Trembling Poems Despite Illness Written by Richard Broderick
Bootlegged by Mike Finley
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© 2019 by Richard Broderick Kraken Press, St. Paul
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Trembling Poems Despite Illness Written by Richard Broderick
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Only Words..............................................................7 From "Dichos," December 8, 2013......................... 9 The Time Before....................................................11 From "Dichos," November 24, 2013.....................13 The Search.............................................................15 Mirror in the Mirror.............................................. 16 Does every moment of pain................................. 17 The Sting................................................................19 At Least Not Yet.....................................................21 Silk Blossoms......................................................... 23 Trembling.............................................................. 25 Impressions........................................................... 26 Seventh Day Sigh...................................................27 Rainy Day...............................................................29 Summer's End....................................................... 30 Yours or Mine........................................................ 31
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Itch Weed.............................................................. 32 Remain and Cloudy............................................... 33 Boom Time............................................................ 34 Sigh........................................................................ 36 Death by Delsarte................................................. 37 Reciprocity.............................................................39 In the End.............................................................. 40
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Only Words Take the word “die.” If it did would anyone notice? Would we hear its fearful cross between a sigh and a sigh in reverse? Perhaps. Perhaps not. The universe is filled with dead things. Dead books, dead words, dead children, etc. Every word you’ve spoken until now, for example, and all the words you’ll speak before you are truly gone. There’s nothing to fear, really. It’s just the going. Once that’s over you can, if there is an afterlife, look back and wonder what all of that was about.
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Couldn’t have been very important. You can’t remember a word of it.
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From "Dichos," December 8, 2013 You want to write something mysterious and from the heart, something that reflects the deep feelings you have, especially at this time of year. You want to say something about childhood, excavate some lifelong lessons you learned playing with friends, tell about the maw that opened up its black jaws underneath you the night she left, and what the moon said to you as loud and clear as you are speaking to us now, and how the sound the crickets made stopped you dead in your tracks. But let’s face it, it’s cold out now, really, really cold. 9
The days keep keeping shorter day by day, the Northern Lights are glimmering in your head like the shimmer of colored lights on black ice, and it all makes you just want to close your eyes and curl up in a ball and when the imaginary owl calls out “Who? Who” reply, “Where?” to which he’ll call back, “Where on earth do you think, dummy? In bed!”
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The Time Before Go ahead. Embrace your son. Tell your daughter you had no right to expect someone like her. Hug your dog, your cat, the potted fern in the window. There is still time. Taste every bite of the evening meal. Let it remind you of the time (the many times) you came home after a long time away. Go ahead. Love your house, your bed, the walls in the room, the pictures on the walls of your room. Go ahead. Embrace your son. There’s
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still time. There will always be time, always until that moment when there is no time left anymore, it’s too late, you should have done it again and again already before it was gone.
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From "Dichos," November 24, 2013 “Too beautiful to burn,” brags the old Delta town where the waitress couldn’t meet your eye and ducked her head like she expected maybe to get hit when she retrieved your tip from the counter. Due south, bare cotton fields stretch away like a shock wave chasing the trees that rim the horizon. The countryside around here is almost empty now,
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but you can glimpse crews of manacled ghosts out of the corner of your eye. The suffering of knowing what people suffered hangs heavy in the air, like the smoke of some still-smoldering cross.
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The Search It was while you were searching for that other writer’s book, a long gray scarf around your neck (Was it cold? Oh, yes. Did the writer generate any warmth your way?), the sleeves of your sweater pulled down, a pair of felt pants under your trousers. After half-an-hour you gave up. Was he even here? You couldn’t be sure. Some visitor might have picked him up, carried him off. Still, the state you were in — a little sweaty, deep long breaths — was perfect for giving somebody a read. Now, which one, you thought? Which one tonight? And how good that they all felt famous now!
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Mirror in the Mirror Rain, you remind me today of everyone I’ve lost, those who stayed late and regretted going, those who brushed past in their rush to reach the other side. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the gray light of that well-spring, the sky. I hear ghostly voices all around me in the breeze whispering, “Remember us, son, brother, uncle, friend. Remember us, please.”
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Does every moment of pain taste like this — dry, acidic, all but lifeless except for the faint bitterness of the earth from which it sprang? Love, I lift my overflowing empty glass to you. I drink your health. All Hallow’s Evening We are the dead. Why do you disturb us? Who cares what news is happening to others, still living, still struggling?
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Of this month’s blue moon and the sunrise that somehow spread from northeast to southwest? Of the old tree brought down by illness or the ropes holding the house together and of the new garden walls that carry more water to the soil and the abundance of grouse and beautiful young girls and boys? We are the dead. We know all this. We were there before you were born. Now we’re here. The dead. Lying with the dead. So comfortable to be here where we belong.
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The Sting You’ve really struggled today. Anger wears you down, especially when its anger directed at being angry. The bare wooden floor calls to you, looks cozy: Come rest your weary soulless self down here. At least it will make the pain in your head make sense, a real start to unraveling all the things you have no energy to unravel. Do that, yes. And practice this. Compose cordial greetings with which to address anyone
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who approaches your door. When no one comes you have a whole — oh, what’s the word! — a whole sling of phrases that started out with seasoned charm, and if someone does, for whatever reason (postal employee, people from Jehovah’s Witness) show up just tell them to go away — Can’t they see you’re busy! Come back later. maybe then you’ll have something nice to say!
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At Least Not Yet Go ahead. Write a poem. The wind rushes past the trees. Girls are lost somewhere beyond anyone’s reach. Loss and more loss. Go ahead. Write it. No one’s going to notice. But what if the message were not, “I suffer.” What if you offered succor earned from so much failure, so much failing heat? Would they matter much then? Don’t know, but you could give it a try.
