POEMS WRITTEN FOR AND ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE

by Richard Smyth

for Walter Lewallen

In this poem a child psychologist tells my friend
he needs to remember the childhood hero that
fought evil and won, the strongest of the strong,
and he tells me of the Silver Surfer, straight
from the days of comic books and cotton candy,
the childhood we tried to have.

In this poem my friend becomes the child
he needs to be
to believe that stories are real
and can change the world. He imagines
three times a day his hero doing battle
with the cancer, for in this poem
the Silver Surfer becomes small--
perhaps by some science fictive device
that shrinks him for this purpose--
and he goes into my best friend's blood,
he rides the blood right to the bone,
slides inside, then on to the melon-sized
growths, all those confused cells, he is small
he penetrates membranes and calls upon
the Power Cosmic to heal what is broken.
Of course, there are setbacks, he barely makes it,
his struggle against this evil is the most challenging
and frightening thing he's ever faced, the universe
is at stake after all, his universe, the one poem
he is writing with his life, already long enough
and complete
but, please, God, please
let it be longer.

ELEGY FOR MARTY HORTON

who was 28 years old
when he died of AIDS in August, 1992

When Marty Horton laughed
one thousand butterflies burst from their cocoons
and painted the sky with their beauty.
When Marty Horton laughed
chains broke their links and prisoners went free
fences fell down
doors opened
their locks no longer functioning.
When Marty Horton laughed
something profound occurred in the universe:
I'm sure that every time he laughed
a star swirled furious into being
or a red giant exploded and swollen
or a white hole opens its portal of light.
I'm sure that a seed cracked somewhere
and a secret energy of growth pushed a flower through the dark and heavy earth.
When Marty laughed
he gave himself to that laugh
he gave himself completely to laughter
to joy
if only for a moment,
the past and future fused in the present
and there was the moment of being with Marty
and laughing together.
When Marty laughed
Joy became reified Joy became a person
who sat with us and told us that this is as it should be.
His laughter was a perfect music
a music of revelation.
With Marty a laugh became a psalm of liberation
a song of breadloaf rising
and his laugh was a magic yeast within me.
I will always remember Marty's laugh
and his quick smile and giving.
It always filled me with a sweet wine
it always made me want to be more.
His laughter was a gift from God
an orchard that still gives me fruit
whenever I remember.
When I think of Marty now
I think not of how he died
but of how he laughed,
of how angels were born from his mouth.
And I was lifted with him
who lifted all who were with him.

TOOL MAN

for Joe Moos

His hands are hammers, chisels,
pliers

With his ladder he becomes tall
like a giant

Watch him take the ladder from the truck
watch the ladder unfold
watch his legs stretch ten feet tall

He has a leather vest with seventeen pockets,
places he can put the tools
so they are part of his body
like his hands, fingers
his opposable thumb

And today is the coldest Halloween
in history
in the history of weather
so he has gloves, boots,
a thick winter coat
with a hood that hides his hair

He is strong
look at his eyes
hot like stars
he could have been burned ten centuries ago
he would not have cried out

All I can give him is good coffee
all I can give him are these weak words

When he comes in and we drink coffee
when we perform this intimate breakfast ritual
this unrecognized religious act
he asks me questions
and when he speaks
I am whole again
I am beautiful I remember
my secret divinity
he is always able to do this

This is no priest no
man of the cloth
no druid no shaman

only a man with tools
who comes to fix me
fix my house
close the windows to keep out the cold

ON RECEIVING A BOOK OF POETRY FROM MY LONG LOST FRIEND

for Richard Brobst

Sometimes I look up at the sky too long.
Later, I read a book about the stars
and learn that some stars are too far away,
their light has not yet reached me
they are part of a constellation
that will be named
for a myth yet to be written.
It is travelling as fast as it can.

There are so many sadnesses.
This one is the color of yellowing paper,
autumn leaves wet with winter.

This one is the sound of bells,
the bells in the blood,
the kind that indicate arrivals
or departures
but you can't tell unless you're looking.

This one is like a dark lightbulb,
dead battery, blown fuse.

I am convinced that poetry is not the answer.
It is only a question we ask,
never expecting a reply

***

Things are different here.
For instance, the boys
are walking and
learning the sounds of words,
the infant poetry of linguistics:
dental fricatives, dipthongs,
labial plosives, gutturals.
I eat fruit in the mornings
in a house that I "own."
And I want to believe in Jesus Christ.

