Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream Vol 22 no 6

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Waterways:Poetry in the Mainstream



Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream, June 2001

A Phantom arose before me with distrustful aspect,Terrible in beauty, age, and power,The genius of poets of old lands,As to me directing like flame its eyes,With finger pointing to many immortal songs,And menacing voice, What singest thou? it said,

Know'st thou not there is but one theme for everenduring baAnd that is the theme of War, the fortune of battles,the making of perfect soldiers.

— Walt Whitman "Song of Myself"



WATERWAYS: Poetry in the MainstreamVolume 22 Number 6 June, 2001Designed, Edited and Published by Richard Spiegel & Barbara FisherThomas Perry, Admirable Factotum

c o n t e n t s

Waterways is published 11 times a year. Subscriptions -- $25 a year. Sample issues -$2.60 (inpostage). Submissions will be returned only if accompanied by a stamped, self addressed enveloWaterways, 393 St. Pauls Avenue, Staten Island, New York 10304-2127©2001, Ten Penny Players Inc.

http://www.tenpennyplayers.org cover photo by Barbara Fisher

Will Inman 4-5Geoff Stevens 6Joan Payne Kincaid 7R. Yurman 8-9David Michael Nixon 10-13Kit Knight 14-17James Penha 18

Herman Slotkin 19Ida Fasel 20-21Bill Roberts 22Albert Huffstickler 23-24Death of Col Edward D. Baker At the Battle

of Balls Bluff near Leesburg Va. Oct. 21st1861 (Currier & Ives, 1861?)

Frontispiece



tradition sucks at our ribs - will inman

tradition sucks at our ribsurging us to take sides. we hastento become our own enemy.

i was told oncethat Krishna came to a young warriorwho questioned war — and told him hemust choose sides and kill.

i knew then

that God, too, can turn us against ourselvesand each otherand that we must conquer

God's hateful wisdomnot by war but by healing

resonance.

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it is God, after all, who plantschaos in cosmos to keep generative processalive and that cosmos, sown,turns fury to a lotus bloom.

yet, lotusroots in darkest mud, so it may be

we must temper lovewith wonder.

24 Novembe

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If Love - Geoff Stevens

If love is a battle

then Walt was right,poets that write

of romance and its gossip,

all the tittle-tattle

of she-said, he-said,

have an enduring theme.

Love is the schemeof poetry, of immortality,

is the living memorial of the dead

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Another Tribe Goes Poof! - Joan Payne Kincaid

They put their children in clay potsand throw them

over the cliffmass suicide to save homes

and ancient lands(how hard people try to convincecorporate manipulators it is evilto drill away history and lives)

walking backward through artand dream to reality —the adults follow

piling up bodiesthat stop a river.

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Street in Zaragoza - R. Yurman

The children's eyes don't follow me the waythey do the boots and capes and hard triangular

hats of the three Guardia.I may be Americano, turista, I may have cashin my pocket — they'd rather dance in the streetand sing to the music of La Fiesta de San Jaime.

Only the sudden footfalls, sharp around thecorner, Guardia Civil, quiet them. Their eyesget round. They stare. The adults they turn tohave already looked aside — frozen in mid-gesture.

I reach into my inner pocket, lay two fingerson my passport. The three uniforms pass withouta glance at me or a nod to their countrymen.

They turn the far corner, their boot echoesfading. The music resumes. The children dance.It is 3 a.m. Spain

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Victors Are Liars - R. Yurman(Variation on a theme from Horst Fenske's Song of the Skinny Indian.)

Behind gunmetal gray faces

they carry home their orders.They swear on their hearthstonesthey don't enjoy the killing.

"They spend small change like talking.""They can whistle through their fingers."But beggars know they're misers.They'll never drop a coin into a cup.

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The Famine - David Michael Nixon

In the famine that followed,all turned fallow.

The bones protrudedas they walked.

The militarystood on the beachesto keep the foodfrom rolling in.

They could not keepthe fruit from rotting,but chased the starvingfrom the beach.

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The sand was silent,but was shifting,tolling the number

of the dead:

each grain that moved,a name.

First published in 'Voices for Peace', Apalso in 'Voices for Peace A Poetry Antholog

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May We Live This Moment - David Michael Nixon

In the hills, the deer are uneasyand hunters tramp the fields and woods

with guns that some know how to use.Possums lie flattened on the roadsand cries of crows decry the invasionthat provides and interrupts dinner.Tales float in from several countiesof hunters shot by hunters, evenone who tripped and shot himself.

Meanwhile in the cities, the murder countrises, children shooting children —disgruntled workers, friends, spousessettling their quarrels with guns and knives.

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Wars, feuds and dissings blossom,spreading red and blackening petals,and even nature turns on us,

twisters scattering beams and bones.

The quiet of ordinary lifeis eating our flesh, a slow dying,certain as the implacable sun.

This moment, we are here together,alive with multitudes still dying;next moment, any may be gone.May we live this moment while we have it,loving, helping, at least doing no harm.

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The General Has Hemorrhoids, 1863 - Kit Knight

A single blade of grassdangled from Grandpa's mouth

as he watched General Stonemanride gawky. As he leanedon the fence, Grandpa's grass

jiggled in laughter. "Look,"he said, "Stoneman flapshis elbows like wings;he's in charge of 10,000Federal cavalrymen andthe man can't even ride."Grandpa shook his headand winked at me. My dad,grandpa's oldest son,

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had gone South to fightwith the rebels. Our farm,seven miles abovethe Mason-Dixon line,

became part of a spynetwork. Food, medicinesand notes on troop strengthsgot through the lines inour wagons. Once, I carrieda coded message rolled upin my hair. My brotheralso served in Lee's armyand he said the menwere marching north andplanning to invadePennsylvania. Brother Billy

hoped for a chance to visitour Gettysburg farm; he hopedthe peaches would be ripethen, and would I please

make him a pie. Grandpapicked up a bucket sayinghe'd get some water, thencasually addedhe'd heard Stoneman ledan additional 2,000 mensince the Federal defeat atChancellorsville. Grandpaobserved, "The general,he don't rest easyin the saddle." I said,"I'm glad the Yankee has piles."

