Stewart Alter

Used To

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by Stewart Alter

Where I used to wonder
How the stream in the woods
Fed the roots of the trees
Twenty feet away,
I am now unable
Even to imagine
How an unknown
Someone
From somewhere
Unknown
Could have found me
To ask for my support
In an email.
And where I used to sit
Quietly and watch
How the birds
Connected
With the branches,
And how the leaves
On the ground
Formed into piles,
Guided by the wind
Invisibly,
I am now unable
To sit anymore
Quietly
And believe
That anything
Could be naturally
Linked.

Stewart Alter, who joined LP2 in the Fall of 2020, has been writing poetry and painting intermittently before, during and now after a long career in business journalism and corporate communications.

Sometimes

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by Stewart Alter

Sometimes things in life
Really do work out.
I can see that now,
The way the cars ahead,
Almost crashing,
Are squeezing
Into an array
Of acute angles,
Like a desperately
Fleeing herd
Of prey
Converging
Into a vanishing point.
Their horns shredding
The air with their honking,
The cars then inch further
Toward each other,
Compacting
Into a single
Purposeful
Jumble of shapes
In order to sprout
A new space, a thin stripe,
At the remotest boundary,
Narrowly available
For an emergency
Vehicle,
Its siren splitting the air.

Stewart Alter, who joined LP2 in the Fall of 2020, has been writing poetry and painting intermittently before, during and now after a long career in business journalism and corporate communications.

Going Beyond

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by Stewart Alter

Earphones on, playing contemporary,
The exercise walker was sure he knew
His way around the cemetery.
He had been often on its boundary

Where, as a passer-by, he had observed
Those crests and valleys of capsulized lives,
Their skeletonized facts in stone preserved
Amid that web of walkways, quiet and curved.

He longed to reach the far side avenue,
Impatient to explore what lay beyond.
So a shortcut across this scenic view
Was what his rhythmic vigor could rally to.

Right here in the city sat this country relief,
A landscape as much as it was sacred ground
Where he was free to bound over branch and leaf,
Bypassing the mourners clustered in grief.

Assured of his stance, now marching with pride,
He refused to be ruled by an unseen world.
With his music to guide his clocklike stride,
He would forge his own path to the other side.

Stewart Alter, who joined LP2 in the Fall of 2020, has been writing poetry and painting intermittently before, during and now after a long career in business journalism and corporate communications.

Running for President

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by Stewart Alter

Unsure of himself, he decided to run
For president and command thousands
Of journalists, zealous and massed,
To invade the shores of his private past.

Muster, marshal, scatter and batter his walls,
Interview everyone he’s ever known.
Hunt down each hint, every shadow and shape.
Investigate, interrogate, get it all on tape.

For there must be a theme behind this tale,
Some furtive facts that can explain the plot,
Crucial episodes that changed his course,
Obscure to him but witnessed by a source.

He has tried to unearth these secrets himself
But his defensive vines were too thick to hack,
Jungle-tangled, with no sense of bearing,
He could spot no sight of a sunlit clearing.

So set loose the scoop-attacking troops
That they might draft an obit-befitting script,
Not the surface bullets of triumph and strife
But the buried motives that define a life.

Stewart Alter, who joined LP2 in the Fall of 2020, has been writing poetry and painting intermittently before, during and now after a long career in business journalism and corporate communications.

A Dieter’s Sonnet: (A Shape Poem)

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xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxStudy the fat
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx man in his native
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxclime. Explore
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxhim
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxwith anthropological verve. He is
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxno savage, but man in his prime, a system
as Levi-Strauss might observe. Disdain men’s meanings when they paint
xxxxxxxxxxxxxand rhyme, there are deeper ones when they
xxxxxxxxxxxxcook and serve. For the real taste of the rare
xxxxxxxxxxxand sublime can be found around each daily curve.
xxxxxxxxxxxYes, the fat man can be thin at any time, but the
xxxxxxxxxxtaboo of thinness leaves him unnerved. To make it
xxxxxxxxxxxxreal would be his sacred crime. It is an ideal
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxresisted to be preserved. So, get out
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxyour notebooks
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxand startxxxxxxx to describe
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxbefore hexxxxxxxxx becomes
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxa vanishing xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxtribe.

 

Stewart Alter, who joined LP2 in the Fall of 2020, has been writing poetry and painting intermittently before, during and now after a long career in business journalism and corporate communications.

Theban Shocker

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by Stewart Alter

What tabloid today wouldn’t long to tell
“Cult Mom and Aunts Rip Son to Shreds!”
How Pentheus died at the Bacchanal
When they thought him a boar
And then tore off his head.

This story surely would lead the news,
“King who Defied the God is Slain!”
They’d replay his speeches and interviews
From his famous attacks
On Bacchus’s train.

