BIG WAVING FLAG FELLOW

FLYING FLAGS ON EVERY LAWN

There you are big fellow, waving
There you are on the eye of everywhere
You are, in-deed, the seventh son of the seventh son
crashing on the sands of freedom’s laughter,
big wave of big wave,
wave for me, in-difference,
on this day of day
from the trunks of rusting cars,
a yellow ribbon of de-nial
rusting before me at the stop light,
stopping light in lust-light,
you have done your thing, no-thing,
your driver cannot see where he has placed you,
thanking you for your frozen ripple,
your crossed silk-painted
thank you for your service
buying him time for non-reflection,
thank you again,
you are the acidification of the oceans,
thanking you like that over and frozen over,
thanking you for your service.

Jim Bodeen
25 May 2014
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No Blueberries For My Morning Grape Nuts!

READING THOMAS KEATING THINKING
OF MY WIFE, DURING THE LATE ANTHROPOCENE AGE
IN WHICH WE LIVE
EVEN BEFORE IT IS NAMED

“…one should give the situation a quiet welcome.”
            —The History of Contemplative Prayer, Thomas Keating

Waking early, my practice,
I brew two cups of Arabica beans,
grinding them myself, filling the kitchen
with smells of rich volcanic soil from El Salvador.
I pour myself a bowl of Grape Nuts,
fresh and crunchy enough between the teeth,
even my grandson favors them.
My friends have heard. They know me
by the way I praise American cereal.

Blueberries, a big fistful each morning
over the top of Grape Nuts. Blueberries,
cousin of the North Dakota Juneberry,
ridding my body of toxins, daily.
But this morning I remember
the last of them
mixed with yogurt for last night’s dessert.
My wife doesn’t need blueberries.
I need them. I always eat blueberries.
My wife doesn’t need interior prayer,
she is one. Frozen blueberries
over Grape Nuts. Early. That simple.
A big handful. Fat-free milk
turned pastel blue during their consumption.
How could I have been so careless?
No stains on my unstained hands.
No blues to lick from my fingers.
Sweet milk shared with my old retriever gone sour.
Quiet time itself gone surly.
No sacred word this morning.
Poetry in free fall.
Deep silence fills with noise.
Empty bowl self-served.

Jim Bodeen
24 May 2014


TWICE TODAY

God has left me.
Twice.
Desolate, I picked weeds
from rocks
by the side of the road.

No dummy, me.

I said to myself,
Leave some of these
for later.
He’ll leave me again.
He will.

Jim Bodeen
23 May 2014
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Kate's Worm Studies with credits (+playlist)




Kate, the grandaughter's in second grade. She comes to Grandpa's with her project on worms finished and illustrated. Looks just like Grandpa's worms. "Want to make a movie?" Her sister Dheezus is here. "Red wigglers," Suzanne Tarr says, "little miracle workers."
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ABSOLUTELY



FOUND POEM
COMING UP FROM WITHIN
WHILE READING
DAVID FINKEL’S THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE

Ya know?
she says,
Ya know?

Jim Bodeen
16 May 2014


















ABSOLUTELY

America’s new word.
Everybody saying it.
Over and over.
Even my sister saying it.

Jim Bodeen
16 May 2014





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Watdyacall a nose with


MARTY LOVINS, AT 75, TIPS INTO THE ANTHROPOCENE EPOCH
AT THE END OF THE CENOZOIC ERA

It turns out we’ve been living in the now
for the past 10,000 years, give or take.
But we’ve made our mark as a species.
Our libraries and all will leave prints
in a layer of the earth’s surface
about as thick as the tissue paper
stretched over balsa wood
in one of your shields protecting us
each morning
from massive amounts
of carefully laid down bullshit.

Jim Bodeen
15 May 2014 


A SOLDIER’S COMPLIMENT

He would embrace the contrary impulse…

…repeatedly sabotaging expectations.
      —C.D. Wright, Introduction to Spring and All

Following the poem
danger de-fused
at cost
friends experience

AS

the local sidewalk
cracked cement

mother’s broken back

The poet and the radioactive price

Any given subway

Jim Bodeen
14 May 2014


SPRING AND ALL

This conversation
with neighbor
about fence and trees
separating us

Going to talk to him soon

Jim Bodeen
13 May 2014


THE SCIENCE OF THE IMAGINATION

Imagination is not to avoid reality, nor is it description nor an evocation of objects or situations, it is to say that poetry does not tamper with the world but moves it…It affirms reality…since reality needs no personal support but exists free from human action…
—William Carlos Williams, Spring and All

I have been having this conversation with my neighbor about the fence and trees that separate us.

·                         

The little book
with the blue cover
by the doctor
from New Jersey.

It’s spring now.

All here in storied
fragments
Barry orders  a copy

The original

and sets out to organize
the doctor-poet’s
first-thought-best-thought word

Patterson everywhere
Even Yakima
Beautiful thing!

