Saturday, May 12, 2012

POEM OF THE DAY BY KEVIN RABAS

Fall Up


Gunkle and I had this big mirror between us, hefting it
into the back of his blue pick up truck. Gunkle’s part retarded,
a giant in blue jeans and green Crocs, wearing a white t-shirt
with battery acid on it. His glasses are thicker than my thumb.
So, we grab hold of this monster mirror, and it glints,
and we both look into that mirror, noticing the clarity
of that blue sky and those green sycamore leaves reflected
so perfectly that is appears you could just dive on into that mirror
and sink into the sky, and we think the same thing.
“You could fall up,” Gunkle says, “and just keep on falling.
Nothing would stop you.” And that was the way of it.
Gunkle’s mind was now my mind, and I was in that mirror
falling on up through those white smoke clouds
headed towards an orange sun.
Gunkle and I stacked box bed springs on top the mirror,
and some branches from out front, and I could hear that large mirror crack,
but I think Gunkle and I could still see it—
that vision of sinking into sky, drowning
with only the sun to hold us up.


-Kevin Rabas

Thursday, May 10, 2012

POEM OF THE DAY BY CHARLES BERNSTEIN

Pompeii




The rich men, they know about suffering

That comes from natural things, the fate that

Rich men say they can’t control, the swell of

The tides, the erosion of polar caps

And the eruption of a terrible

Greed among those who cease to be content

With what they lack when faced with wealth they are

Too ignorant to understand. Such wealth

Is the price of progress. The fishmonger

Sees the dread on the faces of the trout

And mackerel laid out at the market

Stall on quickly melting ice. In Pompeii

The lava flowed and buried the people

So poems such as this could be born.