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Doug Vinson Poem
I
ask
you to
mind our
earth, heed
our existence
upon it, care for
our lives and all that
will occur if we cannot
consider beyond ourselves,
if we are guided by uncertainty,
when we fear the unknown, when we
shun those who differ from us in skin color,
in sex, in persuasion, if we turn our eyes away,
when we dance upon the hidden strings of politicians
or cunning puppetmasters, when we swallow the lust of war,
when poets languish in isolation, without ear or encouragement,
when we torture, when prejudice blinds us to the humanity of another,
when our deluded misconceptions will go public with ready trigger finger,
when we mistake violence for the solution, when we fail the worthy person,
when we won't bother to look past the wheelchair and to whom he really is,
to say his real name, when the most expected thing we will share with him
is discrimination, when we forget that here in space we are in this together,
when tomorrow is the day that old and young will die in roaring explosions,
in quiet corners without notice, when people are driven from their homes,
when women must live in fear, when we steal identities, when evil hides
in anonymity, when we rest in apathy, indifferent to the pain of others,
when our fellow creatures are in chains for our profit and amusement,
when hunger and hatred are accepted, when malice shrieks loud,
when we cut baby girls due to generational gender inequality,
from psychosexual ignorance and hard superstition;
when we deny justice to one lonely voice,
our world falls, stretching itself
into a teardrop.
December 26, 2016
For FJ Thomas's contest - 'Concrete Crush'
Copyright © Doug Vinson | Year Posted 2016
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Doug Vinson Poem
Across the Serengeti plain our matriarch would lead,
Dining on the guarri fruit, and gum acacia seeds.
Upon our sweet green namesake grass our bellies we would fill,
I'd visit with my mother's bones, nap in the northern hills.
We'd cross the Mara river, then the southern rains would fall,
We'd see the African spoonbill, and hear the weaverbird call.
We'd care for all the young ones, and with my sisters I would roam,
Victoria Lake... But then I'd wake, give up my dreams of home.
I'd bust my cage, I'd smash the door, and trample all around,
If I was an elephant, I'd tear the circus down.
December 6, 2016
Copyright © Doug Vinson | Year Posted 2016
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Doug Vinson Poem
You had that future retro look: two thousand seventeen,
There was a slow and sultry permanence, a little slouchy lean
As you eased out of the taxi before it shot off to the right,
Who could have predicted what was goin' down that night.
Your totemic injunctions had me circled all around,
You acutely walled the sky off, left no escape route underground,
You had me penned tight in the doghouse, you could take me to the pound,
You were non-responsive until I proposed our sorrows drown.
I said I knew a house of brew, a joint of many gin
Where all ice would be broken through, where inhibitions would wear thin
Enough that we'd abandon ruse and hauteur,
Whatever were our drinks of choice, we'd pound 'em down like water.
There we were with truth in hand, it was a pub down by the shore,
But it seemed like what I'd planned out wasn't working anymore.
My river of charm didn't lack words, you were just too wary,
You talked and walked me backwards, up every tributary.
There was something to this watery theme, to you it seemed to please,
I remarked how strong a drink seemed, you said my glass you'd ease.
Your finger wavered in a blur, now was the sauce polluted?
I took a taste and sure enough - perfectly diluted.
I would have sworn that I saw droplets form within the air,
And fall into the blessed vessel, to caress the dear gin there.
Indeed I could have stayed all night, but you promptly punctured that baloon,
You paid the bill, pulled me upright, marched me away from the saloon.
Did you have a halo, the faintest rainbow hover there,
The gentlest gauzy prismatic glow that almost touched your hair,
The eye was instantly drawn to you, of that there was no doubt,
No wonder so many people were getting their smart phones out.
Twenty-seven pug dogs also trotted out because
They were hilariously exuberant and light upon their paws,
Faces all bright, with rumps and claws that increase social media views,
Their wagging tongues and happy jaws were gonna make the news.
And all the oysters and the clams rose up upon their hocks
To pour out of the tavern doors and run along the docks.
Perhaps I should have told you that these were seafood bars,
As arm in arm we walked along, to the whispering sand and stars.
Now you didn't have a tail, but there might have been a siren song
Playing airily in the background, a delicate treading from right to wrong,
And the softest kiss that could ever be, you gave me upon the beach,
I felt somehow removed from myself, like I was out of reach.
You put your arms above your head, oh - 'twas a sinuous view
Of all your harms, my newlywed, as the world twirled anew,
While sand devils and waterspouts spun mad in insane art,
I felt myself vaporize as I was swiftly pulled apart.
Born fast aloft, cloistered, rising on a cyclone's gyrating surge,
I coalesced as moisture, into droplets I did merge.
Then foul gravity - ever greedy, ignoble and vain,
Upon the sands of all the souls, my body fell like rain.
