EENNCCOOUUNNTTEERRSS

EENNCCOOUUNNTTEERRSS

KEN SCOTT

Lamplighter Books

Akron Pennsylvania

Copyright 2006

TO KRIS

Everyday I anticipate you…

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am indebted to the following people for helping hone my craft:

Kate Northrop for challenging me to consider what I really wanted my

poetry to do and teaching me the value of revision, Michael Peich for

teaching me the constitution of books, Anne Herzog for introducing me

to slam and confessional poetry and for highlighting the voices of

minorities, Marianne Sullivan for her encouragement when I really

began writing poetry, Don Bender for giving his unbiased and gut

reactions to my poems, and most of all, my wife for being honest and

cheering me on.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction 1

Imprint 9

SECTION I

Weighing the Future 13

Wedge 14

"I Was What Came Before Words" 15

The Isolate 18

December Hope 20

First Corinthians Thirteen: Eleven 24

SECTION II

Liking Your Poem, The Neighbor 29

I You Here 31

The Grand Opening of Poppy's 32

Securing the Future 34

Sway Babe! 36

The "I" in Villian 38

Immortal Me 39

SECTION III

Amishland Cow Tipping 43

Morning Mule 44

Off Kilter 46

Freeing the Caduceus 47

This Is My Pennsylvania 49

Panajachel 51

Flicked 53

Birkenau - January 2005 55

Neanderthal 57

The Jest 59

K 60

The Poet Fades 62

John Deere God 64

Works Cited 67

Other Publications 69

~ 1 ~

INTRODUCTION

French critic and poet Paul Valery once said, “A poem is never

finished, only abandoned.” Relinquishing these poems to this

collection, I, as a poet, must let them go and move on to develop fresh

ideas and new verse. However, before reaching this end, a poem must

first be conceived and crafted.

These poems embody my encounters with life, hence the

collection’s title Encounters. “Imprint,” a poem about a child

experiencing the natural world, introduces the collection with a

warning not to forget the common, that it contains truths to be

remembered and discovered. This thought haunts our reading as we

move into the rest of the collection. The first section, which focuses on

my family and growing up in a rural area, includes poems such as

“December Hope” and “Wedge.” Poems like “The Grand Opening of

Poppy’s” and “Sway Babe!” in the following section carry a more

personal tone. The last section highlights such poems such as

“Panajachel” and “Flicked,” which were conceptualized from my life

journeys and readings.

I create poetry in many ways. Sometimes I mull over an idea in

my head for days before writing it down. Other times, I receive the

idea, and immediately begin typing it. However it occurs, I find myself

weighing what I have written against the poetics of two writers I

consider my mentors: Romantic poet William Wordsworth and former

Poet Laureate Billy Collins.

~ 2 ~

Wordsworth challenges me to consider the audience and how I

present information to them. Regarding his poems the Lyrical Ballads,

Wordsworth writes that the poet needs to choose the

incidents and situations from common life, and to relate

or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible in a

selection of language really used by men, and, at the

same time, to throw over them a certain coloring of

imagination, whereby ordinary things should be

presented to the mind in an unusual aspect. (Wordsworth

574)

First off, he chose the “incidents and situations” from the catalog of

real existence, using subjects such as nature, labor, and relationships.

He believed the poet must take these subjects and “throw over them a

certain coloring of imagination,” making the usual seem unusual by

providing it with different illumination. Take for example

Wordsworth’s poem “Lucy.” In this ordinary poetic subject, the

speaker of the poem is remembering Lucy, who now lies interred,

untouched by time, neither feeling nor aging. Yet Wordsworth clearly

colors this poem when he writes that her corpse is “roll’d round in

earth’s diurnal course” (Wordsworth 14). We might think of the dead

as lying still in the ground, but the idea of them being rolled around as

the earth spins every twenty-four hours is an unusual thought. She is

not motionless after all, but now part of the earth’s rotation.

Wordsworth illuminates the subject of death in a new, fresh way.

~ 3 ~

“Amishland Cow Tipping” demonstrates this sort of coloring.

The poem tells the story of two people tiptoeing through a pasture in

order to sneak up on a cow and push her onto her side. This event

disturbs the cow’s sleep, startling her awake. We certainly expect the

cow to be startled awake when she falls, but the idea of the cow waking

up to see the world “sideways” or in a new way is an unusual

perspective. Like Lucy, who is dead yet moving, the cow awakens, the

expected response to falling, “to see the world sideways,” an

unexpected coloring.

