For all of you who have been following my posts, I want to thank you, and also ask that if you like what you see, please spread the word. It is very hard to develop a following when there is so much data floating around out there. I enjoy writing this blog but I could use a little feedback.
Thanks,
Glenn

In order to help celebrate Halloween, I am posting “Two Moon Night” (In the Cat’s Eye, 2009). In the book it was accompanied by a very fitting photograph, but you will have to use your imagination here.

 

I love this poem for the way it provides a rhythm to the mysteries and fears that possess most of us at one time or another; particularly when we feel the presence of the creatures that prowl the Earth in the early darkness of October and November.

Happy Halloween

 

Glenn K. Currie

 

Two Moon Night 

The devil dances, on the two moon night,

His breath’s cold vapor, freezing in the light.

And a ghost moon rides the fog’s thick back,

Searching in the darkness for fugitive’s tracks.

 

He dances, dances, dances,

When the ghost moon rides the sky,

And the forest fills with empty souls,

Searching for a place to lie.

 

Treetops bend to the banshee’s scream,

Timber wolves gather by lava streams,

Red coals burn beneath tainted ground,

Waiting for those the ghost moon found.

 

He dances, dances, dances,

Across the two moon night,

Stealing through the luminous fog,

Blocking out the light.

 

Forest beds in decay, collect the purged debris.

Tattered shades, drawn this day, mourn what used to be.

 Reapers rise from below, sweeping up remains,

As two moons light the devil’s dance, o’er his dark domain.

 

He dances, dances, dances,

Fanning the rising flames.

While two moons search the shadows,

On the night the devil reigns.

 

 

 

 

“Trees” (In the Cat’s Eye, 2009) is about the steady deterioration of the family unit in our culture.

In recent years, the importance of these family trees has been lost in the individual demands of a culture more interested in material attractions.

Our family trees are dying before our eyes: replaced by a dependence on a government that has no appreciation for the personal development of the individual and no ability to decipher the metaphysical relationship between nature and our pursuit of meaning in our lives.

We watch our family trees fade away just as we have seen the beautiful trees of our early history disappear. We will awake one day and find that not only the elms and chestnuts, but also the maples and oaks will be gone, lost to diseases that killed them from the inside out. We should beware that our own trees don’t also disappear into the clouds we are currently building around ourselves.

Glenn K. Currie

 

Trees

 

The “spreading chestnut trees” of Longfellow,

And mighty elms that guarded our small towns,

No longer wrap our culture in their cool embrace.

They have gone to rest with our ancestors.

 Even our maples and oaks are wilting in the sun,

Slowly digested by invaders from the Far East.

We worry about ozone layers and assault from above,

And hide inside our doors, unaware

We are dying from the ground up.

Too busy with our lives

To notice

The quiet deaths

Of our family trees.

 

I just returned from a trip to Colorado and Nevada. The National Parks were closed so we spent more time in Las Vegas than we had planned. We saw some nice shows (David Copperfield, Shania Twain and La Reve), but the hotels’ efforts to constantly put you in front of slot machines makes the desert a viable alternative after a couple of days. The jackpot noises that announce every return of two quarters from a machine, seem designed to drive one into an hypnotic coma, that starts at breakfast. You are required at many of these fine establishments to walk about a mile through their version of a  neon jungle, and then you are seated right next to the machines. For many, it truly becomes a war in which it is easy to slip into noisy surrender.

 

This is a new poem that is part of the larger “Breakfast Chronicles”.

 

Glenn K. Currie

 

Breakfast at Marilyn’s Café (Las Vegas)

 

Pompeii, Buccaneer, Outback Jack and Stinkin’ Rich,

Form a maze in the search for a neon-lit breakfast.

Early morning travelers with bags on wheels,

Blend with the scarred veterans of the night.

Marilyn’s is a temporary refuge from the black holes

That power the real “city that never sleeps”.

An old woman in red pajamas wanders slowly by,

Finally coming to rest at a penny “wheel of fortune”

Where she plays fifty games with one push of the button.

Marilyn’s prices are reasonable and the food is good.

Money is saved and energy renewed.

Aliens and cartoon characters await beyond the railing,

Where smoke drifts across the battlefield,

And survivors win and lose the wrong things.

