J.K. Durick- Three Poems

J. K. Durick, who lives in South Burlington, VT, is a writing teacher at the Community College of Vermont and an online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Pyrokinection, Record, Yellow Chair Review, Eye on life Magazine, and Haikuniverse.

                             WWII

They can show it in color now, divide it

thematically, begin with parades, the heroic

vanity of it all, saluting and banners, lines of

perfectly timed marching, cheering crowds,

speeches, we see in pantomime mostly, lips

moving, gestures, pauses, well-orchestrated

masses saluting, cheering, bringing it on to

themselves; then invasions and troops moving

into place, into places cheering crowds wanted,

air power, navies and tanks, explosions, bullets

then bodies, piles of bodies, prisoners lined up

marching off; this was the part all the cheering

crowds, from episode one, didn’t know came

after, this black and white of war, the bomb

craters, the smashed and smoldering building,

gaping holes in so many lives, so many lost;

we see them, their faces at war, some smile, even

wave to the camera, some cry, some just stare

seeing things very much in the color of their lives

what they came to; and now the lesson is there for

us, no longer just in black and white, but in color,

the color people can make of our pallid world.

                         Poet

 

Someone once asked me what a poem is.

I said that a poem is what a poet writes.

So he wisely asked what a poet is, but

the answer is simple: a poet is a person

who writes poems. It’s like the chicken

and the egg, the dancer and the dance,

the dinner and the dining, the wallet and

the walrus, the large order and the small.

 

It’s one of those wonderful balances we

have all around us: the quaint and the odd,

the limber and the lame, the war and the

warrior. It all matches up somehow, but

there could be a poet sitting in front of

a blank page, his poem of the moment,

and there are poems, I’m sure, out looking

for a poet, the right size, the perfect fit.

 

We all know there are wars out looking

for warriors; we know the warriors out

there looking for wars to cook up, like

a dinner, a large order of wallet, a small

walrus. We’ve met the lame dancer,

the quaint dance, and the limber oddity.

Can anyone tell the poet from the poem?

Well, let’s hope so.

        Words

 

I put a word down

On paper

 

There it was

But it was alone

 

So I started to fill

Connect

 

Piled words on

Stack ‘em, stored ‘em

 

Became a planner

A builder

 

Wrote full lines stretching out across the page like this and then

Some abrupt

 

One liners or

Two

 

They began to

Fill space and time

 

Some linked up

Some fell apart

 

Some seemed smart

Others numb

 

Some graceful

And others, clumsy

 

They filled

The emptiness

 

Emptiness in me

And around me

 

Made use of

All the silence

 

Drew pictures

Tried emotions

 

Did the things

I do

 

Did the things

I wished

 

Became an end

In themselves

 

One word to words

To an end

Like this.