I admire the accessibility of Billy Collin’s poetry. Billy Collins

says “there are plenty of references and allusions in my poetry—it’s

really quite literary in some ways—but the reader is never required to

pick up any of these references to gain admission into the little theater

of the poem” (Weich). When writing, I must consider what readers

need to gain admission into my poems. How do I help them buy the

ticket?

Collins provides the coordinates of when and where early in his

poems. In the case of his poem “Afternoon with Irish Cows,” he

establishes both in the title. This poetic characteristic assists in

drawing his readers into the poem. In my poem “Amishland Cow

Tipping,” I orient the reader to the where in the title and time in the

first line: “It does not matter that the chirping dusk crickets have not

stilled.” When sitting down to write a poem, I intentionally establish

these types of coordinates.

~ 4 ~

Beyond accessibility in my poetry, another focal point for me is

how a poem gets from point A to point B. Perhaps harking back to my

short story writing days, I wish to know the poem’s plot. What

introduces the poem, how does it develop, and where does the twist

occur? Collins says that

when I teach poetry, instead of asking what does a poem mean?

I try to substitute the question how does a poem operate? Or

how does it get from one place to another? We look at poems

as a series of pivots or shifts or maneuvers, slipstreaming one

idea into another. (Weich)

When I set out to write a poem, the end is not always evident.

Nevertheless, every line must lead toward that destination; every line

carries the responsibility to push the poem forward. In poetry

workshop, Professor Kate Northrop and the class challenged me to

consider what constituted a line of poetry. Speaking on this, Billy

Collins says, “each line [does] its job; it’s making a little contribution,

it’s not slacking off” (Weich).

My double triolet “Weighing the Future,” the only formal poem

in this collection, exemplifies the idea of every line counting and

pushing the poem forward. Since it is a triolet, with five of the eight

lines repeating, every word of every line is crucial and must help the

poem progress. The non-repeated lines must move the poem forward

and increase the tension, which they do. While not strictly adhering to

the form, the subtle change in the repeated lines focuses the reader on

the word substitutions being made. Each change pushes the mother of

~ 5 ~

the poem out of the home until in the end she is parading “the

mountains, wild, alone.” Her role in the poem shifts from her being

dependant on the father to being independent from him.

The poems collected here encapsulate much of what I have

learned as a poet over the past few years. My mentors, workshops, and

the words of other poets have all helped in shaping my poetry to what it

is now. It is my hope you will enjoy this collection.

~ 6 ~

~ 7 ~

EEnnccoouunntteerrss

~ 8 ~

~ 9 ~

IMPRINT

When out from Lancaster’s womb,

my mother wrapped me

in a patchwork quilt of tobacco, corn, and barley fields.

Her manicured geranium and marigold beds

hemmed in my playpen yard.

Years later, when cicadas chittered and whirred

from the locust and the maple in stereo,

their empty nymph shells became imagination’s playthings;

my hand skimmed them across the dry-summer grass to other worlds.

Armed with a mason jar in the settling evening,

I pursued fireflies;

white cats leapt pirouettes after their dying glow.

Bats dove kamikaze style

toward hurled stone missiles in their path.

Those nights, camping tentless in the shadowed yard,

my back pressed against sheets soaked in the dank-dew grass,

the starry night speckled through the concord arbor leaves.

Along with the Pleiades, those seven sisters,

I heard the bullfrog’s deep croak from my father’s pond

and the crickets chirping in the cocklebur brush

~ 10 ~

warn as I drifted off to sleep,

“Do not forget us.

Do not forget.”

~ 11 ~

SECTION I

~ 12 ~

~ 13 ~

WEIGHING THE FUTURE

My father weighed heavy, his years

shortened, what was my mother to do

were he to die that night? Her fears

of his future weighed heavy, her years

alone. He ate beyond his seams, his queer

affair with food, this, his love true,

on mother weighed heavy, the together years

shortened. This is what my mother could do:

from that tense home, alone she moved,

west for mountains, wild, unknown,

considering the end, she learned a new

trade. From that tense home, she debuted

herself, wage-earning, so that in lieu

of his death, she could a new life hone,

free from husband and tense home, and proved,

she could parade the mountains, wild, alone.