And the early life.
The apprenticeship
with the poem
step by step
out of Churchill’s Book Store.
New Directions.

New directions
lifting me every time
I say it
a kind of levitation

A full gospel

Crossing the street,
just crossing the street!

The jewelry store’s
a school full of street kids
Beautiful thing!
M. stealing my camera
young heart buying it back
on the black market
She denying it all
beginning to end

Taking pictures of each other
Does she laugh about it today
Is she alive

Raising heart and mind to God
adding, in the poem,
not part of the Baltimore Catechism
Joseph of Cupertino levitating
every time he says God’s name
Franciscan friar and New Jersey doc

the doctor scrambling
his composition
crossing oceans

Two mothers
dead and dying
reborn in mutual devotion
Reborn in the poem

Daily practice over time

Jim Bodeen
12 May 2014
THE LANGUAGE OF SCIENCE

…words freed by the imagination affirm reality by their flight.
            —William Carlos Williams, Spring and All

He turns to the trees.
Watching them breathing, in and out.
Poison on the inhale.
Oxygen on the exhale.
Watching them,
he asks himself,
How do they do it?

Jim Bodeen
11 May 2014


A WORD FOR MY SISTER ON HER BIRTHDAY

Populacho.
Word I bring home,
wrap up, a present.

Drinking coffee,
the Mexican and I.
Traffic? No, we walk.
                  
More talk,
then the word.
Populacho

From the pueblo.
Workers.
Populachero.

Despectivo. Scornful. 
Anything vulgar.
Too common for dictionary.

My sister at 60.
For the pueblo, from the pueblo.
Opposing word we belong to.

Word for my sister’s birthday.
Mil gracias.
From the bottom of my heart.

A word you can’t buy.
What I say, hard-earned.
Legacy-crossing grace word .

Love,

Jim
9 May 2014


 IX.

     But you
     are rich
     in savagery
     —William Carlos Williams

 Black-eyed Susan in a poem
Poetry describing
Exchange of water and air

 Jim Bodeen
9 May 2014
NO.

After three years
in the suburbs of West Valley
I don’t pretend to be a coyote.

No. I’m not coyote.
I am, in fact, Neanderthal.
Coyote is what comes up in dream.

Jim Bodeen
8 May 2014


ON A BENCH AT THE ATHLETIC CLUB, READING THE 1922 POEM

…in recording the force moving…in the largeness of its proportions…

…is the presence of a…

…is not a plaything but a power…

This separates

…is not a…about…I have experienced that to my sorrow
          —William Carlos Williams, Spring and All

The discipline involved
                           in order to get to the new improv
    the one left
                         (If I'm ready)
duende on the move, has moved, moved again

Waiting…
                           nothing more

Jim Bodeen
7 May 2014


EGGSHELL BLESSINGS

Good inning from the home team
Hot spots sprayed cool on old dog
Worms mating under cover

Jim Bodeen
5 May 2014


 SATURDAY

Some of them were dreamers. 
Some of them were fools. 
And for some of them
it was only
the moment that mattered.
—Jackson Browne

…that in addition to the five major mass extinctions, there had been many lesser extinction events…a pattern emerged…mass extinctions seemed to take place at regular intervals of roughly 26 million years…extinction, in other words, occurred in periodic bursts, like cicadas crawling out of the earth.
—Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction

No special effort was necessary to cleave where the cleavage already existed.
—William Carlos Williams, Spring and All

He built himself a garden of trees.
It took him 1000 days.
He watched his grandchildren play soccer on Saturday.

Jim Bodeen
4 May 2014


Q&A DURING BONSAI REPOTTING DEMONSTRATION

No, I didn’t go to Japan to learn this.
GIs brought these skills home from WWII.

This tool?

Hoof pick for a horse hoof.

Jim Bodeen
2 May 2014


RESTAURANT AT THE END OF THE STREET

A Spanish word for ropes.

HEY JIMBO

Watdayacall
a nose with no body?

Dunno

Nobody knows!

Nobodaddy! No!

To escape the dullness,
Beautiful thing!
All that dulls
in order to greet you,

the great separation necessary

On the way to the city
No free way the interstate

clumped restaurants
Mexican, Los Cabos

But what does it mean?

A vacation place, a peninsula

No, no, no, that’s like calling it
a Mexican Restaurant!
                                   The capes,
Ah,...su gran satisfacción era oir los aplausos
al fin del día

Everyone looking inside telephones
at dictionaries now translating
All inclusive, 50% off honeymoons
No, no, Not two seas, one paradise

Aha! A cabó

All this naysaying
to find the verb, acabar,
to end it all, to find the end,
last restaurant off the highway

rope it up

last words of Christ.

Jim Bodeen
1 May 2014





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