Who Is the Best Contemporary Poet?
The establishment can make you nauseous with its ingrained choices, and when it comes to Free Verse one might be forgiven if they are sick of hearing Walt Whitman, father of free verse. Not all fathers are good. Heaven help us from the children.
In the 21st Century there are few who are readable without a special advanced translator guru. For the bulk of poems you need to spend thousands of dollars for a college course that will teach you how to analyze a poem under duress and torture. After completing a course of study, you will have learned the art of desensitizing yourself to the agony and pain of reading a poem.
In today’s world it is still true that Poets are judged by how much pain and confusion they can evoke in a reader, or how well they make the most trivial banality risible.
And to the drum roll
If one searches hard enough through the galaxies one can sometimes circle back to Earth and find something tolerable for the layman. We present for the first decade of the Twenty-First Century 10 poems from Douglas Gilbert:
These were circa 2005
Watching Kindness
I saw you kneel
to heal a boy
who dropped a toy
smithereens a laugh
when your blessing
was an invention
of love new to him
who instantly lost
attachments to pretensions
pretending to be brave, but
became heroic
to embrace you as angel
I see
as did he
and this is
why I love you,
will share you
with the world
Grand ecstasy
when you come home
to me alone
I give you my awards
my affection tonight, but
I will gladly
have you leave
in the morning, for
I am proud to be
a friend to the angel who will
wash the world with my happy tears
and I fear not because
you will return to
the humble blessings
of me
—————————————————
We Are Glowing
From the journey of a dream
I awoke happy, enveloped in you
under covers
Enraptured in the blankets
of home
with you
of you
Our embrace is
the brightness
of us
with us
We are
the morning together
together in love
An awakening
is here to be
for real
at home
peaceful passion
satisfaction day
not dreaming
but being
in the lightness
of us
with us
we are warm
being the morning sun,
like banners waving
playfully above
the river of Love
extremely rippling,
our streaming
child to the river
Ripples of the day
we stream
like banners waving
playfully above
a gentle brook
child to the stream
The child’s babble
joyful enough
to be a gurgle
in a float-along morning
We splash along
embraced
by immersion
and the kiss of the day
fantastic
better than a dream
———————————————————
You In Me
I woke up to my
longing for you; coffee
bit my dream
I stirred your cream
If I dress to seek you
will I know where
passion gallivants
You haunt me with
your many haunts. I
feel a phantom kiss
and miss the bliss from
flesh and ardor, belief bones
troubles massaged in a love whisper,
soothing music
melodic compassion
I am out to find you
driven like the mating birds;
walking, I hear the coos
but let them fly unknowing
for I have a gift for us:
wait ’til you
see me smile
everywhere I know you
Still Rapid
For me I flushed, a
cheeky glow on me, when
I heard her
laughing in my heart
her oxygen in my
hemoglobin sanguine
Tincture of joy upon my skin
I touched her touch like lunch
of peppers and cherry ducks
in a row of charms
easy to cast as
fruit falling ripe
after blossoms bloom
Vitamin delight I made
floating on her river
tanning, burning in her light
We kissed our meal
to drink the day
a splash of love
in rapids
Throbbing In Crevices
Though there’s little food in Sugar Ditch
the rabbit hoped to hop from me
a foolish-stewing-hopeless creature,
who’d let luck go where
fecal creeks don’t drown
perfumed hope
Broken down in Sugar Ditch
waiting for a scholarship
I was wheeling like
lightning struck me down
The documentary camera came
just before a thunder wash,
saw the open sewer
that’s home to family shame
I pulled out my crying rag
time moaning sack of clothes
and the man heard me sing
while driving lightning roads
Honking horns daring me
to dream away from poverty,
I bent my trumpets to heaven’s ears
But no one told me
evil flies to me
every place I go, and
King Sorrow would reign
over sovereign hopes
I reached the skyscrapers
a tourist of bad timing
had to be the highest
place to see heaven
aside from you
After lightning struck this New York
I was lying under debris,
my quilted sorrow bristling
with cast off bricks
Mortar thoughts around me
being so damn mortal, I
could be thundered away
to the heavenly scene
But a steam pipe was hissing
while lifted stones flew away
like missiles whistling
choruses of dusty blues
Jaws of life jacking time
they slid my body out in time
let the building collapse on through
Thought I heard,
old Joplin singin’
more on Earth
will be slapping you
if you
dodge more bullets
from another fool
And when I sang right out
across the clapping crowds,
my best laid blues
went right to you,
New York girl
in a rabbit hat
Oh magical girl,
my new love,
you kissed the breeze
made illusions
fondle my wishes
Now I dream of you deeply:
my salvation laughing everywhere
To whinny, my dream horse gallops, your
giggling jiggling in my cortex,
cerebral fondness hunting for you
in pulsing fibers
embedded in desire
throbbing in crevices
of nerve-cell books,
passions hiding in no man’s nook.
You journey through my mind,
scampering mind dancer,
doing wild animal tangos. I embrace
your beauty in the hunt
to capture your essence;
my dogs sense your scent,
a presence so foxy,
they transcend all knowing
rockin’ and rollin’ in serotonin.
