the subterranean

A GASOLINE ODE

2011-05-15T15:58:00.000-04:00

A GASOLINE ODE

by Hank Kalet

“Almost overnight, the quiet farming region changed in much the same manner as the gold rush towns of the Wild West. The flats in the narrow valley of Oil Creek, averaging only around 330 m (~1000 feet) wide were quickly leased, and hastily constructed derricks erected. Towns sprang up out of nowhere with people coming from all over looking to make their fortunes. This once quiet area suddenly became louder than anyone could have imagined, with steam engines and other types of machinery necessary to run the hundreds of wells that sprang up in the valley in the first couple of years. And the mud was fast becoming legendary. Horses were the main means of transporting machines and oil in these early days. As soon as a trail became too muddy to travel, the trail was simply widened. Soon, the width of the trails stretched from the stream to the foot of the hills, with the entire area having been transformed into mud. Horses, which were worked to beyond exhaustion, would often sink up to their bellies in the stuff.”[i]

Plume of spreading petroleum

sucking oxygen from ocean,

like a tick sucks blood

buried at the hairline

on the neck

or deep in the dog’s fur,

massive underwater slick,

a bubble of toxic ooze,

growing, expanding, its outline

in the aerial photo

on TV morning news looking

so much like the blood stain

on New Road spreading from the carcass

of the dead rabbit I saw,

the one that must have been hit

just minutes before I passed.

The Gulf is slowly dying,

ocean, too,

like the creek along my house,

nothing here but liquor bottles

and empty cans, a rusted shopping cart

stolen from the Stop & Shop

to cart home the tan plastic bags

that blow

from trash cans and catch in trees

like flags placed on conquered ground.

Decay and degradation,

the slow dissolve of life

across the millennia, settling,

mixing with sediment,

the sandy mud and pudding-like peat

that line the sea floor,

plankton and sea weed,

the small feeder fish

that died in the past-time

before memory,

layer and layer and layer

deep into the core of the Earth,

shale and rock

that burn bright in the flame,

that smolder and glow

with the ignition

of internal combustion.

“Sure, you know oil and natural gas fuel transportation and comfort, but I bet you didn’t know oil and natural gas fuel American jobs, 9.2 million of them. And that’s fuel for our economy.” – television advertisement from the American Petroleum Institute.

“They put us out of work,

and now

we’re cleaning up their mess,”

he told the paper[ii],

fishing boat surfing along

soft swells,

dropping booms

instead of oyster nets,

a lifetime of fish,

a life really,

drowning in oil.

Remember the movie gushers,

oil spurting up, falling

like a Florida rain

soaking all in black,

wild-catter coated

like a mud-slicked pig.

Pelican or southern gull

or maybe some primordial beast,

brown, rocklike, spawned

from a biblical mind,

oil slicked, choked off

from flight, suffocating

in the oozing, spreading plume.

haze of gas fumes

like the heat playing tricks on the eyes,

rises, hovers

from the fuel nozzle,

a barely visible cloud

that stinks of decay

and chemical process –

nothing else gives off

the same sour stench

I like the smell she says

and she also likes

the Turnpike’s terrible toxic stink

and Staten Island landfills

in the summer

and all I can think of

is Robert Duvall,

yes, it smells

like victory

even along this interior coast,

the massive drums and

refineries exhaling black

and acrid smoke,

visible from the Turnpike

and New York bridges,

industrial menace,

engines of modernity,

straight lines and cold steel

made hot in the generation

of power, the breaking down

of matter into motion,

cloud of soot and stink,

the byproduct floating up

mixing with cumulus

and stratus,

a fog of grays covering the sky,

obscuring sun.

Energy in equals

energy out –

that’s what we learned in chemistry,

the black brown goo burning

into power, propelling

Plymouths and aging Pontiacs

north toward Newark Airport,

past Port Elizabeth

and the Parkway,

pedal pressed to push the pace,

my Toyota and all the rest

pushing eighty,

exhausts exhaling

the useless byproduct

of internal combustion

10.

humidity hugging the hazy gas

of evaporating fuel,

the sickly sweet smell,

souring the stomach,

and I can only imagine what those workers feel

deep in their guts

slick of oil spreading

like our national malaise,

the plume leeching into wetlands

suffocating plants and plankton,

shrimp and catfish

as though we’ve tie

a plastic bag over their heads

cutting off air

choking the life from life

with a violent lurch

11.

globules like puss,

the black brown bilge,

like blood coagulating,

tarballs of oil, crude

buds of a viscous brew,

like snotballs

the diver said on the news

an image as ugly as it sounds

12.

