Joe Larkin is a published poet, short story writer and stand-up comic, not necessarily in that order. Joe is tired of playing the "publish my poetry" game.
Joe says, "I don't want to waste any more time sending poems out to journals and waiting for months for them to be published or rejected. I'd rather spend my time writing and performing. I want my poetry to be read by as many people as possible, so I'll be posting poems here for all to read and enjoy. All poems are © Joe Larkin. Please respect my copyright."
Friday, June 12, 2009
New Poem
Hemingway at
In the morning sun, he is lime green
under the big banyan tree off the veranda.
In the papers, the world sings of him;
they love large men of large deeds;
it is no different here.
He eyes the six-toed cats
that mill around him absently;
he loves them, every one.
They steal along the porch,
curl about his ankles,
lick their paws assiduously.
The lizards keep to the rooftops
and the trees.
He drifts naked to the pool
she had installed while he was gone
shooting pigeons with the men on
fishing off the
"Take my last two cents, why don't you?"
he boomed as he threw down the pennies
that lodged there in the wet concrete
to remind her again and again
to honor him and be more frugal.
Fingers of Spanish moss hang
limp in muscular branches.
Soothing the wounds
of body and mind
he slides under the water, counting,
a big marlin tugs at his mind.
In the thick afternoon,
bottle of gin in hand,
he climbs to his lion's lair
above the pool house,
draws the rope bridge in behind himself,
reads what the columns say of him today,
"hero," "coward," "man's man,"
"the bravest man I ever met," said one,
"blustering blowhard
trailing women in his wake."
He paces, leopard to zebra skin and back,
trophies out of
the pain won't let him sit.
Now and then he stands cat still
staring to the future;
gin eyes tinged of shotgun shells,
he pens a word or two.
I Live On the Outskirts of Her Love
I live on the outskirts of her love,
secure, retired, protected in a gated villa
out beyond the stadium where green hills
trace the contours of her rude fortress town.
I see her skyline in the distance, her marble steps,
the streets where she shops for bullet-proof vests.
Nestled in the comfort of flowered beds,
I loll on the grass at the margin of the yard.
I live on the outskirts of her love,
on the bowered veranda where sometimes
we share a glass in the warm summer nights
when the moon flies high and talk about the children
we slew when we were young, mad emperors,
callow, selfish, unwilling to conceive of all love’s facets;
we cry in all its faces and tell ourselves the ones
who came after saved us, guaranteed redemption.
I live on the outskirts of her love.
We laugh around a table set with turkey and dressing,
candied yams and deviled eggs, telling stories
of dumb, daring chances we took out on our limbs --
the weed and whiskey, blind alleys, new worlds explored,
settlements with desert sands and stars pulsing all around,
gods looking down, forgiving, giving us youth to spare.
The walls and gates from here to town concede nothing;
her cobbled streets grow harder, my flowers bloom
in mad profusion under the weeping willows.
I repair to the garden to dig in the earth and eat turnips,
while she goes back to her cell and fights the guards.
I live on the outskirts of her love,
secure, retired, protected in a gated villa
out beyond the stadium where green hills
trace the contours of her rude fortress town.
I see her skyline in the distance, her marble steps,
the streets where she shops for bullet-proof vests.
Nestled in the comfort of flowered beds,
I loll on the grass at the margin of the yard.
I live on the outskirts of her love,
on the bowered veranda where sometimes
we share a glass in the warm summer nights
when the moon flies high and talk about the children
we slew when we were young, mad emperors,
callow, selfish, unwilling to conceive of all love’s facets;
we cry in all its faces and tell ourselves the ones
who came after saved us, guaranteed redemption.
I live on the outskirts of her love.
We laugh around a table set with turkey and dressing,
candied yams and deviled eggs, telling stories
of dumb, daring chances we took out on our limbs --
the weed and whiskey, blind alleys, new worlds explored,
settlements with desert sands and stars pulsing all around,
gods looking down, forgiving, giving us youth to spare.
The walls and gates from here to town concede nothing;
her cobbled streets grow harder, my flowers bloom
in mad profusion under the weeping willows.
I repair to the garden to dig in the earth and eat turnips,
while she goes back to her cell and fights the guards.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
New Poems
The Caretaker
In my park there is a wooded path
from the lowland to the high
where off to the side by chance I found
a garden plot sullied and forgotten,
overgrown with buckthorn and honeysuckle,
where in the center stood
a tree.
