Lull
Wednesday, December 20, 2017
I wrote this small piece in 1969, responding to a photo I saw in a magazine. The picture was, as I remember it now, of Herbie Hancock, though that seems wrong since he doesn't play flute.
Whatever is to be said for the piece, it is an appropriate beginning to this post, which begins a kind of two-week lull.
This post will be short, just a few short, with one exeception poems from my first eBook, Pushing Clouds Against the Wind (poems 2007-2008). The post next week, if I do one, will also be short.
Just too much going on.
lull
black man
with
your silver flute
sing us
soft
a song
to sleep
Here they are, all me.
lull
between
post-it notes
little man
girl
fresco on the other side of sunset
the girl with a small mouth and long brown hair
barku
sunset
red
winter postcard
yellow
blue
she used to be somebody
i swear
a cool breeze in August
between
not autumn
not
summer
dark
cool
mornings
&
early dusk
cicadas
crying from trees
the end of their
cycle
or the beginning
i don't know
which
but i feel it
too
like something is over
a lull
before
whatever is next
post it notes
crowd murmurs
in a large room
hundreds
of stories
shattered
into random
word pieces
```
i love
you
in little
yellow
flashes of
sticky note
passion
These are from a series I did over time, poems that were supposed to be short enough to fit on a sticky yellow post-it-note
little man
little man
on a cellphone
advertises
with a booming voice
there is more to him
than appears
girl
dancing
across the stage
as she delivers
my order of decaf
and a scone,
then back again
still dancing
still in the music
the abandon
of dance
and rhythm
and music
and youth
elixir
bringing
a moment of light
to an old soul
heavy
with the news of the day
fresco on the other side of sunset
a
ridge
of low clouds
pink
as cotton candy
against bellows
of
virgin white
above
a Mediterranean
sky
the girl with a small mouth and long brown hair
threw back her hair
with a flip of her head
and smiled
little mouth a bow
drawn tight like a knot
on a pink and white tie
or a kitten
that curls like a ball
when you tickle
its belly
barku
lonely whistle
in the dark
lost
little bird
calls
home
```
whale song
ripples
the deep
navy sonar
roils
the tide
```
conversations
in twos
and threes
i listen
while
i write
These are from an fairly extensive series of poems I wrote, using a form I invented and called "barku" - the idea was based on a kind of simplified haiku, ten words on six lines, short enough to fit on a bar
napkin (it being a bar where I wrote the first one).
sunset
sun lies low
behind scrub branches
yellow jigsaw
puzzles
at end of day
red
blood
on white paper
bright red
like an apple
on a bed of
snow
```
winter postcard
white horse
on a white field
enclosed by a white fence
i am blinded
by the light
```
yellow
lemons
overflow
a pewter
bowl
roll across the floor
crying
caution...caution
```
blue
blue eyes
under clear
skies
ice
on cut
crystal
From a series I did on colors.
she used to be somebody
poor Babe
at six hundred pounds
now just bacon
on the hoof
the life of a
grown up child star
is precarious
indeed
i swear
business suit
charcoal gray,
pin
striped,
red necktie
on pristine, white shirt,
whispers to himself
as he picks
at his Blackberry
with his plastic stylus
i read his lips
"beam me up, Scottie"
I swear
a cool breeze in August
from the north
in a season of southerly winds
trees sigh
with early morning pleasure
welcome this reminder
of better days to come
My single long poem of the week, a poem of personal history that won't be finished until I die.
this old bed
i sleep
on the bed
where my father
was born
one hundred years ago,
second child of Celeste
and August
amid the rocky hills
and pecan and oak and
flowing streams
in the little
Texas-German town
of Fredricksburg
i sleep
on the bed
that has slept my family
through two world wars
a cold war
and multiple wars of lesser
scope
through twenty two Presidents
of the United States,
some wise
some not
at least one a despicable
malignancy
some equal
to the needs of their time,
some not,
through musical genres
from ragtime
to hip-hop,
through prohibition
and bathtub gin,
and the continuing scourge
of drugs
natural and manufactured
always multiplying,
through the gilded age,
the jazz age,
rock and roll
and Chuck and Elvis
and the Fab Four,
and for a few illusory years.
normalcy,
before fire bombing,
atom bombing,
terrorist bombing,
getting bombed
in the suburbs
and getting sober
with AA,
through seven presidential
assassination attempts,
death in Dallas,
death in Los Angeles,
death in Memphis
death
on the launch pad,
death
in near earth orbit,
Kitty Hawk
to men on the moon,
to challenging the deepest reaches
of interstellar space,
the cries of the dead
from famine,
from genocide,
from indifference
of the ruling class,
through Bull Connor
and his police dogs,
through King
and his dreams
and his death
on a motel balcony,
through Barack Obama
and the triumph
of dreams,
through Donald Trump
and the crushing
of dreams,
through the triumph
of good
and the reemergence
of evil,
the cycle played out
over an over again,
through the days of yellow
journalism, through
Murrow and Cronkite
and Brinkley and Huntley
on radio and TV
and on the web
where truth and lie
fight the old and never ending
battle,
with
Wikipedia fact
and Wikipedia fancy,
truth swaying
on a tumbling pedestal,
lies flying in the wind,
opinionators,
blowhards,
conspiracists
plain racists,
and everyday bloody
fools
and through it all,
all the times of reaping
and sowing,
the bed has calmed the nights
through three generations
of sleep and passion
and midnight dreams
waiting now
for the final sleep
of this generation
and the lying down
to rest
of the next

This being the street where I live - it's to home for the week, maybe two.
Until we meet again, happy holidays of your choosing.
As usual, everything belongs to who made it. You're welcome to use my stuff, just, if you do, give appropriate credit to "Here and Now" and to me
Also as usual, I am Allen Itz owner and producer of this blog, and a not so diligent seller of books, specifically these and specifically here:
Amazon, Barnes and Noble, iBookstore, Sony accusatory, Copia, Garner's, Baker & Taylor, eSentral, Scribd, Oyster, Flipkart, Ciando and Kobo (and, through Kobo, brick and mortar retail booksellers all across America and abroad
I welcome your comments below on this issue and the poetry and photography featured in it.
Just click the "Comment" tab below.
Poetry
New Days & New Ways
Places and Spaces
Goes Around Comes Around
Pushing Clouds Against the Wind
And, for those print-bent, available at Amazon and select coffeehouses in San Antonio
Seven Beats a Second
Fiction
Sonyador - The Dreamer
Peace in Our Time
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