From 'Dating at Fifty' a collection of poems about the quest for love in middle age
...
I stood in the dark
On a warm spring night
Waiting for the bus
...
You will get no roses from me:
Over-tended, overfed, pruned, and powdered,
Cut with shears in leather gloved hands.
No showy blow-bag flowers
...
Long after I had stopped living there
I came back to the house to see my ex-wife, my ex-family.
It was a warm sunny afternoon
And there in the overgrown grass of the front yard
...
The other day
My newborn son
Tried to tell me about oblivion.
...
One Sunday Morning
Down at the mini mart
On a chilly, misty, day
...
Farmer Brownshirt works in silence
with only the rustling wind in the corn
And the calling of birds in the trees
To intrude on his dark and roaring thoughts.
...
The birds had left the week before
But the leaves had lingered
Soaking up the last of the golden light.
...
A poem I found at a hotdog stand
It is nine thirty on a Sunday morning.
...
Charley was picked up on 1st
He was drunk and had fallen.
At the time it seemed like
Too much trouble to get up again
...
It’s all there;
The paranoia,
That sickening sense of failure,
That need to justify my existence,
...
It was hot.
Then there was a week of rain
And when it was over
The summer had gone.
...
This is a long piece. I have been reading CD Wright and Calvino lately so blame them.
This is a long piece. I don't know how many people have the attention span for long poems anymore. I have been reading CD Wright and Calvino lately so blame them.
Thanks
...
My girlfriend
Made me soup.
It was rough,
Bones, big sticks of rosemary, whole bay leaves.
...
After the gross matter that bore my name
Has dissipated, the molecules
Of flesh and bone dissolved.
...
Everyday
Year after year
Generation after generation
The cows
...
Poetry has helped me keep going through many difficult times in my life. In the eighties I was living in LA and reading Bukowski and his straight forward, raw style encouraged me to begin writing. In 2000 my marriage of twenty-eight years came apart. The next four years of heavy dating are commemorated in a self published collection called 'Dating at Fifty. I make hand printed books entitled 'Haiku I Found in the Trash'. For those who like to hear poetry rather than read it i have a podcast called the 'Book of the Blood, ' poems inspired by my children. Contact me at vudu8ball@mac.com if you would like to receive any of this material by mail. I have also written a hypertext memoir called 'Tales of a Time Now Past' which will tell you more about me than you would probably care to know. It can be read at my website http: //mac.web.com/vudu8ball. In addition to writing I take art photographs which can be seen on Flickr, search for budart. and make jewelry. I own a wholesale bakery in Seattle, have two adult sons and live with my girlfriend sharon in Pioneer Square.)
Sleeping With Cats, Or Trying To
From 'Dating at Fifty' a collection of poems about the quest for love in middle age
Trying to sleep with cats,
Cats not content to use their box discretely
But compelled by strange ambition
To dig to China after each smelly deposit.
Trying to sleep in blankets
Full of cat litter
Tracked in by the cats.
Trying to sleep with cats, not content
To sleep or read or wait quietly for the dawn
But driven to actively stalk
The largely fictitious wildlife
Of a two room apartments.
Trying to sleep with a new woman
In strange bed with cats….
Forget about it! ! !