World Poetry Day

TODAY has apparently been tagged World Poetry Day, and I approve of whomever declared this (who does this sort of thing?) and it is the sort of thing that I can get behind contributing to. The Lose has been hard at work here on a new novel, which is entitled Queen of Diamonds and will hopefully be done here by the end of 2017. This is the reason why there have been so many crickets in this space lately.

I wrote poetry for years, a collection of which is available here and here or by clicking on the Dream So Real gadget on the right of this page. I mainly stopped doing it because I got frustrated with the fact that, rather than expressing anything new, I found myself just saying the same thing again and again after awhile. I came to hate the form – or, more to the point, I came to hate the poet more than I hated the poetry. I also found myself gravitating towards long form work instead. Either I write something in one page or 400 pages, but nothing in between. Welcome to how my mind works. It is a dark and scary place.

This is probably my favorite poem that I want to share. I wrote this in 1999 while living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It was previously published in Sycamore Review, the literary journal of Purdue University which, for some unknown and wonderful reason, decided to feature my work prominently in one of its issues. I hope that you like it.

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Why I Don’t Dance

   DANCE TO THE MUSIC THAT
   HELPED WIN WORLD WAR II
    — Showbill on a library bulletin board

   I didn’t know we dropped
   sheet music on Dresden
   — Geoffrey Escandon, guitarist

About once or twice a month, we
would schedule a band to come
down from the city and set up
their equipment beneath the NO

SMOKING museum piece hanging
from a nail at the south end of
the hangar, the old Air Force base
having fallen into a state

of disrepair since the Air Force
was downsized. Peace is hell. The dance
organizers made sure to book
swing bands or jazz bands or even

rock ’n’ roll, disregarding raised
eyebrows from elders in hopes of
attracting the young people, since
dances, like weddings, should showcase

the young, with codgers reduced to
showpieces. We would justify
these dances by tying in a
4-H fundraiser dinner or

charity auction, which always
was poorly attended since the
same ten items were donated,
and, us guys, we would polish our

automobiles and dress in black
suits and shined, underprivileged
shoes and dollop up our hair like
movie stars, and the music would

resonate, rattle off the beams
and our feet would ache, because they
don’t park æroplanes on parquet
dance floors, and the bands we booked would

usually play two sets in
exchange for a few hundred bucks
and all the apple pie they could
stomach, but we stipulated

they return to the makeshift stage
for an encore, at which point in
time us guys would stop being friends,
elbow and trample, skid across

the concrete to grab the last dance
with the prettiest girl. Mothers
would blush for their daughters’ catches,
offer invites for dessert. Tea.

Our proudest citizens met their
wives this way. We’re a small town in
the wheatfields off the highway. We
love the orange of harvest moons.