We keep a folder of new poems, a place where they sit and age a bit. Like most wines a poem needs to age. Here are a couple pulled from the pile:
Reverie
on Maine’s Rocky Coast
on pondering what
has been long pondered
the significance
of redoing the obvious
seeking profundity where
countless predecessors
did the unceasing same
watching tired waves
crash on ancient rocks
reflected golden sun
fractures away on
the undulating surface
a seabird effortlessly glides
through splashed foam
as if to signal
a trenchant answer
to something not a question
transcendence is found
in being present
where contemplation
is blithely generated
to finally end
an emptied shell
dropped back
by a screaming gull
into a persistent sea
- a new poem by Duane Robert Pierson
2009
Passing a Looking Glass
A pathetic old fool
caught in a mirror
quite by chance
Quite an encounter,
a frightening event
Uncovering sad truth
like an old love letter
forgotten in dusty drawer
A vision suspected
yet never acknowledged
Stark vivid reality
viewed from outside in
The graffiti of age
rudely disfigures
an unclouded page
Perhaps mistaken
There is no chance
- a new poem by Duane Robert Pierson
2009
Applied Quantum Mechanics
History's rhythms ride the waves of time
Find comfort in the constancy of discord
Lo, old triumphs generate inconsequential
transforming to odious worn memories
Dreams only seductive synapse impulses
Lament the lost surge of youthful optimism
For just one fleeting moment we shine
like a sun caught single piece of quartz
on a vast expanse of sandy beach,
itself beautiful for the fact of its composite
Beware the tyranny of randomness,
probability an opiate to the hopeful
Futility is not to be found in having existed,
aye, the plaintive cry is imbued in that once is all
Truth being each minute becomes incrementally less,
yet, there is satisfaction in the quantum process
- a new poem by Duane Robert Pierson
March 2009
Excruciating Tremor
These are not pleasant sounds
assaulting our reluctant ears
and provoking pitiable tears,
a steady beat of cries, whimpers,
and horrific screams menacing
our persisting innocent dreams
What species is this,
what raging bloody foul creation?
Can incrementalism be applied,
a varied depth of revulsion
to raging indiscriminate slaughter,
loathsome bloodletting hatred
denying rational description,
to cold vacant morality
that leads to lopping off limbs,
wanton rape of women and children,
selling women into sexual slavery,
permitting rape and sale of children,
stealing the food of the starving,
shredding cultures for coins,
creating child warriors?
Is there a quality to be found
in killing without torment?
Can humanity's senses be so dulled,
awareness of outrage so benign
that we can be at ease,
can nod in acknowledgement
that we can smile and enjoy
our resplendent consuming trivia
while begging pleas for mercy,
excruciating screams of terror,
death chortles rend this planet's air,
an element that we share?
These are not pleasant sounds
assaulting our reluctant ears –
- a new poem by Duane Robert Pierson
January 2009
My Saddest Song
I wrote a love song
for a man to sing
in hope a sweetheart
to me it would bring
Many a pretty girl I have met,
but she is the prettiest yet
Oh, as the night grew long
he sang my plaintive song
What affect that tune did make,
many a heart it will surely break
My intended sweetheart,
she did deeply sigh
Indeed, not an eye
in that crowd was dry
I am not a happy guy
No need to wonder why
My pretty girl, she did fall
for the singer across the hall
Singing my song he soared
with her blissfully aboard
I a little wiser, a lot sadder
She, the prettiest I have met,
lost to the best verse
I have written yet
- Duane Robert Pierson
1985
Martha
A hard flame to kindle
Her name like America,
homemade cherry ice cream
and warm colonial things
Hundreds of words not said
all lost in fantasy’s bed
Futile mutterings to specters
cavorting about in my night
Desire that we come together,
obstinate fantasies again and again
I fear a polarity of our souls,
dissimilar wants never to meet
We fools write poems of love
Vain efforts throughout time,
scribblings that do not survive,
wishful groping pleas
Yet foolishly we try again
Search for why-
her name
the girl
some need
something
What is time to one’s loneliness,
careening desire, boiling love,
lust described as passion
Concentrate and compress
Make it a tiny grain of sand
placed upon the cosmic beach
where wash the waves
on our emotional eternity
Through the dark night -
I cry
I scream
I lust
as so many before
Ridiculous in rationality
Other eyes appraise her,
surely carnal predators
impugning my assigned purity,
tearing me internally asunder
I love a girl named Martha
There, it is actually exclaimed,
whispered a thousand times
Write a sonnet if you please
about counting the ways
All that matters is stark reality -
she does not love me
we will not exist