Some things, of course, are still the same:
I don't believe in Jesus Christ.
I am still afraid of so many things,
despite daily prayers begging for relief.
I am still confused about my
purpose, as if there must be a purpose.
And I still have that longing
to make something lasting and beautiful,
to give to the future one piece of fruit,
one sweet teardrop enfleshed in skin,
a distillation of a lifetime,
a diamond nectar, a spoken seed.

So much depends upon our peace of mind.

***

We're old enough to know
the time passes and what to call it
and that talk of talk of time
is just that: talk.
The fact is our bodies are dissolving,
entropy is a cold fact of thermodynamics
and soon (five billion years) even the sun
will die.

I'm still trying to finish things--
books, years, manuscripts. There are always
too many beginnings. A life of the mind
is the last angel I know:
all the others have abandoned me.

I heard a song from the lost oaks
the other night. It's good to know
they're live and still beautiful.
It's good to know the roots are deep as dirt
and strong as hands.
It's good to know.

AFTER THE PHONE CONVERSATION WITH DUANE LOCKE

for Duane Locke

During the phone conversation with Duane Locke, this is what I needed:

a broken walnut
a bent crowbar full of rain
the nested sex of eyelids
the incompatible derangement of the lizard brain
silent birds breaking from white waves
a desire to find the frozen tulips yellow red in the animal noontime
the multisyllabic yet monotone voice of strangers
and a druid moon to open its cyclops eye within me.

During the phone conversation with Duane Locke, this is what I had:

one empty eggshell
two raindrops
three eyelashes
four evolutions of the neocortex
five styrofoam statues of an albatross
six constellations of mythic animals
seven stutters of a rhetorical argument
and eight epic quests to choose from.

After the phone conversation with Duane Locke
I roused the darker slumbers within me
put the amber daylight to bed
crawled into its dreams
and swung like the sun through the stars.

DEAF KIDS AT DUNN BROTHERS COFFEE SHOP, ST. PAUL**

I was sitting there drinking coffee
when two boys sat down
by themselves
like twins
and then they talked

and everyone looked
everyone watched them talk
their hands were grabbing the earth
and the sky
and holding them
like a tongue holds a first kiss
but they were more like water
than anything else

there was such life here
I thought of my boys
so far away
I think of all the times
I didn't hear them
and how my hands
when they touch them--
rub their heads or pat their backs--
can never say enough

then their mother was there
and the whole time she talked
with her hands
she looked at them smiling
and I thought how beautiful
to be able to do that

and what would it be like
to watch your mother
talking to you
and the whole time
she's beaming at you
brighter than a bulb
there he was staring at her
wondrous
and I saw
the force that
fifteen billion years ago
gave birth to a universe
it made me shudder

everyone looked
because the moment was crystal
the air around them was diamond
it was like seeing a waterfall
for the first time
the fibrous sunset over ocean
the April ice on Lake Superior
their hands were a wonder
of nature their smiles
sitting there sipping coke
the thick tongue of their fingers
gesturing their pleasure

what lovers they will be
unable to whisper but
how they will talk

how they will
talk

OLD WOMAN CROSSING THE STREET**

Today on my way home during
rush hour, when all who have
gone forth are returning from
their restless groping toward
the night,--and I, though among them,
slow the way a poet is slow and
watchful--an old woman spoke
with her cane, she stuck it out
in front of her like a saber, she
charged into the road with the
shuff-stumble of the aged, her
bright blue jacket with hood covering
her crooked neck, she was declaring
her right to the road, though no cross
walk was in sight, she struck out
and trusted us to stop--and we did,
we had no choice but even if we did
we would have chosen to stop and
watch. For here was a woman
declaring more than her pedestrian
standing: she was speaking of horses
and trolley cars, of bicycles and Sunday
drives, of long walks in the park. She said
no to speed and demons, no to fast and
faster, no to mass-produced food, drug
revelation and saturn sex, broken bones
wrapped in bandaids, light bulbs that burn
out in hours, the unraveling thread and
the hole in the shoe.

And you know, even though this is Boston,
no body honked, nobody. On some other day
I wouldn't have been listening, I would have
the noise in my mind, the voices and songs,
the snowy TV and the untuned radio. But today
I heard all of this, I heard her say
you who have seen me,
make this a poem, for
such moments are poems
and I waited for her to go all the way across,
I didn't inch around, I watched
and saw that poetry is everywhere,
I saw that there is dignity in dying,
that some star spoke fifteen billion
years ago and said this woman
is my daughter look at how she burns.

**Poems originally published in POEMS FROM THE HERON CLAN. Ed. Katherine James, 1999.