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Best Poems Written by Robert Trezise Jr.

Below are the all-time best Robert Trezise Jr. poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Robert Trezise Jr. Poem

Leelanau Calling

Just as bees squeeze like watermelon seeds
Spit across apricot fields
My wife and I on Friday
Join the lines of highways up north

Pulled by hilltops to the Leelanau blue sky

Where lakes stir in the wind at the citrus rims
Of wine valleys below
And cherry orchards blossom in row after row
Like sheets of cupcakes spiraled with frosting.

Tonight we will sit tight around our lakeside fire
As petals closed upon this blaze of flower
With a Loon trilling her flute of bones
To the stars salted across the night

And voices bump from shore to shore
Murmurs softened beyond repair
The cabins flickering to a second life
In a fuse of fire lit around our lake

A tradition. We stop the car a ways away
From my mom and dad’s cabin
And let out our kids on the shoulder of road
To run like deer the final half mile.

Details | Robert Trezise Jr. Poem

Winter Flower

The beauty of a flower is born in the winter.

It is there in that suffering
Amidst the bones of bareness
And the cold of snow
Stark and stretched
White as a perpetual desert

It is there
Where the flower finds its seed
Where red is drawn as deep as lava
And the scent as sweet as cidered apple.

It is there
Not dug from the frozen root
Of Earth
But bloomed from the blood
Of the our imagination

Beyond from where the bleak hovers
And sorrow
Sinks

It is there
Where the soul flinches and leaps

To the distant
Faint
But familiar light of being re-born.

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Ballroom Lust

Her red dress
Pressed
To that beautiful black skin,
She looks like a forest fire
Racing up a mountain top

Burning up

She cannot stop
Her wild curves
Engulfed in flames.

She smolders
In a corner
Of the ballroom,

My eyes,
Like two emptied water glasses
On a tray,

Gliding by
On the shoulder
Of a much younger waiter.

Details | Robert Trezise Jr. Poem

The Jerusalem War Between Boys

The soldiers said
That the boy threw a grenade.
The parents of the boy said
That the soldiers planned to kill him.
This is what happens

When one person
Believes that another person
Is but an animal,
And not human.
People will self-fulfill as animal

And it’s much easier to kill
An animal,
Especially when you are an animal.
So, this is what really happened that day-
Both sides were right.

The boy walked down the street,
Before dawn, and saw the soldiers,
Who were walking on egg shells
With fear and expectation,
(Of course, they were mere boys themselves).

When the boy saw them look his way,
He reached into his basket
And threw a fresh egg
In their direction.
The boy’s face had just a split second

To crack a small smile
Before the bullet
Shattered his face
And skull
And the soldier

Was left with egg on his face
As well, but unfortunately,
Just a split second after he fired the shot.
So, eggs are grenades.
Boys are killers.

And that is when the cock crows
Between boys
In a Jerusalem morning.

Details | Robert Trezise Jr. Poem

Ultra Sound

There is omniscient God
And there is Ultra Sound Lady
And then there is Me
With 24 hours left ahead to wonder.

Two of the three knows my fate.

Cool blue goo swiped across my body
And the nice lady
Pats my bare thigh so intimately so compassionately
With such a sense of genuine comfort
That I wonder if she does that
All day long
With all her pan of patients
Rolled like dough beneath her hands on a dinner table

Or if perhaps we had made a connection
Or if it was just ultra sound code for good luck
Or hang in there
Or was it the first of many explanations beginning with,
“I’m sorry I have to tell you…”

But anyway she said to go ahead and let my breath go
And that it was over for the day.

As if I were her husband
Dressing in front of her
In our morning bedroom
I fastened my buttons and tucked my shirt
Zipped my pants and re-tied my tie

Chatting small talk about anything and everything
But for what was truly in front of us both
Along with fate
For the rest of the day.

Two know the truth
While the other dares not ask.

Details | Robert Trezise Jr. Poem

Yemen Slaughter August 9, 2018

If one is hungry
And bored
Of watching over Mecca,

What better place
To steal an apple
Than from another country’s orchards,
With fighter jets
Twanged in the sky
Like flying bottle openers,
Diving down
And peeling back a tin can roof
Of a school bus
Loaded with 40 children,
Whose shoulders are all
Strapped
With blue and red back packs
That look like little lunch boxes,
One of them
Surely containing
The sweet temptation
Of the perfect apple.