Yes, gravity - the evil one - took my flight away from me,
If you will forgive a pun, I needed my anti gravi tea.
The horizon was all dread dark clouds and thunder's threatening roar,
From the rage it was apparent that this storm had been beaten before.
So - if I was used to quench the thirsty sands then it was no great fraud,
My last awareness was hearing, 'Daughter of the River God.'
Copyright © Doug Vinson | Year Posted 2017
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Doug Vinson Poem
In the late 1970s, I was going home on a Friday evening,
and needed a little more fuel in my truck,
enough to get back to work on Monday morning.
I had $3 on me, pulled into a gas station,
told the guy who pumped gas to give me three Dollars' worth.
Back in those days that was a meaningful amount of fuel.
After a short time, he shut the pump off, came back to me,
"That'll be $10.35." He'd filled it up.
"Well uh... Wow, man, I did say to give me three bucks' worth....
Three bucks is all I got."
I gave him the three $1 Dollar bills,
then displayed the forlorn and empty chamber that was my wallet.
Another blow, one more little stumble of existence,
yet again life had dealt with him harshly.
He dropped his head down and turned it to the side,
"Yeah, you did say that...."
This was before my bank had automatic teller machines.
You were out of money late on Friday afternoon,
you had to wait until the banks opened up on Monday morning.
Credit cards were not yet part of my life.
I told him I'd go to the bank on Monday and bring him the rest of the money.
Asked if he was working then.
"Yeah, I'll be here. Okay..." He was shrugging as he said, "Okay"
- he knew darn well I wouldn't return.
He was going to have to eat that $7.35.
He was an old-looking mid-40s, possibly 50.
He'd been close to the margins of society,
maybe even lived right on them.
He had that "hard look," as if he was used to fate grinding against him.
He might have been too young for World War II,
but what about the Korean conflict, that strange proxy war?
Could be... No way to tell from his clothes or appearance.
He was getting by, but not in a good way,
and didn't expect much else at this point.
Hanging on, a little bit haunted in the eyes.
Ex-convict? Maybe.
As I drove away, he tilted his head back and looked up.
Was he appealing to God, asking for mercy and better luck?
Or was he just staring at the roof-like canopy over the fuel pump area,
wondering what the heck he was doing there?
Monday came, I went to work, and at lunch got some money out of the bank.
Even got change for the 35 cents.
Later in the day, it was busy at the gas station when I returned,
lots of vehicles at the pumps;
so I parked around the other side of the building,
then looked for the guy.
He was bent over an old, low car, fuel nozzle in hand.
I walked up to him and was pretty close when I said, "Hey man..."
There was that haunted look again:
"Whoa, who is this coming toward me, is there a problem, what's going on?"
He was thinking that, didn't say anything, just looked at me.
Maybe he still had trouble with the law out there, somewhere,
thought I was a cop.
"I was here Friday, you filled my truck up and I didn't have all the money....?"
I took out $7 in bills and fished in my pocket, got a quarter and two dimes.
A little bit of sunrise for him, right there, and he remembered.
Some light in his eyes.
I don't claim an especially honest life, this was just one thing I did.
He nodded and said, "Hey yeah, buddy, thanks - most people wouldn't have stopped back."
Almost 40 years ago. He's probably dead by now.
Copyright © Doug Vinson | Year Posted 2016
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Doug Vinson Poem
That tiny pause to skirt the truth, half-reals you'd paraphrase,
The subtle softly spinning gyre of cunning in your gaze,
Vague reflections from your skin - a shedding, sheltering plaque,
All concerned syllables sent swiftly bouncing off your back.
Ever adrift on fiction's lost sea, never blown to shore,
Too late I saw your hidden thirst - too easy to ignore
Evasion and avoidance - thus was piloted your ship,
You'd dance around, not run aground - you gave us both the slip.
I failed your buried, rooted pain, I missed the reddened tracks,
All facts would step aside your rime of displaced parallax,
I slighted each secluded wound, the false-trod thoroughfare,
So ends a life of wary silence, cloaked mutely in despair.
No one knew you as I did, my reward there sadly sure,
I'd like to think away now, yet the hard truths are too pure,
Blinded, perhaps, by my own fear, I let out line for years,
And all my stock of forward time now fills with bloody tears.
Upon my closing sight of you, muzzled words within your eyes,
Your final hour released you not - you'd walked too long on lies.
Copyright © Doug Vinson | Year Posted 2017
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Doug Vinson Poem
On the day after Christmas, they started appearing,
cast out of houses, stripped of their finery,
lying crooked in the gutter, garbage bags flanking.
My brothers and I walked to school
and halfway there, three blocks away,
was a steep ravine called The Hollow.
A place of some dark mystery in summer,
one hundred feet deep and forbidden land
according to most parents, The Hollow
sang its song to all neighborhood kids.