~ 14 ~

WEDGE

The way the iron wedge penetrates the log,

forcing the tenuous hold of the oak’s fibers

to reluctantly give way

under my father’s stroke,

now allows him momentary rest,

now allows him to prop the weathered axe

against his canvas leg,

allows him to fish his stained handkerchief

from his back pocket to wipe the sweat

from his ridged brow now glowing in the tired sun.

But knowing tomorrow’s proximity,

the way it cinches the seconds out of today

until they expire, drained of all service,

knowing too the nearness of December’s bite,

the way she eats oranges and reds till all is white,

his shoulders slump and he sighs,

looks again to western sky,

then raises the axe again.

~ 15 ~

“I WAS WHAT CAME BEFORE WORDS” *

~ Minnie Bruce Pratt ~

I am —

perhaps unfortunate

in that the separation of myself

from the ‘who I am’

in faith remains

impossible

despite the distance of time.

I am —

despite the desire to divorce myself

from my family, tradition and rules,

to break out and be

my own man.

I am —

despite my excuses

of ‘I used to be,’

‘formerly was,’

‘grew up as.’

I am —

breathe….breathe….whisper

~ 16 ~

“Mennonite.”

WAS!

Still

my history bleeds

through this heart

pumpa, pumpa, pumpa.

I cannot escape

and if I could…

If I could sharpen these finger nails,

aim them at my left breast,

then plunge them,

pierce this flesh,

splaying these incarcerating ribs apart,

then, in wrapping my fingers around ‘it,’

yank,

where would I be without my heart?

Who would I be?

How long would I live?

Bleed?

Pumpa, pumpa, pump---a.

I am incapable of forgetting who I am.

I cannot be

who I am not.

~ 17 ~

I am —

despite the electronic current coursing through my house,

despite the lack of a buggy in my barn,

despite my head unadorned by a black hat and beard,

I am —

the product of 15 generations

of pacifist culture.

I am Mennonite.

I am who I am.

* From the poem “Chopping Peppers”

~ 18 ~

THE ISOLATE

I am who I am,

But perhaps I am not

Who you think I am,

But something other than

What I am.

Perhaps I am not

Who I think I am either,

But built perhaps

Upon foundations constructed

Unbeknownst to me

By forces beyond

The internals of my flesh,

By powers such as

Parents and teachers,

Affected in such a manner

As to be invisible to me.

The what of what makes me tick,

Contributes to the overall ticking

Leading up to the explosive ending.

~ 19 ~

I am what I am,

But perhaps I am not

Who I, nor you, thought I was

~ 20 ~

DECEMBER HOPE

Morning sun filters down the slats of the bedroom blinds.

Outside the autumn leaves drift

a soft spiraling toward the ground

like December snow.

In anticipation my boyhood mind winks

alive from a year suffered long in wait.

For down the weathered street,

around the next bend,

up the narrow alley,

a murmuring carol echoes

“Soon…”

Soon

I shall awaken to find wait’s end.

My siblings and I will rush

down the carpeted stairs,

two, three at a time

and lay siege to the child-scarred table,

now wrapped in white linens

garnished with red and green,

crowned with mother’s glazed cinnamon buns.

Electric excitement dances from us

to my mother’s twinkling eyes.

~ 21 ~

Soon,

I will sit couched

where the crook of the arm meets the living-room sofa wedge.

The monotony of dad reading Matthew 1:18

invades my reverie, while I play

GI-Joe with sheep stolen from the wood nativity,

resting on the 1969 GE stereo.

Soon,

Hark, the herald angel, will sing

when the wise men and the shepherds have come,

then gone.

Indian-legged on the floor, my mother

will pull treasures from underneath the tree.

Later,

as we gather around the dinner table

in my grandmother’s basement

watching the Yule fire dance,

I will notice that for once

conversation has turned from

drunk uncles,

runaway daughters,

gossip of other family iniquities.

Goodwill between aunts and uncles,

~ 22 ~

fathers and sons,

husbands and wives

will permeate the room.

Now, a lifetime later,

an unspoken wall separates

me from brother,

sister and other,

division plows the snow-white street

with no crosswalk.

Our leather coats of conceit

we refuse to lay down

over the puddles of warmed winter.

We skate across the thin-pond ice of conversation

artfully figure-eighting potential fissures

that would dump us into chilled reality.

Older I am,

but perhaps not wiser.

For the scene of my early days

persistently replays,

teaches me

that the goodwill between us

is better than no will between us.

