BOOT POEMS

by Richard Smyth

I will go with the boot
into distances
the long haul through life

The boot will be with me
in summer mud,
on mountain trail,
through winter mist.

It will hold me
like a mother holds her child
and I will be warm and safe.

The boot will never wonder
of arrival,
for it knows the worth of journeys.

There is never a need to ask
what the boot knows.
It speaks in footprints,
summits, departures:

the rapture of passage,
the humility of mission.

NEW BOOT (listen to mp3)

Shining soldier,
bright with polish
and tight as forced smiles

you come to me
the way newborns come,
screaming for love.

I will offer myself
humbly
as any sacrificial flesh.

Over time,
we will begin to see
the meaning of horizons.

BOOT: ANTHROPOMORPHIZED (listen to mp3)

There are some simple decisions to make:
are the eyes on the outside
or on the inside?
How thick is the skin?
What kind of strings are attached?
How tight are the stitches,
how sturdy the soul?

Such accidents will determine
the way it walks through the world,
the way it holds the memory of mud.

BOOT: BROKEN (listen to mp3)

You will be broken
like a horse,
bent to my will,
you will wrap yourself around me
the way space parts at my passage,
washes over me like water,
you will become a means of leaving,
a kind of striding off into the sunset.

You will be giving like a mother
or a loving wife.

You will lift me over mountains
and, no doubt, when the time comes,
we will walk right into heaven
as if no great distance
were traversed.

BOOT: TRIUMPHANT (listen to mp3)

The boot will bear the weight
of many sorrows.
It is strong, it is
made for this,
this living on,
this pulling through the mud:
ox in its yoke,
kite on a string
wing in the sky

The boot knows the mud
for what it is:
something that holds one back,
something that swallows the weak.

There is always mud
on the way up the mountain.

But the boot holds me tight,
carries me like a child
toward the summit
where the view will be
breath-taking
breath-giving.

BOOT: THEOMORPHIC (listen to mp3)

The boot will bear me
towards heaven
through the gates of hell
and all its psychic fury
up the rungs of the body
through the spaces of the brain,
synaptic distances.

I let it take me
where it will:
I had no idea
the road to heaven
led through the body.

BOOT: METAPHYSICAL (listen to mp3)

Not the boot
but the idea of Boot:
concept
essence
abstraction
extradimensional in the
Always Beyond
where All Things are capitalized
to signify their pre-existence,
their perfection:

It is here
in the mind of God
that the Boot began its journey
its long walk through time
to arrive in my life
right when I came to the foot
of the Mountain.

BOOT: MIRACULOUS (listen to mp3)

We speak of the miracles of modern science:
laser surgery,
quantum computing,
ten-dimensional superstrings,
but we sometimes forget
the simple miracles of the mundane.

Take the boot, for instance:
flesh of destinations,
host of horizons,
it sacrifices itself for us--
not for our sins
but for our ascent.

We must remember that,
in the time before wings,
the boot was our one tool
of transcendence, a technology
of vision.

So let us praise the boot
and all that it offers us:
the journey,
a way through the mud,
a virgin birth of becoming.

BOOT: DEIFIED (listen to mp3)

You can read of how natural
this process is
in the journals of neurotheology:
the deification of cognition,
the assumption of wonder:
miraculous
radical.

And so it is with the boot:
once we recognize its role
in our lives--
the way it separates us
from the animal earth,
the lizard instincts,
and lifts us towards the heavens--

we will build it a temple,
fall upon the altar,
spill ourselves in sacrifice,
sing hymns in praise
and give glory
to boot.

BOOT: PETITE (listen to mp3)

Petite boot
--not petite bourgeoisie:
as in booties,
small soft things
for small soft feet.

The petite boot is made
to prepare the young for the world:
for a lifetime of cover-up,
hiding, protection:

soon there will be alarm bells,
gated walls, barbed wire
around the perimeter of our homes--
to keep out the shoeless ones.

BOOT: INHABITED (listen to mp3)

Sometimes the boot is big enough
to house whole families

as in the Old Woman
who once lived in a shoe
and was evicted for failure
to pay rent
so she moves in to an abandoned boot.

This is fantasy after all:
people don't live in boots, shoes,
unless there be giants,
drunk, stumbling shoeless
through the moonless night.

BOOT: STRAP (listen to mp3)

It is thin leather
looping to the top of the boot:
something to hold onto
after you've fallen
and you're trying to get up.
The only thing to hold onto
according to those who know
human nature: cowboy philosophers
carrying guns and Gideon's.

So when you're down in the dust,
remember that the boot
is not just for the foot
but is a hand, immanent
like a prayer, thick
like skin.

BOOT: CAMP (listen to mp3)

This is no summer camp:
no fun here no tether-ball
no crafts or competitions
of the civilian sort,
but a place to learn
the arts of war.

This is where boys become men,
learn to tie their boots,
long tall black leather,
new soles thick for the long march
home from hell.

BOOT: SCULPTURE (listen to mp3)

The boot in this sculpture
is not large and soft
or cast in bronze
or on some overlarge hero
of a war memorial.

This work is conceptual in nature.
It is political in content.
It is a sign of those
who died in Iraq,
a war to secure our standard of living,
despite what the soundbites say.

There is a pair of boots
for each soldier killed to date.
They are lined up as if soldiers at roll call.
They stand at attention,
most drooping like dead flowers.

Just a regular boot.
One that you or I might wear.