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The Bugs Love Him: 1864 - Kit Knight

My grief is like an inwardbleeding. I've received

one letter from my sonsince the Rebels capturedhim. I hadn't wantedRobby to fight in America'sCivil War; my son was bornin Nova Scotia and didn'tcome to New York until

he was 18. But Robert lovedthis country and wantedto atone for my grandfatherwho'd remained loyalto the British and fledthe American Revolution.

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"Please don't worry," my Robbywrote in 1863. I've read andreread that letter forover a year. Other men

who've been prisoners ofthe Confederacy all speakof harsh treatment andworse food. Sometimes,only a teacup of cornmeala day. And the thousandsof mosquitoes that never lighton dying men. They talk ofscurvy, rheumatism, constantdiarrhea and typhoid. My sonwrites, "Don't worry, Ma."My Robby went to college;

he surveyed and drew maps forthe Union Army. A formerprisoner tells me that oughtto be a comfort because

the educated class stands thesevere privations ofprison life better thanthe rougher sort. Sometimes,comfort comes from strangesources. In the final lineof Robby's letter, he wrote,"The bugs love me."Those four words are practicallyrubbed off because I'vetouched them again andagain and again.

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The Dying Slave to Michelangelo - James Penha

I hear your whistle keening in the air.Or is the whistle mine? It mustered me

once, manacled in my own potential,to feel your finely-tooled explosions tearmy skin from Earth's own womb of earth that Hewith only Word created. Essentialloss! but Self I found in your placentalhands shaping, smoothing, causing mine to be.So why sing you the dies irae now?

as your conception finally is freeto stand? I am no half-imagined heirof Onan, seed whom you may disavow.I live. From you. Pallas of Zeus's brow.New fingers loving me will feel your care.

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D-Day Newsreel - Herman Slotkin

I hide in Post Theater's anonymous blindand watch with eyes withdrawn to blend.

The screen assaults:Four rifled G.I.'s, burdened, lumber out of the sea.The last drops at water's edge.The heedless picture swings to wicked, lethal blasts—

clods, clumps, shards, shreds.

In the sheltering dark I run to him."Medic! Is he dead?"

"He is dead."

His burdens, which I can never name or escape,are now mine.

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He - Ida FaselWho lost/ What you lost goes nowhere

— Nietzsche, Vereinsamt

1. Election DaySieg Heil!Voices stretch handsto victory: Sieg Heil !New beginnings, halcyon dayshorror.

2. OutcomeWhen hestretched out his armshe blessed roaring thousands.His hate made havoc of live andlet live.

Round the

clock, round the worldpeople still pick up hisarrows, old when he passed on thepoison.

EvenSatan himselfat the judgment wicketwill find him over-qualifiedfor hell.

Note: The day was January 3

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Vincent Van Gogh: Any Self-PortraitIda Fasel

'A terrible beauty is born' W.B. Yeats

Face likea kicked-in door,eyes tense and watchful asif a gun were pointed at them,demon

within

always present,his expectable dreaddarkening the thousand skies ofturquoise.

His brushswirls under forceof anxiety andwill, the clear great want of his lifholding.

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Terrorist - Bill Roberts

My palms were sweating againwhen I met Pete some forty years later.I used to sweat all over back then

when we were in school and he,an ugly bully,was my one and only reasonfor being late so often mornings:I didn't want to confront himand go through the humiliating ritualof being grabbed by my shirt front

and shaken down,having to expose the contentsof my pockets and lunchbag.The years hadn't been overly kindto Pete, though his flower business,I'd heard, had made him wealthy:he was entirely bald —

not a pleasant prospect in combinationwith his menacing, pockmarked face —and the scars from various invasionsof his brain coursed wildly

over his yellowish skull.He slammed down the receiver,after eyeing me through the several miof his vituperative conversation,stood, lurched toward me,grabbed my hand and shook it nearly oWe spoke of old times,even joked about the money I had contr

to the purchase of his business.We spoke as friends —he not apologizing for his teenaged terme not mentioning I knew he was dyin

Published in The Raintown Review, Vol. 1June 1998 (as Bartlett B

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The Old Indian Said - Albert Huffstickler

How could there beany understanding?

They called it a wilderness.We called it home . . .

From: Poetry Depth Quarterly, North Highlands C

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Down ThereAlbert Huffstickler

It's not charted down

there. You can go downto the same place adozen times and nothingwill be the same. It'snot a place you learnbut a place you endure.It's not a place you

conquer but a place you enter to be changedand leave not knowingif you've changed ornot. It's a place

where death and birthhave the same meaningand magic is the ruleof the day. It's not

a place you come tounderstand but a placewhere you go to haveour understandingdestroyed. It's aplace where a hero issomeone who emerges

sane and goes on withwhat he is doing —though there are darkspots in his eyes thatwere not there before.

It's not a place that you go to for love buta place, to find love.You must have been to

and returned. It'snot a place where yougo to find the goddessbut if you do find herthere, she'll devour

you. It's the placewhere a hunchbacked

dragon mated with adying star which eonslater gave birth to

you.From Crimson Leer 2n

1996, Fa

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Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream Vol 22 no 6

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