Gettysburg

Gettysburg

  Southwest Writer’s Conference Award

  Twelve American Poems

  By Neal Donohue

  Copyright 2013 Neal Donohue

  All Rights Reserved

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  GETTYSBURG

  By Neal Donohue

  Gettysburg,

  I stood there, high atop of Cemetery Ridge,

  where ninety thousand blue soldiers

  broke Pickett's Charge and crushed the South.

  I stood there the night the Union boys sharpened bayonets

  on long black cannons, spitting black thick tobacco

  into the amber flames of the campfire.

  I sat beside General Meade in his solitary tent

  while he prepared to war.

  Good General Meade. Quiet General Meade.

  Silent as a cobra, crouching over map;

  calculating the cost of victory.

  Gettysburg!

  I heard the cries as bullets broke the bones of Blue and Gray,

  and death leaped furiously from head to head,

  crowning victims with wreaths of lead.

  I heard rifles cracking, whipping, blasting...

  sulfuriating the air with the stench of hell.

  Forty thousand dead and dying at Gettysburg.

  Just three days and forty thousand dead!

  Bayonets breaking while hearts bled and bowed

  gracelessly into unmarked graves.

  And quietly under glare of lamp,

  Meade rubbed his red sore eyes

  and removed another pin from his map.

  I stood beside General Robert E. Lee, tall, gallant, and straight

  sitting upon his gray steed, Traveler,

  watching ill clothed Southern boys topple like dominoes

  in the red, wet fields of Gettysburg.

  He watched cascading bodies, wave upon wave,

  being washed away by that great Blue Sea

  that shred its way through bayonets and bullets.

  Bitter, so, so bitter, ran the tears

  of Great General Lee at Gettysburg.

  Gettysburg!

  How hollow is its ring

  as I stand wearily above that damned graveyard.

  And with fire in my eyes, I spy that tall, black bearded Yankee

  stride across the scarred, stilled, battlefield.

  Then standing with stove pipe hat tucked tightly beneath his arm,

  he points his calloused finger at me and with the anguish of a bereaved father

  he swears the Republic will not bend, will not remain half slave...half free!

  And then I see the dust of one hundred years of slavery

  fall from my eyes at Gettysburg.

  Bright, glorious, Gettysburg!

  I heard chains breaking as America sang.

  So now, where cannons once volleyed red poppies blow,

  in the warm summer breeze, while green slumbering meadows

  hide the secret of sacrifice, a need to fight, to be free, to be at Gettysburg.

  ARABESQUE

  I venture down upon darkened ruins, ashen ruins,

  ruins of shattered dreams—scattered dreams;

  Dreams without memory, dreams without names...

  I see and hear the aromatic, arabesque, timbrel and cymbal delights.

  I wander in humble obeisance to wail at the Wall,

  While Bedouins show such solemnity.

  Yet at dusk, as my love lies beside me in prayerful adulation

  to this god who does not exist,

  Her eyes glisten as daydreams dazzle

  the crystal colors dancing through her pastel desires.

  Love's shadow lingers on her breast

  like a dusty covering for her heart,

  There my fears are remembered no more

  while dawn breaks shyly across her face.

  So, when night embraces my love again, encases my love again,

  those dim shadows of my forsaken life,

  like so many specters of unforgiving fears

  flee from me, and she, my love, beckons my heart to slumbering peace.

 

  MRS. HAMMERTOES

  The bag-lady traveling on the bus had hammertoes.

  She rode five stops through the city

  before she took off her old tattered shoe

  and winked at me.

  Shifting a heavy brown shopping bag

  filled with all her clothes from one tired arm to the next,

  she rubbed her sore foot and smiled.

  Wrinkled, crinkled, lonely, old lady

  Who do you think you are, and who really loves you?

  Where are you from?

  And where do you sleep?

  You smile, and smile, yet I do not know why?

  Treat your feet kindly, Mrs. Hammertoes.

  You walked a very long way,

  and still have a long way to go.

 

  MY FATHER'S EYES

  Award winning poem of the 1993 Southwest Writers Conference; Albuquerque, New Mexico.

  My father's eyes were colored simply gray.

  They closed them just the other day.

  I remember how sad his expression was,

  the last time I saw him lying there,

  in that lonely hospital room,

  dying beneath those neatly, tucked sheets.

  Crying was never a consideration.

  A handshake, a heartache,

  A painful long last look

  that wanted to say he loved me.

