuclear reactor,

"it's much better than coal!"
said the man on the radio.

But there are certain problems with both.