Month: August 2012

To Like or Not to Like That is the Question

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To like or not to like
that is the question.

I used to like things
better
before there was a button
and an unlike button
but no
button for
I’m sorry I pressed the
like button
or I’m sorry I didn’t
so
I became confused about
what I like
and what others saw
that I like
so that I was
careful to like
or not to like
Ike
or my bike,
Mike

Oh but wasn’t it pages like this that hurt the book? Yes so progress marches on. Websites like this are now dinosaurs in the Facebook and Twitter a paragraph is all we have time for world. Maybe we can get ourselves down to a single word on a page, a single stroke of the brush, and a single note. There are too many words on this page. No one will ever like it but me. Oh sarcasm thou art no angel!

david michael jackson

Chlorine poem by Janet Kuypers

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Chlorine

Janet Kuypers

from the “ Periodic Table of Poetry” series

My dad ran a construction company,
and after he built our house, he used concrete
from an extra job to build a swimming pool
in our back yard. My brother even got a diving
college scholarship, so I guess the pool
came in handy.

Every summer, after cleaning the pool,
filling it with water and adding the right amount
of Chlorine, my neighbor and best friend
would come ove and pay in the chemically clean
pool with me daily. We’d even play
“Bottom Bump”, where we’d hold our breaths
to save us from the Chlorine, and we’d hold hands
and start doing flips underwater together
until we’d end up injuring ourselves
and have to come up for air. Even as a toddler,
because I was just a child and I had this mortal fear
of falling backwards into the deep end,
my sister would have to re-teach me every year
how to back dive into the Chlorine pool.

But now that my dad lives in the retirement
community he started in Florida years ago,
I visit him when I have the time during
the cold Chicago winters, and sit by the pool
they built right across the street from his house.
The Chlorine in that pool actually smells good
when you want relief from the hundred degree heat,
even if the pool is almost eighty degrees itself.

But of course the Chlorine would smell good,
when Chlorine is even used in drinking water.

And it’s funny that we use Chlorine in pools
while Chlorine is mostly found a a Chloride ion
in salt, that it’s found in the earth as well as
in oceans, like the Dead Sea.

Chlorine ions are in the Dead Sea,
and Chlorinated pools can save us from the heat.

But too much Chlorine in the water
is a bad thing, and if you don’t know that
from sniffing the bottle of Chlorine
before it’s poured into a swimming pool,
then know that as a gas, this element
was even used as a weapon in World War Two.
The Germans even used these “Bertholite” bombs
(which smelled like pepper and pineapple, actually),
and Chlorine bombs were even used in the Iraq War
(though the physical force of the bomb
may have been more devastating than the gas).

Because yeah, Chlorine is bad for the
respiratory system, but that’s how we learned
that in the right amounts, Chlorine can kill
the bad-for-you bacteria and gross germs
living in your drinking water, and Chlorine can kill
what can grow into something much worse for you
while stewing in a stagnant swimming pool.

Draw Something Art by Jim Williams

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This is our first installment of Draw Something Art by Jim Williams. Draw Something is an Iphone App. Jim and Kathie Williams use it when they are apart to have fun and draw. Jim is quite good at it. The app is simple. It’s a very limited workspace and the art tools are crude. That’s why I like it in this day of minimalist art. Certainly if a painted rectangle or blank canvas is art then this cannot be denied. Moreover it’s fun.
The app asks Jim to draw something on his Iphone and Kathie has to guess what it is. These are fun and will continue.

Geraniums Poem by Arthur L Heifetz

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Geraniums

You’re 65 and tired beyond all measure.
In the desert of your lassitude
Your last drop of vitality
Has drained away,
Your vibrant years all stacked behind you,
The dull ones stretching out ahead
In a tedious dead-end road.

Then you notice the geranium
Sitting on the bedroom sill.
Taken in too late,
Its stems mostly pulp now,
Its clay pot covered with mold,
It has unexpectedly
Produced a leaf.
You examine its network of
Intricate, dark veins
Branching out like tiny trees,
The faint ring around its center
Like the one the children used to leave
After their nightly bath,
And at the end of a corkscrew vine,
Two pregnant buds,
Drooping with the weight of the flower
Tucked inside like a secret
Concealed all winter long
And now ready to burst forth,
Five petals unfolding rapidly
In staccato bursts of crimson red
Shocking against the cold-steel sky.

Cautiously, you cut the stem
And place it in a jar of water.
Left in the hazy April sun,
By the kitchen window,
It generates as if by conjury
A tangled ball of silky roots.
When finally you plant it in the loamy soil
You can feel the stirring in your heart
Of fresh, new life
As if an old, discarded dream
Had suddenly come to fruition.

Retired State Farm insurance agent returning to his first love poetry.
Beginning to submit work at friends’ urging. 11 poems published since
June.

Here is another poem:

Our Room In Hvar

From our bed in Hvar,
Scented with silk bags
Of crushed lavender,
You can discern
A pot of red geraniums
Balanced on a white marble slab
Below a thin blue band
Of Adriatic Sea
A composition
Worthy of Matisse
Your portrait is more Byzantine:
Black hair splayed against the pillow,
Flecked with gold Venetian light,
You are a venerated icon
Cloistered in memory
And I a faithful pilgrim,
Lips pressed against your cheek
Praying that this morning
Lasts forever.