As the years devour the future,

~ 23 ~

a hope wells within

that such a day will come,

that it will come soon.

~ 24 ~

FIRST CORINTHIANS THIRTEEN: ELEVEN

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I

reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind

me.

Over the crackle grass,

echoes of childhood settle,

creep to the base of the Sugar Maple,

where I shimmy up

where my brother lifts Fred,

our white cat,

into my waiting hands.

We are testing Newton’s law,

the adage of a cat,

the principle of always.

I consider revisiting this

calling up my brother to say

“I have a ladder,

the tree still stands

and I just bought a cat.”

However,

knowing this test would trigger

neighbor alarms alerting the League,

~ 25 ~

I settle, quiet the urges,

and take solace in recollection.

~ 26 ~

~ 27 ~

SECTION II

~ 28 ~

~ 29 ~

LIKING YOUR POEM, THE NEIGHBOR *

‘Liked’ conjures

such interesting potentialities, implying

the way a mother will tell her daughter

the yellow and green scribbles

that hang on the white refrigerator

remind her of Pollock’s The Key,

the way a poet tells her apprentice

“The imagery in the first line captures me, but

then the poem kind of lurches down the stairs

and scatters laundry across the floor,”

the way a teen wearing a translucent halter top

hastily scribbles undying love on scratch paper during English

to the gage-eared young man she will fish free from the hall,

or the way the beloved shivers under the lover’s touch

as on a winter evening he strums her nerves producing music

mingled with the percussion of cracking embers.

~ 30 ~

But the way I liked your poem

is the way a balloon breaks free from a child’s hand

and escapes to places I’ve never been.

* By Kate Northrop

~ 31 ~

I YOU HERE

The screen door slammed.

I heard your car keys

scrape across the tile counter.

My breath quickened,

cheeks flushed,

I rushed

to the kitchen

to meet you,

to greet you,

to envelop you.

I’m glad you are here

in all senses of the phrase.

I’m glad you

are here. I’m glad

you are here. I’m

glad you are

here.

The evening

will be welcome

now that you

are here

~ 32 ~

THE GRAND OPENING OF POPPY’S

(A poem addressed to the reader)

It’s the grand opening of Poppy’s

beside Ray’s Cigar and Tobacco Café.

Streamers wrap people in

celebration as I watch from the warmth

of a coffee shop across the street.

Here, “Have yourself a very merry…”

drains from the corner perched speakers

and mixes with chattering conversations.

My coffee cup desperately wants refilled.

The window reflection

doubles the black canisters

and the red coffee bean poster behind me,

echoes possibilities.

An empty Ikea chair

sits cocked next to me,

tells me that in any relationship,

you would be sitting here.

~ 33 ~

Imaginary you fills the vacancy,

reminds me that it’s cold outside,

why I’m here

and not at the grand opening of Poppy’s

beside Ray’s Cigar and Tobacco Café.

~ 34 ~

SECURING THE FUTURE

From behind the winter hills slung low,

twilight is winking off,

pulling on the starry night,

preparing me passage

through these unredeemable years.

I slip into my black turtleneck

and listen to the sound of you

in the kitchen, twisting down the thermos.

While preparing for the evening ahead,

I think of the germination of you, me, and our togetherness,

how we buried our treasures with our King Tuts

in hope that we might live comfortably in age.

But our guaranteed security lay

unguarded by curses and sleek cats long dead,

unwatched beneath the all seeing eye.

Now you are here at the door,

handing me my flashlight, my gloves,

my tool bag, my cheek kisses.

I head off to secure the future

government could not promise.

~ 35 ~

And here where Annuit Cœptis,*

I pretend I am an archeologist,

I stoop before the forbidding seal; behind it waits

others’ false hopes of laterlife gold.

Ignoring the threats etched on this bank,

I raise the bar and pry.

* Annuit Cœptis – providence has favored our undertakings

~ 36 ~

SWAY BABE!

Sway babe!

Shift weight from one foot to the next.

Seek the secret, unseen rhythms.

Spin the dial of your FM mind radio.

Sift through static,

The bam da bam of staccato beats,

To thought talk shows.

Discuss the unnaturally serene.

Twist, leap, find the highest point of best reception;

Demand clarity,

Find focus,

Tune ears to hear

The One voice of your heart, your soul.

Sway Babe!

