marlboro red, the name matters, i look cool on horseback, camping, driving a truck, my synonym is man, as in, i will make you a man, your lips like a sturdy red brick chimney, creating fire, man fire, from mouth, into lungs, nicotine is my dirty word, don’t say it, it’s addictive, but i don’t care, i was born to be burned, disposable, like life, yours is mine, eventually.
Category: Poetry
Meet the Beatles!
john, george, paul, and ringo, peering out of the darkness, capitol records, 1964, my first glimpse of the british sensation, a window into my mother’s 20-something obsession. as a kid how could anyone not love i want to hold your hand? then, 1986, matthew broderick on a chicago float, twist and shout, later, revolver here, there, and everywhere, first snow in early december maine, young love in the air. and i still listen to do you want to know a secret? but it all goes back to my mom playing that album, dancing like the 1960’s never ended.
Camp Counselors At Night
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.
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
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
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.
Neruda and War Addiction
somewhere in neruda’s memoir he speaks about addiction, war addiction and che guevara, ecstatic life on a constant journey toward death, craved knowing he might die, was going to die, unity with the greatest unknown, heaven maybe, or not, but on the way, violence, machine gun eruption, mortar explosions, deafening everything, all thought becoming sound, becoming silence, perhaps the final silence, and now, instead of fear, there is oneness, war, when we are really in it, makes us whole
Daniel W. Polk 