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.