Poetry

by Mark Fischweicher

In Tucson, people sit tossed
among the fractured cliffs of
two low hills by
Gate’s pass, gauging sunsets
or as it happened once,
when I’d already stood to leave,
and the light slipped out
from under the fast becoming grim horizon.
Light from darkness;
……..catching the Eastern! fringes of
a skyful
of leadened clouds
and scratching them
with bloody fingers
Backwards
cross their splintered edges
as if Dawn were coming now,
Helios waving
from east to west
good-bye.

Imagining the ‘day’ that might have followed
we all applauded.

Imagining the cold dark day,
hundreds of absolute hands.
And the line of headlights leaving, the only ceremony, and
darkness, the only encore.

And yet, you see,
…for me, it is the moon
in bed with the mid-day sky
that I love most.
………………………..There.
As if it were there all the time
day in, day out
shoved out on stage while the sun
still has all the lines.

In swells and streaks its light
defines itself.

Demanding I go see

 

Mark Fischweicher has been scratching out poems since junior high school and still hopes it may become a regular thing.

by Mark Fischweicher

More than fifty years ago, I bounced, backwards; sinking like an anchor,
in the Long Beach pool. My chin, chopped by the edge, my teeth,
bloodied, but cooled, soothed by the sudden disinfectant bath that enshrined
them  —    Lifeguard’s advice: go home kid!  Without a doubt, these
…………………………………………………………………dried out boney relics
were a long time coming.  I was round ten, then but that was probably
…………………………………………………………………………………the root,
the first cause of it all. .I bet my eyeteeth on it, my tusks, my canines.

 

Overcoming obstacles, on either side of a Buddhist altar sit elephant tusks,
……………………………………………………………………………..not canines
as I thought, but incisors, like the ones pulled by my dentist,
…………………………………………….one by one, from their jaw bone anchor,
along with the occasional bicuspid or molar (maxillary or mandibular),
……………………………………………………………………………and their roots
making me, now (wisdom gone decades ago) just about toothless,
and my little (5” tall) bamboo, souvenir, two-story jewel-box house…
…………………………………………………………………a tiny mini-reliquary
where now reside the remnants of my mouth…enshrined.

 

Not like Siddartha’s, pulled from his funeral pyre, with palaces and shrines
built up to hold them, with princes and kings at WAR to own those canines.
Nor like George’s – cow, horse, HUMAN, walrus, ‘Presidentures’ –
………………………………………one full set left amongst the other relics,
the pewter spoons, the painted plates and porcelain pitchers of Mount Vernon,
………………………………………..but not one good tooth to anchor
to. (He had some odds and ends in a desk drawer there, hoping to add them,
………………………………………………his “own, two, small teeth”)
to the set… And, still desperately hoping to recapture NY, despite the English
…………….victories in the south, he stayed rooted

 

Where he was. “Little prospect of being in Philly, soon,” his ‘captured’ letter
………………………………….to his dentist read. He, by Then, ‘enroute’
(upon advice of Rochambeau) to Yorktown   “Check out the cannon display,”
…………………………………..a tourist wrote of that old battlefield shrine,
“It’s easy to picture history coming to life here.” Not that they (or I) could see
…………………………………….it coming, like a kick in the teeth
or a baseball my son pitched, ‘warming up,’ before I had my mask on.
……………It is a Dog Eat Canine
World out there, and that last ‘two-seamer’ truly loosened ‘em up. Now, like
…………………………………………….George, nothing left to anchor
the new bridge to, to latch on to as walruses use their own tusks to do, pulling
……………..themselves up on the soon to be relic

 

Of the past, the arctic ice, its cold wisdom keeping storms down;
……………………………………………..with polar bears afloat on relics
of their own. How can we ask them to pull up their roots,
when for us, it is said, “the foot feels the foot when it feels the ground,”
…………………………………………………………………..anchored
in some primeval belief that we are here together, not bowing to the shrines
of human progress, knowing that the obligate carnivorism that the elongated
……………………………………………………………………………canines
the sabre toothed cat enjoyed, may in fact have led to its own extinction, teeth

 

Not withstanding. As I lose them, I think of you, narwhales, walruses and
……………………………………………………tigers; let us fight, tooth
and nail, to save our home, before our blue earth is consigned to become just
……………………………………………………another relic,
afloat in the darkness. What can we do against it? We can’t wait until its
…………………………………………………..raining cats and canines.
We can’t disregard our own flimsiness, as dependable as any wispy cloud
……………….without roots;
i.e., the eternal light on the flagpole in Madison Square is always going out.
……………..What kind of shrine
is that? “In memory of those who have made the supreme sacrifice,” someone
……………………………………………………..has pulled up the anchors

 

Alas, poor Yoric, is there no sanctuary, no shrine where I can worship
…………………………………………………..something more than relics,
where poetry comes every moment without pulling teeth, where my sorrow
……………………………………………..does not weigh me down?
I hope I haven’t led you astray trying to root this out, O Kali, dark goddess of
…………time, against these demons,
……………………………………………………bare your fangs

 

Mark Fischweicher has been scratching out poems since junior high school and still hopes it may become a regular thing.