Centennial
by Dick Stahl
I'm driving through the five steel hills
of the Centennial Bridge from Davenport at two miles per hour
over the limit this morning. The speed eyes click
their enforcement
at my sleepy foot holding
the accelerator, while my eyes track
a white snake wiggling
into pleasure on the steamboat channel. Comfortable,
this fog drops its belly
and slows the Rock Island Rapids' current
to a crawl.
I'm driving past the dismantled tollbooth
and almost brake to toss
my change into its gaping mouth. Beyond the bridge pillars,
the sun stipples the water troughs
with stars. This pool's
a silver constellation with its own misty shores, a cosmic
eddy turning everything
around, a crossing
for the gulls who wing it to the churning waters off
the red roller gates
of Locks and Dam No. 15.
I'm driving blind into this river's sunspot.
I'm driving
into the whiskers of catfish,
into the scouring lips of sturgeons, into
the tricks of mudpuppies,
into the eye of the snake.
No time to count to one hundred
or ten on this roadbed.
I rush to five
and slide into Rock Island
in one piece.
Out Loud Poem of the Month for
October 2009
Elegy for the Pope,
Feb. '05 (Jan-Feb '05 & the pope's on a ventilator)
Michael Kelly
For the first time since parochial,
grammar school,
I am even thinking about the Pope. If he
dies
it conflicts with my travel plans to be
a tourist in Rome.
The white-smoke seekers will fill
St. Peter's Square and I may never see
the ceiling
of the Cistine Chapel of Michaelangelo.
And all the good coffee, wine & food
will be taken
by entourages of the world's Cardinals.
The prices will skyrocket and soldiers
will be
armed to the teeth with terror threats.
And I shall be in rags, penniless and
deported
because I love Jews more than Jesus.
My paranoia is escalating but my
survival skills
tingle with the sensations of healthy
fear of a senile,
patriachial, homophobe of international
status
who once instilled terror into the
groveling Galileo
whose life hanged by a thread and house
arrest
was the best plea he could bargain. The
burning at
the stake stuff just doesn't seem that
appealing,
especially, when you are right and Truth
and
Beauty have raptured you. But ashes,
sack cloth,
mercy begging are not my stock and
trade.
How high can hippocracy ride when two
out of three,
four out of five priets are gay and
10-20%, the remaining
disengaging their sexuality yet deny
their authenticity
while inflicting suffering; allowing
suffering to continue
to happen or even encouraging some to
suffer.
Don't die Pope because there are a
hundred,
a thousand just like you waiting to take
your place.
Dry, old men with closets full of
sexuality & fantasy
tell the other half of the world,
about which they know nothing, how to
live.
The arrogance and hippocracy rain down
on us
who seek shelter and sanctuary from the
maddness.
Someone who doesn't even know the daily
weather
because of all the security, isolation
and privilege;
" Are you talkin to Me...are You talking
to me?"
I just want you to prattle on acting
like
what you have to say is something
important.
I'll even humor you, act like i'm
listening or
even care about what have to say or
think.
Just don't die before Easter and I'm
back
to my Holy Seat in San Leandro,
California.
Out Loud Poem of the Month for
November 2009
River Maker
by Dick Stahl
The
Mississippi is a trickle
compared to the gushing water when
the glaciers melted 10,000 years ago.
a sign on The Great River Road
The Mississippi Valley wrote its name
in gorging water after the glaciers
melted, and roaring torrents sliced through
the steep grade southward
for 2,000 miles.
O to stand on the shore of this whooshing rush
of creation, this first
liquid glacier
warmed a few earth degrees moving
like a stampede of charging primordial beasts
eager for the sea.
Even dipping one hand
into this cold, sweeping wash sucked
you down headfirst
into the ferocious current,
the dark undertow.
down to the bedrock, scoured smooth
for a quick drowning.
White caps slapped their own applause
over this vast rapture
of surging water, the great River Maker marking
a swift valley, steep graded,
gouging at will, shorelines pulling wider apart
like one day's long summer horizons.
This is power. This is Nature's spectacular,
and no one standing to feel the bones
rattle, the eyes bulge, the heart leap out
of itself, the feet slide, the imagination send out
millions of current ideas
that only one river could contain,
The Mississippi.
Out Loud Poem of the Month for
December 2009
The Seagull
By William E. Buchholz
The sea, and the sand, and the
wind had a talk
(Very loudly, to hear
o’re a seagull’s shrill squawk.)
And each was deciding that he
was the best.
Each said that he,
only, could equal the test
That God gave for the sand, and
for the wind, and for the sea…
“I’m the best!” each
one shouted. “Pray, listen to me.”
First the sea gave a rumble- a
fearsome old groan
A strong, and a loud,
and a weird sort of moan.
“I water the earth,” to all
giving his challenge,
“I’m strongest,” he
cried. “I weigh men in the balance.”
They seldom can weather my
gigantic waves…
“Only the bravest their
lives can save.”
But then a dull brilliance came
over the sand.
“I’m the color of Sun,
not the color of man.”
My beauty’s not
boisterous…failing…untrue,
I stay just the same
while listening to you.
I stay on the beach and
underlie all
You can surely see I’m
the most beauteous of all.”
Then, even if quiet, a tiny
voice sounded.
“I’m airborne, my
friends, I’m not stunted or grounded.”
As the wind said these
syllables, up came the sand-
In a whirling of fury,
just as the wind planned.
“It’s simple, who’s best! See
those great waves a-slopping?
On the pretty brown
sand the debris that they’re dropping?”
“But wait just a minute!” These
words brought a halt
To all of the argue mid
waters of salt.
“I’m airborne as well,” a voice
squawked from the blue.
(For squawking’s what
seagulls like foremost to do.)
“I live in the water, and also
in sand,
And fly on the wind,
for I very well can.”
So you see? Your uniqueness is
just in your mind,
And your overripe ego
has made you three blind.
God made us all three for just
certain reasons,
And we play our part in
all the four seasons.
“God bless you,” said Jesus,
with love in his heart.
A small seagull that
day gave all three a new start.
Out Loud Poem of the Month for
January 2010
The Last Bully
By John McBride
Something darkly bright within us
sparks,
The crawling child backing out
of the infant’s image,
his thin skinned terror of the night,
the ever-lengthening veined ticking
by which we grow our hearts,
our first raw bumbling on another’s
mouth.
Eros in flight from the bloody holiday
of birth-
domestic clocks will mark
her diapering red hands, her earnest
kiss,
his rude stubble and great scissor lips,
Eros, who will take us by the arm and
throat,
or be taken, who will teach us in love
to smother hate, has just awakened.
And whole houses, avenues, cities
begin to move, boys, girls,
chasing to exhaustion, and an empty
wind-blown street is all they claim,
so they must do it again and again,
such misery in your springtime
rectitude,
this inland fever when you know the
country whole,
and possessing it have gripped our
inmost soul
for what we deny you, you deny greater
still,
and all you need do is mention winter,
when glaciers slide half way across the
bed,
and every night a beggar is outlined
against the window,
to show that only you will have our
head,
Eros, you may be the world’s last,
greatest, bully.
