NOTE TO HIDDEN POEM SEARCHERS: YOU NEED TO CLICK THE TITLE OF THE WARNING POST. THE NEW ‘HIDDEN POEM‘ IS AT THE BOTTOM (‘THE SWITCH IS REAL IS OLDER)’
As a short preamble to what I am attempting here, I write this note. At best, I’ve dabbled in poetry. I took it in college at Auburn under the esteemed Dr. John Nist, now deceased, who said he thought i showed promise. We had to read our poems in front of the class. He was encouraging, yes, until I actually started to process what he said. What’s promise in the poetry field? I wondered. I went into Journalism, which at that time post-Watergate, was a popular major. I continued to dabble in poetry. I took literature classes, admired poets from Blake to Yeats to Hopkins and American poets Emily Dickinson, Lewis Carroll, ee cummings, Whitman, T.S. Elliott, and Dylan Thomas. And, of course, Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan.
Gerard Manley Hopkins Wikipedia public domain
But I can’t say I’ve looked at poetry or seriously thought of writing it again until this brain diagnosis. I will tell you I still can’t read two pages of Joyce’s Ulysses and make sense of it — but it does fascinate me, the word play, the obscure and dense references, and the stream of consciousness, kind of like a Capt. Beefheart album.
So, without further ado, here’s my poem:
This Switch is Real
The expansive Sleep fell away
To consciousness just like the Big Switch
On, off. On, again?
She drinks the clear water. And puts the biscuits up.
Yesterday’s coffee at bedside. Like every day.
But it’s not my coffee. Not my bed. I dreamed I looked at my hands last night. And feet.
I had shiny black shoes. I need to grab the railing.
There are cereal bowls with milk on the bottom. Silly soft cotton pajama bottoms.
Morning? It’s Friday, no, Thursday. A 24-hour interval intervenes, droops over the table.
I fold the clocks. Put them in that space. TV blares for argument sake. In another space. What a good space, she says. Toast burns.
Hello? Hello? I want to hold my girls Hannah, Emily, Claire.
Catherine. Himmelman name-check. God Bless You.
The flowers match the curtains, how odd, yellow-green.
Not the matching colors, the flowers. Are they real?
Buzzing voices hum with low talk.
They are all here. I know them all but do not really.
The light dims with time. Lord knows what time it is.
Are they my hands?
How can it be?
Music is hard to hear in the air. Need a better conductor. Stand By Me.
No. Let It Be. The hardcore life is not where it’s at.
Heavy, I helped lower the titanic vehicle into the hole.
I’m typing my letter of resignation. It was an interesting experiment. I made a ripple; Everyone makes ripples. So many ripples. Fat-skinny ripples. They crash, clash and push against each other until finally smooth.
Am I alive?
Bang, you’re dead. This Switch is real.
I Am.
Oh My God
(Mike Oliver, Jan. 14, 2018)
NEW POEM
Congratulations you have found the Hidden Poem. Now explain it.
Ha! Not so easy. Even for me.
Lots of riffing off rhymes, after market sand blasting. Still doesn’t blast, far enough to find the underlying truth. The truth, lying under.
So here we go.
The Hidden Poem
This is about the mind.
Brain drops keep falling
But a hard rain yet to come
Burn the Beatles, shake it up
Like a hurricane
Keep in mind. Keep your mind.
Cross out the triangle and orchestrate a reversal to a circle. It’s a dance.
Burn the Beatles shake it up
Here in Birmingham.
Play date. Replay. The grievance system all day.
OK, OK,
Call the man, go ahead call the Man.
Burn the Beatles break it up.
Combo unit, turntable, CD,
Blue Ray, Radio, TV,
AM/FM., PM, LMNOP.
TeeeVeee.
Burn the Beatles. Shake it up.
Remember and hit save. For later you ex-Hume the past. I Think.
Therefore. You Are. Don’t put DesCartes before the hors
Tainted from an Apple byte.
Don’t Soft Cell my brain sell.
Burn the Beatles. Shake it up.
The MC is KC. Discipline. Words.
Word.
Badger, banter. Re-Cognition.
Not fragile words fall to the ground and shatter into a thousand pieces. What? OK, a million pieces. What? Okay, a billion pieces.
No sunshine needed KC. Shake your booty, Shake your groove thing. Shake like Alabama Shakes. Towns in splinters from winds of violent change. Like a bent fire hydrant.
And red white and blues from an orange tyrant
What Marvin said. Mercy.
Keep in mind.
In mindfulness you will find.
Keep in mind there’s no revelation.
Except for this: You are the cherry on top of creation.
I decided to go to church. There was good discussion on the environment drawn from a book called Beyond Eden.
“Do we really have stardust in us?” I ask.
“In Alabama we do,” Arthur said. “They even wrote a song about it.
“Stars Fell On Alabama”
Arthur is funny.
I can’t forget the glamor
Your eyes held a tender light
And stars fractured ‘Bama
Last night
I was at First Presbyterian Church Birmingham, one of the oldest, if not the oldest church in the city. The church, started in the 1870s, fractured over Civil Rights or related issues in the 1960s.
‘
I was at First Presbyterian Church Birmingham, one of the oldest,