I am the caretaker. It is my job to bring it back.
As if beguiled, I hacked through the underbrush,
climbed to the treetop, careful not to fall,
and looked out, envisioning paradise,
then climbed down from my high perch
and set myself to work.
The Hub of The Wheel
The dam has sprung a leak
The water of miracles
Will drown me.
Gift of clear lungs
Sharp tongue
Vision unapprehended
Flowing through my fingers
Cold and pure.
Come for a visit to the corner of my eye
Leave the center of my vision alone.
For there is falseness, unreality,
Look away, look away
There is truth in nothing.
Nothing is the truth
The hub of the wheel
Is nowhere, look away.
Friday, May 8, 2009
New Poems
The Spider’s Song
Is it not too much to ask
to be the keeper
of one’s fate, the one
who feeds his own desires?
That is the tune played
on your instrument;
the threads sing songs
of succulent flies
struggling to keep their freedom,
and now you’ve captured one
in flight, as if you had
the vaunted wings themselves,
as if it were the end of all endeavor,
all spinning and planning,
the bridge from here to there.
You leap across the cosmos
of your conception
to spin out tunes
that bring the vast world
to you in your solitude.
You trap life’s essence
bundle and drain it
and sleep up in the corner
waiting for a note
to zing across your strings
announcing a new song.
© Joe Larkin
……………………………….
An Extended Life
Another one’s passed out of the world and we cannot cry.
The tubes and machines are disconnected and we sigh
sighs of relief and say she’s in a better place, and by God
she is. She spent her last two years crying, not knowing why,
or where her home went, who the people were who came to her
and where they went when they left or if they’d come another day,
and if she’d care. And she cried and cried for her lost children,
her mother and father who could not comfort her except in dreams
interspersed with nightmares of death and yearnings for death
when living death had taken her, left her bereft of hope.
And now, mercifully, she’s gone.
We hope she’ll recognize her old home.
As I look into the years ahead,
Life extended with prescription meds;
the little senior moment, forgotten name, word that slips the mind
I feel a nightmare coming on and fear those who would save me from myself.
© Joe Larkin
Is it not too much to ask
to be the keeper
of one’s fate, the one
who feeds his own desires?
That is the tune played
on your instrument;
the threads sing songs
of succulent flies
struggling to keep their freedom,
and now you’ve captured one
in flight, as if you had
the vaunted wings themselves,
as if it were the end of all endeavor,
all spinning and planning,
the bridge from here to there.
You leap across the cosmos
of your conception
to spin out tunes
that bring the vast world
to you in your solitude.
You trap life’s essence
bundle and drain it
and sleep up in the corner
waiting for a note
to zing across your strings
announcing a new song.
© Joe Larkin
……………………………….
An Extended Life
Another one’s passed out of the world and we cannot cry.
The tubes and machines are disconnected and we sigh
sighs of relief and say she’s in a better place, and by God
she is. She spent her last two years crying, not knowing why,
or where her home went, who the people were who came to her
and where they went when they left or if they’d come another day,
and if she’d care. And she cried and cried for her lost children,
her mother and father who could not comfort her except in dreams
interspersed with nightmares of death and yearnings for death
when living death had taken her, left her bereft of hope.
And now, mercifully, she’s gone.
We hope she’ll recognize her old home.
As I look into the years ahead,
Life extended with prescription meds;
the little senior moment, forgotten name, word that slips the mind
I feel a nightmare coming on and fear those who would save me from myself.
© Joe Larkin
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
More poems
Mastectomy
The fog that forces season's change
has somehow seeped into her house;
no offshore breeze lifts the palm fronds
or stirs the curtains at her door.
Damp sheets cling to her
like lambskin gloves,
or hairs upon a mouse.
A misted mirror shows her face
behind a murky mask that tires
her with its epigraphs to love
or hatred or compassion.
The head scarf shrouds
beauty deep inside her
a mole in the dark
splashed upon her face.
Scales on her eyes freeze
when she removes her blouse,
sky caves in, soul flattens,
heart pinches, crucified,
alone on her bed of nails.
And still the fog hangs on
where long ago she walked the sands
daring the sun to burn her down.