“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’” – Genesis 1:26, New International Version, 1995

13.

Is this what dominion means,

to use and abuse

and burn it all away?

God in the bible

blows life into Adam,

molded from

dust and dirt,

first man shaped

from tiniest speck

of dried ground,

water and dust,

and given dominion,

as the believers say.

To what end, though,

Residue of tail pipes,

exhaust fumes from burned fuel,

the slicks from leaks,

antifreeze, engine oil,

and dead cigarette butts

and fast-food orange drinks

tossed from open windows,

running off macadam in the rain,

hazy rivulets,

streaks of light

catching like rainbows,

as colors swirl

and leech into the aquifer.

14.

Decay, degradation, dissolution,

a dead zone

of suffocation,

oil coating the seagrass

and underwater plants

that breath oxygen

into the Gulf,

That’s the irony, oil sucking oxygen

from Gulf waters suffocating

coral and grasses and the bottom-feeding fish,

the shrimp and mollusks and mussels

and with them years of trawling.

15.

Oil slick still there

two years after lawn mower’s

rusted oil pan leaked

on cement floor,

after bag of cat litter

and straw helped

sop some up,

after dish soap

dispersed slick some,

but still that stain remains

and always will.

16.

Thick smoke disgorges from

narrow stacks spitting flame,

black, heavy, waste from years of re-creation,

of casting thick ooze into

heat and energy

to power four-cylinder Toyota

through Turnpike’s slow-moving traffic

on way to airport,

an exhalation

like a cough choked out from

too many cigarettes,

too many years of menthol

and nicotine,

the emphysematic wheeze

of our addiction.

[i] “The Story of Oil in Pennsylvania,” History of Oil/Petroleum Education, The Paleontological Research Institute website, http://www.priweb.org/ed/pgws/history/pennsylvania/pennsylvania.html

[ii] Fisherman Donny Campo, speaking with columnist Bob Herbert, New York Times, May 21, 2010

Villanelle for Minnie Imber, by Hank Kalet

2010-07-22T09:44:00.000-04:00

Here is a revision of a first villanelle, the French form that had been used primarily for bawdy lyrics but that had been made famous as a more solemn poetic structure by Dylan Thomas and Elizabeth Bishop. This particular villanelle has undergone significant revision -- this is the 11th version of the poem.

VILLANELLE FOR MINNIE IMBER
for my grandmother, 1905-1986

By Hank Kalet

She leaves the house, wanders the city
alone on a grid with now unfamiliar lines,
her mind untroubled, lacking clarity,

lost in headlights, streetlamps, whir of packed jitneys
that run down a street she’d walked so many times.
She leaves the house, wanders a city

of chattered English now foreign as she
fades back to girl’s shtetl Yiddish, her mind
splicing frames out of sequence, without clarity,

calling to long-dead mother, vacant and empty
in the cold dead space behind her eyes.
As she leaves home, wanders alone in the city,

damned by grainy scenes to obscurity,
decades of images, cutting from shot to shot,
her mind untroubled, lacking clarity,

as the film reel flickers, snaps, is spliced, turns gritty,
frame by frame, leaning into the stuttering light.
She leaves the house, wanders alone in the city,
unmoored mind drifting, lacking of clarity.

First try at a villanelle

2010-05-14T11:21:00.000-04:00

This is my first attempt at a villanelle. I'm not sure what I think of it.

VILLANELLE
by Hank Kalet

Her mind untroubled by a lack of clarity,
memory decayed, sputtering in a buzz like
radio static that damns a song to obscurity.

She'd leave the house, wander alone in the city
on streets unknown to her brittle, fragmented psyche,
her mind untroubled by a lack of clarity,

echoed noise, nothing approaching lucidity,
a fog of vague images and sound and such, like
radio static that damns the song to obscurity.

muffled tones, a dress she recalls as so pretty
she refused to take it off, thoughts jumbled in time,
her mind untroubled by a lack of clarity,

dense calls to long-dead lovers; I have to pity
the emptiness and cold white noise in her eyes, like
radio static that damns a song to obscurity.

Film reel sputters, flickers, snaps, gets spliced, turns gritty,
frame by frame, leaning into the stuttering light,
her mind troubled by a lack of clarity,
radio static that damns her song to obscurity.

Dogs in the Rain by Hank Kalet

2010-04-16T10:21:00.000-04:00

This is a new poem, mostly finished, I think, but I am open to suggestions -- including for a better title.

