Books by J.R. Solonche For All I Know Enjoy Yourself To Say the Least The Time of Your Life The Jewish Dancing Master In A Public Place True Enough If You Should See Me Walking on the Road Tomorrow, Today, and Yesterday, Deerbrook Editions In Short Order I, Emily Dickinson & Other Found Poems, Deerbrook Editions Invisible Won’t Be Long, Deerbrook Editions The Black Birch Beautiful Day, Deerbrook Editions Peach Girl: Poems for a Chinese Daughter (with Joan I. Siegel)
The Porch Poems
J.R. Solonche
deer br o ok edit ions
publ i s h e d b y Deerbrook Editions P.O. Box 542 Cumberland, ME 04021 www.deerbrookeditions.com www.issuu.com/deerbrookeditions
f i r st e di t ion Š 2020 by J.R. Solonche All Rights reserved ISBN: 978-1-7343884-2-8 Book design by Jeffrey Haste Author photo by Emily Solonche
Table of Contents There’s Something to Be Said 11 Sign 12 My Mind at Present 13 Small Pleasures 14 The Drying Rack 15 Memory 16 The Family 17 At the End of June 18 I Met a Young Man 19 My Neighbors Are Woodchucks 20 The Flowers at Night 21 When I Saw It on the Ground 22 The Odor of Lilies 23 Monosyllabic 24 Twenty-Nine One-Liners on Death 25 Prospero 27 Mistake 28 Warning to a Young Poet 29 Jehovah’s Witnesses 30 Clouds 31 Reading Li Po 32 Two Lilacs in Early May 33 Memorial Day 34 Three Part Cricket Poem 35 Paradise 36 The Stars 38 Day Lilies 39 I Want to Write about What I Do Not Know 40 I Am Tired of Faces 41 Poem for Myself on Rimbaud’s Birthday 42 How Poets Ruin Zen 43 To My Left Hand 44 Part Two While the Woman Sleeps after Making Love and the Man Cannot
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Part Three I Learned How to Write Poetry 59 Cooking 60 There Were So Many Crows 61 Deer in the Yard 62 On the Birthday of John Keats 63 Owls 64 I Heard a Bird 65 Imagine 66 When the Rain Stopped, I Stepped Outside 67 Skunk 68 Reality 69 Nothing Ghazal 70 Gold Ghazal 71 River Ghazal 72 Shadow Ghazal 73 Wind Ghazal 74 Emily Dickinson’s Dog 75 6:05 PM 76 A Noise 77 Because 78 I Don’t Know 79 When I Saw the Hawk 80 My Neighbor 81 The Perfect Poem 82 That Word 83 Going Back To The Bullshit Shit-Ass War 84 Mother-in-Law Rose 85 Half a Hundred Years Ago 86 Eight Questions I Would Like to Have Asked the Buddha 87 When a Poet Reaches a Certain Age 88 Abu Nuwas 89 Improvisation on a Line by Wallace Stevens 91 Three Carpenters 92 My Favorite Tree 93 The Empty Stool 94 Give Me Time and I Will Give You WHAT 95 The Terror Comes with the Territory 96 When I Awake 97 I Want to Write a Poem 98 On My Afternoon Walk 99 Early Morning Poem 100
I Am Tired of Owning Things I Want a Fireman’s Funeral
101 102
Acknowledgments; About the Author
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Part One
There’s Something To Be Said There’s something to be said for a town where the tallest building is a church.
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Sign God loves you. No exceptions. That’s the sign in front of the church. I would like to meet this god. I would like to meet this god face to face, this god that loves us one and all, this god that makes no exceptions, not even for Hitler, I presume. I would like to meet this god, this goddamned god, who loves the murderer of millions of children.
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My Mind At Present Two Yuengling Black & Tans followed by four glasses of Mellini Chianti & I still have the presence of mind to put the empties into the recycling container & not the trash container. I must be wary. Soon I will be bragging about it.
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Small Pleasures What a pleasurable perversity it is to sit in the rocking chair without rocking it.
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The Drying Rack in the sunny corner is the skeleton of the bath mat, the beach towel, the dish rag. Or sunlight’s skeleton. No matter. The most frightening of skeletons. The skeleton of nothing.
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Memory King of the Gypsies, what do you do with them all? Where do you take them? All the stolen ones, the ones you scoop up from their cradles and beds in the middle of the night, while they sleep your sleep for you, while they dream your dreams for you? What do you do with them, all the children of the dead?
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The Family across the street lives in a big beautiful Victorian. So far, I’ve seen two daughters and two dogs. I have not seen the mother and father. I hope I never see them. I have seen all I need to see. Two daughters. Two dogs.
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At The End Of June At the end of June, the rhododendron now without its blooms, is still the rhododendron, but I’m having a more difficult time spelling it.
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I Met A Young Man today who said he named his cat Socrates. He was about 20 or so. I told him about the philosopher after whom he named his cat, and ancient Athens, and how he was accused of corrupting the youth of Athens, 20-somethings like himself, and how he was found guilty and sentenced to death and how he drank hemlock and died. He didn’t know what I was talking about, so I asked him why he named his cat Socrates, and he said it was a cool name, and I had to agree. It was a cool name.
