2am and even the mosquitoes are sleeping, but we are still up, campers slumbering in bunk bed cabins with wet towels hanging from wooden pegs, luna moths circling bathroom lights in the distance, the talk goes on and on, 17 year-olds under summer stars in virginia countryside night, sitting on wooden picnic tables, flirting with time and each other, we’ve hit that moment where words don’t matter anymore, just eyes twinkling in the quiet dark surrounded by trees, warm july breeze, daylight will arrive, but not yet, not yet.
Author: @DwPolk
Sports Card Investing. Photography. Poetry.
when art influences life
we must constantly look at things in a different way, mr. keating says in an empty movie theater, empty except for me and a friend, two amc rooms showing the movie at the same time, but everyone else went right, and we went left, so when robin williams stands on his desk, we stand, dead poets society, you guessed it, or you knew, to think that was 34 years ago, and who became a teacher and poet?
I Am A Beer
hold me in a bottle
wrap your fingers around
my label, place me
carefully on a pool table
i help with conversation
will make you a man
give you something to do
wanna grab one of me
after work? sure thing
i invented liquid courage
beer muscles, and who
said you can’t win
with me you will punch
all night, or say hello to
him or her, or that person
sitting over there, don’t
stare too long, drink me
like you mean it
with time, you will
love me, but i’ll
never love you back
Pontiac Fiero & The American Dream
12 years old, not able to drive, but furious fingers tug on the rotary phone dialing again and again, the pontiac fiero will go to the 107th caller, says the Q107 DJ, as he cues up sweet dreams are made of these, frantic to somehow win, knowing the radio station won’t give it to me anyway, but the chase is everything, like sitting in a boat doing nothing but waiting, like scratching lottery cards, like betting everything on the yankees, busy signal, busy signal, time wasted, finally, you are the 94th caller, busy signal, i lost the car, i never had it.
She Drives Real Fast
don’t call her old
or elderly, foot on the
accelerator, doing 73 mph
on a south carolina highway
near myrtle beach, my
91-year old grandmother
in her pontiac, like the
jan and dean song about
the lady from pasadena
she died a year later
left me the car
determined to follow her
lead and never stop
moving forward
National Parents’ Day
Photo of a photo, salvaged from a stack found in one of those white envelopes, buried in the basement of the house that I grew up in. Summer blonde, with the Izod grin, mobile, ready to camp anywhere in the Volkswagen. That was freedom, when others drove the bus. Today, my kids are about to turn 17 and 13, and I’m a parent. Did you know that July 23rd is National Parents’ Day? I’m probably going to be offline that day, so here’s to an early celebration. BIG thank you, Mom and Dad!
Thinking About Marc Chagall
how to write about chagall? feels impossible to describe an unending dream of color, sky, moon, donkeys, chickens, man/woman sailing/flying through skies, love is so much of his world with flowers and everything magic, magical, to imagine, mystical, that feeling, when you pretend to be in the painting, who/what would you be? the tree? the violin? the rooster? the angel? the dancer? the sun? what/who? where will he take you? away, where have you been? inside his mind, your mind, our mind, our universe, marc chagall with a key, a brush, some paint, opens the door
My Favorite Writers/Poets
mitch albom, jimmy santiago baca, sylvia boorstein, ray bradbury, raymond carver, pema chodron, ta-nehisi coates, pat conroy, e.e. cummings, emily dickinson, william faulkner, william finnegan, norman fischer, f. scott fitzgerald, nick flynn, natalie goldberg, richard grant, doris grumbach, thich nhat hahn, ernest hemingway, tony hoagland, zora neale hurston, jon kabat-zinn, mary karr, jane kenyon, ted kooser, stanley kunitz, anne lamont, li-young lee, philip levine, patrica lockwood, gabriel garcia marquez, peter matthiessen, frank mccourt, john mcphee, thomas merton, w.s. merwin, joseph millar, marianne moore, john muir, tim o’brien, sharon olds, mary oliver, pablo neruda, jd salinger, suzanne scanlon, shel silverstein, isaac bashevis singer, john steinbeck, wislawa szmborska, richard wilbur, c.k. williams, thomas wolfe, tobias wolff, richard wright
I Have Fleas
i also have a borrowed walkman with one cassette, phish, rift, when you’re there, i sleep lengthwise, and when you’re gone, i sleep diagonal in my bed. july, 1993, and i’m in ojaca, honduras, you won’t find it on a map. i have fleas. listen to rift over and over again, itching in my sleeping bag, while looking for fleas by flashlight. 2am, i give up on sleeping because i have to be up at 4am to hitchhike back to gracias, a smallish town that is on a map. and you’d never believe it, but it was a great night, sometimes suffering is like that. PS-i don’t even really like phish
Writer as Quaker
so much of life is waiting, for lunch, for the uber to arrive, for the plane to land, for night to begin, for graduation, you get the drift. and then there are quakers who wait to hear from god, sit in silence, just waiting. and this is me too, some days the words just arrive and I say, hello words, and we are happy together, one word emerging after the next. other days, i just read and read and stare and stare, sort of hoping that my fingers start typing something, but glad to be waiting. because, i don’t agree with tom petty, the waiting isn’t the hardest part, the waiting is everything.
Daniel W. Polk 