Mowing Cambodia

Sweat runs down my face like the blood of three million victims. I have been mowing Cambodia.

I trim close to the neglected flower beds that lie all around the house like mass graves and swerve to avoid stones for fear they might be covering landmines.

When I pick up

branches in my path they turn

to bones in my hand.

I turn off the mower and relish the silence

for a few seconds before I hear birds

fly over like bombers. -- Jeff Barnes

Penultimate

Two lonely graves

sit side by side a universe apart.

My grandparents are estranged in death

as they were in life.

My sister died piecemeal,

losing a little of herself

every day for twenty years,

her muscles knotting and her legs failing,

her vision blurring and her words slurring,

her brain regressing

until she drowned

in her own lungs.

My father is a box of cremains.

His exit was swifter if less lamented.

He rests on a shelf in the mortuary,

unclaimed after all these years.

My mother is fading to white.

Her hair is as white as her face,

her face as white as her pillow.

She shrinks a little more

each day and eventually

will dissolve into her sheets.

This cloistered road

is my favorite place in October.

Driving through this tunnel of trees

every day I savor

the fiery leaves contrasting

the gray sky.

I will savor them every day

before they fall,

leaving bare branches reaching up

like the hands of skeletons. -- Jeff Barnes

The Ballad of Woody and Rita

Woody Canoebubble always wore
a Hawaiian shirt, Bermuda shorts,
sandals, and a Peruvian hat.
One morning he spilled hot coffee
on his left knee because,
unbeknownst, to him he was using
a false cup and saucer
which couldn’t hold liquid at all.

Realizing that he was out of
band-aids and salve, 
he walked to the drugstore to get some,
accompanied by his pet,
a sparse dove named Dave,
who was never up to flying but always
rode on Woody’s Peruvian hat.

The cashier at the drugstore
was a redhead named Rita,
whose smile made her face
resemble an incised moon.

Woody told her he was fascinated
by her shuttlecock volva 
and her striped engina
and she almost slapped him until
she realized he was speaking of
the seashells she kept on 
the counter for luck.

He called her Strawberry Top
because of her red hair and
said he had fallen in love with her.
She said she had always
found love to be an unequal, bittersweet
thing, but he promised her it would not
be so this time.

He asked Rita to marry him
and she agreed to do so
at 4:00, when she got off work.
He came back for her at 4:00
and, because of her sensitive skin,
she put on a heavy bonnet
when they left the store.

After walking around the city a while
they happened upon a cathedral
where they met a bishop wearing
a ghastly mitre but, despite that,
he seemed a nice enough fellow
and agreed to marry them on the spot.

After the ceremony, the three of them
(Woody, Rita, and Dave the sparse dove)
thanked the bishop, took a taxi
to the airport and, flying on a new
airline called Atlantic Turkey Wing,

embarked on their honeymoon. — Jeff Barnes

Post-Mother Mother's Day Haiku

Rainy Mother's Day.
we have no plans anyway.
Just another day. - Jeff Barnes

Walpurgis Night

The wind blows cold tonight,
yet there is a festive mood.
Witches on their broomsticks
are flying in the nude.

Bonfires light the night,

The sky is gray and sober.

We celebrate the Eve of May,

though it feels more like October.

Tomorrow may be sunny.

The Earth may be warm and green.

But this night is darkly mirthful

and feels like Hallowe'en. - Jeff Barnes

Haiku

Morning? Afternoon?
Who can tell? This day will be
gray until nightfall. - Jeff Barnes

Hitting Ezra Pound with a Stick

The "golden shovel" is a fun poetic form to work with. Here are the rules for the Golden Shovel:

Take a line (or lines) from a poem you admire.

Use each word in the line (or lines) as an end word in your poem.

Keep the end words in order.

Give credit to the poet who originally wrote the line (or lines).

The new poem does not have to be about the same subject as the poem that offers the end words.

If you pull a line with six words, your poem would be six lines long. If you pull a stanza with 24 words, your poem would be 24 lines long. And so on.

Here is the original poem:

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough. - Ezra Pound

And here's the golden shovel poem I wrote, based on it:

Ezra, Waiting for a Train

When I saw Ezra Pound in the

subway station, I thought he was an apparition.

Was there something I'd had too much of?

Alcohol? Weed? No, I'd long ago given up these.

But of all the faces

I ever imagined I would see in

this station, his was the

last. He stood out in the crowd,

and I don't mean he was pretty, like flower petals.

He had the most godawful plaid jacket on

and his beard was all scraggly, like a

shaggy dog that has gotten wet.

I told him his poetry was like a black

hole. Then I hit him with a tree bough. - Jeff Barnes