Do nothing and everything will be done,
that's what Mr. Lao Tzu said, who walked
around talking 2,500 years ago and
now his books practically grow on trees
they're so popular and if he were
alive today beautiful women would
rush up to him like waves lapping
at the shores of his wisdom.
That's the way it is, I guess: humbling.
But if I could just unclench my fists,
empty out my eyes, turn my mind into
a prayer flag for the wind to play with,
we could be brothers, him the older one
who's seen and not done it all and me
still unlearning, both of us slung low
in our hammocks, our hats tipped
forwards, hands folded neatly,
like bamboo huts, above our hearts
John Brehm. My God.
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You never know unless you try,
yes, but if you never try you'll
never fail, and that's what
my heart tells itself, inching
back from the platform's edge,
sensing someone might yank
the water from the pool like a rug.
The heart remembers: blissful
moment of soaring, sky-blue rush
of weightlessness, somersaulting
backflip into a jackknife handstand
in midair—and then the eyes
seeing too late the water gone,
the undeniable concrete.
Oh he's good, John Brehm
ReplyDeleteI'd not heard that one before, but I know, oh I know so well the moment he describes, the world laid bare, that moment when you know... the sky slows...
and there's nothing you can do but accept your fate.
I posted one before, http://gritinthegears.blogspot.com/2008/02/poems-i-have-not-written-by-john-brehm.html
Here's another,
At the Poetry Reading
by John Brehm
I can’t keep my eyes off the poet’s
wife’s legs—they’re so much more
beautiful than anything he might
be saying, though I’m no longer
in a position really to judge,
having stopped listening some time ago.
He’s from the Iowa Writers Workshop
and can therefore get along fine
without my attention. He started in
reading poems about his childhood—
barns, cornsnakes, gradeschool, flowers,
that sort of stuff—the loss of
innocence he keeps talking about
between poems, which I can relate to,
especially under these circumstances.
Now he’s on to science, a poem
about hydrogen, I think, he’s trying
to imagine himself turning into hydrogen.
Maybe he’ll succeed. I’m imagining
myself sliding up his wife’s fluid,
rhythmic, lusciously curved, black-
stockinged legs, imagining them arched
around my shoulders, wrapped around my back.
My God, why doesn’t he write poems about her!
He will, no doubt, once she leaves him,
leaves him for another poet, perhaps,
the observant, uninnocent one, who knows
a poem when it sits down in a room with him.
Indeed, Mr Brehm has it. Truth is the best poetry.
ReplyDeleteA wonderful reflection; comes now poetry month for the needy.
Damn. I'm not a poet but I think I will work on that one. It needs a couple more verses. I'll let you know what I come up with. :)
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