DOGS IN THE RAIN

“Be wet
with a decent happiness.”
-- Robert Creeley

Rain pools on vinyl chair covers,
the dripping from the bent edge of the gutter
a rhythm that pushes
steadily into the hard
improvisation of a wind
chilly with the last
talons of winter grasping
to hold off the change of season.

The creek is full and flowing
beyond the fence, breaking in white
crests as the mud-brown stream
rushes across the rocks and
fallen limbs and toppled trunks.

The dogs run, bounding through a yard
stripped clean of grass from a wet year,
a vast sea of rain and heavy run-off,
mud spraying back into air
from fast-moving paws like
infield dirt from a base-stealer’s spikes.
They like it out there in the rain,
can sit for hours as it
pours down, soaks into fur,
or splash like two children in a puddle,
like my nephew Dan does,
stamping his sneakers
just to watch the surface crack
and the water spray out.

They love that spot at the rear of the yard
where the water collects,
a mucky pond, lake-like when it rains,
bobbing and digging in dirt-brown water,
tracking mud into the house and
smelling sour for hours as they dry.

This storm is biblical, a friend says,
but that seems extreme,
though the rain has been coming down hard,
beating the windows and the roof
like a heavy-metal drummer,
lights flickering, phone going in and out,
and the dogs jingling the back-door bells
to go out every ten minutes.

Is there
a lesson in this I wonder,
this deep pooling of rain water
in the sinking corner
of a yard ignored for years,
a depression in the ground
near our shed,
at the base of a slope that runs
the length of the street,
yard to yard, the runoff
a rushing river almost
and this temporary pond
an attractive nuisance for the dogs?
Is there a lesson
or maybe a warning,
the storm overpowering it all,
dimming lights and closing roads?

We’ll install a drain, re-grade the yard
to redirect the flow
of water, but nature always gets its way;
even the massive trees that
shade the streets we walk with the dogs,
the northern red oaks with thick trunks
the width of a sturdy fullback
or an Olympic power lifter from Russia,
even they fell in the presence
of the rain and wind, storm-soaked sod
giving way, the aging oak
tipping, ripping roots from saturated soil,
sidewalk’s cement slabs
wrenched upward and flipped
like burgers on a grill,
like the branches and stray sticks
the dogs will find and play with
after the storm fades to calm.

Bare Tree, a poem by Hank Kalet

2010-03-31T21:50:00.000-04:00

Bare Tree
By Hank Kalet

like an old woman's boney fingers

the tree's bare branches stretch out
in gnarled twists
swollen and knotty with time

Three readings

2010-02-10T17:55:00.002-05:00

Three readings, the first featuring yours truly, the other two are part of the Sundary reading series in South Brunswick:

Wednesday, Feb. 17:
Somerset Poetry Group Poetry reading featuring New Jersey Poets Hank Kalet, Ray Brown, and Paul Sohar.
Followed by an Open Mic. Feb. 17 at 7 p.m.
Free. Bridgewater Public Library, 1 Vogt Drive
908-526-4016
Contact: Bob Rosenbloom bloom306@yahoo.com

Sunday, Feb. 21:
South Brunswick Library reading series featuring Metta Sama and DéLana R.A. Dameron
Sunday, Feb. 21, 2 p.m.
South Brunswick Library, 110 Kingston Lane, Monmouth Junction
732-329-4000, ext. ext.7635
e-mail, arts@sbtnj.net or otherhalf@comcast.net
Readings are free, but a donation of a nonperishable food item for the South Brunswick Food Pantry is encouraged.
Open readings follow all features.

Sunday, March 21:
South Brunswick Library reading series featuring Madeline Tiger, Lois Marie Harrod and Renee Ashley
Sunday, March 21, 2 p.m.
South Brunswick Library, 110 Kingston Lane, Monmouth Junction
732-329-4000, ext. ext.7635
e-mail, arts@sbtnj.net or otherhalf@comcast.net
Readings are free, but a donation of a nonperishable food item for the South Brunswick Food Pantry is encouraged.
Open readings follow all features.

A Dog's Life by Hank Kalet

2009-11-28T15:19:00.001-05:00

with the dining room table
covered in bills
and all the proofs
that responsibility requires,
the packing slips
and insurance cards,
catalogues and doctor's notes,
I think sometimes of when I was 8
and the worst I had to do
was homework and swing my bat
and miss at a slow-tossed pitch
and wonder where that time went
and, sometimes, I just
look at the dogs and think
they've got it right,
find a patch of sunlight,
crawl into a ball
and sleep, yes, sleep.