Ignore the mass of men

Listen to Thoreau, to Ellison.

Remember the Tick-Tock Man.

Sell not your soul

To society’s

So-called integrity.

Dig up the rails.

Take your steam locomotive

~ 37 ~

Through woods,

Over mountains,

Ram it through the capital building.

Through phony political promises

Into their diabolical truths.

I will not dance slave to marionette strings.

I will not go gently into Dylan’s night.

I will sway babe,

Out

of

synch

to

you.

~ 38 ~

THE “I” IN VILLIAN

Yanked down

Self-tied to the railroad tracks

The distant woo

Woo pulls the train closer

Straight rails

From rim to rim nullify

Desperate prayers

To the Switchman to throw it

The poke

Of the anticipated cow catcher

Will soon rush in

Followed by steel grating on steel

I cannot

See the laughing villain

~ 39 ~

IMMORTAL ME

When the Polaroid camera flashed,

photo paper whirring out the bottom slot

immortalizing my pirouette,

I stood in frozen poise,

a captured definition

for your scrapbook.

Twenty years have come, then passed.

Still I am etched in your memory,

arms arched above in a graceful ‘O,’

one leg stiffly balanced on pointed toe,

the other out, right toe balancing on left knee.

My face stares off the page

toward a wall your picture chose not to include.

This will always be who I am to you.

It is helpful to forget

that age and circumstances

change us and that

I can no longer pirouette.

~ 40 ~

~ 41 ~

SECTION III

~ 42 ~

~ 43 ~

AMISHLAND COW TIPPING

It does not matter that the chirping dusk crickets have not stilled,

though twilight fails, gives way to moonless night,

and the dew seeps into our canvas shoes.

Shhhh…we warn each other and look past the barn

to where the kerosene eyes of the farmhouse shut with sleep.

With this unspoken permission,

I lift the tense barbed wire.

You slip under; I follow.

Starry night illuminates our path,

leads the way between the burn hazel, thistles and dung

to the sleeping cows, bovines content

in their idyllic pasture and dreams.

We carefully creep to the chosen one.

We lean, the push,

her black and white frame topples,

startles her awake to see

the world sideways.

~ 44 ~

MORNING MULE

Morning mule I am

of established routines

rising at 4:21,

beating eggs for breakfast,

inhaling coffee while

reading the morning paper (75¢ an issue),

feeding my Jack Russell in his $10 bowl,

kissing my wife on the cheek before I leave

priceless.

In my Jetta by 5:23,

I will listen to jazz while traveling to work.

Arriving by 5:55, I will answer e-mails,

grade papers, plan my classes,

initiate students to English mysteries.

But this morning,

where the road curves left by the motor court,

a mule stands idly on the road,

perhaps pondering his new-found freedom.

Perhaps wallowing in his mud flat,

he has always wondered what it was like

to not be confined by electrified wires.

The asphalt of West Metzler Road

~ 45 ~

feels so much more certain under his hooves.

After swerving around this unexpected brother,

I encounter a second mule

who, lost in thought twenty feet behind,

is as surprised as I am

when my bumper taps his left flank.

Until now, he had stood there, all sixteen hands,

dressed in a chestnut overcoat with burnt cuffs and mane,

dreaming perhaps of the arrival of spring meadows

lush with alfalfa and Queen Anne's lace,

dreaming of working once again with his brothers,

his feet feeling the winter-hardened earth

pull up and turn soft

under the plow he tows behind.

~ 46 ~

OFF KILTER

When the thunderheads rolled frantic from the North

Armed with gales, sounding like a full-throttled locomotive,

I stared through the window as the rain sheeted down.

The violent wind shivered the trees.

The world on the verge of going off kilter.

After the dark clouds spent themselves and the tormenting rains lifted,

The front yard maple lush with summer sprawled across the road,

garnished with dancing wires.

Chunks of jagged asphalt and black mailboxes accented the front yard.

The barn’s tin hat bathed in the corn stubble mud;

Much of the field now painted the white-skinned barn.

The world was off kilter.

The world was off−−

~ 47 ~

FREEING THE CADUCEUS

Bowed

under a burden,

I heave my computer monitor out

the second story window,

my empty hands completing

the follow through.

The metallic frame penetrates

the glass, tearing the stitching till

it breathes free air, silence broken

by the shattering replacement window.

Gravity’s fingers draw it down,

the jarred impact littering pieces across the winter grass.