Returning to school after Christmas,
my brothers and I would drag the discarded
Christmas trees along the sidewalk and onto the bridge
that spanned The Hollow, then heave them over the railing,
watching their graceful tumble earthward,
their air brushing final fall.
"Hey, I used to do that too!" Donnie was a lot older,
almost done with high school, and his walk took him
right by our elementary school - he laughed to see us
hauling the trees to that concluding bridge.
He grabbed a large one, bigger than any of us could handle,
and upon the bridge had us help him hold it upright on the railing,
as it stood in life, as it looked down upon Christmas gifts;
we watched it slowly lean into Gravity,
watched the balletic descent into silence.
Donnie kept with us that first month into the new year,
the pile of trees growing in the bottom of The Hollow.
He told us things, we told him things,
we asked him things and he told us more.
My brothers and I still talk about that big tree
on the railing of the bridge over The Hollow.
It hit right on top of the pile of other trees
and bounced off to the side, its own special place.
As January wore on, we didn't find as many trees,
and ultimately it was all done.
Eventually the school year too was done,
and then more years, and school itself was done.
The trees at the bottom of The Hollow rotted away to nothing.
Somewhere in there my mom told me that Donnie
had been shipped off to war, killed within a few weeks.
We had that one magic month.
December 25, 2016
For Anthony Slausen's contest - 'The Day After Christmas'
Copyright © Doug Vinson | Year Posted 2016
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Doug Vinson Poem
We drifted not far from shore -
a delicate night with supple air entire,
black and white until patience sent us grays
that rocked with the boat on the slight swells
which gradually reflected the star colors
azure and indigo, carmine and beryl,
sang to us in laurel and rose
verdant with coral and mint
emeralds peeking between pinks,
sapphires that told us of every prayer
ever whispered to them.
I was coming a long way back
that time in the empty park
where all I had were fears that I'd never heal.
In an instant it was all done and I was found
that day I saw your eyes.
The moon set in silence beyond the land.
A gentle wind turned the boat to the south.
Distant rain sent water washing the earth.
Just for a moment we touched the surface of all things.
I love you.
February 23, 2017 147 words
Copyright © Doug Vinson | Year Posted 2017
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Doug Vinson Poem
You're a camera obscura, a broken bell's rings,
You made me dance slowly on sad phantom strings.
You always had the slightly off-color touch,
Your insensitive skin never softened up much.
Our meals were quiet with subtle trespass,
Off like a mispronounced requiem mass.
I corrupted your files, threw you askew,
You knew my pictures weren't entirely true.
We never could see in each other's mirrors,
Our focus was broken, our lenses were tears
That clouded our vision, that shrouded the past,
Our statements were false, or if pure couldn't last.
I voided your interest, the chasm was steep,
You fell into boredom, I put you to sleep.
You woke up translucent, you dissolved in the air,
Did I ever see you, were you ever there?
December 17, 2016
For Daniel Turner's contest - 'What was I thinking'
Copyright © Doug Vinson | Year Posted 2016
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Doug Vinson Poem
Our fellow travelers,
What measure of trust for them?
The moment's imperfections are easily, even instinctively overlooked -
We risk for their benefit, sacrifice for their good.
Minutes stretched, the holy person spoke to all comers
As I heard love's woman,
Hanging on the pierced and tattooed man.
What did she see, he was fractional to me;
Her freely-given look demanded no return,
Love's area of the mind spreading over others.
Was it that he'd only hit her once?
The sightless mother's fingers over the face of her child
Tenderly traced that juncture of skin and hour,
Acquiring an instant in time.
Copyright © Doug Vinson | Year Posted 2017
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Doug Vinson Poem
If I ruled the world I'd paint it mostly blue,
Spiders would build the finest webs - I'd decree the morning dew,
Auroras would shimmer above the poles, their colors ringing true,
Those would follow my first thought, "Good grief! What will I do?"
Puppies would be off to run and romp, kittens added to the chases,
Mountains, deserts and oceans - set down in law as special places,
The red kite's ride, the jaguar's stride, moon and trees within their races,
The sable's fur, the cheetah's purr, we'd acknowledge such given graces,
And I'd praise the honored beauty in elderly people's faces.
Wind would dance across the sand, long waves would come ashore,
Unfair rebukes and tactical nukes - do we need this stuff anymore?
Graceful herds would move around the Serengeti plain,
I'd reach across the ocean, try to lessen my good friend's pain.
I'd find the key to hardened hearts,
To quell our many tribal wars,
Diplomatic smarts and peaceful arts,
Those things I'd underscore.
No more homeless, evermore - from that they would be free,
(I'd live with the skepticism that we could ever all agree.)
I'd want to know all the poets, every poet that can be,
To never miss the poetry, it's in every soul, you see.
24 February 2017
Copyright © Doug Vinson | Year Posted 2017
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