  But Irish men are baked in churches,

  They don't touch, and they don't cry,

  And they live their life without asking why,

  enjoying the cold, brisk, winter wind,

  And seldom lie.

  My father's eyes are mine today,

  They're very sad and very gray,

  and they weep for a man who couldn't say…

  he just couldn't say.

  And I'll be damned if I will ever know

  why God made him that way.

 

  THE DAY THE CHILDREN RETURNED

  I once had a brother, a pirate was he,

  who sailed about the Caribbean Sea;

  Proud for making himself a killing,

  selling pills to everyone's children.

  A bright, and busy boy was he,

  as busy as a bumble bee,

  buying a thousand of acres of land,

  mostly beaches, and mostly sand.

  Living a life so full of splendor,

  wonderful and grand;

  proving he was a very important man!

  But those children returned one day.

  Grown, worn, weary, and gray,

  and armed with their memories of pain,

  they found my brother.

  So, now, he's slain.

  CAM

  From her eyes I feel the sad plight of pain,

  as dark dreams drifts across her room

  melancholy shadows carelessly dancing away

  from her smile.

  She saw death once,

  flaming amber dark.

  But now she sits alone,

  knowing the strength of love.

  Living with silhouettes and dreams,

  masquerades and moon-beams.

  Lo
ve like a laser

  speaks through her wide eyes,

  deep, and wide, and ocean blue.

  So, now no thought is given

  for nothing said and nothing lost.

  GRANDPA'S DRUNK AGAIN

  So swift to save the son

  of your son from your son

  some have assume you've sat so long in the sun

  Somehow, you've lost your sense.

  Now you sit, stare, and sing like a swallow,

  strange synaptic songs, strained by senility

  and strongly shaded by your own charade.

  So much simpler to accept the only Son

  and save yourself, instead.

  Don't you think?

  THE DESERT ROSE

  On a rickety porch, in a blue faded rocking chair,

  long after the sun has spent itself

  and lies satisfied beneath the earth,

  a lady named Claire holds a desert rose

  sits and stares at stars left scattered

  in the midst of the twilight air.

  She rocks as she wraps her thoughts like a cradled child,

  shaping the moonlight with a kiss,

  knowing all love soon flees

  like a jasper wind in an autumn breeze.

  So, while churning flames of nocturnal yearning

  lie smoldering, no longer burning.

  Claire's nights are sheltered in satin sheets,

  cloistered by the time of a golden age passing.

  Like an owl she spies from the corner of her eye,

  the hour glass quickly sifting.

  Hearing the fractured portraits of lovers, long departed,

  Sitting up in her cupboard shelf,

  murmuring through her canisters of quilted memories;

  tapestries of men, handsome and strong;

  yesterday's delight, yesterday's song;

  The one's which grind and bump

  in the mucky hot summer rain

  while moonlight glows grandly

  and black cats poised on picket fences,

  curl their quivering arrows,

  and wail their love melodies.

  Like a misty scent soon tuned to musk,

  What's left is a heart shaped by colored beads and baubles,

  and crystal chandelier moments of desires

  once reflected in the twilight of her life.

  So, now the midnight stars twinkle at the feint painted memories of love,

  While Clair runs her fingertips across the petals of her desert rose,

  She rubs the damp dew across her face,

  inhales the sweet perfume of life released,

  and smiles, as she whistles to the lingering moon.

  LIKE A CHILD

  Can a snake eat a cake?

  Or catch a cold from a singing toad?

  At times I creep sideways in the dead of night

  hoping to feel like a crab.

  Other times I dance the Carrioca

  with minnows by the bay

  in the twilight of the quivering moon.

  I make noises with my cheeks

  when my mother sleeps,

  to make her wake.

  I don't fear thunder, it only makes me laugh

  because I sleep with my five-foot giraffe.

  So, you may hurry, or worry,

  until you lose the day.

  But I shall soar on an eagle's wing,

  Or stalk the night on tiger's feet,

  and raise my eyes up high

  and roar against the summer sky.

  I butt my horn against the darkest storm;

  tread on snakes, rocks, and thorn,

  to celebrate the day I was born.

  I see the twilight of dreams,

  that speak louder than those money schemes,

  Those terrible lies so soon to die.

  And if there be wiser ones who wonder why

  let me gently offer my reason.

  Love lasts longer than just one season

  and my life now is loosely worn

  like a garment, never again so easily torn.

  HAVE YOU EVER BEEN TO IBIZA?