On the oak desk with its ‘no vacancy’ sign turned off,

power chords lie like empty shackles,

fetters devoid of power.

My soul has been emancipated,

no longer a slave to databases,

instant mail and the World Wide Web.

I have wielded my Sting and escaped

the darkness of Sheob’s weavings.

Perhaps these were not fetters after all,

but Caduceus snakes twisted around me,

~ 48 ~

the winged staff bound,

poison from their fangs tainting,

drinking the “I am” of me,

isolating me in the advocacy

of connecting me to the world.

But I have shed them like skin,

their corpses now below,

freeing the Hermes in me.

Later, on the concrete steps glazed with snow

that lead from the front door to the winding sidewalk,

stretching to roads endless with possibility,

subzero temperatures sting my cheeks,

let me know I am alive.

~ 49 ~

THIS IS MY PENNSYLVANIA

On the ghost-white rocker,

on the porch fronting a limestone farmhouse built circa 1786,

twilight rolls the credits of the day,

and I ask myself, “What is my Pennsylvania?”

Is the soil of Penn’s Woods nothing more

than memorials of Valley Forge, the Liberty Bell,

Flight 93?

Is it nothing more than the beginning of the Oregon Trail?

Is it nothing more than the stain of puppy mills

and the fight against urban sprawl?

Then I remember Somerset.

Nine miners trapped in the death shroud

of earth, rock, and stone,

two hundred feet below.

When the voice of Pennsylvania

(those armed with rescue drills,

the clergy comforted families,

firefighters and medics at attention)

called Lazarus from the tomb,

the trapped shook off their coal dust funeral linens

and came forth.

This is my Pennsylvania.

~ 50 ~

When the arsonist’s touch,

tore an Amish man’s livelihood from his grasp,

fire charring a year’s labor of tilling the soil,

the community, both sect and secular,

did what could not be said of Rome:

the barn went up in a day.

This is my Pennsylvania.

A driveway nightlight breaks through the infant darkness.

From across the still road on my neighbor’s porch,

Annette’s fingers dance hymns off the weathered accordion,

which mingle with the sound of clinking canning jars,

filled with neighbor-shared grapes,

a gift from my wife to her mother.

The warmed shoofly pie Thank You sits on the counter inside

our kitchen.

I stand on my porch edge,

This is my Pennsylvania.

~ 51 ~

PANAJACHEL

I’m back at Panajachel

where eight young girls surround me,

their dirt stained faces and flickering eyes

shrouded in indigenous wrappings

of brightly colored blues and greens,

wrappings that recount the story,

their ancestors’ rise; then the fall under

the swords of conquistadors,

faces weathered from working too young,

from the lack of food and compensation,

and their calloused hands, signs of existence

they etch out on the jungle hillsides.

Supposed jade necklaces and bracelets

are shoved my direction,

are accented by pattering Spanish.

Beneath the blazing Guatemalan sun,

I stare past them

across the cobalt green lake

to the three towering volcanoes,

~ 52 ~

Toliman, Atitlan and San Pedro,

their heads hidden in clouds.

~ 53 ~

FLICKED

The flicked cigarette skittered across the asphalt, bounced, then

ricocheted off the hood of my red Jetta, igniting

the urge to demonstrate one fingered vocabulary

to the young man in the gray Element, who cut me off

after speeding past me on the right.

Perhaps in a gesture of good will, in a measure of interdependency,

he had aimed his misgauged throw under my left front tire,

believing I would assist him in snuffing the cigarette out.

With the ashtray in his new car still wanting discovery,

his designer Levi’s and unsoiled upholstery were not considerations.

Or perhaps this driver thought I might enjoy the passing whiff,

somehow knowing that as a child I enjoyed

the fragrance of the chestnut pipe,

the kind my grandfather smoked, because the doctors

in the 1920s believed nicotine cured headaches.

Unable to quit, it killed him.

But then again, it may have been his last cigarette, thrown

from him in an epiphany of disgust,

knowing that if he did not quit now, he never would,

knowing too the threats his girlfriend made of dumping him.

~ 54 ~

In this moment, with no passenger beside him, he chose me

to share his victory.

Maybe knowing Nature’s graces,

her avid fondness for roadside collecting

the cigarette butts of George Barker,

T.S. Eliot, and Edna St. Vincent Millay,

he thought she needed his, an example from a common man, labeled

“Salem, from man in a gray box car.”

