Potato Soup: A Book of Poetry
By
Stan Grimes
Smashwords Edition
* * * * *
Published by:
Stan Grimes on Smashwords
Potato Soup: A Book of Poetry
Copyright © 2011 by Stan Grimes
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Table of Contents
For years I received a pay check because I was good at watching people, reading people. I enjoyed it because there are so many stories to be told on each face, each nervous tic, and each gesture. Watching is an animal instinct I believe. Watching and watching closely we learn much. Not just watching, listening…not hearing, but listening. Perhaps I could make the grand confession that I have watched others my entire life, from childhood until now.
It’s not an unnatural thing to do. After all, it’s how children and adults learn. Watching is vital to understanding. This small book is a result of watching with eyes tending to look into the soul of another, or perhaps looking into my own soul. Watching my friends is not confined to external stimuli. We must watch ourselves and how we react to rejection, to lost faith, and the negativity we generate as humans in this crazy upside down world.
For anyone curious about the title of my book, potato soup has been the security blanket of my childhood. In cold weather after a big day of snowball fights and slogs of sledding my mother would always have a pot of potato soup on the stove, perhaps the most warmth ever felt in my upside down youth
Long stemmed grass stuck between my teeth
shock of black hair blowing in a summer breeze
I lost count of puffy clouds slow motion journey
across my panoramic view of childhood.
I guess life awoke my sleeping innocence
eighteen and America counted on me
to kill protect uphold words written
before my naiveté before I could shoot a gun.
Dark spots growing across this wrinkled skin
tell a story repeated in so many volumes
so many stories lost on hills valleys jungles
headless soldiers burned like a Sunday barbecue.
Did Uncle Harry Grandpa Seth daddy Johnny
come marching home again hoorah hoorah
did anyone wave their bloody legless bodies
in the air and scream “I’m buying.”
America’s stories are written in blood
hot rivets and soured sweat let’s kill those reds
yellows blacks browns and baby eggs
let’s kill mothers collateral relevance is all.
Peace is reading a newspaper want ad
grandkids suckling in the parlor
growing gun hands and running feet
they too will learn too soon, too soon
So what’s your plan little child soldier
go to college learn you are useless learn
Thomas Jefferson loved black women
his genius mind is lost forever in ignorance.
Learn that God is only you inside a Santa suit
learn your parents were wrong about freeways
cause nothing is free especially not your way
money pays for the paper George and John wrote upon.
This is my America you don’t like you shun
like dumpster diving rat lovers
cardboard mangers sitting on steam grates
back alleys backwashes backstabbing.
Grab your last pay check and scream hoorah
parade your colors of black and blue
life is not mine to keep or yours to take
salute this brass bell America shoot my head off hoorah.
Neighbors
Is it time to change my linen
make the bed and clean the closet
chase the cobwebs from my head
and swing on a backyard tree?
No one would know
neighbors aren’t that way
they stare ahead without
knowing misery on your porch.
Too busy I’m told
to watch a neighbor die
too busy eating fast food
to think about my last supper.
Nothing to Say
What do you say when you’re out of words?
The dead horse won’t move
Phoenix won’t rise
like god above fluming ashes.
A hotel with only vacancies
a voice above the ocean’s roar
unheard unseen unknown
with no dreams sleep is barren.
A swinging sign
broken arm in the wind
for sale to no one
words cannot pay
for my rent or food
desperation is a lonely friend
time a lonely enemy
death the ultimate home for words.
Potato Soup
Snow
like bleached bones
crunching beneath our boots
everywhere
from where we came
to where we were going.
Prisoners
of some unnumbered Reich
we didn’t care
being caught in a battle of youth.
My face torn
bramble bush skin but I was sure to win
a medal as we dragged trails of tales
behind us like a pirates booty
tonight potato soup
would make the war worthwhile.
Still though childhood wounds fester
the war only stops on a flat line screen
a doctor’s pronouncement and a crying child.
Thoughts of Suicide
I sit cross-legged
somebody’s Buddha
staring at my carpet
brown and swirling
it makes faces at me.
I cover my eyes
yet still not blind
November holds a party
outside my window
snaps of lightening
shouting October
isn’t finished yet.
I think about my pills
wondering
would I look good
in navy blue.
Thoughts of You
What I know of you
a fragment of the whole
a morsel of cheese
from a larger wheel.
Knowing you is like dandelions
in a well kept cemetery
reality challenged
in a world of fantasy.
My dream of you is plural
you, me, and we.
There is more of course
words are like raindrops
falling
accumulating
and sadly evaporate.
My love, it is the cycle of you.
Wall Street
Is it so wrong to feel broken
glass broken bone broken?
Is it all right to feel remorse
for crimes written unwritten?
How is man justified
to take another’s breath away
to silence another’s tongue
for two cannot occupy one.
It’s written in universal emptiness
man and woman are and cannot be
any other way, it’s untrue you know
life is untrue, power is not given.
It is taken and wrestled to the ground
cuffed and collared brother
against brother, the war between us
Is man’s folly and no other.
Welcome
Bare baby slapped
twisted and gagged
born in violence
scabbing belly button
here you are
what’s next
momma’s tit
daddy’s gift to you
more violence
welcome to this world
don’t cry
don’t be hungry
don’t need
for god’s sake
don’t need.
Wonderment
You lay there quietly
half smiling
a gray monk morning
catching you beautiful
pristine
I shiver and cover
our nakedness
wondering in dead stillness
if you know I am here.