  Have you ever been to Ibiza,

  the Mediterranean isle off the coast of Spain,

  where the sun shines all day and men behave like boys.

  Where Spanish children hawk their wares near harbor docks,

  and would-be artists, would be found,

  Where Scandinavian women, blonde and bare

  lie on beaches all the day

  or parade promenades with their perfect hips,

  just to leave you breathless.

  Have you been to Ibiza?

  Golden isle of paradise, filled clever people, idle people, drunks and clowns;

  jaded people, dark people, and even some dangerous ones, as well.

  Have you been to Ibiza?

  Where you see the artists, con-men, the fakirs, and spies,

  or those pretty women who shake their rumps all night long,

  that roll with the sweetness of life;

  while a Spanish sun just beats for fun,

  and laughs at your serious dreams.

  Tell me, have you been to Ibiza?

  Where the garden isles of parasites,

  the juggernaut of rich and elite, have lunch at four,

  and live off the fat of the landscape.

  And all those poor, pasty faced, druggies,

  the ones with the quick smiles, and the slippery handshakes

  who only live to die.

  Now tell me, have you ever been to Ibiza?

  Where the Spanish sun beats, and beats,

  and peirces like a great golden needle,

  but there is no wine that can water your thirst.

  There is nothing laid naked by a tongue that fits a tale so well,

  of men and mice, coffins and dice,

  of loose legs shaking unfamiliar beds,

  and broken hearts gambling in a Jambalaya of Brazilian melodies,

  burning brightly this liquid dust called life.

  POOR JOHN OF VIETNAM

  Poor John of Vietnam,

  woke up one morning and shot the wrong man.

  All the government lawyers said, they found John legally dead,

  Lying there with his bloody face torn,

  Bellied up beneath the flag, on the veterans hospital lawn,

  That well-kept, well watered, manicured lawn.

  “God damn! Five hundred dollars just ain't enough

  for a forty year old man who use to be tough!”

  But John--five hundred dollars is all you get

  When you're wounded for the money-market man on a losing bet.

  Poor John. Dirt poor John.

  Your war is over, and your anguish gone,

  But now, you're one more memory of my Vietnam.

  FATHER'S PRAYER

  Midnight, moon bright,

  angels sing beneath a neon light.

  on street corners late at night.

  Spreading wide, white silken wings

  across the black city sky

  to wipe the tear away from a child's eye.

  This red tethered scheming world

  delights in odes to crippled toads,

  grieves gangrene with selfish dreams,

  their vernacular greed, transliterated as need.

  But muse and magic, and chiming church bell steeple

  are granted to children, widows, and we ordinary people.

  And through the lightning, its brightens this nocturne

  to present to those hearts so dedicated

  with delightful psalms and madrigals,

  of portent visions of heaven

  and quiescent paintings of cherubim,

  clinging to harps against a yellow sky,

  turning and swirling, and watching us with a careful eye.

  So, now its time to go to sleep

  look only with your heart, your soul to keep

  Reme
mber the day you were born,

  not when your sorrow began;

  but when angels sang your song

  to the four corners of the earth,

  So you'd not forget

  God’s love is begotten for you on earth,

  His hymn to live each day without regret.

  ELEGY FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT

  Muhammad Ali is defunct!

  Damn, he was a handsome man.

  I still remember how he could knock them out...

  onetwothreefourfivesixseveneigthnineten...

  Right in a row...just like that!

  Jeez, you should've seen how he would stride into an arena

  and set it on fire, swirling in those red tasseled, silver bullets

  he wore for feet.

  I still hear the roar of ten thousand voices rise

  as that conductor would lift his red gloved baton

  to twenty thousand eyes,

  leading a familiar choral chant of boxing fans in delight,

  expectant of another show from the black magician that night.

  Hah--lee!

  Hah--lee!

  Hah--lee!

  And as the gong of each bell would ring,

  a matador's dance would quickly begin.

  Flying...flashing!

  Dodging...bashing!

  Miraculous machine created by a black god

  to wreak havoc on white reality.

  Tiger in a rage,

  clawing his way out of a white man's cage!

  ...a white man's war!

  ...a white man's law!

  Diamond burning on a crown of fire

  each and every battle lifting him higher.

  Star streaking across an American sky,

  World luminary drawing the eye.

  Manila.

  Zaire.

  London.

  Japan

  Universal heart. Universal man.

  A hero, a dreamer,

  A merchant, a schemer,

  A blind teller of tales,

  A giant jumping walls needed to be scaled