Tiger Lilies
Poems by Marc Isaac Potter
It Is Just A Matter of Time
Part One
Pairs of little bare feet
Running across the Kentucky Bluegrass,
Children laughing as they run,
Showing off their new Easter clothes.
Papa pops a beer
In the hot pool and chugs this one too.
Momma is in the house
Peeling carrots while Auntie
Cleans.
All is being readied
For the disaster.
Part Two
All is being readied
For the disaster.
Water Song
The water
Drop
Let. Itself.
Be water.
Then falls.
To the waiting earth.
Meal Time
Food too old for
- too unusual for –
regular people, we
covet and fight over it.
The lines are modestly long,
No one talks, if they are
Not talking to themselves.
The homeless
Searching for a meal,
Any meal,
Are treated with respect
And dignity,
By the helpful workers
Who do even more than they can.
.
Shopping Cart
Early morning hours,
The cold hours before sunrise.
An old man in need of a clean shave
Pushes his shopping cart
Past an old woman
In need of love.
Water World
No one is an island.
Who really wants
To be surrounded
By water
That long
Any way.
Maybe a long shower, sure,
Or a quiet afternoon
With your hand in the dishwater.
A Rabbit’s Ears
A coffee cup
Used as an ashtray.
A radio,
Keeping time.
A set of rabbit ears
Sitting on top
Of a blurred image
Of an old TV.
Honor
Dad,
I know you are as honest as my skin.
Wrapping every part of me in
Something that can bleed.
Your honor makes it possible for
Me to see when I open my eyes.
By the rules of your day
You exemplary man,
You stumbled and fell,
You fell off the wet rough skin of a
2 by 6 piece of wood
We put in the yard for a sidewalk.
You got - up never to fall again.
Who knows your incredible smile –
Tiger Lilies
Opening like a jar of slivered red peppers,
Like a Venus Fly Trap
Like your grandmother’s arms
At church when she sees a friend.
The Tiger Lily Stands tall
In the world,
The new thinnest model
Coming down the runway.
In our world of geraniums and tomato
Plants the Tiger Lily was a movie giant,
Unbelievably confident,
Trapped in its one little spot.
Looking Up
My Dad did not say
a goddamn thing to me
for 21 years,
That was memorable,
That was for me alone.
Never spent a day with me.
The revolutionary war gun
that hung over our mantel:
I looked up and respected it.
Zen Defined
Zen is :
- Completely not Zen and could not be Zen
- Absolutely is Zen and has to be by definition
- A moot point.
- All of the Above.
Russian Poetry
Yvteshenko
Wrote STOLEN APPLES
And the Russian government
Censored half of the book
Before they would allow him to publish.
Now,
We cannot remember
What it is
we are not allowed
To say.
Cane
An old man bought a cane.
It had flowers all over it,
He bought it because it was beautiful,
Because it had flowers all over it.
But he was uncomfortable,
Thinking everyone would think he was gay.
And he was gay.
So he made an uncomfortable speech
Everywhere that people would listen
About how people might think he was gay.
Small closets are tight.
Return
If you love
A beautiful stone,
You must throw it in the ocean.
If it loves you,
It will fly back.
Cigarette Song
For a cigarette
I went out in the dead of night,
And was killed brutally
By my addiction.
Girl, Resting
A 14-year-old girl
Walks home from
Scrubbing floors.
She stops and rests
In the admiring moon.
Money Therapy
We talk about money,
Rather than the horrors
Of my death.
I need money,
They need money
And we spend our sessions
Talking about money
Rather than the horrors
Of my beautiful death.
Dog Barking
The morning is a dog barking,
A truck letting out its air brakes excess.
You are gone.
Of Course
But of course my father,
The silence now
Defines him
His companion
World War II
Is fading into the past,
This sink full of dishes
Is quite alive.
A Man and His Car
The hot muffler pipe
Backed up into some dry grass.
A small fire,
The wind is blowing away from the car.
Like Hermes1 traveling into hell
And back out safely
The owner gets in,
Puts on his favorite radio station,
And drives away.
Leaf
Rain Soaked Leaf
Yellow underbelly and green skin
Fell plop
Like a washrag from a high shrub.
