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Christopher Bowen Poem
Musee
See where it burns in Titian's brush
subsides along the cool Aegean stone,
or twists in the fist-faces of Rome,
our only mystery--flesh.
There, uncertainty ends, or does it merely pause?
The surgeon's knife reveals a shadow
no surface contains, our laws
are not what we do or vow.
Yet surface is all, and scars--
the scuttled pains that heal.
Observe how memory collects in flaws
placed where they are most real.
Or how, as flowers, the persistent leaf
bears the color of its grief.
Copyright © Christopher Bowen | Year Posted 2019
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Christopher Bowen Poem
Losers
Do you waver. are you shy?
When they look at you
do their eyes imply:
"We'll have to make do"?
Do you doubt your reasons,
suspect your goals,
commit self-treason
defer to trolls?
Are you always too reflective?
Are all your victories retrospective?
Do you try to do what's right
and end up being too polite?
Take heart then, don't despair!
Remember losers, everywhere,
it's within the infinite power of thought
to prove conclusively the winners are not.
Copyright © Christopher Bowen | Year Posted 2019
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Christopher Bowen Poem
Pro Patria Mori
Missouri volunteers bit bullets, watched
as Santa Ana's baggage washed
their brazen hair, hip deep
in the Rio Grande.
The ancient river moved across the land
Like slow drool down a leather cheek.
Bang! Paul Bunyan's balls
rolled down the Great Divide, rattled
across the porcelain sea.
Oh, the girls!
Hair hot and black, Whoopee!
Their tongues as pink as baby fat.
Now tongs drop a hissing crepe
on the defoliated plate. Butter complicates
our fingers, soils the bib.
We crack a claw. Like a crib
at Benin, wary and dull,
the eagle fills his nest with skulls.
Copyright © Christopher Bowen | Year Posted 2019
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Christopher Bowen Poem
International Airport
This nowhere, a contrived freedom
expatriate as air,
demonstrates our mastery
of what we meet or leave behind.
Each precise beginning
finds an ending imprecise,
as we fly to where or whom we wish
only to find them somehow less.
The conquered distance
returns within ourselves
as all that's joined grows relative
becomes a nowhere too.
Until the town seems smaller
the loving eyes less absolute.
Copyright © Christopher Bowen | Year Posted 2019
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Christopher Bowen Poem
Swesish Saga
Gerda left Sweden with an odd liking for turnips.
She claimed hard labor ruined her hands.
She hated her father.
Fritchof walked like an ex-sailor.
He had a vein-blue tattoo on his left hand.
He once sailed the Red Sea and grew a mustache.
They met in Vancouver. A brown wedding oval preserves
her stiff upper lip, his doubting earnestness.
She made him smoke his after-dinner cigar
in a corner where he taught me chess.
On the morning he died my mother removed the half pint
of Jim Beam from his bed-table drawer.
Gerda now reads the Bible to her son.
He is 50 and masturbates in the tub.
They go to faith healers.
He has actually seen the Devil!
Copyright © Christopher Bowen | Year Posted 2019
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Christopher Bowen Poem
Ethics
Taught accurately to account
for each reward an exact amount
a Kantian conscience reprehends
a stray Romantic dividend.
Publicly our just deserts
are measured by our type of work.
For what surgeons are forgiven
clerks and watchmen go to prison.
Few are ushered through the streets
in black sedans by the police
to carpeted chambers where the great
decide the future of the State.
Love, Genius, Power are for the elect.
Underpaid and oversexed
most lives are lived where intersect
the ragged lines of job and sex.
So if future preference won't assuage
your trussed Byronic middle-age,
think of all the lions who
are languishing in Christian zoos.
Copyright © Christopher Bowen | Year Posted 2019
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Christopher Bowen Poem
Then and Now
Then, I did not know that you were there
or miss the slight confusion of your hair
or think about your gracious smile
while pausing by brook a while
Or wandering under cloud-blown skies
did not recall the beauty of your eyes
when walking in the woods in June
through green-filled Summers in full bloom.
I did not think of how you walk
or of the music of your talk
(so like sunlight among flowers).
Now, strolling over fields for hours
I forget what once had been
your beauty in my heart has so grown
you now are all the Spring times I have seen
and all the Summers I have known.
Copyright © Christopher Bowen | Year Posted 2019
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Christopher Bowen Poem
Guadalcanal 2019
Tour boat, ice-blue water.
Five rubber rafts,
12 heroes each, approach
Antarctic 'beach'.
‘Explorer’: 'Look! Penguins!'
Rest chirp approval, focus Canons,
shoot the penguins left and right.
'Great' 'Wonderful'.
Two hours later, 3-star restaurant,
Tierra del Fuego.
'Global warming...'
from the end of the table.
Heads nod assent. Crab dinner,
good Sauvignon Blanc. 'This is great!' 'Wonderful!'
Are they talking about the crab? Or the penguins?
Does it matter?
Copyright © Christopher Bowen | Year Posted 2019
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Christopher Bowen Poem
Beach Boys
Male, wise virgin sly.
within their pubic-awkward
brawn, they testify
to ultimate wry-caricatured
innocence of flesh.
The body? Yes. But strutting chaste
and mirror brave--enough
for mirror bluff.
None dares to risk
(or daring, could but hate)
A dim-lit face-to-face
With female, wantflesh Odalisque.
Copyright © Christopher Bowen | Year Posted 2019
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Christopher Bowen Poem
Conversion
Leopard, jugular eyed, silent,
did you pause to rest too long?
See how she pulls you about her throat
how lightly you rest upon her shoulders.
Upon what missionary did you feed
that you should be so converted?
Copyright © Christopher Bowen | Year Posted 2019
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