Free Poetry by Joe Larkin

The Teapot Poem

2011-06-25T10:14:00.000-07:00

The Teapot Poem

Gentle rain
runs in tiny rivulets
down to an enchanted pool
where silver fish flash like lightning
below the surface
swallows bank upon the breeze
dip and skitter along the water

chasing their shadows

on the wind.

J. Larkin 3/03/2006
My translation of a poem inscribed in
Chinese characters on a clay teapot.

Nude Descending a Staircase

2011-06-25T10:07:00.000-07:00

NUDE DESCENDING A STAIRCASE

She came down
  with a crooked smile
   her pheromones
   leaping out.

Lovely, yes,
   spectacular
   in her colors.

Behind the bright faÁade
   the glue of her composure
   was unstuck
   oozing out of every pore.

The picture s h a tt e red.

She came down
   a nude
   descending the staircase
fragmented
and
torn

Trailing
pieces
of
herself
along
   the escalator.

Free Poetry

2009-06-12T19:46:00.000-07:00

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."

New Poem

2009-06-12T11:25:00.000-07:00

Hemingway at Key West

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 Key Largo,

fishing off the Dry Tortugas.

"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,

Italy, Paris, Spain, Africa;

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 Africa;

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.

2009-06-12T11:19:00.000-07:00

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.

New Poems

2009-05-13T07:33:00.000-07:00

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.

New Poems

2009-05-08T11:39:00.000-07:00

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

More poems

2009-04-29T20:53:00.000-07:00

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.

New Poem

2009-04-20T07:04:00.001-07:00

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's Free Poetry

2009-04-01T10:16:00.000-07:00

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