Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About The North Coast times-eagle. (Wheeler, Oregon) 1971-2007 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 1, 2001)
PAGE 13 NORTH COAST TIMES E A G L E , DECEMBER 2001 PHOTOGRAPH BY GENE FAULKNER VERSE FOR OLDER CHILDREN EARTHLINGS Do not volunteer truths, these will make them pale Do not disturb fantasies. If one smiles, smile in turn. If you are spoken to, listen. Do not look at them for long. This they take as staring, causing crotch panic. Do not look closely at them. They are angry enough even when smiling. I think I shall never see A book of verse written by me TO A SKID ROW WAITRESS Give us your bravest a m. smile, wipe the fogged counter of our minds Towel up the crumbs of our flaky poems, ignore the deep-fried disorder of thought. Dismiss the weak coffee paleness of wit, forgive the dishwater muck of our words. But really you season the soup of the day, you butter both sides of our bread Out to the street for whatever spare change, this day we shall drink to your eyes only P.O. BOX 424 If I don’t find someone to share me with soon, I may turn on myself and bite my own ass! FURNISHED ROOM (WRITER’S BLOCK) The Muse whispered at the keyhole of his mind He let her in, cautioning about the clutter. She smiled and unzipped a comer of the room, unzipped the ceiling and down the farther end They stood in other walls of his head. She urged against one wall and another, raising the ceiling to an outer world. He complained of the dark an cold, standing in other walls of his head. An axe was swung in all directions. The room reduced to a child’s toy block, the Muse fled through the keyhole of his mind as he stood in the four walls of his head. MICHAEL MARSH, POET The poem ended, you lie in your grave grey with exhaustion. As in life, unkempt, wrinkled as your brow retaining wonder. THE PARTY IS OVER All credit cards nationally canceled, America's Elm Street shades are drawn Women and children, under pastel bedding lie stunned before TV static and snow. Manly beer bellies soured and gaseous, the boneheads under hardhats are crushed as Military/lndustrials foreclose on the land. Now matriarchal scout cookies are crumbled, the air let out from all our balloons. -BILL BERTIN (1973) Bill Berlin died in Astoria on Monday, December 3 at age 73. He spent the last five years of his life in Astoria after much of it as a merchant sailor, and his youth as an orphan raised in New York. He lived nearly thirty years in Portland. He did live to see a book of verse written by him, published just before his death by stroke and incipient cancer. The poems on this page are from that book, Verse For Older Children, which he had printed for friends, and from other publications such as the North Coast Times Eagle. I knew him for a long time before he moved to Astoria I printed many of his poems in the NCTE, and just as often committed typos upon them, which he declared in a favorite phrase, “Shocking horrible!” Just before he died I read a few on KMUN-FM, which Mike McCauley told him about “I hope he got them right,” he said. I hope I've got them right this time also. - michael M c C usker ALL ANIMALS IN CHORUS WINTER FOR A DEAD POET No one came by today You should have seen the way the thinner first year trees stood shaking in the breeze No one came by today The dog is just a stray who sometimes comes to tease by nosing at my knees. No one came by today. It seems a waste to play at whispered rhymes like these with only me to please LOVE STORY AT THE ROUND TABLE Seated and dressed in that particular pride of men who have been tried and passed the test, they would meet for breakfast. Longtime knights of the neighborhood. Appetites whetted by a good fare of memory. Their shared treasury. Pancakes and eggs and hashing through ball games business deals World War II. They accepted the strangeness of all the changes that were occurring while they were maturing And held their exemplars devoted to Buicks but generous critics of their children’s imported cars Materialists. In the best sense. Past tense and present tense - mike M c C auley CHILD’S PLAY There never was a plan More suitable for Man Than going to the moon. May you all leave soon! ON COOKING A GOOSE Working from her own recipe, she peeled the skin all around exposing trembling sinew and nerve-ends. Exposing, as well, the purpled hurts, the yellowed strands of self-rejection. There a shriveled peach-pit heart, a quivering liver choked with bile After a time she looked it over Basting with juices simmering darkly When all was done she simply left it Having, really, no appetite for goose. Love me or leave me, she cried! Leave you? Not ever, he lied Say I'm the one, she pleaded But of course, he conceded Then, later, he loved a lot. But then, later, she did not. I was just her toy, he sighed — the more wounded in his pride. In a moment of delicious madness she gleefully undid the knot of his navel. Undone, his bottom fell to the floor. Shedding an alarming stuffing, the rest of him collapsed in her lap She fingered the exposed spinal cord until his jaw began to work at her: No, he would not forgive, would never forget Unforgivable then, never to be forgotten, gathering his several parts, she dropped him from a many-storied window Waking, tearfully confessing maybe murder, she is given Kleenex, a hug and a smile In the next room, trembling, paler, Brother’s birthday teddy bear is appalled! CULTISTS Centerpieces waiting in dark grottos, drawing the unwary to dark embrace, down hollow maws without echo BENEATH THE VALLEY OF THE KINGS B. KADRIE, NATIVITY (1968) In sarcophagus within sarcophagus within sarcophagus the mummy smiles thinking of the good times he did have the golden days, the nights brighter than gold And he smiles recalling the further truth all lives are but dreams of the Ancient Ones MALACHI KEEFE BORN DEC. 3, 2001 SON OF JENNIFER & PATRICK
