| A sense of
place is important, even in this day and age of the Internet, subdivisions,
superhighways,and growing pessimism. I was born in the western Appalachians, and
live just east of them now. There is (I hope) a bit of that sense of place in all of
my poems that anchors me to my identity and my home. My place is where my literary
heroes hail from--Robert Penn Warren, Jesse Stuart, Wendall Berry--and is also home to
those nameless kin who share all these stray thoughts and experiences in common with me.
All poems � 1999-2001 Jack Trammell
Capuchin Creek
Where I am, and
Where I’m going.
Might as well be a path
Leading to a family field in Capuchin.
Along that trail,
Weaving between dark mountains and
Ancient white oaks,
I make camp with my memories.
What’s the difference?
I wonder…
Between an old family photograph
And my son sleeping beside me.
Shadows close-in, falling
Thoughts of places and rivers,
Homesteads on eroded hills,
Watchtowers of my eternity.
###
Homecoming
Feel the zephyr; smell the cedar wood burning;
Watch the golden rod waving in the constant breeze.
The sound of water echoes through a hackberry hollow,
While opossums, copperheads, and deer watch.
The grass really is blue, melding in a concave sky,
Soaking up March sunlight like a long-dry sponge.
I cut locust posts and drag them through dusty hills,
Building a strong fence around the things I love.
Cattle graze, ill-bred, unaware of the ground they trample,
So recently sanctified by pioneer and indian blood.
Red-tinged dirt, maybe crimson life stains it still,
Where grass grows strong, blooming at the merest hints of rain.
This land I was born into calls me with the hoot of an owl,
Caressing me from afar with soft river waters.
My roots stretch out, tickling fertile soil, reaching,
Seeking out nutrients, life, love, and home soul.
###
Reprise to the poem I wrote before
(or, the banlaws)
Banks... actually,
Banks AND Lawyers
Go together like
Warts and pimples.
Unimportant men at the treasury dept.
Must stare at the blight indefinitely;
Piles and piles of green stuck,
Shaped so it's hard to grip.
Banlaws should wear their money to work
Stitch it all together, into finery;
Use it as stationary
Announcing final legal/monetary merger.
Politicians...
Hell, you can smell them
Without it really ruining
Your appetite.
But bankers and lawyers
Don't come to dinner;
They arrive early in the morning
With a single knock on the door.
Mint handles on your coins;
stitch Velcro on your dollar bills.
The Banlaws produce no fruit
They are fig-less trees;
In some millennium they'll wither
Or lower interest rates.
The skies will darken
Clouds will swirl; and still
The banlaws will offer loans
Or representation at final judgment.
Who will represent them?
Who will cloth them?
When the money is gone, and
Currency is God's fiat.
###
sECURITY
what we really have to thank the romans for:
litigation
199? what?
counting single raindrops as they fall down
over 100,ooo new books enter the world
marching like spartan soldiers
trained to fight
illiterate goose-stepping fire ants
AND the medium may be the message
internet trash
10,ooo new web sites a day
new ideas like the dodo bird
truth sweet god's breath
lost, now that "violence is fine"
if arthur is taken out of context
murder is a vote
AND the greeks gave us philosophy
but forgot to include instructions
we supply the batteries
and create the WWW sites
security is a rocket about to be launched
out of inner space
into a second middle age
while the pope wonders where exactly he lost control
199? the age of unreason
great literature = great television
ezra pound + charles dickens = cnn
"at behest of usura"
crying babies scream for their mothers
or warmth
or milk
or a good dime-store novel you can read in an afternoon
security is a blanket
run through the laundry once too many
times, spare change in the
age of the timid
AND a child comes with questions
browned Torah, Koran, Bible, Tripitaka, Veda,
SEND EM' TO THE WEB SITE
page 652 world almanac
a thief comes prowling in the night
security is electronic impulses
"the desire for safety"
tacitus wrote about history, not burglars
shame on us
199? looking at single raindrops
through electron microscopes while
THE THIEF IS AT THE DOOR
will cnn cover the next world war?
if anyone will volunteer to organize it
perhaps no one will show up
but the button pushers and politicians
AND security is not a company
or a state of mind
or a foreign policy
OR A **&%$# WWW (site)
security is a lock on your door
a hasp on your intellect
a single raindrop
somewhere off the phone lines
an idea that is still original
a book that hasn't been written yet
a child not born yet
a monkey sitting at his typewriter, still
creating plots diluted
watered down to flaccid gutter rinse
only people are cheap
words are just affordable
AND what does it mean
but 199? will pass into papyrus
and security will change
SPELL IT WITH A CAPITAL LETTER.