I have traveled into you–
touch me there
where thoughts are real
and lightning tingles fine:
hats off to
everlasting good times
When I awake to you
I am in heaven
——————————————————
Sax Piano Bird
If you will play
I will kiss your tune lips
’cause anything goes when
slinking down your keyboard
tickling doleful note doodles
plinking your chords
caressing pianissimo
bopping forte, top a’ ya board,
chording love accolades
staying for improvisations
when cool mistys get hot. I shall be cool
when you transpose the glory
keys to high toned harmony
that sees me exposed
with whistling kisses blown
all sax-ified, but that’ll
be after a race. Y’ know
it was a mystery that
birds of a feather could
get the winner’s name
from the horse’s
mouthwash, but
I heard them say
she plays with her pet cockatoo
at the piano bar
down by the racetrack
at the end of the race, and
I saw you
The bird said, “Leave a tip”
I said, “Baby Needs Shoes to win,
place, or show me a new tune”
She nagged the feathers off it
to snatch bills
out of patrons’ hands
After she played with her cockatoo
I tipped it into a snifter
hoping she’d play with me
’cause I bet on the nag, then
I said
to the showers
I said
To install the clean
in a froth of warmth
above a soapy love,
join me in the shower stall
by the steamy wall
where flights of fancy
are never scrubbed. If you will,
then I, with fragrant soap,
will wash in tribute
the toe that tested my waters,
cleansing the foot feats that two-stepped
when I was a mere calf
and you were knee high
to a love
like a soap opera. Sing
in the shower from your diaphragm
where no melting soap is barred
while I swoosh below your breasts
with swirling helicopter hands
taking off with haste
as whirlybirds land
on nipple pads. When you say
taxi to the terminal
the refueling hose can dock
and the passengers can be served
hot blessings, but remember
the fifth race is soon,
time to place bets
by the river
on the sailboats, although
we could check out
the entries
swimming in the
racing waters
where in trepidation
you can put a toe
in the water of my soul
as I kiss it as
I would a child’s boo-boo
offering you
a future, a splash
of my essence; I
breathe your perfume
a cherry-flavored love
You undress in my river
and I kiss your thigh
in baptism before lips
Like a mallard
I swim aside,
a breast in hand
and hand in bush
All goes swimmingly,
as I reminisce
first kisses
raising my mast,
sailing our ship, and
now anything goes
even past
the sunset,
in moonlit tunes
splashed across the stars
————————————————————
Backward Train
I’m fond of her biases because
she notices differences
like the eye on the back of my head
She’s the only one who
ever came onboard my train
not thinking it impolite
if I stood with my back to her
while I shoveled coal, and
still watched her front.
She did insist once
to stand in front of the furnace, but
we did take a vote to see if
we’d face to embrace–
it was four eyes to one
the ayes had it — although,
I did turn my gun backward once
shooting a bandit thus
keeping the cuddle just
so moving along
the track and train, but
next time I think
I’ll let her take the gun
in her third hand
——————————————————————
Diane Lobbies
She could not cook
what I brought to the nest,
couldn’t cook
lively recipes,
offerings too gamy
I thought I was
a bald eagle, but
Diane said to me:
“I lobby for
your oneness with me
with filibusters in thought
to block a vote against
Tempting shame once
I wore my red shoes
and unused womb,
bled red desires, those
messy wants nested with
last straws of perseverance
trinket twigs of yours
Come, Eagle, fly back
with wiggling gifts
to give us our child
our daily bed
sprung below
our spring to life, although
You emulate the hawk
watching for moves
but seeing no detail
gallivanting with all the wrong ladies
scattering lust to those
who would pluck your feathers
I have made you soup
when you were sick partying,
ladled out love gently
warm and spicy
Come back when
your peacock feathers are stripped
your hawkish manners grounded, and
land here in my nest forever”
Diane asks if
I am an albatross,
as if I would know
where to find
gooney blue skies
I offer to tickle her with a feather
and she is pleased that
we are not birds
just strollers into paradise
————————————————————–
Legend Baby
With lost soft hugs
lost pressing kisses
bear hugs,
Melissa is lost
has left me to be
haunted by ghosts
of guilt, of soul
I deny:
J’accuse my dear
you fooled me
against my nature
Oh Melissa, you
cried upon a star,
told me and the night sky
I was the father though
you had many lovers
Because the baby girl made
a lollipop microphone
I knew she’d be a star
a legend in her twinkle,
no end to promise
You were a mother
who watched bear legend TV, liked bears,
believed every myth seen
as cuteness lied and misled. Earnestly I
warned against them.
Listening to me in jest
smiling at me instead
you said
the wild child laughs. I kissed
the one who chuckles,
your baby luck
the one you suckled, but
you are at an end to sanity
your daughter lost
to your foolish love of all.
I changed baby’s diaper once,
watched her take a first step,
a father sharing labors.
But I was fine, I thought
’twasn’t mine in the end, and
though your daughter cried
I would not bare faced cry
for didn’t I say with logic base:
do not feed the bears,
not flour
not flowers
not porridge.
Hungry bears eat babies.
Listening to me in jest
smiling at me instead
the baby was left alone. That’s why
you could not stop screaming
clawing the tree
scratching your own face, why you
threw the empty baby carriage into the river,
childless
Fathers don’t let bears eat their children,
not the one read
“Goldilocks and the Bears” to sleep, but
if this is my dead baby
I will cry tomorrow.
If I were to believe
this baby were mine
I’d be as crazy as you, Melissa.
They were beautiful
and the woods are ugly.
Melissa’s baby, her Myth, and
my feelings are dead
to drift in my fog hiding
howling vain creatures
biting and sucking to leach
the guilt I deny, but
creature forgive me;
give me back my blood
my guilt, before death
makes me ghostly
too pale to love Melissa again.
——————————————————————
Reading Alabama
Jeannie dreamt of cherry blossom times
when falling cherished petals
rode on her shoulders like
dandruff thoughts
of springs past
jumping with him on bikes
pedaling home
to the sitting room
to shared cherries and
dreams of travel assumed
with sitars on their knees
playing hozannas from the West
like gospel cries
by the Alabama mist they’d seen
kissing faux banjos
Chloë 