USA

johnsokol57@earthlink.net

On a Line by Lucretius

The old outcrowded by the new gives way.
Maybe that’s the source of our troubles

these days, as this planet spins around
and dies away and the music of the spheres

strays to dissonance. As for you and me,
I know this: we got caught in the din and fray

of those frenzied days, when all we had to do
was end our means and defend our ways.

I haven’t seen your face for some-800 days,
and if that's a fraction of what I should dread,

then let this planet spin around and die away.
Alone, I’ll grovel in forgetfulness and mourn

the day when the old outcrowded by the new
gave way. Save the tarmac, spoil the earth.

We’re all just feet of clay, and if omega point –
that day of no return – is just ahead, then there’s

no turning this planet around before it dies away.
Come dance one final clumsy waltz with me;

sway and fall, and grieve the future, in our one
small bed, and when the old outcrowded by the new

gives way, we’ll turn around and watch
our children watch this planet die away.

© Copyright, 10/1/01, John Sokol.

-- originally appeared in Ludlow Press, October, 2001

Pop Bottles, 1956

What a racket they made as they clinked
and clanked in our wagon to the wump

tha-wump of a funky wheel. We'd comb
the ditches and drag the creek, pan the fields

and scour dumps, and wherever we looked
we'd stop on a dime for another nickel.

By the end of summer diminishing returns
had us waiting for workmen to finish their lunch.

We'd trade-in their bottles for Mars bars
and Fire Balls, Milky Ways and money.

Once, down at the widest part of the Nimishillen,
Jimmy Cook and his gang pushed my brother

and me in the creek and ran off with our wagon
full of bottles. We were already soaked

and the sun was setting so we slogged through
the creek until dark and found more bottles

than we had before. By then, we were catching
lightning bugs, and putting a few in every bottle.

When we set them afloat, out on the water,
we stood in the creek, and watched our blinking

armada float away like money down the drain,
and money well-spent. And when they docked

in the harbor of a fallen tree - a hundred yards
downstream -- we laughed all the way

to that Nimishillen bank.

-- originally appeared in SLANT, Vol, XIV, Summer, 2000
* also in the "Archive" section of ForPoetry

Born Catholic in the USA

Sister Rosalita made her trains
of sixth-graders run on time

whenever she led us to the Stations
of the Cross. Chained to a rosary

that would choke a mule, she reigned
with a ruler and dovetailed the devout

with the damned as she marched us
to confession every Monday morning.

So, it was 'Bless me father, for I have sinned.
I stole more lumber from Mr. Paine's garage.'

You must stop this, my son.
What was your penance last time?

'Three rosaries, Father.'

Do you know how to make a novena?

'No, Father, but if you have
the blueprints, I have the lumber.'

Prisoners of War, 1956

my brother
with armies of plastic men
planes armed
with Tinker Toy bombs
and me Godzilla
crushing his tanks
his Lincoln Log forts
when out of his throat
an air raid fills the house
and alerts my father
who bounds the steps
and smacks me to bed
where boredom
rolls me over onto my side
to roam the labyrinth of grain
on the closet door
as time ticks away
to the sounds of my father
in his basement shop
building I figure
a cage for me
warnings of wood
and hammered spikes
that scare me enough
to hide in the closet
where I open a box
he stores in the cubby
behind some clutter
I find some pictures
I've never seen
dead soldiers
rotting in mud
missing arms
missing legs
faces gone
empty ruins
mountainous piles
of empty shoes
barbed wire
mass graves
overflowing
rows of matchstick bodies
naked on frozen ground
human cords of wood
burn my eyes
I can't move
so crushed
by weight of bodies
among which I am one
shaken and hammered
bombs exploding
metal to metal
blade of dozer
picking me up
and the corpse beside me
breathing my name
my brother
shaking my arm
shouting
get up get up
Dad says
it's time for dinner.

-- originally appeared in SLANT, XIII, 1999, Conway, Arkansas

In the Summer of Cancer

And we'll say baby ain't it all worthwhile
when the healing has begun.

-- Van Morrison

Butterfly weed flamed orange
in fields of chickory and vetch,
the white stars of snakeroot
glowed in the shade
of shagbark and beech.
The blues were out of season
and the bitchy crows
had no complaints.

When I asked you to put on
your pretty summer dress,
that's all you wore
as we walked down laurel
and hawthorne avenues
to our favorite kip
in the sumac grove.

And when you took off
your red dress, we thought
the healing had begun.
For awhile, at least -- a brief time
in the sun -- your hair grew back,
your veins were rivers,
your lungs had cleared.
Beyond our hills, Homer's reaper
was stuck in a ditch
and yes, yes, yes
we were screaming.

-- originally appeared in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 27, 1996

Alcohol

He quit the stuff years ago,
one April Fools' Day.
Still, he misses it; not so much it,
but all of its accoutrements: the crack
of a seal, the click of ice cubes, the clink
of bottle to glass. He misses
the labels on liquor bottles,
the memory of which he still collects,
like illuminated manuscripts;
antiphonal pages he once read
from aubade to vespers. He misses
the elegant, high-shouldered shapes
of wine bottles and the amber color of
bourbon (that sticky resin
in which his life was entombed for so long;
like a fly from some prehistoric Age of Denial).
He misses the aristocratic clarity of gin,
the watery secrecy of vodka,
the sting of Scotch, and, as much as anything,
the loyalty of that proletariat: the boilermaker.
He misses the seeming credence and dignity
that alcohol once gave to the free and ridiculous
flow of tears down his face
whenever he drank and listened to Mozart.
But what he misses most is how it could kill
and kindle pain at the same time; how it once
greased his grieving; how it fueled that fire
and burned the house down sooner; how --
after his wife died -- it gave excuse and reason
to his hours of shouting at the ceiling,
gave exemption to his hypocrisy: his calling upon
God, and using God's own name in vain
against Him while he asked -- not Him --
but the white walls: Why?

-- originally appeared in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 29, 1995

These Are the Days We Shovel Under

These are the days of famine and thunder
when bones show through the evening screen.
These are the days we shovel under
as fires burn and winds blow mean.
These are the days of vehemence born;
cretinous minds as thick as tar.
These are the days we'll always mourn
when we are dust and blown afar.
Yet who's to know what bliss we'll find,
how quiet the calm of the Morphean tide,
how cool the water we'll ferry blind?
Who's to know what stars we'll ride,
after these days of famine and thunder
become the days we've shoveled under?

-- originally appeared in Tucumcari Literary Review,
Vol. VIII, # 2, 1995

© All Copyright, John Sokol.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.