 

Copyright by Glenn K. Currie, 2013

 

 

“Night Riders” (Riding in Boxcars, 2006) is about the world that exists after most of us are asleep. It is about people trapped: travellers moving among the deteriorating underbellies of cities and towns where the squeaky wheel gets no oil.

A late night bus is where people pretend they are elsewhere, but don’t know where elsewhere is. It could be about any of us, reflected in dusty windows, blinded by the headlights, and waiting for our name to be called.

Glenn K. Currie

 

 

Night Riders

The riders

Climb wearily up the stairs,

And scatter,

Seeking space.

Old women

Wrestling with shopping bags,

And boxes tied with twine.

Young men

With no baggage,

Except their birth.

 

The engine rumbles awake,

Then settles to a low whine,

Inviting uneasy sleep.

Approaching headlights

Ricochet off the glass,

Then disappear.

Blending with stops and starts,

And potholes,

In familiar rhythm.

 

The towns,

Strung out,

Like bread crumbs

On a winding path.

Mark places

To pass through.

The driver calling out

Their names.

A few departing,

Among the faded signs

And broken street lamps.

 

Those not asleep,

Pretending they are elsewhere.

Staring,

With empty eyes,

At their reflections,

Hiding in the dark.

Waiting,

For the driver,

To call their names.

I’m sorry to go so long without a post but I have been traveling and unable to get to a wi-fi site. Normally I will try to have a new post every couple of days.

 

 

I occasionally was assigned shore patrol when I was in the Navy. We would often patrol in the seediest parts of the ports we visited. Too often we would see children working the streets, growing up way to soon.

 “Child of the City” (Riding in Boxcars, 2006) is about one of these girls. She was one of many, but she caught my eye because she seemed so young and yet so old.

She had a technicolor tattoo of a butterfly on her shoulder. Perhaps once it had told a story, but it had long since been pinned to a wall in someone’s collection.

 

When I looked in her eyes, there was no one there.

 

Glenn K. Currie

 

 

Child of the City

 

Her shoulder butterfly

Struggled, feebly.

Trying to escape.

Caught in the cloth

Of the life weaved.

 

Her eyes were tired.

Her body, glazed china, broken

On city streets.

Cracks traced the edges

Of the pasted pieces.

 

She was a child,

Already bent with age.

Covers of a book,

With the center

Ripped out.

 

She stood on the corner,

Waiting a lifetime,

For day to end,

 

And night to hide,

The despair.

 

Time capsules can teach us a lot about maintaining perspective.

 

“The Cat” (In the Cat’s Eye, 2009), is about that point, about forty years ago, when I realized that material things all ultimately perish, but the life lessons of my childhood had persevered and were a constant in my life.

The “tiny crystal ball” is a remnant of my childhood that rests in my mind’s eye, and has helped me to see a little bit of the future, as well as the past.

I have a real one (although not the same one) from my children’s games that I keep on my desk to remind me of the things I learned “in my mother’s garden”.

This will probably be my last post for a few days, as I don’t believe I will have access to wi-fi service for a while.

Glenn K. Currie

 

The Cat

 

A cat waits by my door.

A visitor from the past,

Escaped from the mixing pot

Of watercolor memories.

He silently sits by the dish

Where pieces of my mother’s garden

Come to rest.

 

He stares unblinking,

Seeing me as a child,

Remembering me from decades ago.

I had stroked him for luck,

And played with him on sunshine days

When we lived in the hour

And the certainty of tomorrow.

 

I buried him by a catnip bush

On a crimson, autumn afternoon.

A day when the wind

Persuaded the white oaks

To let their golden leaves fly.

When promises were made,

Then forgotten in the aging season.

 

Only the cat survived,

Finally working his way to the surface

Among remnants of the cardboard time capsule.

His green iris was reborn in the sunlight:

A tiny crystal ball

Telling me what he had learned

In my Mother’s garden.

 

 

Breakfast at McDonald’s needs no location to describe it. Even the restrooms require no extra thought. It’s that place you go to when your plate is already full and you want no surprises.

In this segment of my new poem, The Breakfast Chronicles, I look at what is a tradition for the many who can’t bear to deal with forty different versions of coffee at 6:00 am, and want something to chew on besides the traffic reports.

