A Poem for July

First of all, let me say, welcome to the three new followers. I have no idea who you are because I am still such a novice at blogging (after having had this blog for three years) that I cannot figure out how to look at who you are. I see "6 followers" where there used to be only "3 followers, " but when I click on what appears to be an "active link" to some sort of useful information, I get nothing. Well, what of it? I am happy to have doubled my following in the last month. I hope it is because you enjoyed my posts on the BAP blog. What an amazing experience that was. So amazing, in fact, that I contemplating using this blog as an actual BLOG, not just a holding tank for a monthly poem. It would be kind of nifty to transition away from the the gigantor mass email that I send to my "Poem of the Week" list and to simply allow you folks to follow me or not follow me...Since you are my first six followers, if anyone has any thoughts on the matter, let me know. I'm here to serve. It is called "servant leadership." Me=leader; you=followers. Wow, power is a heady thing...Meanwhile, here is a poem for July. Enjoy. Lisa

Hell in a Hand Basket

Would going to hell
be any less hellish
if we went—not
in a hand basket—but
in a foot basket
or in a hand cart?

How about in a purse
woven from lost eyelashes
or better yet, from stray
pubic hairs that litter the tub
with telltale spirals
of someone else’s desire?

Have you ever noticed
how going to hell in a hand
basket is a lot like going down
the drain? A horrible,
unavoidable sucking
sensation not unlike

being born. Face it.
Leaving the womb
was your first and only
entry into a hell entirely
not of your own making.
It was all laid out for you.

All future hells blossom
into an all-too-familiar
reminder of that first
wrenching separation
when you had to undock
from the mothership.

You know full well that—
given the choice—you would
have stayed tucked up in there,
full of eternity (and then some),
happily floating in your amniotic
ocean of love and mercy,

not in search of a savior,
or a pleasure cruise, or a warm,
wet paradise. Yet safe
in your palm, you'd hold
that coin for Charon’s boat
to cross the River Styx.

Lisa Vihos

Poem for June

As I predicted last month, the June poem does have a German flavor...


Brot und Zeit

Brot is bread
and Zeit is time.
If bread were time,
I’d slather every hour
of the day with butter,
forget about the fat.
I’d let crumbs fall
just where they may,
lick them from the corner
of your mouth.

If time were bread,
I’d match my Brot to yours
with meat between.
We’d toast our Zeit
whole wheat or rye—
it matters not. But yeast
to make each moment rise
a must. We’d share our feast,
thus: half to start our day,
half to nourish our night.

Lisa Vihos

Poem of the Week Transforms...

into Poem of the Month. You may have noticed that the weekly poems are not happening. That is because I felt like I needed to stop kicking poems out the door so quickly. I am moving into the "quality not quantity" phase of my poetic journey. So, after three years and three months of weekly poems, I am cutting back. I hope quality really does go up. We'll see. So far, all that has happened is that I have temporarily stopped writing. I have been very busy with other things in life, so I am not too worried. Not yet. My three years of discipline have taught me to think like a poet, so even when I am not writing, I am writing. At least, I think I am writing. We'll see. In the meantime, please enjoy the monthly poem, and feel free to delve into the last three years to see what is there...

I am heading to Germany today for two weeks. If the June 1 poem does not have a German theme, I will be very surprised! -- Lisa

Poem for May

iPads for Tots

“These toys are neat. The children love them.” –a preschool teacher in Milwaukee

On the topic of becoming real,
the plush toys know. This incipient state
is just around the corner of free will,
deep in the heart of the nursery, late.
When the child has nothing more than the dark,
dream’s door, and a velveteen friend to hold.
Today we let our charming gadgets speak
and push the child forward in a world
longing for buds on trees and imagination.
That fertile place, that hatch where iPads
may first have slipped to conscious thought. Don’t shun
these sparkly tools, these harbingers, these fads.
Let new be new, but let’s maintain the old, the frayed.
From the ragged edge comes love, human-made.

Lisa Vihos

Poem for April

Son Poem

How is a teenage son like a poem?
He is long and gangly but his stanzas
are rather even. His hair is perfectly

combed, and his scant words fit him
like a glove. He is one moment super bebop
cool and then hot like a pepper. He enjoys

the look on his own face, especially
when distorted in a maniacal grin.
Like a good poem, he imagines himself

a gangster, a troubadour, a bow and arrow.
He would steal your heart if you let him in
and bring it back, maybe next Tuesday,

if it suits his iambic pentameter. He ignores
niceties such as towel racks, trash cans,
and the call of civil conversation. He speaks

in monosyllabic haiku and will eat donut holes
all day if you let him; he will think of countless
words that rhyme with donut hole.

He picks at his forehead like adolescent poems
have done in secret since the Romantic era.
He is no stranger to comedy or tragedy.

Any resemblance to a poem, you say, is purely
accidental. And yet, he has this way
of yowling his hello on the telephone,

then offers a blank stare that clouds his face
when you ask for the details of his day.
Show, don’t tell, he seems to say. Leave me

alone, to my own devices, just like you did
when you made me, when you knit me
in the darkness of the rocking chair with dad.

I say, when I made you, I had no idea what I
was doing; did not even know the first thing
about making a poem, let alone, a son.

Lisa Vihos

Poem of the Week #167

What Goes Around

At five,
the argument
was with my mother.

I insisted that drum
begins with j. She
patiently claimed

otherwise and I
cried, but could not
prove her wrong.

At fifteen,
the argument
was with my father.

He said, rock n’ roll
is abstract. I said,
structured. I knew

I was right. I went
blue in the face
countering his theory.

At fifty,
there is no argument,
only a longing to go back

and tell that child,
that teen, to calm itself
and consider the parent.

Now, I get to argue
with my son. He says,
you don’t like anything.

He is wrong. I am wrong.
Or, rather, we are both right.
I leave it at that.

Lisa Vihos

Poem of the Week #166

Whisper

These days
there are all kinds of whisperers.
Horse, dog, cat. You name it,
someone is whispering to it.
American idols, who are they?
There are politicians whispering
behind closed doors, on cell phones,
to large piles of money. Who
are these faces and what lips
can whisper such secrets
designed to hurt so many?

As for me, I am whispering
to the trees. For so long,
they have whispered to me
and now I beg them, please,
teach us to be more like you,
steadfast, but flexible.
Don’t just hug a tree.
Be a tree: root, stretch
shade, blossom. Then,
when the wind blows,
whisper thank you.

Lisa Vihos