held together by shreds of faded fabric, pages torn, inside inked December 1914, that cursive once on chalkboards all across america, found it in the trash where my father had placed it, rescued history, my hands cradling the past, how could you throw this away?, i thought, but never said a word, her poems carefully pasted next to drawings of men and women, little girls, dolls and dogs, lakes with sailboats, christmas greetings from the 20’s, dance cards, foxtrot, lindy hop, young love in pencil marks, pressed carnations, color long gone, diaspora of flower petals wedged into the treasure’s every crevice, army v. navy football ticket, pink powder puff once pressed on a face, my grandmother’s, her life still here, with me forever.
Month: September 2023
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
all white faces at new trier high school, john hughes film trademark, vanilla chicago, the only actors of color that i can recall were the two guys who took the red ferrari for a joy ride, but this isn’t a political poetic meandering, only painting the picture, backdrop if you will, matthew broderick, that envious grin, i always win, and rooney, who always loses in pursuit of bureaucratic justice, pick and choose your nuance, warm gummy bears, sausage king abe froman, voodoo economics, student drool, these are ornaments, but the narrative throughline wears a redwings jersey, we are talking about sickly cameron, neglected cameron, angry cameron, by product of capitalism gone too far, this part gets dark, like that molly ringwald/judd nelson tension, like collapsing into a pool, like killing a car, and perhaps this is the whole point of the film, have fun, enjoy wealth, but if your kid is sick, urge them to wrap a hot towel around their head, shows you care.
Rembrandt & the Original Selfie
it used to be hours and hours of sitting staring into self, into a mirror, looking at facial skin, wrinkles, curved hat, tufts of hair, textured brushstrokes, somber color palette, a desire to paint that face, his face, my face, he thought, must be preserved, saved for the ages, or perhaps because it was always available, free model, he thought, whatever the reason, several selfies, over many years, and they took forever, each one, meticulous, now, we touch a camera app, press a white button.
Green Tea
matcha, genmaicha, sencha, bancha, kabusecha, tencha, all of the cha’s, and the list goes on and on, and you thought it was just trader’s joe’s moroccan mint, cardboard box, bits of green wrapped in plastic squares, no, the earth offers more, from india, china, new zealand, sri lanka, south carolina, taiwan, bangladesh, hawaii, fields with leafy bursts of light caffeine, subtle, translucent hot water, in a glass, a mug, on lips through throat into stomach, mind alert with awareness of dirt, warm humid rain, lots of rain, to create moments of wonder, sipping stillness.
Alphabet Money
all we care about is money
bacon, bank, bones, bread, bucks
cash, clams, coin
dead presidents, dinero, dollar, dough
everything runs on
funds, financials, facts, they want the
green bills
hedge equity
including liquid assets
just because we
keep believing
loot is loot and
moola matters
never trust the
ones without the
paper rectangles
question those with no
resources
something is wrong if they’ve got no
treasure
unless this whole construct is
vapid
what if we
x-ray the system and this
yearning for money isn’t worth
zilch?
Bananas
i’ve seen you in el oro ecuadorian plantation encased in plastic, no beauty in bunches of wrappers strewn on earth underneath, because profit is everything, exports to united states & european union, consumers pull back yellow peels, reveal that white, sweet appetite for mixing with peanut butter or in milky cereal, loved for potassium, fluid balance, lower blood pressure, means we won’t die, not from eating this soft south american wunderkind, edible prodigy, machete hacked plant, cherished comestible.
Palo Alto Hermit
I live two blocks from the Apple store, don’t own a cellphone or a TV, don’t have an internet connection. Some weekends I unplug my phone and I’m an ascetic, surrounded by my volumes of John Muir, Jane Kenyon, A Buddhist Bible, and my journals of poetic plodding. I watch them on their headsets, talking to the air, talking about technology into technology. They fill the Starbucks on University Avenue with their napkins, sketching schematas of the next IPO. I’m a walking anachronism, a luddite they call me, voluntary simplicity, I call me. Doing the mental math, I calculate whether I’m the only one in all of Palo Alto completely disconnected. Maybe a couple of Stanford religion majors without TV, but none would be internet free, no, that is just me, 1 out of 66,000. But there is Greg, that isn’t his real name, no one knows his real name, he drags his feet, toes sticking out of his shoes, his long, unkempt blondish brown hair jutting in all directions. Greg and the other homeless people by the creek are my kin, my kind, fiber-optically missing, invisible, off the grid. One night I meet Larry Page at a Stanford pub, we don’t talk about his company, Google. He tells me he likes Dance Dance Revolution, but only does it in private. The seven minute conversation sticks with me, like the mornings when I see Steve Jobs at the farmer’s market. Me, Steve, and Larry, we’re in this thing together, makes me feel like I’m a part of the team, the future. But all I teach about is the past, the Cherokee, the Californios, the buffalo, the removed, the replaced. I hike miles on Sundays, Butano Ridge Loop, Foothills Park, my fern-filled temple, my isolation, my solace. I try to make sense of it all, the movement of time, my standing still. After many days, maybe hours, I plug my phone back in, walk down Kipling Street, go to the library, check my email.
What is Wisdom?
not old body parts: craggy eyebrows, gray hair, beard, failing eyes, not dusty books: shakespeare, socrates, aurelius, arendt, not words: erudite, precocious, sagacity, percipence, not education: cambridge, oxford, harvard, princeton, not military: combat, boot camp, target practice, bombing, not politics: president, judge, senator, prime minister, not bragging: instagram, birkin bag, nantucket house, porsche panamera, but rather: nameless nature, lakes, oceans, trees, mountains, timeless, perhaps one day dead, but still wiser than….
Reading & Billie Eilish
some question the point, why not just watch a screen, text, talk on the phone. why leave friends to immerse with already dead authors? why visit streets where horses pull carriages and fast food doesn’t exist? paper pages, turning them, what a chore. who wants to detach, disconnect from internet, iphone, streaming shows, online shopping? yet, somehow this has become me, always was me, by fireplace, under quilts, narnia, watership down, the hobbit, the color purple, quiet moments, alone, reading, reading, reading, imagination, walking with holden caulfield, questioning the phonies, the ones feeding us cookies, tracking our every electronic move, urging us to fear the next disaster- to quote billie eilish, when reading a book, no one can hurt you.
When I Think Of Trains
human-made ocean tide of steel, freight and escape, like waves continually crashing, compartments rush by, sound bending wind, horn blasting, alerting animals that machine can collide, graffiti painted sides, desperate spray paint, crude canvas carried from small town to town, and this meant progress, loneliness, like a harmonica pretending, like running away, like blue collar grease, a sunset, a sunrise, an aching, a braking, cacophony, a screech and heartbeat.
Daniel W. Polk 