But no, this only certainty.

As the butt leapt off the hood, then finished

its routine with a sparking spin on the median,

I rolled the dry leaves of my poetic muse

in imagistic paper with interpretation’s filter,

then lit it.

~ 55 ~

BIRKENAU - JANUARY 2005

The tattoo above your left breast

gives you the right,

shouts louder than your voice ever will.

As you kneel your aged frame

on the rails at Birkenau,

you know this truth:

some events one cannot recover from.

Yet still you move.

I cannot comprehend

being you,

standing helpless in selektion,

watching

as your brothers,

your sisters,

your mothers,

your fathers,

were placed in the line

opposite you labeled

termination by the SS gods who decided

what trash got incinerated that day.

And you?

~ 56 ~

You lucky bastard,

you were deemed worthy

of life’s right. In vertical blue and white

hanging loose against your protruding ribs,

your grief burden weighed

more than you.

Like a criminal fettered in stocks,

toes jutted out through the tips

of those dead man’s shoes you wore, kissing

the frosted ground as you worked

the furnaces under watchful eye.

As you tossed the gassed bodies

into the roaring flames,

you prayed for Jehovah’s forgiveness.

In the bitter winter of 1944,

it was the only way you could get warm.

~ 57 ~

NEANDERTHAL

Imagine the frustration of that Neanderthal

communicating with his wife,

working the nuances of the sound

to describe the friend

killed during the hunt;

a mammoth squashed him like an insect.

She, clothed in hide,

breath crystallizing in the ice age air,

squats on the ground by the cackling flames,

a newborn cradled in an arm

suckling her breast;

eye brows rise in question.

Determined, he tries again to recount the story:

reared beast-- on hind legs,

twisted on come down,

companion flattened--

breathless--!

~ 58 ~

Still, she shrugs,

jabs the fire with a stick.

He kicks the fire,

ash twists, and knots.

She scrambles back,

arms guard the infant,

her eyes full of fear.

He grabs a rock

anger throws it out the entrance of the cave

and topples the crude spears propped there.

He looks at her, she at him.

Misunderstanding between.

Frustrated,

he picks up

a charred wood chunk,

slashes black streaks into the wall.

Frustrated,

he turns to art.

~ 59 ~

THE JEST

The sun drips through the fall leaves

and splashes off white

benches of the Renaissance Faire.

Customers and actors play

the Scotsman in his plaid kilt,

the swashbucklers with their leather scabbards,

the wenches with their bodices and black skirts,

the regal English, hair woven with peonies,

the juggler, diamond pants bobbing

under an endless circle of torches. Down the gravel path,

the Virgin Queen and her cortege ebb

toward the royal courts, where sit the poets,

pen and vellum perched on crossed legs,

with nothing to write

for everything is clear.

When night falls, sleeping the Faire,

folks will drive off in SUV’s and Volkswagens,

to their homes with air-conditioning,

refrigerators full with food,

and medicine cabinets,

knowing that they indeed experienced

the Renaissance.

~ 60 ~

K

In the time of you, the time of K,

when counselors considered you middle,

which was really a way of calling you last.

After all, with A unobtainable,

and F’s losing shot,

K followed so much further behind.

What chance does K have of college

except through C, who steals K’s sound?

Shake your fist, K, at those authorities,

those who said McDonald’s was your destiny.

You showed them.

Ah that fist

raised high in that

you-ain’t-gonna-take-advantage-of-me ball

for the times killing lies curdled truth,

the times white marigold promises withered brown,

for times your faith was like a clear window

with a log though, replaced by new clarity

broke later with a ball.

I like the way the tongue kisses

~ 61 ~

the back roof of the mouth, then

kicks away to the floor in sounding

your name, your harsh edge,

your unabated truth, scissors

cutting through the fabric facades

that people shroud themselves in.

I remember you, in your conquistador outfit,

footprints on the virgin shore,

your right leg kicked fearlessly forward

through the jungles of new endeavors,

through the tangled vines and downed trees,

blazing your own proving trail,

walking, back straight, fist raised, proud.

~ 62 ~

THE POET FADES

(On Meeting Galway Kinnell

Dodge Poetry Festival 2004)

The poet stands,

his thoughts struggle to gather

enjambed, end-stopped together,

caesuraed with Ahs, Ums, silence.

