John Paul Davis: Some Poems

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John — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 14:21:09 +0000

Terribly sorry, but the poems are taking a rest.

Crazy

John — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 16:19:52 +0000

You don’t have to hear voices,
hallucinate, or be clawed by unrelenting fear.
You don’t have to hole up in a belltower
peering down through a sniper’s scope
or devise elaborate schemes
to overthrow the government.
You don’t have to talk to yourself,
steal things you don’t need
or drink yourself down to darkness.

You just have to ask a question
no one wants asked, walk on the grass,
take a path not shown on the map.

No need to break down in the canned
fruits aisle with everyone watching.
Just stop smiling when you’re not happy
or stop praying when God quits answering.

Why bother with multiple personalities
or schizophrenia when you could just get angry
when the gears and talons of the powerful
cut the small and meek?

Don’t meddle with depression:
just be sad when you’re lonely,
cry when you need it,
laugh when things are funny.

Just be gay or black
when the world demands straight
and white, just be woman and strong
when the world wants girl and weak,
just be poor and outraged
when the world wants hands
for the assembly line.

Forget the paranoia. For more effective
to be unafraid. Ignore the terror alerts,
the killer bees, the bird flu, the killer
storm. Stop looking over your shoulder,
stop caring what they hear at the other
end of the wire, stop worrying if you’ll
be fired or if you’re sexy enough,
or smart enough, or trendy. That’s enough
right there, stop worrying,
or really, just try making
the slightest bit of sense

and watch. They have a term
for what you are already, a webpage
and a self-help book. They’re praying
for you, and know the five step plan
by heart. They looked it up,
they’re ready to tell you,

the reason you want to sing
when you have a song,
there’s a pill for that, and hours
on the couch, pouring out your
story to a friend-for-hire
whose story you will never hear.

If you want to be crazy,
no need to pile up bodies
in the basement or drink
the spiked kool-aid.
Just refuse the money,
visit Africa, find the bright
line you need to walk
and walk it, unashamed,
clumsy, but head held high.

Name Poem: Brooke

John — Thu, 31 May 2007 16:59:00 +0000

An opening or closing
door, a footstep,
the space between breaths,
one quick laugh, child
hoisted up in a strong arm,
a measured gesture,
force of water on its way
to the ocean’s openness,
a clean silence,
a flame or a darkness,
a look upward, a nod,
life leaned against hope
like a child leaning
into a tree’s trunk
as it climbs higher,
higher, wanting
to touch the sky.

Mother’s Day

John — Sun, 13 May 2007 15:18:06 +0000

The world is made of rock and breaks
us when we stumble. We are born unseeing.
We are born and borne by women
who wear our birthing on their bodies
still, who bled for us and cried
and whose hands stung with years of work
who stepped heavier as they walked,
carrying us. Some woman worked
a life out of the world’s hardness
and gave it to each of us, some woman
gave over her body and mind to that work,
some woman watched us break
ourselves against the world
and choked back tears, some woman
exulted at each tiny victory,
some woman’s hand was at our back
for our first bumbling steps,
some woman’s voice feathered
our ears late at night as we slept
writing love without measure
into the pages of our very souls.
When we raged and spat
it was some woman’s heart we broke,
and some woman worried,
wearing our blood
in an emergency room somewhere,
and some woman was our playmate,
confidant, teacher, theologian,
and in the years below time
before words came, each of us moaned
the universe’s name for her,
a hum through parting lips,
mother, mama, mére, mathair, mam, umi, oum, em,
music of everyone’s first kiss,
first breath and greeting to the world.
Some woman cradled us, reveling
in that song and saw us without judgement
and knew us and opened up her life
for us and lived in that space
when we left it behind. Some woman
was open-armed to receive
and let us go, inhale and exhale,
the rhythm of the world.

Standby Mode

John — Sat, 12 May 2007 17:51:08 +0000

You’re the day’s leftovers,
yesterday’s news, the last resort.
Get used to it. Your blues, beautiful
but merely a soundtrack
for everything else more important
in your audience’s day-planner.
You’re the heart’s graveyard shift,
bench-warmer, friendship’s
purgatory. Take comfort
that the hold music
isn’t easy listening;
take the backseat,
learn to find the harmonies
in the ride’s white noise
as your heart tightens
like a guitar string,
singing til it snaps.
Why you keep coming back
is the mystery. At the end
of the day, when everyone’s
gone home, asleep,
no one’s looking and
you’ll get a call,
a look, an uncharacteristic
tender touch that melts
away every inconsideration
and ignorance, and you’ll fall
asleep without crying
by telling yourself
being needed is the next best
thing to being loved.