Blue Wall in Chile by Hank Kalet

2009-11-26T23:15:00.002-05:00

cesantia
es humillacion
on a blue wall in Chile
translated
on the front page
of The New York Times as
unemployment
is humiliation,
the graffito like a
chemical equation,
the two sides in balance,
the shock of no work
after years at a desk
and now home with no one
returning his calls,
the embarrassment
driving him to silence,
to lie to his son,
to avoid the mail,
the phone, to
bury himself in his house,
banging nails
into wallboard
and patching the dents
and cracks that come with time.
Idle hands
are empty hands, are
hands he’d rather hide
deep in his pockets,
holed up against the chill,
away from the elements,
the winter breeze
that pushes the trees to dance,
the painful numbers
trickling down
from the television.

-- Hank Kalet

Poem: Still Life: Graveyard on Woodbridge Avenue

2009-11-20T21:32:00.000-05:00

STILL LIFE: GRAVEYARD ON WOODBRIDGE AVENUE

1.
Weather-beaten flags mark
graves of veterans,

red stripes fading to white,
to memory

2.
weeds sprout like white hairs from
old-man’s half-shaven face

3.
picket fence, gap-toothed
white paint chipped and peeling,
beaten by wind and rain

4.
church façade, a scratchy red,
unwashed brick
like dead leaves in the sun

Poem: Notes on 'En La Casa De La Casa'

2009-11-20T21:30:00.001-05:00

NOTES ON “EN LA CASA DE LA CASA”
On a painting by Kevin Patrick Kelly
(seen hanging in Small World Coffee, Princeton, Sept. 18)

Curling of pigment, brush strokes that
sweep the sweating hues, a yellow
that’s more than yellow, more than the glow
of an oven flame in the steamy
Southern Hemisphere afternoon,
blue curtains swept back in
an unexpected breeze, farm fields
speckled in distant color with an ocean blue sky
hovering like a bird lost in thought.
Sauce pot simmers, its enamel
the scratchy red of the unwashed brick
visible on overcast morning
in an empty back lot.
Can you see the hand of god
in the uneven lines, the movement
in the shadows implied by
heavy outlines, the disjunction
of space and mind?
Can you taste the mole poblano’s
sweet spice or smell the yellow tortillas
crisping in the oven’s wood-fired heat?
The eye plays tricks, acrylic glaze
infused with life, with light,
flat wooden canvas under
fluorescent bulbs in crowded
coffee shop, dishes clattering,
Princeton morning skittering under a sky
empty of pigment, rain falling,
curl of coffee’s steam
twirling into nothing at all.

Tuesday Poetry Podcast: Sonnet for Bob Gibson

2009-04-23T13:14:00.002-04:00

This week's poetry podcast is of an older baseball poem -- "Sonnet for Bob Gibson" -- that appeared in the Elysian Fields Quarterly in 2002.

A nice Sunday for poetry

2009-04-19T22:20:00.002-04:00

The readings today at the South Brunswick Libryar -- at the series I organize for the township Arts Commission -- were quite interesting. Above is Sander Zulauf, the editor of the Journal of New Jersey Poets and a professor of English at the County College of Morris.

This is Ken Hart, who teaches at NYU.

Thanks to the poets and stop by May 3 for the Idiom Poets.

Tuesday Poetry Podcast: Little League Poem

2009-04-14T14:37:00.001-04:00

This week's poetry podcast is of a new poem -- "Little League Poem" -- that has been accepted by the Edison Literary Review for an upcoming (2010) issue.

Tuesday Poetry Podcast: Cleavings

2009-04-08T14:35:00.001-04:00

I took the week of from the podcast last week -- and then almost forgot this week's reading.

Here it is: a poem called "Cleavings."

Tuesday Poetry Podcast: The Cost

2009-03-24T23:30:00.000-04:00

Check out this week's Tuesday Poetry Podcast here.

Tuesday Poetry Podcast: The Risen Bursting Flower is an Explosion of Color

2009-03-17T20:10:00.003-04:00

Today's podcast is a poem I wrote a while back that is unlike most of my work. It is called "The Risen Bursting Flower is an Explosion of Color."

Tuesday Poetry Podcast: "Aftermath"

2009-03-10T18:03:00.000-04:00

Today's poetry podcast is of a poem I wrote in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, focusing on the beginnings of our now endless-seeming war in Afghanistan.

The great poets read

2009-03-05T12:19:00.000-05:00

The Poetry Foundation offers a number of intersting podcasts, including two that I've become great fans of:

Essential American Poets offers a selection of poets -- chosen by then-U.S. Poet Laureate Donald Hall -- of some of the best poets working in the medium in recent years. Poets like C.K. Williams, Galway Kinnell, Ted Kooser and Theodore Roethke have been featured. It runs every two weeks. You can listen on the foundation's site or subscribe via iTunes.

