Be'Mused

By Joseph Hesch

I sat twirling the pencil in my fingers.

I had carefully sharpened it four times now. 

The faint green notebook page on the desk

could have been a paint swatch

for redecorating someone else’s bathroom

for all the good it did me just sitting there.

Occasionally, I would rub my eyes,

hoping for a red-tinged glint of a vision. 

Or I would scuff my feet

on the carpet under the desk,

briskly comb my fingers

through my hair, and reach out

to touch the lamp,

perhaps expecting some static-charged

electrical spark inside my head

would nudge the pencil across the page

in something resembling chains

of subjects and predicates. Iambs or trochees.

Nothing.

And then, I think for no reason,

since I wasn’t anywhere near that memory,

I thought of you. 

That’s when something bubbled up

from beneath the rock of my heart,

through my hand, onto that page,

and I was happy, for a blessed little while. 

Are you Beatrice or Old Will's

"muse of fire, that would ascend

the brightest heaven of invention?" 

No, you are the other,

the one that launched

my thousand thousand dreams.

Still Standing

By Joseph Hesch

The smell of raw wood

struggles to fight its way over

the oily exhaust of the chain saws.

It is a contest these resinous exhalations

lose as surely as the maple and pine

eventually bow to the keening teeth of steel.

For years I was hushed

by the gnawing growl of the city,

my heartwood ripped by neck-tied woodsmen

wielding telephones, email and arrogant lies.

When I eventually fall

to their maleficent ministrations,

I won’t scream and crash

with the powerful gasp of the plummeting timber.

I will no doubt go down with

the push of an OFF button,

a click of a pen,

and post-straightline silence.

Until then, unlike the wind-strummed forest,

I won’t stand and whisper.

I will scream and crash and

thrash about on pages cut

from those who fell before me.

Her Power

By Joseph Hesch

She loved this time,
the first instance each show
when she broke from behind the curtains
and into the lights.
She can feel her power
to draw the attention of men
as well as women
to her beautiful face,
her seductive body,
her magnetic being.
She reveled in the fact
that every man out there wanted her
and every woman
sitting with that man
secretly wanted to be her,
sinuously slinking down the catwalk,
head high, stride strong,
to stop at its end,
right hip, POP
left hip, POP
swirling turn, and
show them the rear view is
as good as the front.
The lights, she thinks,
it's the power of the lights
that helps bring this power
out of me.
I love the light and it loves me.
Love.
And this crowd loves me.
Love.
Just listen to them,
just...
"Can I give you a push,
Mrs. Marmelstein, love?"

This poem was written in response to the photo above as part of One Stop Poetry's One Shoot Sunday. At first this photo made me feel the sadness and rage of old age, and there most definitely is that in so many of the elderly. But there are some for whom their bodies are merely vessels in which their memories and imaginations still live a vibrant existence. My character here, Mrs. Marmelstein, is one of those lucky people. And her memories...oh my!

Puddles

When the rain stops I must get back to work.

I want to work on playing in the puddles,

a grown man getting wet feet, stained cuffs

and sensations felt best by small boys.

I will gather myself on the run to leap high,

high as I can, 

to soar over that wet window in the ground

through which I can see the sky, trees

and, just for a second,

me.

Burdened as I am by the gravity of time,

I’ll break that skylight into millions of pieces

of cirrus lambs, arthritic maple fingers,

and falling man.

For those moments suspended, though,

the wind will brush my cheek, my eyes glisten,

and I’ll glimpse that kid

in the wavering reflection again.

We’ll be flying.

Les Danseuses

By Joseph Hesch

The dancers I’ve known
hardly ever showed much joy,
except while they moved to the music.
It seemed to soften the diamond hardness
of their bodies and faces,
like they were appearing on Degas' stage,
all shadows and smeared pastel smiles.
But, when the music stopped,
and you saw them on the street
away from their cosmetic camouflage,
their armor of knits and tulle,
and their funneled electric suns,
you understood who they really were—
heroically tiny, ambivalently starving,
radiantly tired, and gloriously pained girls,
in conflicted relationships
with their art.


I wrote this, one of my favorite poems, in response to a picture prompt from With Painted Words Magazine. The painting used as the prompt is the one above, by Maggie Barra, a fantasy artist and illustrator from Lake Oswego, Oregon. When I saw it in its tiny size, I didn't see forest faeries. It reminded me more of the dancers from the Paris Opera Ballet and the Twyla Tharp troupe I met when I worked at Skidmore College. I let my memory and my imagination take it from there. I submitted the poem and it ran in the magazine's December, 2009 issue.

Vespers II

By Joseph Hesch

Before dusk, feathered greyfriars chirp vespers,

while a woodpecker drills for dinner in the

pines behind the neatly furrowed,

crops of red brick.

Jingling wind chimes announce the huffing

passage of a Jack Russell terrier.

Madly circling his owner, he's a rogue satellite

straining against the gravitational pull of his leash,

lest he spin off into the unknown,

the lengthening shadows and benign dangers

of this suburban galaxy.

Each afternoon he and his rotund master planet

course around the development,

each cyclical foray another chance

to slip the similitude

of the little fellow’s days.

I feel the strain against the leash, too, 

always hoping to break from just a little

of the gravity that holds me captive to a life

made of circles, cycles and birdsong reminders

that tomorrow will be one more transit

toward a hoped-for someday when I don’t

have to carry so many worlds on my shoulders.

Let's take the idea presented in the shadorma "Vespers," and expand on that theme.

Vespers

By Joseph Hesch

Before dusk

feathered grayfriars

chirp vespers

in the pines

behind furrowed red-brick crops

in suburban fields.

This bit of verse is in a form called a Spanish form called Shadorma.  It was written in response to One Stop Potery's Form Monday prompt. The form requires six lines with a syllable count of 3-5-3-3-7-5.