In Those Cars

In those cars, those V-8 cars and those six-cylinder, six-pack, church-key cars ~ back seats fertile as Iowa itself ~ in those cars we loved each other and America (See the U.S.A. . .) and the road. In those cars with Dynaflow and wontcha blow your horn and Body by Fisher and hormone flow and bodies with fever reproducing like Ford's assembly line and Mortality just another cop snoozing behind a billboard in a black & white; in those cars we drag-raced through the uncertain light of a nation's adolescence and our own, in those cars we loved and came skidding into night; in those cars we loved.

...

drive-in movie

dusty projector pointed

into the past

~ Ralph Murre

ahhh . . .

It is June and summer comes
to your exquisite flesh
and young men and old
renew their faith
in unnamed gods
if that is what they are.

~ RM

Carta Blanca

~ RM

Three Two One

Three Great Lakes, two mighty nations, and one aging and slightly quixotic gentleman astride his good motorcycle, Rozinante; that pretty much sets the stage and introduces the cast for the little play I gave for the last six days (two without rain!) and 1650 miles. Windmills encountered? Yeah, plenty of them now, but you want to think twice before charging at them. Have you seen the size of these things, up close? Still, I'm Netherlandish enough to love 'em. And while some are now being built offshore, I think they look and ARE rather benign compared with the other offshore energy misadventures going on. Made two very small and unavoidable purchases at BP stations on the trip; what can you do when your tank is low and the next gas available is fifty or more miles away? That's how it is in the North Country.

photographs of loons

show he's not the only one

in the rain today

~ Ralph Murre

I'm very proud to say that my poem "All Right" now appears in Mobius, the Journal of Social Change. Check it out (yes, that IS an order) at http://mobiusmagazine.com/

Now We Are Sixty-Six

the constant rattling
grows slightly more distant
in the middle of a long night

or past the middle sometime
and that distance
is what you stay up for

why you nap
in the middle of the day
or past the middle somewhat

and traveling
you are part of the noise
but you can't find a motel

that's just for napping
in the middle of your trip
or past the middle somewhere

you begin
to grow old
or at least I'm afraid

past the middle some age
and your ears won't hear
but the rattle is clear

~ ralph murre

Ever Widening Gulf

A quick and (rightfully) dirty poem:

Ever Widening Gulf

In that gulf
where I tugboat-towed
so long ago
from the refineries
to the refined
in their finery
from the pineries
of the impoverished
grease for the palms
of the over-rich
forever
over-reaching their rights

My days
on that gulf
of life and delights
foreshadowed
times and crimes
that would not go
unpunished
my own lust for oil
part of the spoilage
part of the death
and the blight

Yet I vote
each time
to install
in the capitol
someone else
who will not
set it right

~ Ralph Murre

y' just might find y' get watcha need

What is Given

The likelihood of finding strawberries
tiny and wild and sweet
around your ankles
on any given day
in any given place
is not great
but sometimes
people find strawberries
right where they are standing
just because it is their turn
to be given a taste
of something wild and sweet

- Ralph Murre

bird in hand

soft in my fist
the indigo bunting
window stunned
regains itself
and
loses any need
for me if
there was any
its heart
machine rapid
with fear
or passion
or maybe
they're the same
its eyes bright
with flight
its wings ready
to push
all of this behind

my empty hand
having held
blue brilliiance

~ ralph murre

L.M.H.

and when the time

came for scattering her

to the winds

he could not

but

sheltered ashes

beneath that little tamarack

where the marigolds

bloom in spring

.

because shelter

was what he could give

~r.m.

May Day

After the thaw,
grass greens its blades to meet the mower,
daughters are raised, prom goers
in pinned-on flowers wilt from the nearness
of over-hot hours and days.
Sons, their hearts (and they have them)
swollen, like rivers, are unable to ever
go back, as haze lifts, descends.
Fair-weather friends smile
while plans are made and deserts storm
just over flag-draped horizons.
Now airports at night receive
flights of sun-filled boxes
and docks on the bay feel the sway
of tide on tide and May after May.

A few ships come in, there,
below the blue hills
and the gaze of gray foxes.

~ Ralph Murre

Big Deals

Big Deals

one . . . two, I suppose
thirteen . . . sixteen . . . eighteen
twenty-one . . . sixty five
and, I imagine, one hundred
one hundred and anything

~ RM

Pablo, old friend

pablo picasso, 1937

On Picasso's

Weeping Woman

with Handkerchief

-

Pablo, old friend -

You've given her eyes to cry,

but can she see?

You've given her a mouth to wail,

But can she sing?

You've given her pain;

did she give you pleasure?

-

~ Ralph Murre

-

first published in Hummingbird

bang!

Part of the Deal

was that you owed a good death.
Whether you were a good guy
or not, you had to die right.
If I came out from behind
something and pointed my finger
and said bang! before you did
and cried gotcha, you might
say no y’didn’t or gotcha
first y’dirty Nazi,
but in the end, we all had to die
with awful groaning and kicking
and many spasms and rolling
back of eyeballs and ultimately,
as anybody who’s ever seen
a dead guy knows, the tongue
must protrude, skewed
from a corner of the bluish lips.
And then, you had to stay
really still and painfully contorted
‘til you got bored and came back
to fight again or play red rover.
But it was not part of the deal
in the bang-you’re-dead wars
of South Sixth Street
that you got your balls shot off
or came back to play
wheelchair red rover.
Nobody on our street said
bang-you’re-screwed-up-for-life
the way it happened when some
of us fought on other streets.
No amputees on Sixth.
No psych ward on Ohio Avenue.