The Dream

John — Thu, 10 May 2007 11:54:35 +0000

“What’s your dream,” she asked me
but it was the day after you told me
so of course I could think of nothing
else, and really, how, in a world
like this one, could I dream for myself
of success or comfort when the gears
of the dark world turn against so many
of us, when the hunched shadows
of men leer over the trembling
bodies of women, when men, covetous
and clawed, forever try to break or own
every strong or beautiful woman,
when there’s a scrabbling, a ravening,
a sick virus of lust in the hearts of men,
when fathers, for the sake of the pointed laws
of father-gods betray their daughters,
when the whole coughing machine
of society seems built to press them down,
the bold, the brilliant, the inventive
and irreverent, the hard-working and holy
women who bore the world
and have borne the world on their backs
till they were bent over
and who then believe, as they’re told,
that a curved spine and work-worn
hands are not beautiful,
how can I want anything for myself,
how can I dream of anything but an end,
an end, a new day, the death of that ancient
demon curled round the minds
of so many, too many,
too god-damned many men?

At Night Your Eyes

John — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 12:28:49 +0000

at night your eyes sing
and the fruit of their song
is the universe of dreaming

i fall into them, a white stone
in deep water, wobbling down
to the world’s hot pulse

where I am carried on the current
of its blood through the thundering
caverns of of its persistent heart.

i’m swallowed by a whale,
spat out on a sparkled shore
under the minuet of stars.

it’s like i got hit, ambushed,
my whole chemistry is changed,
or its a new world i walk in

though sober as a stone
i reel, giddy, drunken,
i stumble, giggle, sigh,

i can no longer read maps,
tie my shoes, cross the street,
walk a line, start to breathe.

i’m permanently dancing
in sea of walkers, i sing
like a schoolboy all afternoon.

i’m crazy, i know, a fool,
but i’m helpless, so at night
i dive into your eyes

deep into the universe of dreaming
and walk the otherworldly paths
and kiss you, kiss you, your singing
eyes, your lips’ nectar, strawberries and wine.

Xenia Ave. Love Song #2

John — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 12:56:02 +0000

The smokers are out on the bench
as always and the dogs lope
in the shadow of the Emporium
where inside someone’s plunking
on the piano and the old men
sip their coffee and eat soup.
The teenagers fan out and snap
back together like starlings
in flight as they loop down
and back from the Sunrise
to the gas station to HaHa’s
to the skate park and back again.
There’s a local celebrity
doing ollies on his skateboard
while the tourists rubberneck
and scramble for pens and paper,
wanting autographs. Kids glide
and bound down the sidewalk
like bees around the ankles
of their parents, slow as flowers.
Motorcycles lined like dominoes
in front of Dino’s where the music
is good but loud and the college
students and professionals clatter
away on laptop keys in the window
seats. Ripples of laughter roll
from the patio at the Tavern
like the sunset splashing itself
all over the Winds where the ladies
and gentlemen float from their car
alarms to dinner and wine.
Robert’s selling t-shirts with puns
on them and Pierre’s painting
a mural of our kids and Steve McQueen
is having a smoke and Wendy’s
smiling down the block and Joan’s bright
eyes shimmer like the day.
Up on ahead is the US highway
and it goes on and on,
someplace else, wherever
those 18 wheelers go,
but I’m staying right here,
and everything is not fine
but I’m sailing down the avenue,
I fell in love with a place,
and every animal needs a home
the sunset paints it all,
every bird rests its wings
and here we are, here we all are.

Name Poem: Hannah

John — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 12:44:30 +0000

palindrome, ouroboros
like the universe’s first living thing,
two breaths, one for sorrow,
one for joy, a heartbeat,
blink of an eye, a petition,
small “a”s and “n”s
crouched down behind the high
walls of “h”s like a city
under siege or churchgoers
at prayer, lips puckered
for a kiss, song of the blood
singing in your ears
as you fall asleep.

Name Poem: Eric

John — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 12:42:18 +0000

flip of a switch,
sword singing
as it’s freed from stone,
metronome, a charging
bull’s footsteps,
a flirting wink,
a guillotine’s clean path
through tobacco,
key to a door in the house
you haven’t found yet,
clink of ice cubes
in a tumbler, the open
heart, red hand that pulls
you up from the day’s defeat.