Wendy Sloan
Where the Poetry Comes From
For My Father
Chrysanthemums of red and yellow lit
your cherry casket; all the brass shone bright
and golden in the soft October light.
We were a somber group assigned to sit
in those front family rows. But when I heard
how every single mourning soul that spoke
remembered most of all a favorite joke
you used to tell--a pun, some kind of word-
play, riddle--I thought then how you knew all
the songs from back before the war, how good
your whistling was, and how you used to hum
the harder lines with me when I was small.
So at the very last I understood
that you are where the poetry comes from.
Jim Morrison's Grave at Pere Lachaise
Ah yes, the French do everything with style
including cemeteries. Stroll now through
their City of the Dead, each avenue
full-lined with moldering sepulchers, each aisle
a feline haunt where stolid tombs enthrone
green memory's tribute to celebrity,
and pause at his graffiti-encrusted stone,
the tawdry flowers' stench of destiny.
So young, so bright, so earnest--and so dead,
fulfilling maudlin poetry's cliches
of blazing genius. Waking in a daze,
she found you in the bathtub past desire,
past pain, past madness--and the poet, fled.
Death stilled a hand that dared to seize the fire.
To Ray, After the Bell
". . . Do your best,
my nightmare snickers, What the hell--
you've got some time before the bell."
from Ray Pospisil's "Exam Today"
Where will we get our kicks now that you're gone?
Who else will stalk the stage, cat on the prowl,
and wrestle down a nightmare, cheek to jowl
with those dark thoughts determined to descend
to haunt our dreams? Who else could carry on
through that prolonged Hamlet soliloquy
knowing it all by heart, delivery
fine-tuned to catch, in every tone and pace,
the sharpest anguish poetry can trace?
The price, some say, of living on the edge
of art is often death, a poet's fate.
And yet, I am unable to pretend
your death held something noble, or to hedge
against regret for help that came too late.
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