Glenn K. Currie

 

Breakfast at McDonalds

 

A road worker in a yellow reflective vest

Feeds her cigarette into a long-necked fatboy,

And rushes to a waiting pick-up truck.

The drive-through creeps along,

As sleepy customers mumble orders by the numbers,

And any size coffee for a buck.

An old man in a dirty, Tequila Sunrise t-shirt,

Exits a side door and moves quickly to the fatboy.

He expertly removes the long-neck top,

And retrieves the still smoking cigarette, and two other butts.

A disembodied voice suddenly offers to help me.

I choose a number three meal and a Newman’s Own large, black.

Fully equipped for the road ahead,

I join my fellow commuters for breakfast.

 

 

I am going to post a couple of extra things this weekend because I will be travelling for a while and will not be in wi-fi reach.

I heard Billy Collins last night accept the Jane Kenyon award. Good stuff! Another poet with a sense of humor. Maybe someday people will realize he’s pretty good. Actually there was a line to get in that ran around the block. New Hampshire seems to like poets. They have certainly been good to me by buying over 5000 of my books.

Anyway, it seemed to be a good time to do some humor, so here is some thirteen-year-old stuff from my latest book, Surviving Seventh Grade (2013).

I guess the moral of this story is “he who pads his resume may find the padding stuck in an uncomfortable place”.

 

Glenn K. Currie

Kleenex and Potatoes

Billy said Irma told him

That a lot of the girls

Stuff Kleenex in their bras

To make themselves look more mature.

 

That didn’t seem fair.

What can guys do?

We were getting way behind

In trying to look mature.

 

Billy’s brother Dave, told him

He could try stuffing a potato down there.

I tried that at home,

It doesn’t work with boxer shorts.

 

I told Mom I needed briefs.

She got me some briefs,

But an Idaho potato looks weird.

Maine potatoes look a little better.

 

I tried walking to school with one,

But it kept shifting around down there,

And it’s not good when it gets in back.

Maybe I should stuff Kleenex instead.

 

 

When we lived in Texas, I actually got to know a few cowboys. They don’t equivocate, in fact I don’t think most of them know what it means: which is why you don’t see a lot of cowboys in Congress.

They seemed to me to be men of few words and lots of common sense. Their words of wisdom were things like “don’t squat with your spurs on” and “timing has a lot to do with the success of a rain dance”.

It struck me, however, that they had a lot to offer when compared to our current list of celebrities and idols.

I wrote “Heroes” (Daydreams,2004), one day when I was particularly discouraged over our choice of role models in our society.

Bring back Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy and Gene Autry.

Glenn K. Currie

 

Heroes

 

When did cowboys stop righting wrongs,

Doing good deeds and singing songs?

Did it exist that simpler time,

When hearts were pure and people kind?

 

We take such joy in crushing dreams,

In making things not what they seem,

Why can’t we let children pursue,

The innocence that we once knew?

 

Rules to live by have changed a lot,

Since Arthur lived in Camelot.

Knights don’t quest for the Holy Grail,

People try to make others fail.

 

It’s strange to me what’s on TV,

Everyone’s watching tragedy.

Shows with hope are considered lame,

Crime and sex the names of the game.

 

Our heroes now convey their views,

Appearing on the evening news.

Guys taking drugs, fresh from divorce,

Setting our children’s future course.

 

Have we really come out ahead,

Worshipping rappers, eyes so dead?

Perhaps cowboys doing good deeds,

Is still something the country needs.

 

“Kaleidoscope” (In the Cat’s Eye, 2009) is about the media and the general public. From their observation posts, they encourage beauty and innocence, and help bring it fame and celebrity. And then they seem to take delight in watching that celebrity get chopped to pieces in the camera’s bright lights. For too many, the plunge into the abyss becomes the best part of the story.

Glenn K. Currie

Kaleidoscope

The light waved to the north wind,

As she danced across the snow.

She was sunshine’s fresh-faced child,

Born to brighten the world.

But a tiger maple eye,

Captivated by her beauty,

Dragged her into his cave

Of stained glass and mirrored walls.

She brought light to the darkness

But fell through the glass, into an abyss,

And was cut to pieces.

Her bright blood flowed freely,

Mixing with the broken colors,

In a spinning vortex.

As they plunged into the depths,

They created fireworks

Of unimagined beauty.

And the eye in the eye

Was pleased.