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My Neighbors Are Woodchucks My neighbors are woodchucks. One big, one small. I’m guessing momma and cub, or pup, or kit, or whatever small woodchucks are called. I put a bowl of water on the porch for them. I don’t know why. I knew they wouldn’t come for it even though it’s so hot. Fraternal instinct on my part? Woodchuck instinct on theirs? Fear of porches? Fear of fathers? Fear of anything remotely human? They keep their distance. And they know what distance to keep exactly. Unlike you and me. Oh, the bowl? It’s empty. Evaporated into thick air.
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The Flowers At Night The flowers at night are all the same. And at night, the trees are all the same. So too are the clouds at night the same. Only the wind at night is different, so different as it moans its secrets to the unwilling who cannot turn away.
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When I Saw It On The Ground When I saw it on the ground, struggling to get up, the yellow wings beating so hard against the earth I swear I could hear them, I said a little prayer, and in a heartbeat, we both were blessed with what we wanted. For me, it was the only prayer ever answered. For the monarch, it was the only ever sky.
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The Odor Of Lilies The odor of lilies. I don’t know if it’s good or bad. I stop what I’m doing and concentrate on the odor of the lilies but still don’t know if it’s good or bad. I go down and put my nose down the throat of one of the lilies. Still I do not know if it is good or bad. So be it then. Odor of lilies. Neither good nor bad. Or? Or both good and bad? Let me tell you something about ambiguity. I’ve learned this the hard way. From more than 40 years of writing poetry. Too little is bad for the brain. Too much is bad for the heart. So, yes, let us admire the tall slender white lilies. But only as we admire the model with the mole on her cheek.
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Monosyllabic The best ones are the small ones, those you need to hold in your hand two or three at a time, those you need to feel for size, and shape, and heft, the blunt, the sharp, the smooth, the rough, the square, the round, the firm, the soft, the ones like rocks, like bricks or stones in streams, the ones like clods of soil or clumps of clay, the ones you pile to build the whole world with, and then the ones you hurl to bring it down.
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Twenty-Nine One-Liners On Death Death is funny sometimes as it comes when you most expect it. For many, death is the best thing ever to happen to life. Before we are born we are not alive, yet we do not call this death. Death is the second greatest mystery in life. The opposite of death is not life but sex. Death brings us full circle, but circles do not exist. Death is what we wish upon our enemies when imagination fails us. To the question, “Death, where is thy sting?” the answer is, “In the left anterior descending coronary artery.” To the question, “What does the dead Jewish mother say to the worms?” the answer is, “Eat!” The reason why we meet death with such astonishment is we have no memory of being born. Death has a generous spirit, for it allows us to believe anything, right up to the very end. Death is a dead end without end. Death is the life of the party. Indifference to life is only possible when we are first indifferent to death. Death may be on the other side of life, but it is still on this side of the Great Mystery. Death is in the details. Death is our preoccupation until it is our post-occupation. Death has a heart of lead which philosophers have for centuries sought to transmute into gold in vain.
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Death answers everyone, but answers to no one. Life’s blood is death’s life’s blood. Of all the millions who have lived vicarious lives, not one, not a single solitary one, has ever died a vicarious death. Death makes strange bedfellows. Feel sorry for Death, for he can never have the last laugh. All death is local. At the time of our death, everything falls into place. Feel sorry for death, for it doesn’t have a life its own. Death is the last fact of life. Have a heart, Death! Alas, death doesn’t hear us, for death is dead to the world.
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Prospero So every third thought shall be the grave. But what shall every first thought be, and every second thought? A blowjob? A glass of wine? His grandchild on his knee? A nap in the sun? Or as Dustin Hoffman said about retirement, a good baked potato and a good crap?
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Mistake Odd word, mistake. It means an error caused by a lack of skill. Just think. A life, a whole life, can be an error caused by a lack of skill.
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Warning To A Young Poet Words are indigent. I warn you. They will make you want to scream at the top of your voice and utter no sound. There is a poverty in speech. I warn you. It will make you want to bleed a thousand miles on your knees. I warn you. There is a paltriness to language, a neediness that will make you want to fall to the ground and grovel at the feet of silence. I warn you. You will want to cut your throat. You will want to be old before your time. You will curse the day you were born. I warn you. You will want to burn books. I warn you. I warn you. You will want to burn books.
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Jehova’s Witnesses They also suffered. They also died by the thousands in the camps. They too were man’s witnesses, these Jehovah’s witnesses. They too were murdered, and when they come to my door, a married couple, or two women and a child, well-dressed, in a car just waxed, gleaming in the sunlight of Saturday morning, soft-spoken, smiling, sincere in everything, rehearsed by the elders, blessed, I want to talk to them about suffering and witness, but all they want to talk about is Jehovah and his plan for the world and his plan for me and why they alone are right. They alone.
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Clouds I once saw a photograph of a cloud that looked like an angel. Other than this, the best I can say for clouds is how they humanize what would otherwise be a sky, vast, pure, blue, and intolerable.
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Reading Li Po So many arrivals. So many departures. But what is a poem if not a door with a face? And what is a poem if not a bell with a name?
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The Two Lilacs In Early May The two lilacs are finally in bloom. The lilac-colored lilac is full of heavy lilacs. The other one, the smaller one, the white one has a single sprig of white lilacs. Plain daughter of the famous beauty who flamboyantly dominates the room, shyly, she offers me her pale hand.
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