I plead to time to let tenses slip
into the comfort of memory
I loved a girl named Martha,
her name was like America -
myths of certainty,
of what should be,
homemade cherry ice cream
- Duane Robert Pierson
1966
A New Poem by Duane Robert Pierson, September 2008
Already gaining traction with the stock trading crowd
The Algorithm Blues
Got them algorithm blues
Thumping technological news
Squirming little parasites upon
the fleas that bite the dog
Billions of bytes of data
and me, and you, just bits,
corpuscles in the body economic
Thousands of math geeks,
their pasty fingers upon buttons,
feed and churn every possible fleck
into massive copulating equations
that strip away our nonobjectivity,
depreciating nuance, voiding humanity
Empiricism rules, inseminating
the gangling computer models
Humans reduced to data pods
Thoughts dreams ideas converted
into utilitarian statistical mush
A black hole that sucks in privacy
converting it to market feed
It crushes our layered simulacra
into a singular utilitarian form,
fertilizing the insatiable marketplace
Ah the incessant electrical humming
of those sad algorithm blues that
shake freedom's willful essence
where even tears are collected,
registered, processed and projected
A New Poem by Duane Robert Pierson, June 2008
Annullo
Walk about knowing
they are there everywhere
mechanisms of transmission
cell phones, radios, satellites
dutifully emanating electrons
all pulsating and emitting
digital and analog formats
flitting about and streaming by
The trite and the meaningful,
intimate conversations impact
and we cannot feel or hear
We know they fill the air
swirling around and through,
invisible gusts of verbiage
descending somewhere into
an instrument of reception
Venture to Plato's cave
guided by sage Socrates
blind one's thinking self
experience another reality,
listen to the shadows on the wall
Practice secular aniconism,
shun the graphic image
They are truly there,
these hypothetical waves,
free in Aristotle's ether,
what he thought was something
but it is nothing but nothing
Now see the unseen
shift the polarity of reality
We are engulfed within
spatial spirals and convolutions
winding about us like endless
black strands of spaghetti
composed of electric ions
They striate the infinite ether
randomly bounce and careen
converting to fixed rhythms
Flip a cosmic circuit
break the connectives,
the bits flutter and fall
a lifeless black snow
of no purposeful utility,
all of cognition neutralized
into nonfunctional particles
The electron defeated,
a cyber catastrophe
No sound but silence
except when the expanding
cosmos hisses and roars
A New Poem by Duane Robert Pierson, June 2008
From an actual event on a neighbor’s farm remembered by the poet from his boyhood
The Wreck in the Meadow
A liquor delivery truck
failed the sharp turn
by Sherrill's lush meadow
early one spring morning.
That a quiet sleepy place
with a tiny meandering brook
rife with frogs and watercress.
Scattering across the wet green
flew bottles of every brand.
Heifers grazed undisturbed
looking on with bovine disdain.
A morning shift of workers
commuting to a nearby mill
gazed in credulous wonder,
awed by this dream come true.
Sherrill finished morning milking
ready to accept whatever event,
anything to disrupt a farmer's day.
His a primitive farm, ancient machines,
iron wheeled wagons, and draft horses.
He scratched a hard living from
patches of green on thin soil
beneath limestone escarpments.
The shaken truck driver waits
with hands on his head,
this not to be his best day.
Eagerly entreated by opportunists
declaring this indeed a blessed event,
he reconciles to inherent affability,
telling all to help themselves.
Thus does destiny sway and turn
The sleepy meadow soon picked clean,
songbirds and damsel flies flit about.
The mill’s day shift is soon sent home,
their drunken revelry a legend born.
Sherrill too harvests this bounteous crop
gathering arm loads of bottles to
cache in dusty nooks and crannies,
behind beams, in hay lofts and feed bins,
through the rambling old red barn.
As a farmer’s work is never done
he had never tasted demon rum.
Now with opportunity presented
a latent thirst was awakened.
A wary righteous wife stood guard
diligently alert to evil inherent
from such easy dubious bounty.
Nevertheless, he imbibed regularly
sampling from this ample reserve.
She never knew to pull a cord
hanging from the water trough
attached to a bottle deep within.
Old age crept in like an autumn frost
while tired joints and muscles
were ritually lubricated by a gift,
tonic delivered unexpectedly
on a long ago spring morn.
In a joyous postscript,
we tore down that old barn
many years, aye decades, hence.
We found dusty remainders
and will attest that if anything,
those brews improved with age.
We hoisted a drink, or two, to ole Sherrill,
a tired farmer and a damned good man.
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