THE CRISIS SONNETS

NOTE BETWEEN STOPS

Now that I have gone back to writing lists,

questions for you--How's that puppy?

Has the flu bug been chased from the neighborhood?

Isn't the between place

the space where we find the poem,

cancel ourselves before the one John Keats?

If we do love, isn't it far off

to which we commit? Awake

for ever in a sweet unrest!

Memory of one young line

manhandles us. From here

we took our vows.

Fierce empathy of  love unsettled

asks for anger again. Forlorn bright star--No!

Jim Bodeen

27 January 2017

THE POEM BEING THE ONLY HIGH ROAD I KNOW

Me trying to listen from the fallen place.

Surrounded by music and stones.

Bird post cards sent by my friend

so like him, Audubon image from earlier times,

bordered in almost washed out blue and green,

adult female, adult male illustrations.

Almost tinted in their innocence.

Photographed or drawn. Charm of purity--

dynamic giving results in unknown flight.

They make a wall in a room where shields hang

constructed from balsa wood, tissue paper.

A child sits on his knees on the summer lawn.

I, too can fly. Starlings are on their way,

they'll nest behind the kitchen microwave.

Jim Bodeen
28 January 2017

SATURDAY IN JANUARY

--for Cal Kinnear

It all depends on our seeds of consciousness,

the monk says. Opening my notebook

a poem falls out, "Come, nest in my beard

with the crows and raccoons," these words

falling on the floor. I have just come

from the dentist chair, mouth-numb

and silenced beyond epiphany.

Lifting the words one at a time,

repeating ones carefully placed

inside the poem like descending steps,

giving one a place to land and rest

before proceeding. Four times,

"Come," step and command, all the while

looking for the word for harvest-breath.

Jim
28 January 2017

THE UPSHOT OF ALL CONNECTIONS,

            FOR E.

            from the 1530s, the final shot in an archery match.

Don't have to know who I write to.

I get 14 lines each time out, but don't

have to use them. Love, terror, dreams.

God and the poem. Stretch the humor.

Mix the sacred with the obscene.

Commitment. Action and non-action.

Today: Goon, Dutch apple, frohr

and other winter words. Three sets.

Write to those I love. So many.

We are so God-damn many.

Erica and Jim, same side on the other side.

W.S. Merwin, Russian-American journalists.

Find a way to quilt with Karen.

Her quiet weave, sustaining threads.

Jim Bodeen
31 January 2017

STUCK ON A PHRASE FROM GOD

            --for Pastor J

If I could be your muse, returns

in the Beatitudes. Blessed are these,

arcing into song and word at 39:

Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr.

Bonhoeffer, Che, Flannery O'Connor,

Fats Waller, Dylan Thomas. Thank God

you're still here with me. That one beloved

friend with the collar, may he survive

this lonely time. Sunday he spoke on

Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.

Apathy or empathy in the pew. Which is it?

We cannot remain looking at each other as others.

Don't have a discussion, he says. Sit with them.

Jim Bodeen
31 January 2016

THE TRUMP SONNETS--for M

can say any fucking DADA

thing they want to say and find its truth.

The fact, as Robert Frost said,

is the sweetest dream that labor knows.

When we say, Trump may have run

for President as a payback for a comedy

routine, that may be fact. Emily Nussbaum,

television bless her, writes, Lying

about the truth is part of the joke.

Is that a hitch in my giddy-up?

David Brooks turns his column

towards collegians, the President

suffers from Anhedonia,

inability to experience happiness.

A poet I know wrote 791 sonnets

last week breathing in and out.

Jim Bodeen
28 January 2017

FINDING ONESELF ON POST CARDS AND LINEN

--for Terry, Jane, and Karen

creates epiphanies in mail boxes

and collaboration re-turns to nobility

as an ally in resistance. Toxins

we'd never invite to coffee

sit with us as family. Eyes

remain alert to change in discourse.

Welcome to the Temple of Holy Boldness

and secret anthems. Dangers,

toils and snares as visiting companions.

Elvis sings, Who could I turn to but the poem.

Karen feeds the birds

and they shit on the deck.

Jane turns birds into clay.

We do words into lines of music.

Jim Bodeen
28 January 2017

WHEN THE GOONS WERE AVAILABLE FOR STUDY,

where was I then? What the fuck was I doing?

According to the teaching, Thich Nhat Hanh says

everything has been nirvana since the nonbeginning.

Informally, a goon is only a thug, a hired hoodlum.

Thank God for slang, for deliberately foolish.

For origins, for gooney fool, after the character

Alice the Goon, created by E.C. Segar, American

cartoonist. Sailors, not thinking of Coleridge,

called the albatross, big, clumsy, goons. There was

The Goon Show, and in the 1940s, juvenile delinquents

were called goonlets. The monk might say I'm running

away from death, from the paid ruffian:

fondled, pinched, handled--a big red-haired goon

who was our jailer. Another winter word: frohr.

Jim Bodeen
31 January 2017

SONNETS FROM THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT

    --for Lee B.

Even though our brains may be hard-wired

to help others, these days I find myself

turning to YouTube for the word of God.

I know, I know, all those pastors for friends,

suffering too much for me to tune in.

Did Jesus, or his followers, for that matter,

have a term for resistance fatigue?

What does Full Orwell sound like in Aramaic?

When my truck was stuck in snow,

tires spinning, my Grandson asks,

Grandpa, what are you doing?

Practicing uncertainty, Son, that's all.

Songwriters on the missing years.

Poets trying their hand at objective correlative.

Jim Bodeen
31 January 2017