Far off along the shore,
sea sounds mute the silent change
her tongue of fire and ice is still.
A POEM FOR EVE
She is an ice-blue distant galaxy
approachable but through a lens of fantasy;
In her I spy visions of fire and fury
exploding light and passion at her core.
If I could fly once more
to pierce the dark surrounding space
come into close orbit
I might revolve around her
Endlessly.
Space is so empty
galaxies so far
the gravity of her so great
that I will surely be drawn in
burned alive.
Monday, April 20, 2009
New Poem
Here's a new one for all you old Beatles fans:
I Want to Tell You
John’s been shot down,
taken down to the Strawberry Field
across the park
where he’ll live for a time
until time takes him by the hand
into some dim corner of a story
vaguely remembered
like the lost soldiers
of the great war
spinning out
across the universe.
But we still hear him singing
Give Peace a Chance...
Imagine, peace.
George, too, has passed
along with all things
that must.
Guitar gently weeping
like an old brown shoe,
he was with us
and without us
trying to reach us
with heart and soul.
It’s been a long, cold, lonely
winter since he passed.
But we still hear him singing
Here Comes the Sun…
© Joe Larkin
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Joe Larkin's Free Poetry
Here are a few poems for your enjoyment. I'll be posting others as time permits:
Three Photos in My Wallet
I open to the smell of leather -- a young girl,
not yet ten, sunbathes on a dock in Lake Champlain,
unaware, it seems of the camera's presence.
It's the early '20s. My eyes are drawn to her,
not because she's my mother. The composition
points to her. She's been gifted with
timeless beauty to balance her not so lovely sisters
striking poses behind her.
Another girl, my daughter. Her newborn face
resembles the one on the dock; she'll be a real looker,
alert and present on that summer day in '74
when I cried with joy because of the long-dead
girl in the bathing suit.
It's '97. My daughter is grown. A small girl,
a toddler, her mirror image, sits on her lap
smiling up at me -- I see the sunbather on the dock;
she travels through time with me.
The sunbather on the dock. My mother, Elizabeth Reeves,
Lake Champlain, NY, circa 1920.
Angel
I'm hooked on your wind-curled hair
floating high above me in your troposphere,
thin, wispy, high-white and delicate,
ice-crystalled, you are my sunrise/sunset;
your silky translucent sheen brings change;
you color my mornings, evenings
crimson, rainbow-salmon, pure gold.
Emerald Isle
We drove on the wrong side of the road
on the right side of the sea
where green is greener than green
can be anywhere else in the world
and the sun and rain collide
in the stretch of an hour.
Kings, saints and martyrs
rest beneath the stones
that grow like grains of sand
or stars across the sky
lining the fields of night
with runes set in bygone days
but not so far they can't be heard
in a Dublin pub behind a pint or two
when music sings down every lane
and spills out on the streets of Temple Bar.
We heard it on the wind at Dingle Bay
from beehive huts of stone stacked upon stone
mocking time, marking time with the sun
and with the moon for all eternity,
songs sung from each thatched cottage
with gorse as yellow as sows' ears,
from roads that course with no intent
up and down, around and through
tiny villages where craggy folk
solid as rocks within themselves
lilt their way across the land
among the ruins of their past.
And we fit right in as each day waned
we paused for bed and breakfast,
settled in for a still night's sleep
and woke to a big Irish feast of cereals,
juice, bread and jams, coffee and conversation,
earthy talk with hosts and fellow pilgrims.
We inhaled burning peat as if
my grandfather had cut it from the land
and handed it to me.
We lunched on strong fish chowder
and the briny smell of the sea
was everywhere and wild
as the hair on an Irishman's head.
I know from where my rock hard stubborn streak
derives as sure as does my love of music and words.
I met myself each day strolling down the streets
heard my voice issue from the mouths of men
in pubs, churches, shops.
I live there now in them
and dwell there always in my mind.
Old Man to Young Friend
Please take me in hand,
show me how to read
your new world:
where to dine,
what to eat,
when to sleep.
You say you'll sleep
when you're dead.
I once thought that way.
I now say, why rush things?
I walk in circles
like Thelonious Monk
seeking lost chords,
bemused.
There is so little time;
decisions appear so fast,
make toast,
play with dog,
read paper,
cross to the mailbox,
swim upstream,
cautiously.
