Why Don’t You Listen to Me?

Why Don’t You Listen to Me?
Christopher Bogart

Why is your colonial a house
And mine, a hacienda?

We both call them home.

When I listen to you
I don’t hear Brooklyn,
Atlanta,
Dallas,
Or Maine.

When I speak,
Why do you always seem to hear
Guadalajara or San Juan?

We were both born in the same hospital,
In the same town,
In the same state,
In the same country.

So

When you can look at me
And not see
lettuce pickers,
Field hands,
House cleaners,
Landscape workers,
Or hired help
You pick up at the train station
At the crack of dawn;

then

Then I won’t look at you
And think of Wall Street brokers,
Ponzi schemes,
The INS,
The KKK, or
Country clubs you would never let me join.

Every day I listen to you,
I hear you loud and clear.

Why don’t you listen to me?

Dead Angels

Dead Angels
Christopher Bogart

Brief bursts of frosted wind
Whip through these fields,
And dries the weeds
To a brittle brown.

Launched from crumbling pods,
Their seeds sprout wings,
And with brief abandon,
Fling themselves
Upward
To populate the pale gray sky
Of a fading sun.

They rise
In alien formation,
Committed to the fight
For a chance at future life.

The victors fall
Far beyond the call,
The death rattle
Of their parents past.

There they burrow
Deep into the ground
In a winter repose,
Until warm replaces cold.
When some will rise
Through new and fertile ground
To await the new sun’s reign
Over better days.

Their fellows in the fall
Lie in dryer ground
As dead angels,
There to fertilize the soil,
For the royal of green sprouts,
And new wings,
Grown for the promise of
A new life of flight.

But I will not die
On this dry ground
As some dead angel.
I will fly to fertile ground,
to grow,
to dance
In the warmth of new suns.

The Bet

The Bet
Christopher Bogart

How can you bargain with One
Who holds all the chips?
I’ve looked under my cards,
Under my chair,
Under the table.
I’ve even turned my pockets
Inside out
In search of just one
Chip to bargain with,
And, I’ll be damned,
Literally,
If I can find one.

It seems to me
That the game is just a little
Lopsided
If you can’t get up
The bet.

Masterwords

Masterwords
Christopher Bogart

Poetry paints
with broad brush strokes,
cover canvas with concept.

Fine lines delineate rhymes,
divide thought,
delineate nuance
left in shadow.

The palette of sounds
abound around hues,
find clues to feeling,
motive,
message
best left
to the reader of verbs.

Our words,
like humming birds,
flitter from flower to flower,
captured on canvas,
hour by hour -
little seen,
and rarely heard.

One Door Closes ...

I have only five more weeks before I end a 42 year career in education and retire. They say that writers draw most from what they know, what they have experienced. What they are experiencing. I guess that this is true. I find that I can think of almost nothing else these days. I wish that I could just jot off a poem or two about the myriad of thoughts that have crossed my mind over these last few weeks. And I know that this will only get worse as the day draws near. There is a retirement dinner on June 10th and graduation on June 18th. I have an office to empty out, final projects to complete, goodbyes to say. I am working on re-landscaping the front of my house, a sprinkler system install on my property, a new fence to surround my backyard. I am having new front and back doors to put on this 120 year old house, a kitchen to completely renovate, all the white trim in the house to paint, and the carpet and furniture to have steam-cleaned. And I don’t even want to think about cleaning out the basement and the attic. That will have to be a retirement project.

What can I write about? Renovated kitchens? Sprinkler systems? Fences? One of the great things about this blog is that it forced me to look at a lot of my older writing, and either renovate or dispose. I was also able to bang out a few new poems as well. However, one of the main purposes of the blog was to get me to write every day, something that I really wanted to get into the habit of when I retired, but something that is becoming increasingly more difficult to do as a 42 year old door closes, and a brand new door opens. But to what? I have ideas. Lots of ideas. But no clear vision as of yet.

The other purpose was to enter into a conversation about my writing and the writing of others. So far, that is not going so well. I appreciate the few comments I have received so far, but, so far, that is all I have gotten. Well, I am determined to continue to write. And, if you feel so inclined, write back. I will listen.

The Stoop

I had an old picture that someone found in a garage sale recently, and I used it as a prompt to write this poem. I could not upload the picture onto the blog, so I used one I found online that was similar. I don't have a brother, but when I lived in New York City growing up, we did have a stoop.

The Stoop
Christopher Bogart

There was a stone stoop
At the entrance to the New York City apartment building
In which we grew up.
My brother and I used it as our private front porch on which
We lounged on summer mornings, waiting for friends,
Played stoop ball on summer afternoons with a bright pink Spauldeene ball,
Or sat and talked with friends on cool evenings
Until our mother shouted “Bedtime!”
Through the fly-specked screen of the living room window.

Yet the times I most remember
Are the Sunday mornings before church
When Master Young and Master Younger,
All dressed up in their “Sunday, going to Church” best,
Sat on the stoop and waited for their parents to come out and
Pack them in the black and chrome Chevrolet with the duck tapped back handle
To go to fulfill their Sunday Obligation.

“I call the front seat.” My brother would crow
As he adjusted his brown felt fedora, just like Dad’s.
He in his long grown up pants, long enough to cover the elastic of his socks
But not the scuffs on his shoes from forbidden Sunday play,
And me in my little boy shorts and baby white shoes.

He was the eldest. The heir.
And I, the spare.
“Why do you always get the front seat?” I whined in mock resentment.
“Because Mom and Dad like me best.” Was his arrogant reply.

Mom and Dad did like him best,
I thought later from the back seat of the Chevy.
But then,
So did I.

There is a sadness certain in the leaving.

I have mentioned many times on this blog that I will be retiring from teaching after 42 years this June. Since 1968, when I first stepped into a classroom, I have taught thousands of children. Many of these children went on to lead successful and productive lives. As a matter of fact, my first class turns 60 years old this year. Many of the children I have taught were "challenges," coming from dysfunctional families, and had difficult lives. And some, for whatever reason, had lives cut short by violence, drunk driving accidents or health problems. I have been to a lot of proms and graduations over the years. I have also been to more funerals than I had ever cared to. There never seems to be a believable justification for a young death. Poets have written about such deaths over the history of literature in a vain attempt to make sense out of such a loss.

Two days ago, one of my former students, Terry Paul, passed away at the age of 21. He was in a college classroom, taking a test when he had a seizure and his heart stopped. He was a gifted student, a talented young man who excelled in track and in oil painting,and a kind and generous soul, more mature and wise than most high school seniors. One of his paintings hangs in my office opposite my desk, a gift he gave me when he graduated from our high school three years ago. It is a reminder of his talent as well as our loss.

I am posting two poems today. One, by A.E. Housman, is a well-known poem called "To an Athlete Dying Young." The other, one of my own, written as a poem about autumn; but one that, at this time, speaks of how I feel today.

To an Athlete Dying Young
A. E. Housman

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields were glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.




The Leaving
Christopher Bogart

There is a sadness certain in the leaving.

In the falling,
Sad flight begins
As slow, mournful drift

Down.

It is there
I sit
on cold, damp ground

Below.

I speak
in somber distant sounds,

While through the bright
And leaving drift

I sift
Through sad stories
of the deaths
of petty princes
and of dying kings.