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Best Poems Written by Bill Sander

Below are the all-time best Bill Sander poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Bill Sander Poem

My Life Used To Be

My life used to be a journey. The destination of my journey was heaven and the current
landscape mattered not.
Now my life is a ride. Rides are destination-free.
Some people find purpose in their children, who in turn find it in their children, and so on. But if
nobody ever gets there, there is no there.
Maybe the destination is a ride.

I am in a bubble bath. I can see the bare branches of winter through the high window. Heat
seeps into me, a warm ride. I am old and will need to plot how to get out of the tub. But for a
half hour yet I need not move. Non-aching is a destination.
Yonda kneels beside me. Her skin is a sky, leaking light. She smiles and says we were lovers.
She reaches toward me, scoops up an array of bubbles, and blows herself away.

The sand makes squeaking noises as I walk along the beach. Only the clear ocean seething
toward me is newer. A palm tree arches over me to launch a volley of fronds at the sun. A boat
bobs in the waves, an iguana slants into the forest, and I see a distant hut up the beach.
Everywhere is a destination. Running is a ride.

Wide steps lead up to the museum. High ceilings cup quiet to my ears. Unembraceable
objects enchant. Strife and struggle have been confined. Accomplishment is postured, beauty
decided, and pride mounted. The past is cleansed of destination. I ride the past.

I hadn’t seen her in two years. When she called, it was from further than 2000 miles. I didn’t
know it was to say goodbye, that she was terminal at 39. She took a version of me, one I had
liked and she had loved, with her.
Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a destination where we all ended up? I’d like to ride with her
again.

Drinks clink, balls click, the king is toppled. I win the game, finding the angle for the balls, the
intersection for the pieces, the weakness of others. I lose the game. It is still a ride, ersatz
significance. Boredom has been averted. Something I dimly sense and acutely miss is again
postponed.

On a ride you carry nothing. The people change. There is no plot. The theme of the park is
perfunctory, pasted on. Yet it seems important. I seem alive.

In Limon I plan Cahuita. In Kuching I plan Belaga. In Flores… Livingstone, and in Penang…
Batu Ferrengi. In…

The computer hums on my desk. I get out of the chair and go to the recliner. Ahead of me is
Wall, White, Without Window. This isn’t a ride and sure isn’t a destination.

In Cayce...

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Chiaroscuro

sun-spoiled colors like fruit to burst slowly yield to a shadow tide pulling a demure 
crescent 
moon posing nude for constellations extinguished by the tremorous lips of dawn 
changing 
watercolor into oil for noon’s dominion over shade hoarded then troweled and finally 
plowed as 
light is sipped into 

stars

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Negotiable Beauty

That’s what she was, what she thought of herself.  That: the title—negotiable beauty, looks for 
sale.  She was a work of art, all right.

And she was full-service, the whole act.  She figured out what you needed and provided it, an 
engulfing fantasy, a gestalt of lies.  What you never got, what no one ever got, was her, the real 
person, the core creation.  After a while she never got that either.  Maybe it didn’t exist.  

I only knew what she showed me:  the candied apple, the Tunnel of Love, The Wild Mouse, 
thespunsugarcorndogdietcokediet, the whole nonnutritive unsustainable Emotional Carnival.  
Did I mention the House of Mirrors?

She showed me mes I didn’t know I had.  She showed me who I could be:  A wreck of 
dependency, jealousy, and lust, spending whatever sacrifice it took for an hour… a look… a  
mouth.

A month.  A month to move from a preoccupation with sex to fantasies of violence; from 
screwing to striking, then confusing the two.

Time only ends.

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A Box For Forgetting

I am dreaming.
I know I am dreaming.
It is more important than life, better than living.

I am in a dark room.  
The door is ajar and a bar of sunlight illuminates two rosewood boxes.
One is much larger than the other.  
Both are intricately scrolled and heavily lacquered.

One box is for remembering, the other for forgetting.
I can fill them as I wish.

I need to forget more than I want to remember.
A woman.  
It’s not the bad times that haunt me.
It’s the good times that I pour and pour into the large box.
It’s like crying.  It’s like vomiting.  It’s like crapping.

It is over.
I leave light.
Everything awaits me.

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Noon of Midnight

now is glare caged and pasted dry 
where once wet opened drapery skin so wide
 
moments stubble the truth even as it chews
on dreams stored in eyes’ dark crawlspace

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Not-Words

from incised colors spill not words,

nor the tremorous lips of dawn speak;


a rose by any other pin is a name,

and nature eludes a rhyme a frame.

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You Are In a Deep Well

You are in a deep well.
The only way out is to float to the top.
The rising water is a dream.

One climbs over the rim.
The well is a silo.
The ladder is luck.

He walks to the lake.
The only way across is a sail boat.
The wind is volition.

She lands on the island.
The road leads up a hill.
Gravity is reality.

They watch stars appear.
The only way higher is imagination.
Thinking is different.

I look down.
Something remembers.
You are in a deep well.

Details | Bill Sander Poem

Nine Words

I want a five-word sentence about the pain of beauty.

And beauty is painful:

Because you want to be it, and aren’t.

Because you want to sense it all, and can’t.

Because you want it to last, and it won’t.


Laps a tongue at twilight’s scents whispering “…Come….”  Gone.


Okay, nine words…