Poetry Off the Shelf is another important offering, which provides readings, interviews and criticism on a weekly basis. There have been discussions of Elizabeth Alexander and the inaugural poem, Langston Hughes, erotic poetry, Louis Zukofsky, economic poetry and other topics. You can listen on the foundation's site or subscribe via iTunes.

Poets R.G. Rader and Joan Cusack Handler to read March 15 in South Brunswick

2009-03-04T17:24:00.003-05:00

A press release from the South Brunswick Arts Commission:

R.G. Rader, an award-winning poet and playwright, and Joan Cusack Handler -- essayist, creative writer and psychologist -- will be the guest readers on Sunday, March 15 at South Brunswick's monthly series of Sunday poetry readings. The program, sponsored by the South Brunswick Arts Commission, in conjunction with the South Brunswick Public Library, starts at 2 p.m. in the library, 110 Kingston Lane, Monmouth Junction.

Rader is also an actor, director and a professor of English and Theater. He is publisher and editor of Muse-Pie, a small poetry press founded in the early 1980s and recently revived in 2007. His poetry has been widely published, earning him a Merit Book award for his collection of haiku, Neon Shapes. His collected works of haiku and tanka, Raising the Blade, is online published by AHA Press. His longer work of poetry has also been widely published over the years in online journals, magazines, and hard copy journals including Tiferet, Black Swan Review, Cerebration, Lunch, Stepping Stone, Passaic Review and The Paterson Review. His collection of poetry, Kicking the Rain, will be published early summer by Finishing Line Press.

In addition to his work as poet and publisher, Rader is a playwright and a member of The Dramatists Guild of America and the National Audio Theatre Festivals. He is an actor and playwright in residence with Arrowhead Theater Company, a professional theater company he co-founded and which primarily focused on productions in New York City. His stage and audio plays have been performed and heard (audio) throughout the country. Raderalso has published a number of essays on poetry and is a contributor to "Society Matters," a British political journal of the Open University. He lives in Passaic, NJ.

A native of the Bronx, Ms. Handler's poems have appeared in The Boston Review, Poetry East, Seattle Review, and Southern Humanities Review, and have received awards from The Boston Review as well as five Pushcart nominations. Her first poetry collection, GlOrious, debuted in 2003 and its CD followed in 2007. Her second book of poems, The Red Canoe: Love in Its Making, explores the anatomy of a marriage and will appear in October, 2008. She is currently finishing her third book (this time prose), Confessions of Joan the Tall: A Memoir in Two Voices; Book I, is the voice of Joan, an Irish Catholic girl of 12 living in the Bronx in 1954.

In her "other lives" Handler is an essayist, creative writing teacher, psychologist in clinical practice and the publisher and senior editor of CavanKerry Press, a not for profit literary press that serves both art and community. She has served as resident faculty at The Robert Frost Place Center for the Arts and co-chair of the advisory board. Ms. Handler lives in Fort Lee, New Jersey and East Hampton, New York.

Admission to the poetry readings is free, though a donation of a nonperishable food item, which will be given to the South Brunswick Food Pantry, is encouraged.
The readings, sponsored by the South Brunswick Arts Commission in cooperation with the South Brunswick Public Library, will continue through the spring of 2009, with the following program schedule:

April 19: Sander Zulauf and Ken Hart
May 3: The Idiom Magazine poets
For more information, including directions, contact the South Brunswick Arts Commission at (732) 329-4000, ext 7635.

Tuesday Poetry Podcast: Poem for Mary

2009-03-03T11:56:00.002-05:00

Today's podcast is a poem I wrote after reading a story in the North Jersey Herald. You can get it here or on iTunes. Consider subscribing to the free podcast through iTunes.

Liquidity by Hank Kalet

2009-02-27T11:55:00.001-05:00

LIQUIDITY
by Hank Kalet

We see them standing
on highway's soft shoulder
in parkas, ski hats, cold rain
like tears soaking to their weary bones,
an economy in signs, the placards
that pop up at traffic lights
in all weather, these men
paid to stand out there
as advertisements,
as signposts literally
corner after corner
of closed storefronts,
a furniture store,
shoe warehouse, placards
announcing available space
in strip mall
after strip mall,
empty lots pockmarked
with potholes
slick from the drizzle,
but I'm dry thank god
or whomever
inside this humming Toyota
with Gene Pitney singing
through the speakers as we
sit in an empty
parking lot of empty
lighting store on
overcast Sunday,
drizzle of rain falling
like housing prices.