Mistaken identity, can happen.

So, a few bombs,
True,
Have to remove
The dozens of windows
And deposit
The million shards like razors
To flay the skin of the girls and boys

And, in an attempt to remain civilized
About this,
First cook
With fire and oil
The cheekbones from the skulls
Of the five year olds
Who are still alive,

And it’s important to keep fresh
The liver, tongues and hearts
Shish-kebobbed
With splintered ribs, white as serpents,

And finally, then
There it is,
The well done slab of lamb’s meat
Still clung, red as a beet,
Limbs and noses,
To be stripped
From that one buried back pack
And within it, zipped,
The fine taste of a ripe apple
Polished by mom
As a snack that was packed,
That day,
For school.

Details | Robert Trezise Jr. Poem

Bells of Christmas Past

On Christmas Eve night,
The only sound
Within our house
Comes from its wooden frame,
Creaking
And settling
Like three footsteps
Carefully
Stepping
From the upstairs
To downstairs
Then nothing more,

An exhausted ghost
Lifted
From the hot air
Of the furnace
That begins to blow
Through the opened vents
On the wooden floors.

But then,
From the living room
Down the hall,
A tiny bell
Rings
Rings
Rings.

I go to see.

From under the Christmas tree,
Lit
With twinkling lights
Like the skyline of a city
Towering upon a bay at night,
The presents
Underneath
Wrapped
And stacked
In all the colors,
Rippling
Like a watery reflection,

I see
Our cat
With his snowy white paw,
Much like a miniature mitten,

Batting the air,
Back and forth,
Above his head,
Jiggling
A little bell
That fell
From the top of the tree,
Snagged by the tree’s scraggly arm
Outstretched
At the hem of its billowing skirt,

Pulsating a tiny
Ting
Ting
Ting
Through all the rooms
Throughout our house
In the pendulum eyes
Of that curious cat,

Holy echoes
From all my Christmas’ past.

Details | Robert Trezise Jr. Poem

Black Crowes In the Snow

Is there a difference
In January
Between a crow
And his shadow?

Lurching in flight, so slow
And low
Threading
The snow-glued birch trees
That stand,
Wound in wind
Like barber shop poles,

The crow’s
Shadow
Glancing
The pearly floor
Below
As oily-black
As his own feathers
Ruffled upon his back,

Married
Like a yoyo
To the unusual sun
Strung
To the Earth,

Landing
Upon himself,
Claw
To neck
As if he was his own prey

Cheek to cheek
In black dance,

Uniting
Like a charred spoon
Scooped
Into the cream of the snow
In search of berries
Buried
At the bottom of the bowl

Then
Up
The crow
Separates
Again
Skating above and upon
The glimmering winter forest floor,

The real bird,
His beak,
Stained red from is juicy feast.

Details | Robert Trezise Jr. Poem

Mom

Mesh
Of my window screen
In spring
Licked from the inside by our inherited old lady

She is made of bird bones
White whiskers
Wearing her oversized fur coat in the new heat
Pulled from mothballs

Tongue of sandpaper
Scratches and tastes
I don’t know what

Bitter pollen?
Invisible scents of fellow felines
Hunting shrews from under the garden?
Or lion mares of dandelions?

Perhaps
She is merely savoring herself
In the intricate weave of parallel atoms

Who wants a mirror at this age?

Without ears or eyes in her private world
She finds an in between
Alive
On the inside
And from the outside

My ancient mom hisses
None of your business.

Details | Robert Trezise Jr. Poem

Assume Nothing of Storms

For an hour
Cicadas saw at the early August evening
While thunder purrs as kittens
In the yarn of dark clouds balled up out west over Ionia County

Trees prepare their umbrellas
The Tigers on TV swing away in the 3rd inning
A good book in hand

Then out of hand
A den of lions-wind roars outside our patio window
Devours the screens
I jump back
House turns black
And our 100-year old standing friends
Just like that
Break in half no more than the unlucky draw of straws
While others are plucked like Hedgehog mushrooms
All thrown down

At dawn
Sunlight strikes of leftover lightning
Flashes through new holes punched in the canopy

I hadn’t seen the sky in my backyard for decades
But there it is
Claw marks across the laid-down lambs on forest floor

And upon the beast of me who lies beside them.