Friday poetry: Broken Window by Jim Daniels October 5, 2007
Posted by Evil Bender in Poetry.trackback
The thoughtful points raised in this thread–ironically, given the stupidity to which my post responds–left me with lots to think about. The older I get, the more I think William Carlos Williams had it right: “It is difficult to get the news from poems/yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.”
With that in mind, today’s poem
by Jim Daniels
So you’re looking for the last cloud’s
dark lining, the last true sin
for those who didn’t stop counting.
Why demand bedtime stories
when morning’s shards
slice them to ribbons?
Tonight I ate fresh eggs
for dinner, true dawn.
I have met these small hens
and I will testify
I’d eat them too,
me lips bleeding with their juices.
My screen glows in the dark
just like yours.
When I pick cherries
I pick the stem too
just to throw it away later.
That’s the only explanation I have
for red wine and dark secrets.
Somebody’s sighing in the other room,
a late request for explanation.
It begins to rain in all my misspelled
scenarios. Two dogs fight viciously
and everyone forgets. Even sin
is not so easily named or located,
identified, specimined. If we could be
innoculated against it, would we?
One cloud drifts by as if it has direction.
My children were amazed to watch
the airplane’s wing disappear,
wondering what held us aloft.
We are still wondering.
It all gets messy in the end.
I meant to start with that.
Great poem! I really liked it a lot!