How online comments could fuel that debate,
“Killers or Victim, Whose Crime was Worse?”
For didn’t this king seek to violate
A god’s sacred rite
In spite of a curse?

When the TV talkers tackle this theme,
“Men and Mothers They Don’t Understand,”
Could they ever explain that feral dream
Of family bonds abandoned,
Lured by a tambourine band.

Stewart Alter, who joined LP2 in the Fall of 2020, has been writing poetry and painting intermittently before, during and now after a long career in business journalism and corporate communications.

The Businessman’s Lament

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by Stewart Alter

After he dies, he will finally
Have time to spend with his family.
He vows presence and patience
As he listens and delves,
And grows closer than
Their own thoughts to themselves.
No more flights abroad,
No separate memories stored,
No more windowed wonders
While adrift aboard.
He will get to the heart of things.
Study how each behaves,
Exploring even their darkest caves.
He will seep through their soil,
Embed in their clay,
Live in the liquid dream
Shaping their glass of day.
Yes, he will use his time well,
Unseen, but committed to stay,
Becoming the chemistry
Their clouds employ to play.

Stewart Alter, who joined LP2 in the Fall of 2020, has been writing poetry and painting intermittently before, during and now after a long career in business journalism and corporate communications.

Misplaced

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by Stewart Alter

We were no longer talking
About the field across the river,
The one with the giant rock emerging
Out of the ground at a funny angle.
We agreed it would be tempting
To slide down that slope together
When the snow covered its jagged edges.
And we agreed also that the rock
Was exposed for one of two reasons–
Either the grass’s frantic fingers had
Lost their grip on this prow, upside down
To us, as it steered the earth around
On its axis–or else it was
A monumental sculpture from ancient times
Which, like the glass shard in the garden
Near the house, would keep rising,
Revealing the bridge of the nose
Of a huge broken bust
Whose forehead is now the sky.

Suddenly we were talking instead
About my misplaced tie, the one
That you picked out for me. I have searched
Everywhere, retraced my steps three or four
Times, rummaged through every drawer
And closet, and looked into the shadow
Beneath the bed, but have come up with nothing.
Except that I do remember
The last time I saw it,
Resting there on a chair.
I studied it, asking, “Is that really me?”
Just as one casual random doubt among many,
Like one arthritic brown leaf
Swirled among many, and it seems
This really is how things get lost.

Stewart Alter, who joined LP2 in the Fall of 2020, has been writing poetry and painting intermittently before, during and now after a long career in business journalism and corporate communications.

The Worst Seat in the House

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by Stewart Alter

Fidgeting and uncomposed,
His coat in the way,
He wanted to leave his seat
When the performance began
To join the actors onstage.
He was drawn to the radiance
Of sequenced moments
And exposed intentions
Through lines ripened in memory.
He wanted to be a presence
Close enough to hear their breaths
Rounded into words—
Not, as he now heard,
Coughs in the assembly
Of shadows, in the role
Of the distracted, eavesdropping
On half-completed scenes.
His thoughts mingled and astray,
He turned them toward the vague
And disturbing muttering,
So bitter and blistering
And untransformed by artifice
That he was unsure what to say.
He wanted to leave
The darkness,
But someone had to stay
In the audience, to watch
And to listen,
With no role to play. 

Stewart Alter, who joined LP2 in the Fall of 2020, has been writing poetry and painting intermittently before, during and now after a long career in business journalism and corporate communications.

 

 

 

 

Sleeping

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by Stewart Alter

I know nothing about my snoring self,
The loud beast whose breathing chills the village.
I have never heard myself, but have been told
My snoring is the terror of the night.
I know myself only as the dreamer,
Master of the quiet and private signs
Who slips nimbly through night’s animation.
But I have become the cave of the dragon
In which each day ends, the legions of Rome
Milling restlessly in the colonies, threatening
To stir up all laws and languages.
I know myself only as the dreamer
Who was prepared to face the senselessness
Of my own discomforts, not those I imposed.

I wish now that I had known success
Was the blessing of sleeping silently—
The foxhole fellowship of hiding unheard
Together for weeks to surprise the enemy,
The lovers’ afterlude when satellite minds
Regain their orbits in expanding space.

For I had envisioned a different end for myself:
Old man beneath a broad suburban tree,
Lying on my back, and pedaling from leaf to leaf
Until I reached the sky,
I would return outside one evening
To climb and doze off, undiscovered
Until a few mornings later,
Casually I would be spotted,
Huddled in the branches,
Dear old eccentric. 

Stewart Alter, who joined LP2 in the Fall of 2020, has been writing poetry and painting intermittently before, during and now after a long career in business journalism and corporate communications.