And the worth that I see in you
is unworthy of my expression.
While you fly on vaunted wings,
I sit here in my indolence
an old fart enjoying the scent
of years lived so fast
with only wisdom to impart.
Bird/Tree
The bird is just five black
lines, but it is a bird on a
limb, plain as day.
The limb is one long line,
thick here, thin there.
And the needles,
thin lines in a spoke.
A blue wash is the sky;
the bird, limb and needles
just three colors --
brown, blue, green.
Simplicity, space
defining form, and
my hand inspired,
guided somehow by
the breath that
animates me, and the
bird and the tree.
© Joe Larkin
Three Photos in My Wallet
I open to the smell of leather -- a young girl,
not yet ten, sunbathes on a dock in Lake Champlain,
unaware, it seems of the camera's presence.
It's the early '20s. My eyes are drawn to her,
not because she's my mother. The composition
points to her. She's been gifted with
timeless beauty to balance her not so lovely sisters
striking poses behind her.
Another girl, my daughter. Her newborn face
resembles the one on the dock; she'll be a real looker,
alert and present on that summer day in '74
when I cried with joy because of the long-dead
girl in the bathing suit.
It's '97. My daughter is grown. A small girl,
a toddler, her mirror image, sits on her lap
smiling up at me -- I see the sunbather on the dock;
she travels through time with me.
The sunbather on the dock. My mother, Elizabeth Reeves,
Lake Champlain, NY, circa 1920.
Angel
I'm hooked on your wind-curled hair
floating high above me in your troposphere,
thin, wispy, high-white and delicate,
ice-crystalled, you are my sunrise/sunset;
your silky translucent sheen brings change;
you color my mornings, evenings
crimson, rainbow-salmon, pure gold.
Emerald Isle
We drove on the wrong side of the road
on the right side of the sea
where green is greener than green
can be anywhere else in the world
and the sun and rain collide
in the stretch of an hour.
Kings, saints and martyrs
rest beneath the stones
that grow like grains of sand
or stars across the sky
lining the fields of night
with runes set in bygone days
but not so far they can't be heard
in a Dublin pub behind a pint or two
when music sings down every lane
and spills out on the streets of Temple Bar.
We heard it on the wind at Dingle Bay
from beehive huts of stone stacked upon stone
mocking time, marking time with the sun
and with the moon for all eternity,
songs sung from each thatched cottage
with gorse as yellow as sows' ears,
from roads that course with no intent
up and down, around and through
tiny villages where craggy folk
solid as rocks within themselves
lilt their way across the land
among the ruins of their past.
And we fit right in as each day waned
we paused for bed and breakfast,
settled in for a still night's sleep
and woke to a big Irish feast of cereals,
juice, bread and jams, coffee and conversation,
earthy talk with hosts and fellow pilgrims.
We inhaled burning peat as if
my grandfather had cut it from the land
and handed it to me.
We lunched on strong fish chowder
and the briny smell of the sea
was everywhere and wild
as the hair on an Irishman's head.
I know from where my rock hard stubborn streak
derives as sure as does my love of music and words.
I met myself each day strolling down the streets
heard my voice issue from the mouths of men
in pubs, churches, shops.
I live there now in them
and dwell there always in my mind.
Old Man to Young Friend
Please take me in hand,
show me how to read
your new world:
where to dine,
what to eat,
when to sleep.
You say you'll sleep
when you're dead.
I once thought that way.
I now say, why rush things?
I walk in circles
like Thelonious Monk
seeking lost chords,
bemused.
There is so little time;
decisions appear so fast,
make toast,
play with dog,
read paper,
cross to the mailbox,
swim upstream,
cautiously.
And the worth that I see in you
is unworthy of my expression.
While you fly on vaunted wings,
I sit here in my indolence
an old fart enjoying the scent
of years lived so fast
with only wisdom to impart.
Bird/Tree
The bird is just five black
lines, but it is a bird on a
limb, plain as day.
The limb is one long line,
thick here, thin there.
And the needles,
thin lines in a spoke.
A blue wash is the sky;
the bird, limb and needles
just three colors --
brown, blue, green.
Simplicity, space
defining form, and
my hand inspired,
guided somehow by
the breath that
animates me, and the
bird and the tree.
© Joe Larkin
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