###
|
Fall (an alternate view)
Fall is the evening,
The quiet respite after the journey.
Far, yet, is the sleep of winter,
And the joy is still a fresh flavor.
Mothers gather their children in
Early, the better to watch them.
Moody whirlwinds swirl, looking
Out for the gay laughter.
There is no gaiety,
Only a calm resonance.
The clocks move more slowly,
Winding down to midnight.
Stories are told, while outside
Wolves howl at the moon.
Stars shimmer, and the tree
Locklets whisper back in reply.
###
The Night of the Kleenex War
The night of the Kleenex War
Started out innocently enough.
It began with a trip to Wal-Mart, and
Ended with Saddam’s revenge.
The issues at stake were large
The emotions ran quite deep.
Because the box was a little too small
Guns opened fire; men began to die.
Or more properly, a man began
to die
Oblivious to certain feelings anymore
Like concern, or optimism.
Salvos continued to fly
Filling the air with a verbal hiss,
While innocent children slept
Stirring whenever a bomb went off.
It finally ended when technology
hummed to the rescue.
When the combatants read what they spoke,
The war began to die away.
Once again, the tick of a clock
Audible above silent breathing.
Peace, like a blanket,
Pulled over the shivering derelict.
But the Kleenex,
Damn the little box of them;
It was such a tiny little box of Kleenex,
That war was certain as dawn.
One of them, for sure
Was bound to notice it.
Yes, war was a certainty,
Over a box of Kleenex.
###
Sandy Creek
(A Three Part Journey)
Part 1
The unknowing call it a swamp
Environmentalists,
haughtysyncophants
Call it a wetland.
A place can be a haven for
Things,
humansensabilities
assume snakes, irises, oaks.
Sanctuary in a shrinking habitat
Places,
quietescapisms
To hear the buzz of a deer fly.
People lam out from city places
Folks,
misunderstandophants
Smiling stupid at blooms.
I hear and feel the swamp
Living,
ignoringme
I breath it in like perfume.
Part 2
The river runs through the swamp,
Right where the water lilies smile at sunshine
Beavers timber trees they can't possibly
Understand why.
Fish run cool, dark and silver in lazy rapids,
Emotionless until a frightened moment
Black reel buzzes and bends and bears
Heavy weight of struggle.
A pickerel, rows of shark teeth,
Freshwater alligator of shallow cools
Helpless in a fiberglass canoe
While two students of nature learn afresh.
We smile and the river smiles back,
Pointing those who question to secrets
Within old stones, the ruins of a mill
Clothed in vines before naked water.
Then a curve, around the edge of one universe,
Into another dimension
Where time is a watch that keeps hesitating
Each second a little longer/shorter than next.
Part 3
Night beside the lakes is a stranger shade of green:
A place where weary navigators and owls quietly preen.
A place where sleeping rocks and dozing hemlock dream:
A place that traps the moonlight and crowns it virgin queen.
Words become like silence,
Of which you never drink your fill
To quench the evil human violence,
That pollutes our purest thrill
The silence bliss.
It tucks you in.
God's kiss.
Washes sin.
Reprise
When the morning returns, we trek back to the city.
###I Sing for America
Walt Whitman
Knew
The Stars and Stripes,
He knew the swing of the axe,
The way the blade cuts down to create
A startling new shape and form.
Like a thunder
Storm
Brewing, he knew the storm's hiss,
The trill of the foreman's horn,
Signaling the end of a shift
In human thought and progress.
My America was his
America
Growing, living, thriving, hurting,
With wicked men and hearty women,
Wanting so badly to succeed that
Success has become part of the very dirt.
Walt Whitman
Knew
His America is my America,
The worst of his troubled generation,
Like doves in an age of poetless workers
Still ring the bells loud and clear--America!
### |