Tuesday Poetry Podcast: Joyride (for Bob Nutter)

2009-02-24T21:09:00.002-05:00

Today's podcast features my poem "Joyride (for Bob Nutter)," about a trip Bob and I took more than 26 years ago after a night drinking tequila (etc.).

The Sick Rose William Blake

2009-02-23T09:52:00.002-05:00

I want to start the week with something from a dead white guy, a visionary who has influenced numerous poets over the last 200-plus years.

The Sick Rose

O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

-- William Blake

From Songs of Innocence, 1789

Sonnet of the Everyday (Hopper's "Nighthawks") By Hank Kalet

2009-02-19T17:17:00.002-05:00

This is part of a larger group of poems called Sonnets of the Everyday:

Sonnet of the Everyday
(Hopper’s "Nighthawks")

By Hank Kalet

Staring into the faces –
what is that blank stare,
cracked from the face
frozen behind the glass?
What is that distance
that keeps the smile buried
beneath a sullen non-committance?
What is that late night,
weary scowl,
permanent like a water mark
on the table top,
soaked into the linoleum
of the loneliest
of counters?

Poems on podcast

2009-02-18T15:52:00.000-05:00

I kicked off a new podcast two weeks ago called Hank Kalet's Tuesday Poetry Podcast.

Check it out by clicking here or going to iTunes.

To submit audio to this podcast, please send mp3 files here.

Tennis Balls (poem for Honey)by Hank Kalet

2008-10-20T12:26:00.000-04:00

tennis ball's ripped skin
like a tear in the soul

wishing her panting smile
given so freely

could be here right now
that I could toss

the tennis ball
and watch her leap

like Tommie Agee
and snare it from

its downward arc
and wait as she

trots back, tongue
flapping like her tail

the breeze rustling
autumn leaves....

Poem on the eve of Rosh Hashana by Hank Kalet

2008-09-29T21:59:00.000-04:00

I wrote this poem four years ago after the attack on a school that killed 300 in Chechnya. I'm posting it today, the first night of Rosh Hashana, because of the title and because I think its basic theme remains relevant.

Poem on the Eve of Rosh Hashana
By Hank Kalet

The count is more than 300 and the calculation
is not so simple, dead children
and building boulders scattered like
so many leaves on an autumn lawn.

What is terror but desperation, a political calculus
born of a sense that there is no future
but in violence. But violence is just violence,
the dead lacking the symbolic grace

of the High Mass or the Shofar's trilling call.
I can't watch the news anymore, filled with
so much pain and personal anguish.
I wash the coffee pot and measure out the beans,

pour them into the grinder and start the maker,
the harsh whir exploding the morning's silence.
The television drones in the background:
a hurricane batters Florida as the candidates

swing through the Midwest stumping for votes
and college teams get ready for their season.
The president's in Pittsburgh talking about jobs
and Kerry's in Ohio talking about taxes

as 13 Americans die in Iraq defending a lie.
I want to ask the president how often you need
tell a lie before it becomes a fact,
how many times you must repeat a wish

before the wish becomes reality.
But then I think of convoys destroyed
by rocket propelled grenades and American bodies
lying dead roadside and Iraqi bodies strewn

across burning cities, and language fails me,
words seeming woefully inadequate to the task.
Our toast has popped and the eggs are burning on the stove.
There is ethnic cleansing in Sudan, the refugees fanning out

across the plains, the rebel forces ragtag and hungry,
running roughshod over small villages as the government
terrorizes its own citizens, the nation breaking apart
under the weight of memory and too many guns.

Hamas takes credit for a bus bomb that kills 16
as if it were awaiting an award nomination
or signing its name to a painting like Picasso or Matisse.
The Israeli government responds with airstrikes that

kill another 14, retaliation begetting retaliation,
the circle of violence replacing the circle of life.
Who is to blame when the oppressed become the aggressor?
And how can we apportion blame when none of us is blameless?

How can we be so smug when we help create the conditions
that drive the young boy in Jenin or Ramallah to strap
a bomb to his chest and blow himself up on a
crowded bus or boulevard in Tel Aviv or Beersheba?

We have too much to atone for this year, too many lives
lost in the haze of never-ending violence,
a war of attrition taking aim, breaking our spirits,
its vast weight suffocating our souls.