When worshippers undulate

petitioning their god,

his hand curls around one ear,

desiring petition’s repetition…

Later, when gatherers

line to glimpse this poetry deity up close,

his attendants move from one to the next,

penning the names of his followers

on bright yellow sticky notes

adhering them to the books, pamphlets, and other pendants

brought by his disciples to be touched by the pen,

the pen that coined such poignant poems.

Then, when they ask, the poet pretends he hears,

and signs their name, then his.

~ 63 ~

His frame waxes frail.

Time hunkers down,

and trims the insight lamp low.

A voice from the shadows beckons

“Listen, Kinnell,

dumped alive

and dying into the old sway bed,

a layer of crushed feathers all that there is

between you

and the long shaft of darkness shaped as you,

let go.”

And the poet fades.

Still,

when he reads,

he reads with passion.

** Excerpt of “The Hen Flower” lines 108 – 155 from The Book of

Nightmares by Galway Kinnell **

~ 64 ~

JOHN DEERE GOD

As my car drifts to a stop

on the asphalt drive,

God corners the lawn

perched on my John Deere mower.

I know it’s him,

the great “I am.”

The flowing beard, the snowy hair

flecked with green trimmings

frames his face radiating like the sun.

A silly grin upholds his moody eyes,

he twists the steering wheel again.

I try to resolve the scene.

God,

apparently trading his heavenly throne

for a yellow vinyl seat,

bounces down the yard,

his bellowing laughter

rises above the engine,

brings into bloom my scarlet rose bush.

He wears cut off jeans

and a Springsteen sleeveless shirt,

exposing his all powerful muscles.

~ 65 ~

He must be trying to get a tan

to bring out the white in his heavenly robes.

He eases back on the throttle as I make my way up the walk.

He tells me he feels so alive.

Doesn’t everyone need a break from the throne sometimes?

One can only take so much adoration,

answer so many prayers and petitions,

before he needs to get away.

At this point, any response to the Almighty

seems ill-worded.

What does one say to God,

lawn mower idling beneath him?

If he were in heaven,

I might know how to address him,

my three “Our Fathers” and crossing myself

somehow opening the portal between realities.

But he is here, now.

I offer him lemonade

for the day is hot

and God is sweating.

He shakes his head,

says he needs to get back to mowing.

~ 66 ~

He throws the throttle forward,

tires spin on the damp grass.

He speeds off down the lawn,

clippings flying, laughing.

~ 67 ~

WORKS CITED

Ferlinghetti, Lawrence. "Poetry As News." Exquisite Corpse. April -

May 2000.

Valéry, Paul. “Paul Valéry – Quotes.” Little Blue Light. 10 December

2005. http://www.littlebluelight.com/

lblphp/quotes.php?ikey=28.

Weich, David. “Billy Collins, Bringing Poetry to the Public.” Powell’s

Books. 14 January 2004. 10 October 2005.

http://www.powells.com.

Wordsworth, William . "From Lyrical Ballads." British Literature

1780-1830. Ed. Richard E. Matlak, and Anne K. Mellor. United

States: Heinle & Heinle, 1996. 573-582.

Wordsworth, William. “Lucy.” The New Penguin Book of Romantic

Poetry. Eds. Jonathan and Jessica Wordsworth. New York.

Penguin. 2001: 14.

~ 68 ~

~ 69 ~

Other books by Ken Scott (Scott Hertzog)

MURDERING TRANQUILITY AND OTHER

STORIES

In this collection of science fiction short stories,

the NeuroNet wires humanity together in this

vision of future Earth. These stories capture the

reclamation of humanity’s adventurous spirit from

technological enslavement. They fight for peace. They fight for

tranquility. They fight those who murder it.

THE SOUL’S WATERSHED

Reflective, this collection of poems explores the

various aspects of life that make a mark on us as

individuals. Ken Scott’s first collection of poetry

takes us from the springhouse to the streams, and

then onto the raging sea.

~ 70 ~

Edited by Scott Hertzog

A COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES AND POEMS

Within this house resides a collection of poetry

and short stories. These young creative writers

explore everything from love to death, from

politics to nature. The short stories and poems

span the breadth of science fiction, real-life,

adventure, and action.

PENN MANOR HIGH SCHOOL 2005

WRITERS ANTHOLOGY

Poems, editorials, dramatic scripts, and short

stories by the Scholastic Writing Contest and

Newspaper in Education Award Winners.