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Go ahead. Write a poem. No one’s listening. At least not yet.
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Silk Blossoms Is “renewable” your favorite word? Or “irreversible?” Does it really matter? Tonight the rain generated by a hurricane hundreds of miles away spatters on the streets of the imperial city. Power to enslave. Power to crucify and sell into a lifetime of servitude. But right now, nothing but these flimsy umbrellas fashioned to project a sense of power so entrenched it can be — delicate?
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Tomorrow? It will be drenched by cherry blossom silk choking the gutters.
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Trembling Every note is a sign of how much simpler things were. How a cloud was a cloud, not a sign of what was to come. How a rain drop was just that, not a tear, not a small rip in the fabric that held you here, close to me. What has changed that love? Fear? Come to me. I will put down whatever doubt, whatever fear, whatever holds us apart even for a second. It doesn’t matter what might happen. For now I am yours. You are mine. Put your head down. Sleep soundly on my trembling arm.
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Impressions I wish I were a painter, like one of those aging impressionists, Monet perhaps, getting older, his images ever more striking even as his vision fades. But I’m not. I’m just a writer, trying to focus as hard as I can and picking up only fragments, a scattering of declensions. I put them on the page, hoping they stand in for the whole, hoping that uncertainty makes them shift and tremble, reaching toward each other, still alive if only for a little while.
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Seventh Day Sigh Today, I was almost able to get nothing done. And tomorrow, if forecasts of heat and paralyzing humidity are correct, I shall get even less accomplished. This sounds boastful, I know, but if you thought about how the pollen is feeding the blossoms, I think you’d agree this is best. So, if you are in the neighborhood and in the mood to remark upon the hard works of stamens and root, honey bees and blossoms, not to mention dogs and cats and their tireless watering of the rest. I feel sure that the idea of
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of lying low, drinking a little gin & tonic and doing nothing more but comment on the beauty of the day is more than enough; is, in fact, engaging in the hard work of contemplation, God’s work from the 7th day forward.
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Rainy Day Early on a rainy morning — a Tuesday to be exact — a gray light filters into the bedroom and presents you with a list of today’s obligations. No! you moan. No! There must be another way! Why can’t I just roll over on the pillow and slide back down the dreamland chute to silken hats and friendly voices and drinks all day on the house? You can, old fellow, you can. But think how much worse it’ll be when you finally slide on out again.
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Summer's End Did this summer bring everything you’d hoped for? Everything you’d hoped it wouldn’t? A pool of rainwater rusts the bottom of the wheelbarrow you left last June behind the shed. Have you been too busy to get to the gardening you’d planned last spring? Or just not busy enough?
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Yours or Mine A bend in the stream. The crossroads. A few clouds with wispy smiles. Hello there, all of you. The breeze blows this way. Which direction are you going, yours or mine? Mine I hope, sincerely. Then it will be ours until the end of time. And all the way back again.
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Itch Weed The itch weed leans across the muddy path, entangling your feet, wrapping its pain around your legs, but only if you pause, only if you look down, concentrating on how to break free. Up ahead, afternoon light pours down a funneled hillside. Walk along, eyes fixed on this heavenly spectacle, your heart enflamed with longing.
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Remain and Cloudy The flowers could use some rain, yes. The grass, too, the trees, the birds, the shrubs. But grief does none of them any good. Why did you leave? Just now when everything needed you? Cracked earth, tears leaking. Why did you leave. Why? Is there an answer? Surely there is an answer. The sky remains clear.
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Boom Time Mother never imagined she’d end up like this in her afterlife. A long boom, not the kind used for construction, but the other kind, laid in a channel of moving water to make sure everything flows in the right direction, nothing’s jumping the channel to create sinkholes downstream. How did she end up this way? After awhile she began to grow used to her assignment, taking comfort in the coolness in which she bathes even on hot days, proud of the way, without even
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a raised voice, she could keep the channels moving steadily along, flowing toward an unseen but certainly critical point somewhere down there, past the trees, out of sight, just as she had in life.
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Sigh A great weight hangs over him. He can barely keep his face upright. He’s lost everything — everything, even the eyeglasses perched atop his head beneath all the other things he’s lost. He stares emptily into space. He raises a small, weary sigh.
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Death by Delsarte It will all be the same only different. Gestures, facial expressions, tone of voice, movement conveying a range of feeling that cannot be discerned. Would you care to try it? It’s not hard. Nothing beneath, nothing above. Do not imagine a great longing tearing at your heart. Hands reaching out. Or one hand pushing away, the other resting on your forehead. This is it. The moment. And it is not. Fall on your side and sigh. You’re not really feeling anything. The audience reads all its torn
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fabric into your closed eyes, your frozen gestures. Curtain. Lights out. Lights come up again and they carry you away, sadly hands over mouths.
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Reciprocity Could anything make this evening even a bit more peaceful? Late June, the sky still holding some light. A star (or planet) shows just overhead. The full moon rising to the treetops. And out there, somewhere near the horizon, the thought of you thinking about me.
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In the End I need something sweet to lighten my heart, some idea or face or memory of a kiss or touch from before I grew too smart for childish ideas. Is that why I’m tired this evening? Why my feet, legs, lips, eyes, ankles arms, fingers, toes, shoulders ache to exit. I did so little today. I do so little everyday, less and less each day. The short nights reach toward a point on the horizon, merging into one long darkness that never ends.
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Richard Broderick and Mike Finley
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