Sitting in a Ford Taurus by Hank Kalet

2008-08-27T14:55:00.000-04:00

Sitting in a Ford Taurus
by Hank Kalet

I knew he slept in his car
from the clothes balled up
in the back seat, from
the blear in his eye,
and the way his black hair
snarled in an awkward
cowlick. Eating breakfast
with a plastic spoon
from a can of meat stew,
sitting in the front seat
of a banged-up Ford with
no front bumper and a
phone book beside him
on the seat, watching people
through dirty windshield
rush in and out of the bagel shop,
isolated and alone,
his eye catching mine
as the bells jangle
on the glass door behind me
as I leave with bagel in
brown bag and black coffee
in hand, and I wonder
what's running through his mind
watching the unbroken flow
of workers passing through
this door like electricity
through a circuit as he sits
eating cold stew in a car
in a strip-mall parking lot
on a day when rain is forecast
and political speeches
lead the paper rolled beneath my arm.

Pen and Ink by Hank Kalet

2008-08-20T22:02:00.000-04:00

Pen and Ink
Hank Kalet

If I were to draw you
in black pen,
I'd use all curving lines
and trace them with my tongue....

Vacant Windows by Hank Kalet

2008-08-13T22:31:00.000-04:00

This is brand new.

Vacant Windows
Hank Kalet

"The city itself
is ruined"

and the photos
in pixilated color

on the front pages
of the papers

at the Wawa
bear out the words

of the refugee
in Tskinvali

that I read in
The Chronicle

on a Wednesday
when Michael Phelps

won his fifth
gold medal

and the feds issued
retail stats

that put in numbers
what we all know

all too well,
that our pockets

are as empty
as Mother Hubbard's

bare cupboard,
though the bills

keep arriving
with the frequency

of nightfall
or the trashmen

on Wednesdays.
Broken buildings,

the rubble
in the street,

it’s like I’ve seen
these pictures before,

the smoke billowing
upward from blackened

apartments, upper stories
bombed out and burned,

blacker than the Black Sea,
vacant windows like

the eyes of the dead
before the pennies

are placed to pay
Charon, before

the ferry comes, before
the coffin lid’s secured.

Morning Fragment by Hank Kalet

2008-08-06T12:36:00.000-04:00

Morning Fragment
Hank Kalet

large bees hover
in humid August air

no breeze, drops left
from last night's rain

on hasta lily's
waxy green leaves

Near the Leipsic River by Hank Kalet

2008-05-28T15:36:00.000-04:00

Near the Leipsic River
Hank Kalet

fragility's face --
four white wooden crosses

in the grass beside a
Delaware freeway

names obscured
by the seventy mph speed

as we head home
to New Jersey

(After Lorca) by Hank Kalet

2008-05-05T21:45:00.000-04:00

(after Lorca)
Hank Kalet

for Annie

1.
Rose quivering
in October’s gusting
cool,
last petals
swaying
falling
scattered
like dust to wind

2.
to you
I am open as
a vein to air
to the breeze
to the season’s changing strength
open
as a mind at the moment
of revelation

3.
We two
are caught in the elements,
the mud-green algae,
the murky depths,
wading from the depths
to the river’s
farthest bed,
together

You Are by Hank Kalet

2008-04-30T22:37:00.000-04:00

You Are
by Hank Kalet

steady for me
though you sometimes feel wobbly yourself
my mind feeling frayed
like a weakened seam that
holds together an over-washed shirt
centers on you
like a star in the night
like the distant coastline glimpsed
from across the vast ocean
you are my beach
as I break upon your shores
my quiet blanket on the sand
the quiet moment
when the sun slowly fades
below the horizon

Runner's Poem by Hank Kalet

2008-04-25T16:27:00.000-04:00

Runner's Poem
By Hank Kalet

dried apple core
a turquoise toothbrush

humanity's wasted mingled
among pine cones

and grass clippings
along cracked macadam

-----------------------

tissue box crushed
colors faded

robins' voices
chirping counterpoint

to rhythms of runner's feet
pounding worn pavement

(Written and memorized while running five miles this morning. I jotted it down on a scrap of paper when I finished.)

