The Poetry, Essays and Personal Journals of Larry L. Dill
Clean Slate Productions
and other poems by Larry L. Dill
written in Austin, Texas in January, 2008
for the Poetry Project
If you could start all over
Without the banality
What would you do?
Cut out television
And dumb blondes, too?
Give up guns
Or get a few?
Walk your dog
Or eat it? Ooo.
You can’t get away
From the order
That is already a part
Of your breathing
And your brain.
I suppose you could dream
Or stand out in the rain.
You could be more supercilious.
Like a gay man in his groove.
The difference between intelligence
And defensiveness is hard to prove.
You could just move.
You can sit around on the floor
Drinking wine and smoking dope
With another lost generation
Talking about hope.
You could live in trees
And look at leaves
And wonder why the hell
She couldn’t hang on
Or was it you that lost your grip?
You could take a trip.
You can live in the moment
Or plan ahead
Either way you’re gonna be dead.
Live like a child
Or live like a monk.
Both ways free
Both in a funk.
I went out to North Dakota
Saw the moon for the very first time.
That’s what you have to do, you know.
to see divine.
But I'm sittin' here now
in a padded chair.
I'm in here.
The world's out there.
Anger management
is a powerful tool.
But either way you're still a fool.
I’m goin home now to my quiet space.
I have a good pencil
but it doesn’t erase.
Melancholy Traces
Melancholy traces to the dark domain
The black dog barking in the empty brain
The sleep of death becomes desired
When the soul is tired.
Looking at the photographs of an English garden
Remind me of the times that I’ve been pardoned
I don’t look up at the stars anymore
I can’t see the forest for the trees.
I’m thinking about the ground now
And working with my hands
I never really got them dirty
Not from working anyway.
I’m thinking about going away
But I know I won’t
The things we want to do most
We usually don’t
Rational thought is one way of not thinking
Like looking at the sun and not blinking
You can burn your eyes out
As well as your brain
The question is what do I have
That will likely remain?
Anything besides the
Melancholy traces of the dark domain
Home Depot, I-35 and St. John’s,
Austin, Texas, January 10, 2008
It’s the money that gets you down
A bunch of Latinos standing around
Wouldn’t mean anything otherwise
But you can see it in their eyes
Last night’s beers holding back the tears
They squint in the dirty morning
Praying for a lucky break
Their master is fate
White guys driving through in diesel trucks
White guys with big bucks
And bad vapors
They don’t check your papers
They pay cash at the end of the day
Works out better for everybody that way
Or so they say
It’s an economic coup
But for those who know by two
Nobody else is coming through
Try to make it on a six pack then
Try to be asleep by ten
Back in the parking lot at 6 again
With a hundred other hungry men
How’re you ever gonna win?
Business as Usual
Now that we have that out of the way
What do we have left to say?
She was talking on a cell phone
To someone out there.
Talking like a long lost cousin
Was in despair.
“Everything’s looking good,” she said.
“We’re on our way.
Middle of the month
We ought to know, I’d say.
Yes, yes, we had a good holiday.
We’ll you, too. Have a nice day.”
She looked at me
And then looked away.
“Another idiot I wrote a grant application for today.”
In the forest of the night
Your life begins in dreams
And ends in nightmares
Unless you remember your childhood
Day after day.
I woke early on my birthday
To find a bow and arrow by the bed,
A giant cardboard lion to shoot at
And no thoughts of death
For either of us.
As an old man now
I search the files
With the same pleasure and aplomb
That I fingered the arrows, the feathers,
The rubber stoppers on the ends,
And the shiny visage of the lion’s eyes
Burning brightly into mine.
No Country for old Men?
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
--William Butler Yeats, Sailing to Byzantium
Does the imagination dwell the most
Upon a woman won or woman lost?
If on the lost, admit you turned aside
From a great labyrinth out of pride,
Cowardice, some silly over-subtle thought
Or anything called conscience once;
And that if memory recur, the sun’s
Under eclipse and the day blotted out.
--Yeats, The Tower
I’m not sure why I’m angry tonight.
Hillary pilloried,
Cormac Macarthy praised for turning
A Yeats line into a mindless bloodbath.
Let’s see. We could start with me.
I just don’t accept the idea that the existence
Of psychopaths among us means that
Human nature is psychopathic.
That the psychopaths are a race of giants
Eating us little people alive.
Hillary Clinton? Same people looking
Only at the dark side seem to think
That she’s proof positive the devil exits.
You can see she’s one of the witches.
Broomsticks and switches.
So to paranoia as a human trait.
Not human nature. Not fate.
Drama factors in the darkened mind
In dreams the paranoid spirits unwind
Macarthy plays on fear
Plato warned against the theatre
We’re always getting closer to the end times
Still the poet’s heartbeat is in his rhymes.
Hillary is a poem of her own
Her vision misunderstood
As a quest for throne
Let him without a vision
Cast the first stone
She walks within her own lines
Stop listening to Bill
She’ll do just fine.
Readings:
An Artist of Life by D.T. Suzuki
Complete Site Index
larrydill@newhopejournal.com
www.newhopejournal.com
copyright 2008 by Larry L. Dill