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About The North Coast times-eagle. (Wheeler, Oregon) 1971-2007 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 1, 2003)
PAGE 11 NORTH COAST TIMES E A G L E , OCTEMBER 2003 POETRY God has given you one face and you make yourselves another.’ -CHINESE FORTUNE COOKIE IMAGINE THIS Imagine the ghosts of Arlington gathering in Congress to say they know the answer does not lie in bayonets and dirty bombs, empty skies moaning with drones imagine the possibilities in sky, in blue with a few wisps of cloud, and Einstein telling us what equals what and who we should die for; imagine living instead, imagine meadows in the craters, paintings in caves brought to light, imagine the deep sound of thought, brushes brushing against the truth of it and pens scratching like beaks of extinct birds reminding us of the past pointing to this future. -GERALDINE HELEN FOOTE SAYING GOODBYE GEARHART GENUFLECTIONS You should see the Big White Victorian Beach Front House I own in Gearhart That everyone agrees, who sees it, Has the Awesome Ocean View in this burg. And most who meet me must agree I have almost nothing to worry about. You see, my wife, with Betty Davis eyes, Just drapes herself all over me when I Make an appearance, home from my Very high rolling ultimate business opportunity. However, I must daily turn away swarms of Beautiful Buxom Women Who loudly scream that I’m always breaking Their tender little hearts When I drive by in my gold Mercedes With hot leather seats. These women claim, though, that they are very grateful That I acknowledge them with a little nod In their direction. And it has been said by most in this bizarre universe That I am their answer to perfection in flesh. I know all the answers to all the questions Worth asking. I know everything worth knowing. I possess the only clock in this time and space. I am not arrogant, Only supremely knowledgeable Of my superiority to those beneath me. "SHE HASN’T SLEPT IN DAYS" BY HAYDEN GREELMAN, AGE 9 (2003) -ROBERT LEGG Rocks, shells, sand, dirt and trees Smells welcoming of evergreen Air always washed clean Salt, blowing through on the breeze Numbered streets running chasing Winding back Alphabetical barely keeping order Fishiness along the tracks Hollow sound of walking Tap tap tap Everything uphill Always sliding down Strong legs and stronger souls Intertwining friendships and lovers Yellow orange pink purple Columbia sunsets Quiet streets of 11:00 p.m. Burned once Burned twice Don’t go underground Bridges going nowhere Bridges coming back Water. Constant. Stirring. All the way around Us all connected to... The heart resting underhill Warm. Beating. Feeding us All of us thriving here This heaven. This glade, this beauty I’ve found Shhh. . .this is our secret place It’s our special place As long as we believe No one can take it away FOR SHELTER & BEYOND WORLD I’M BIKER The soft illicit sighs — “our love,” you said “will never die.” so when I see you with the new man and the new smile i wonder if your love perhaps has broken a leg. -MIRANDA LEA RINKS (Miranda leaves for Arizona sometime in October.) Olive green of pond water, tea colored is the newt’s body. Legs stroking, it floats close to the surface, lazily circles the dock’s posts, a fish swallowing in the shallows Its feet once walked moss, logs — A world and name, eft, left behind. Pinpoints of vermilion freckle its skin. It nudges under floating leaves, blown down from the trees. Saturdays, the zebra-striped plane flies up from the neighboring fields. Its roar follows the tree edge, our porkchop-shaped parcel of land, turns back at the boundary. Over the woods, over the dock, narrow trails and deer paths, the dead tree where the vulture roosts. A finite number of times the engine will go up, up. The zebra in the circus ring prances round. Rises the snapping turtle's triangle face from the mud. My wishing to nudge the days larger, longer. A girl’s run in the woods at dusk — blue shorts the hunters saw briefly as the deer’s flickering of blue sky. -TERESA BARNES INDIFFERENCE Indifference eventually burns through its mask, shows its teeth. Its vast need, comes in fierce wailings, anger, in deference. Indifference, the gritty hanger on, tearing up everything, to feed its unmemorable existence. -TALVIKKI ANSEL -THEDA SPRACKLIN MANLY TASTE CREEPING WATER The death scent of late autumn spreads thick on every somber molecule of leaf and soil, soft and damp and waiting for winter to come, in denial of the crisp stiffness in frost-rimed grassblade; fallen fading leaf. She doesn’t seem to notice how, in the mornings sometimes even the loquacious river is still in glassy, earnest folds of gray ice, doubling in on itself in impatient wait for burbling freedom. In all her beauty, she doesn’t see the baleful dark-eyed stares of delicate raven and crow, searching for prey while the cold has driven all the mice underground. Through mellifluous eyes she watches the river churn in defiance against the crackling chill; slower and slower until the first snowfall muffles everything from ear, the fleeting former warmth lost to bird, to snug grass-lined burrow, to the sharp-crying geese that follow her away to a better place, far from winter's scorn that tears at her throat with icy claws regardless. -MARGIT BOWLER Margit Bowler is 14 and a freshman at Astoria High School This poem is one of 41 finalists out of thousands of entries from around the world in the 2003 International River of Words Environmental Poetry Contest, and is published in the book ‘2003 River of Words ” Never seen an episode of Bay Watch and haven’t read Bukowski. Wish Rilke were still around and that he’d write me letters. Never been to a Quaker graveyard nor rhymed words with "Nantucket." Recollecting Lowell, I'm thinking he wasn’t the last of the poets to have breakdowns What breaks me down — coffee served in paper cups and people who feel compelled to talk about Jesus at the worst possible times I can name more poets than sitcoms and feel real smart showing up places with books tucked under my arms I don’t do push ups while watching my broken 13 inch TV which might have been filled with the same babes whose plastic tanned faces stare down from highway bill boards Don’t know the stars’ names like I do the women poets who grow tense and reluctant when asked to read. But when they do, it's always a smoking gun and me knocked flat, bullet-ndden, and gasping for more -JOHN A FIFE For battered women, battered by the fist of your keeper, by the nailed boots of the man drunk on the bottle or the booze of his will, by the angry man, by the self-pitying man, by the man kicked by those who can afford to pass on rage. For battered women, battered by hunger, by poverty, by bills coming in with the old bills unpaid and the phone turned off and the children with no shoes to wear to school. For battered women, battered by the rapist you thought your friend, by the rapist your uncle, the rapist in every man who uses women like something he can wipe himself on. For battered women, battered by birthing methods invented for doctors’ profits, with your baby yanked out of you strapped down, battered by social workers prying, battered by jail, battered by divorce court, battered by electroshock, battered with drugs that slow your body and snuff your mind. For battered women, battered by insults on the corner and on the job, by the lack of love, by the loss of love, by the rancid garbage abuse that come to the aged, by the death of children, by the death of respect for you and who you are battered but alive women ready to give birth again to hope, ready to midwife hope for other bleeding women. -MARGE PIERCY FAREWELL ASIA SOLDIER A THE AUSTRALIAN WHORE Can it be that we are dreams Created by one for the other To shape life anew from a sleep Troubled by loneliness and fear? Forms bound by purpose begin In dream lines we create ourselves A song that the tongue refuses the lips The words are lost on ears deafened by a sleep That the eye refuses The departure Preordained by necessity Sees the voyage of hands over skin As the night blind seek reference Of a way home again, and again Across rutted streets Away from dark indifference -RICK BARTOW