Bird on a Bay Window by Hank Kalet

2008-04-23T10:21:00.000-04:00

Bird on a Bay Window
By Hank Kalet

black-feathered birds
do battle
sweep in with the scraps
of our weekend raking
in small beaks
the thatched undergrowth
scraped to the surface
placed atop the bay window
relentless they return
no matter how often
I clear the ledge
mud stains dead grass
five times maybe six this morning
this orange-breasted bird
swoops in and away
oblivious to my repeated
retaliations

Found Poem of America by Hank Kalet

2008-04-21T22:06:00.000-04:00

Found Poem of America
(a draft)

FOUND POEM OF AMERICA

half-scraped decal
of American flag,
egg-shaped, scratch-edged,

flaking away
to nothing
on side window

of greasy
service station,
near propane tank,

the size of
a small car,
near Coke machine

and back fence
that obscures
the sprouting weeds,

the fast-food wrappers
and newsprint
telling stories

of rising taxes
and broken bridges,
of corruption probes

and jail time
for crooked pols,
the window’s glass

grime-streaked, caulking
cracked, paint peeling
from trim, glass

reflecting
midday sun,
window facing

stand of trees
that shrinks as
work trucks carve

out space from
thick woods for new
medical offices

and strip mall,
trucks idle today,
summer afternoon

with no breeze,
waiting to buy
propane

to grill burgers,
Mets game
whispering from

my car speakers
as traffic whizzes
past on Route 27.

Sonnet of the Everyday by Hank Kalet

2008-04-20T16:34:00.000-04:00

Sonnet of the Everyday
By Hank Kalet

Just in case
she didn't see his car was gone
or that he'd emptied the closet
of clothes or
pulled his books from the shelves
or disconnected
the stereo but left
the Technics turntable
she got him
last Christmas
he left her a note
no explanation
just a note to say
so long.

Published in Chronogram, March 2006

Scraps by Hank Kalet

2008-04-18T22:21:00.000-04:00

Scraps
By Hank Kalet

The doves in grainy
black and white, blasted
from their cages in
the New Baghdad Market,
torn up, crumpled
like the newspaper pages
we used to pack away
the Christmas ornaments
just weeks before.
“Death has become
so normal for us”
said one teen as he
as he collected
“scraps of flesh,”
the remains
of the victims scattered
like the snapped branches
and loose trash stuck
in the brambles
and bushes littering my yard.
“It doesn’t scare me
anymore,” he tells the paper,
“because I’ve seen
a lot up to now.”

Te Deum by Charles Reznikoff

2008-04-17T16:06:00.000-04:00

I'm reinvigorating this side blog with a poem a day -- some by me, some by others with credit and links. Today, linked from the Academy of American Poets:

Te Deum
by Charles Reznikoff

Not because of victories
I sing,
having none,
but for the common sunshine,
the breeze,
the largess of the spring.

Not for victory
but for the day's work done
as well as I was able;
not for a seat upon the dais
but at the common table.

From The Complete Poems of Charles Reznikoff. Copyright © 1976 by Charles Reznikoff. Used by permission of Black Sparrow Press, an imprint of David R. Godine, Publisher, Inc.

Blues for Tedo

2007-02-02T11:58:00.000-05:00

Years with the shovel

left him hunched

a bent man trying to hide
the pain that showed itself
in the creases
at the sides of his eyes.

Life is not kind
to the man who lives by his hands
or the strength of his back.
Physical strength
is finite
like a tank of gas,
the needle ticking
slowly to E,
or a fan belt, maybe,
the stress squealing
in a stretched-out song,
or the knock and ping
that spring from a motor
on its final push.

-- Hank Kalet

Sonnet of the Everyday

2006-10-02T21:47:00.000-04:00

SONNET OF THE EVERYDAY
from Suburban Pastoral

Cacophony of bird songs,
canopy of blue sky and white tufts of clouds,
a vague melody of sunlight
cracks through the trees,
a leafy song of morning in her head,
harmonic ballad strumming on the
guitar strings of her sleepy mind,
fingers working the moist soil,
crushing clumps and turning,
churning the damp odorous peat:
Dig in with the spade, drag the rake,
a new bed for this year’s tulips,
a new song, early planting
on this early spring morning.

-- Hank Kalet

Channel Surfing

The Risen Bursting Flower is an Explosion of Color

2006-10-02T17:17:00.000-04:00

THE RISEN BURSTING FLOWER IS AN EXPLOSION OF COLOR

the risen bursting flower is an explosion of color,
light cresting in the folds of petals,
the creases, the lines,
the shadows arresting the mind
(light on the canvass
fractured into essential particles,
refracted, the spectrum creating its imperative,
like o’keefe seeing with the eye
of the honey bee)
newly opened iris
form, fragrance, its functional sexuality
a vibrant, immediate, erotic pull
the honey bee drawn into the base,
draws from it the thick sweetness,
its straw-like tongue plunging strong,
working deep within the wrap of petals,
pollen dust coating its bristly fur,
pollen dust, the male seed, carried from
plant to plant
deposited in a floral womb
a fertilization that produces the new,
germinates a future of
new breath, new fruit, new life.

-- Hank Kalet

Channel Surfing