- Ralph Murre

"Part of the Deal" was first published in The Cliffs Soundings and has subsequently appeared in my book Crude Red Boat (Cross+Roads Press) and in Wisconsin People & Ideas magazine.

A Note From the Orbit

spinning but not

out of control

another planet

circling

in the long night

~ arem

This is now included in Henry Denander's cool new mail art site; http://hankdmailart.blogspot.com/

what path?

clues, that's all we get

no arrow pointing to the path

no path, really

maybe the trace of a footprint

in dust

maybe bent blades of grass

a disturbance of dew

and a lingering doubt:

did the ones we follow

know the way

or were they lost, too?

~ rm

Java

Do yourself a favor, and become acquainted with the excellent blog, Coffee Spew, (http://coffeespew.wordpress.com/). While you're there, of course, I really hope you'll take a look at the review (http://coffeespew.wordpress.com/2010/03/24/psalms/) coffee-baron Robert Wake has written of my book, Psalms, which is still very available from Little Eagle Press. Reviewers of poetry books rarely receive the thanks they deserve for contributing, as they do, to a discussion of the state of poetry; which I believe is, in a word, thriving. So thank you, Bob, not only for words of praise, but for bothering with words at all.

Incidentally, the webpage for Psalms is http://lileaglepsalms.blogspot.com/ , and you'll find ordering information there.

northeast

a pasture of horses

like weather vanes this morning

all looking downwind

presenting round rumps

to the cold northeast

~ rm

Buoyancy

Yes, I'm aware that it's nowhere near "Thanksgiving", the day that is, with the capitol T, but it feels like a good time to offer a few words of appreciation anyway, to those that have given me the much needed buoyancy which got me through the winter, that dark season that tries to sink me. My friends, and you know who you are, both close at hand and far removed, have pulled me up time and again, and so has this peninsula, the home of my heart, the home of my bones. I give thanks daily for this place - its woods, its shores, a Great Lake, eagles, swans, coyotes, and crows - yet my thanks don't seem enough. We who live here pay a price, to be certain, in diminished earning potential, in high-priced goods, and in distances traveled to obtain certain bits of what we feel we need, but we reap a harvest of riches, too; dividends that feed the soul in a way very few places can, I think, and dividends that most people in cities not so far away are willing to pay dearly to try to grab a share of.

I can think of nothing better to say than simply, thank you, once again, to my friends and to my watery little corner of Earth, for getting me through to another Spring.

~ RM

among bricks

among bricks

i sense beats beaten senseless, this immenseness
holding mere echoes of former cells, wisps of smoke
of former hells and, lately, scents of latex, spandex,
nomex, romex, and tex-mex. ex-lovers and ex-pats
eating corn-chex, this immenseness not near the size
it used to be, when it just held two or three of us
reading cross-word puzzle morning news, tea leaves,
nazis killing jews, nancy into sluggo, adams into eves.
just when i think the beat can’t go on, another regains
his feet, chases protons across the sub - urban lawn,
loses jesus and brain cells, drinks cribari ‘til dawn,
fawns a dew-covered lover, sees the dark ascending.

i sense beats beaten, poison meats eaten. i repeat,
seize the dark if they’ve taken all the light, why
fight ‘em if they could be slightly right, but you can
take what they don’t use, poor excuse for cities
left behind, these towns could have some style,
maybe painters and their models, heavy drinkers,
thinkers for a while ahead of the wrecking-ball.
then they’ll build some condos for nine-to-fivers,
some parking for the barking-dog audi drivers,
some galleries to show the artists driven out,
the rout complete, waiters on buses, three-piece
realtors selling the bricks right out of the street.

i sense beats beaten senseless, defenseless against
bankers & wankers & painted women with mba’s.
i sense the dark of nights and a lonely trumpet plays,
a lonely pen scratches through light of live-long days.

- ralph murre

O.K., O.K., the poem's a rerun; having appeared on this site before, and originally in the excellent but now defunct Cliffs Soundings, but the drawing is new!

As a Clam

What is it,
don't you sometimes wonder,
that keeps clams so happy?
The ocean view?
Quiet neighbors?
Or is clamming-up
its own reward, lost on poets?
A friend clammed-up
some years ago,
or got clammed-up by A.L.S.,
that condition of Gehrig and Hawking,
that robber of muscle control,
that creator of clams.
Maybe the happiness of clams
comes from silent acceptance
of what the sea brings,
but that's hard for humans.
Wordless so long,
our friend climbed from his clamshell
the other day, and flew.
Here on the bottom,
we'll look to the sky
and watch for him,
finally soaring.

~ RM

In memory of Jeff Kaufman, who clammed-up only vocally, but continued to speak by whatever means available. Please learn just a little about this quiet hero at:
http://www.jsonline.com/news/obituaries/87541862.html