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Train
From Mombai
His e-mail spoke of his journey,
on the rails running south from Mombai.
A western man wandering the land
with monkeys, cows and people.
Always people. Mobs begging, selling,
wanting to photograph this blue-eyed
doctor with his strange auburn hair,
lost in the crush of terrible troubles.
About him, a multitude of spindly men,
dusty children, and half dead women in saris,
bathing off the banks of the Jumna,
in the shadow of Ghandi's tomb.
Back now, he cures bleeding cuticles,
LaJolla nails eaten in the market's fall.
The Wait
They say
it's between you and the poem.
Like some mysterious Ouija board
scribbling on a sheet.
I’m waiting,
and jack shit is happening.
I’m on the lookout for signs
my life’s story will pour out;
something, anything--You know,
a tale that grabs you
by short hairs and holds on
until there is an epiphany.
I know it’s more complicated
than that. Like when you try too hard
at practice to be like Agassi,
spraying balls everywhere,
instead of easing up
and being in balance,
taking that slow sweet
angle shot anyone can make,
but doesn’t.
The Genesis
Did you think a rib would fill man’s
loneliness, growing arms and legs
to crawl in the Garden’s lush underbrush?
Who would suckle this ugly mass
only a Father could love, squelch
squeals for care and a change of diapers?
No, God would make woman from fire,
a dervish swirl to complement man,
with no navel to tongue in sweet joy.
The ultimate tease, even smiting
the snake, whose cool coils reticulate
in anticipation as he slyly offers
the apple of knowledge, good
and evil, wet in the rain of pain.
The author has returned to myth to find a beginning basis for good
and evil. The first stanza questions the beginning, shows the very gift
woman gave man. The humor mitigates the fact God's narrow test has
brought good and evil in the world. One provocative view from this is he
is to blame, for he fashioned the players.
The author's view of the myth forces the reader to examine the evolution
of good and evil. The ridicule in this piece is humanistic in intent,
and the word images here compliment and are evocative of the photograph.
The humor brings the questions and myth into a modern perspective.
The free verse sonnet form breaks the poem into logical transitions; it
brings the the ideas home in a familiar way with the compactness of the
piece working to its advantage.
But Will They Salute It?
I dreamt of this in art school,
and here I am, pitching the idea
as the opening multimedia display
for the Egg Producer’s Convention
in Paramus. What a great project
for my meager portfolio! A brilliant
juxtaposition of global birth
and feminine control. A great crepe
fallopian tube will hang from the rafters
over a papier-mache world egg.
It will lay oblate on red-spotted sheets
Bobby and I will use the night before.
Sort of a physical artistic comment;
my menstrual blood delivering my ideas,
as Bobby struggles to break out of the piñata.
I’ll be off to the side pointing to this
magnificent metaphor with little Julie
as part of this elemental world family.
The blank faces of the committee
were egg-shell white, as they strained
to pass this unthinkable idea
through the oviduct of their minds.
Oedipus Vexed
I sat quietly underfoot in the dusty
barroom, poking peanuts and butts,
listening to them talk about Walter,
the dark haired carpenter who blackened
my aunt's eye, pushed her into a Catholic girl's
depression, drowning in a pool of blame.
My mother wasn't much help for her sister,
what with me on her leg into everything,
and a husband lost in calculus problems.
He and the carpenter, partners in drunken fun,
set off carbide cannons in the back yard,
neither being much bang in bed.
She went quiet when he and Uncle W. laughed,
tipsy father shooting my suction-tipped arrows
into the ceiling. I cried, leapt up for the feathers.
Unreachable, I'd never again have them in
my quiver. Mama's malevolent cupid,
I'd have put one through his heart.
© Jim Fowler 2003. All rights reserved.
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