Still Being Here
Nothing bad happen to me lately. . .
John Berryman
I read the obit
of a man younger
than I today.
My free day
unfolds its jack-
pot map before me
on a sun-dappled,
tree-lined walk.
July heat has
not yet scalded
a clear sky.
I remain healthy,
angst-less,
off for the day.
I try conjuring
the cloud of illness
that loomed over
and ran through
the now stilled
life of that man
and impoverished
his family.
I feel for them
but can’t regret
still being here
under this endless
blue, the light
playing over me
like so much gold
I will have all day
to spend as I wish
and in a cool room.
Giving Myself a Nickname
I can’t help but think writing your own obituary
is akin to giving yourself a nickname.
Patti See
Self-knowledge too frequently stubs its toe
against the furniture in a dark room,
vainly, with wishes, desires, and hopes.
Family and friends gladly pop those balloons,
light the furniture of that dark room
of glamour and power, riches, renown.
Family and friends gladly pop those balloons
with their smiles, elbows, teasing, and laughter.
For glamour and power, riches, renown,
fancying dobbins as stallions, we race,
face those smiles, elbows, teasing, and laughter,
tear up sure-fire pari-mutuel tickets.
Fancying dobbins as stallions, we race
and give up our pride as we lose our shirts,
tear up “sure-fire” pari-mutuel tickets.
After all these years, you’d think I’d have learned.
I give up my pride as I lose my shirt,
try to write my own obituary.
After all these years, you’d think I’d have learned
to pick my own face out of the lineup.
I try to write my obituary
vainly, with wishes, desires, and hopes,
to pick my own face out of the lineup.
Self-knowledge too frequently stubs its toe.
The Laws of Physics
An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in
motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted
upon by an unbalanced force.
It doesn’t take that many years to learn
some pains, unlike tiny mother-kissed cuts
that knit and heal, can’t get all better, yearn
though we might. A dropped glass scatters its guts.
A boy observes his old uncle’s long run
and tries experiments to slow the kiss
of dust and entropy. Constant motion
could maintain a heart’s force, its blood-jet bliss,
longer than the idle and crimped with age.
The daily movement could shore up the walls,
keep out the flutter, the plaque, the blockage
of his fate, keep him a while standing tall.
Fair weather within margin for error
could dawn: eschew salt cellar, sugar bowl,
whittle body mass from foul to fairer.
The day could shine long on each part and whole.
No matter, though, the sunniest day’s splash
of blue. Succeeding it will be a storm
with black and swamping rain. Lowered booms crash
the most. And all’s regression to the norm.
Giving In to Temptation
“Have a nice day.”
“Thank you, but I have other plans,”
You’re always tempted to respond.
Stephen Dunn
A ghost blending into the furniture,
my round face a graying balloon nestling
amidst the peeling yellow wallpaper,
I was mistaken again today for someone
else’s cipher. Thought of by friends as kind,
that vague synonym mostly for harmless,
I am the quintessentially nice guy
mired where Leo Durocher once consigned
the stiffs in any competition. Splayed
in any old compromising position,
I intend to act on first impulses,
to gossip, sneer, and lie to old ladies,
the hell with upshots and consequences
and what anyone else thinks since to many
I make such a small, flimsy impression
I am anyone, spontaneity
muffled in burlap, any ambition
stalled and dulled by that hectoring whisper
to be good. Now I want to be evil
as Eartha Kitt once seductively trilled,
to step on all the cracks, my deceased mother’s
back clearly long past breaking and concern.
I am about to go all Walter White,
and in a pork pie hat, no less, to covet,
to wrest and plunder, to build and amass
and make all take sober notice at last.
How, you ask, does it feel to influence
a mob of cronies to believe in chintz
and plaster his trending name everywhere,
his face ruddy and gilded on big flags?
Come see me again in about six months.
About the Author:
John Graves Morris, Professor of English at Cameron University, is the author of Noise and Stories. He is reworking a manuscript for a second collection, The County Seat of Wanting So Many Things, and assembling a third, tentatively entitled The Strongest Song. His poems have appeared in a number of publications, most recently Big Muddy and The Concho River Review. He lives in Lawton, Oklahoma.
Isele Magazine 