You Never Knew Did You
I guess we knew it would happen
tentacles of pain wrapping themselves
once too often once too tightly
so here we sit in the heat of disappointment
in the dead not knowing how to revive our death.
You listened but never heard
the finality of my summation
counted agony weakly creeping
across my tongue
you never heard.
Night Ride
Windless night greet me
old friend like friends should
smile before going
into a world without hope
or mutterings of daylight
you the blackest of stallions
galloping through my dreams
boldly running through washes
long forgotten
old memories return riding
roughshod for daylight
your wicked grin chagrins
even the pinkest streaks
of twilight.
A Cheap Hotel
It’s not time so you say
I sweat cold clammy
in the hot nights of Dallas
you roll a dollar and nose your way
to the nightstand fingers cut thin
again you tell me it’s not time
your breasts ponderous upon my bare chest
a whistling snort through a dollar bill
turned our world inside out
Now you say as you crumple into nothing.
A Dark Haired Boy
Not of this world
a young boy’s detachment
growing up alone.
He watched trains come and go
a fascination
nine years old, alone
he watched faces some smiling
others blank
blank to him, blank to his grin
sheepish and wanting
only to know their genesis
they only wanting a taxi
a friend a sister a brother
to greet them.
Sometimes they received neither
walking to a nearby diner
never speaking never admiring
the dark haired boy watching and wanting
to talk to love to understand
trains never static came and left
leaving the boy wandering
dark haired and alone.
A Short Love Story
You
ghost crab
inhumed
in sands of deception
waiting
for a tide of sunflowers
to set you free.
Cat in the Window
Cat in the window
marbled eyes staring
into the dusk without
hoping to escape
knowing otherwise.
Cat in the window
preening and clinging
to domestication
surveys its world
through marbled eyes
watching and waiting.
Contradictions
The gutless fish swims in green
rivers rushing north of poor
not underwater poor
under cardboard box poor.
A home in the center of Marrakesh
a flat in London with private wings
flying fish gutless clueless
deathless to those on city grates.
Buying gator shoes for queen mama
texting god telegraphing
arrival time to green heaven
the gutless fish on the 18th hole
water hazard trash hazard
on Chicago’s south side
a paved golf course leading
to the snap of a shaved pistol.
A game of gotcha daddy
not black enough to be a gamer
yet the rich get richer
and another wino shits himself.
Entanglement
The gooseflesh morning
left no traces of you
no imprints in my pillows
not even a follicle of your Roman hair
trailing on my faded sheets
just a shadow lingers
where we once lay
two entanglements
praying for the night to stay.
Farewell California
Looking at old photographs
California coastline
me
you carefully carved out
an art of sorts
you mustn’t worry
scars can heal now
I’ve put my knife away forever.
Father’s Day
Gray crane in the mirror
the years have been sad
spider wings above your eyes
sun channels on your cheeks
time caught you undressed
for the final dance
the final song wind chime haunting
will touch the ailing heart
and carry your river home
beneath the northern star.
His Memory
The lantern cast shadows
like so many tentacles
reaching to each corner
in the dank dusty room.
An old woman stared sadly
a young man’s picture
framed and time yellowed
she once loved him fiercely.
Outside wind whispered life
through cracked windows
with eyes vacant
time robbed her of expression.
Secretly she kissed the picture
tucking it deep inside
her heart broken chest
and slowly began to die.
Hopeless
It never stops
this ball of muck
rolling through my mind
like a pebble in a shoe
I can’t walk forward
until it’s been plucked.
The lingering dreams
never bring good news
just headlines of hopeless
hypocrisy
will I die in a homeland
that never was?
Daddy can’t fix this crumbling
rock
reality
it’s over all over
black boots tramp
inside my head
inside this muck ridden circus
called a mind.
Jericho’s Wall
Elbow propped listening to my radio
half sitting half supine
like a broken fence post
needing mended.
For now I remain propped and staring
at the broken wall between us
you graze insatiably upon my wonderings
like all the stones you’ve unturned.
The radio sounds itself
in spectrums of nostalgia
I light a cigarette trying to erase
the indelible words goodbye,
surely this fence is doomed
just another Jericho’s wall.
Momentary Lapse of Logic
What a nice surprise
this gray sky pause
amid insanity and blood red bites
shadowing me.
Impossible questions
never to be answered
but here at this moment
a womb of silence blankets me
cuffs me and I think for just a moment
I love you.
My Casket
I stared into my coffin
expecting to see me
traditional pose
pale and placid
arms crossed
death face chalked.
To my surprise
emptiness lay
where I should have been.
Instead I saw my world
spinning
a jewel amid the indigo of space
spinning faces
a gravitational party
pulling faces
distorted
disfigured
dismembered insanity.
Whatever happened to the silent repose
only death can bring?
Whatever happened to my dreams of love?
Thank you for reading this small morsel of literature, if it can be termed as such. Writing poetry is not an easy matter. The process requires the rawness of the writer’s inner thoughts to be bled out on pieces of paper, to expose one’s self to others. This task is not easy for individuals who desire to build a wall around their vulnerabilities and foibles.
I choose to let the world to view my thoughts in their naked form. I write honestly from the gut. I have tried writing rhymes, rhythms, Haiku, and in pentameters, but I have failed in each endeavor. Therefore I simply write, right or wrong. I will let the reader choose whether or not what they have read is prose, poetry, or just plain nonsense.
Again, I thank you for downloading and reading my contribution to your reading repertoire.
Sincerely,
Stan Grimes