The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Sat 11/04/06)

[RetroLounge]

Monkey Mind

When I was a child I had what is called an inner life.
For example, I looked at that girl over there
In the second aisle of seats and wondered what it was like
To have buck teeth pushing out your upper lip
And how it felt to have those little florets the breasts
Swelling her pajama top before she went to sleep.
Walking home, I asked her both questions
And instead of answering she told her mother
Who told the teacher who told my father.
After all these years, I can almost feel his hand
Rising in the room, the moment in the air of his decision,
Then coming down so hard it took my breath away,
And up again in that small arc
To smack his open palm against my butt.
I'm a slow learner
And still sometimes I'm sitting here wondering what my father
Is thinking, blind and frail and eighty-five,
Plunged down into his easy chair half the night
Listening to Bach cantatas. I know he knows
At every minute of every hour that he's going to die
Because he told my mother and my mother told me.
I didn't cry or cry out or say I'm sorry.
I lay across his lap and wondered what
He could be thinking to hit a kid like that.

Steve Orlen

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Steve Orlen is the author of five previous collections of poetry, including This Particular Eternity (Ausable, 2001), The Bridge of Sighs, and Kisses. He has received awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as the George Dillon Memorial Award from Poetry magazine. He teaches at the University of Arizona.



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RL

If you have a request for a certain Poet, post their name in the thread and I will find a poem by them and post it...

if you want to see some of my poetry, see the blog at:
http://www.myspace.com/retropaul

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. Good morning, my dear Retro..........

How sad this is.......

It is so exquisitely put........you can really see how his mind works...

To contemplate his youth with his Dad's anger......and to see where his Dad has gone now, in his last years.....

What an interesting transition!

But very sad at the same time.......

Thank you......:hug:

[RetroLounge]

3. ...

:hi:

RL

[wildhorses]

2. to be punished for natural curiousity--

i think maybe it is a good thing to be a slow learner when it comes to that lesson.

[reyd reid reed]

4. This is the saddest thing I've read in a long time

Curiosity is a wonderful thing; I'll grant that the questions of a child can be uncomfortable at times, but it's wonderful. THOSE are the questions that truly make you think and understand what's really important.

Sad when it's not seen like that.