Nothing graceful.
Abstract
Zen is the Abstract painting
In a room of realists.
The dawn comes.
Who sees this exact moment?
As completely and totally new,
As something that has never happened before,
As something that is always happening
Prema
In all the world,
Let alone in all of my world,
You are precious.
Attractive Betty and Attractive Jim
Her pink, air-light teddy
Nearly floating around her body,
We cannot tell
What Blonde Betty,
Hazel eyed Betty,
Attractively thin Betty
Actually looked like.
We can tell you –
No, no we can’t –
But we can say they both enjoyed
Their afternoon -
Gasp –
in the same bed
This married couple
Who had stolen a day off.
(cont.)
Likewise
Tall, Dark, and Handsome Jim
Must remain blind to us.
What did they do?
That was so satisfying,
My God do not ask.
As they both light up,
As the radio plays
Les Brown
And his Band of Renown
Creek side
I remember sitting
For endless time,
Beside a tiny creek.
A tributary,
Watching my body
And Weldon Kees’2 body
Floating by
Once by a River
Once by a river,
I began talking to a tree.
I kept imagining it was like
Talking to some guy in a bar who
Thinks he knows you from somewhere.
Harold Puts Catsup on his Fried Potatoes
A blue rimmed porcelain dinner plate.
Harold breathes in the smell of the grease,
And the pure fried potatoes.
The old style dinner
Where a plate of fried potatoes
Is not out of the question.
Harold’s blank yellow pad
Stares back at him,
Already grease stained,
His pad is living life,
Rather than writing about it.
Tiny Flower
Tiny Flower,
looking out to me
like a child
the first day of school.
The Drawing Left Behind
The boy’s studied,
Long fingered right hand
Was the first to drop the crayon
And go.
Wandering – no - homing in on -
His video game.
On the video he could make
Moving pictures
That ran, jumped, and killed people.
Part Two
Now twenty-seven years later entering
Middle age, he felt called to the museum,
A place his blue-edged interests had not
Taken him before.
By now he was a successful
Game developer
And was looking to round out his life
With a normal life, perhaps children,
Perhaps a wife.
(cont.)
Instead – in the midst of the clicks
Of shoes on the museum floor,
He faded into himself, he visually
Leaned into the painting
Until his date
Had to call his name
And ask if he was ok.
His long thin neck, his aging shoulders
Still carried the memory
Of the moment he turned away
From drawing with crayons.
He strained to see the exact brush
Strokes in the stunning portrait.
His date, her blue dress now stiffened up,
Her shoulders feeling unattended,
Went on to
Other parts of the gallery.
Todd, the lick of memory
Across his cheek, frozen in this moment,
Visiting the woman in the blue dress
In the portrait,
Imagining he might have painted her himself.
Does Not Know
Red hair cut military short
He does not know
Where his son is,
Not because the boy
Like his father before him
Picked up a gun
To be a man
But because
Twenty-five years ago today,
The 12 year old boy
Vanished.
The Eyes
The Iris of the Eye.
No one speaks of the Iris of the Human Eye
Like a harbor inside a well rounded bay
The eyes of the dead
Nothing can describe them
Nothing can bring them back
The harbor has become a
Dark alley, full of large rats
And spiders that crawl on seven legs.
Blossoming
The opening
Orange rose,
Is celebrating
Its blossoming,
That began
Before Time.
Buffalo
In my dream
A buffalo
Massive and Graceful
Ran toward me
Wanting to
Say hello
He kept running toward me,
And leaped over me
Like a gazelle.
Old Radio
I can not remember
How to turn off my radio.
The star-studded night goes by.
Outside my window.
I am dying for a friend to be here
For coffee and talk.
Roses – I cannot remember.
.
Subway
You are trying to remember
The cool autumn nights of Ohio
By living in the subway.
Here it is either pitch-black rats,
Living down the tracks.
Or the florescent operating room
Of the waiting benches.
But yes you are glad to have
Staked out a claim to part of the subway –
Winter is coming
As undeniably as a run away train.
The Soft Moonlight
The soft moonlight
Of Northern Ohio.
All the young lovers
Order French Fries at Frisch’s Big Boy
Its softness.
Its fullness.