The Second Order of a Minute

The ghost of Tyrone Guthrie

wavers and walks again

across the city in which he slept

built dreamed thought acted

action impacting thousands

even as his body rests

and his face, always larger than life,

stares for a time down Washington Avenue

while we walk, jog, run

acting on the small stage of Minneapolis

under the influence

of the flour sacks

and the ruins of mills

We know our bones won’t last as long

as the stone arch bridge

even with its trusses

its heart surgeries and such

our time is a moment

and we still do not understand the nature of time.

An Afternoon on the Farm

Two hour van ride, carsick in the back.  My family, actively a family, even during mundane tasks. Not like some families- mine loved to be together.  Playing games and laughing.  Listening to Dad’s jokes.

The only time we got upset was helplessly watching cars pass us in the left lane – admonishing dad, Step on it!  Step on it.  We’d wail like greek mothers upon learning a child was fated to die.The farm was like no place else we visited – even a gentler purgatory than the one we believed in.  Illisium fields, had we ever heard of such a place, we would known we were there . Timeless, detached from space – country road C wound by like a thread back to the rest of the world = a world easily forgotton as a we walked back and forth on the gravel road from the mailbox to the farmouuse – Dad maintains that it had electricity in the end, but that’s not my memory of the place.  Farmhouse.  Still with it’s original tarpaper sides

Looked crooked as though it had been dropped by dorothoy’s tornado.  No ruby slippers, though, I checked.  Just field after field, on Grandpa’s poorly farmed farm.

With nothing to do, mom would say Go Play!  And we would.  Trounce out to what must be the center of a field of hay, my brother and sister and I would use our forearms to press down the grasstalks, forming mazes to crawl through.  We marveled at bugs and flies, stalks that bulged with baby insects frightened and fascinated us.  Our skin grew tan in the unending golden sunshine, and we didn’t run away from anything.

Untrue

Falsifying my way

through reality

to a reality

that better suits me

Fake it till you make it

How will I know

when I’ve got it made?

humid as hell

People say it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.  But on a day like today, there is no heat.  I mean there is no humidity – only heat.  Heat and a dry, cooling breeze.  This breeze is the raw breeze of an emotion  -  the planet in turmoil, not unlike my turmoil – dry, no tears.  Save the refreshing rains for another day.

Dry, scorcher thoughts chafe each other in my mind.  A dessert.  No, a desert.

The sun beats down, wind shoos it away, but it doesn’t go anywhere.  Like how thoughts can chase away other thoughts, but the problem still radiates down from on high – from on high?  That’s not exactly true either.  If I want to get this right, to track down how I really think, I have to admit that the beating, heated energy my thoughts try to whisk away comes from somewhere other than outside.  Inside.  What’s it called?  If I name it will it go away?  Sure it’s not too dull?  It’s called guilt and shame, just like evryone has.  You, too, I’m sure.

Sorry I Really Can’t

Sorry I really can’t.

I could try to think

of some sort of

existential excuse

my soul is in a downturn

my life is too taciturn

my energy won’t return

all your efforts my brain will spurn…

that’s why I can’t write today.

  Sheila

If I Take the Time

If I take the time

to write small

and with good penmanship,

maybe that part of me

which is always in hiding

will come out to play.

Maybe she’ll kick out some rhymes

she’ll be ahead of her times -

you know she’s always there

but a true, complete sighting

is very rare.

Sestina for Carol

On the happy occasion of my second cousin’s birth
we were also visited by Death
it was almost hard to see the joy
flitting in and out behind the grief
we all felt ———-mixed-up
a funeral is no time for Wisdom?

We heard plenty of lines – wisdom
of the ages – saying death was birth
from this crazy ~~~~~~~~~~~~mixed-up
world – a new life, death
was not an occasion for grief
but instead for uncontainable joy

We strove to find the joy
we had heard, and could see the wisdom
of it- but all we felt was grief
at the thought. We gave birth
to new questions for Death
all of which he’d heard before mixed-up

with curses, mixed-up with prayers, mixed-up
in general, with the continued joy
of living even in spite of Death
stealing a source of Wisdom
from us, earned by an ancient birth
we lost the wise one with a jolt of grief

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~grief
which, when~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~mixed-up
with~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~birth
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(what joy)
where~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~wisdom
was, there was~~~~~~~~~~~~~Death

death grief wisdom mixed-up joy birth

mixed-up joy birth.

1-5-1996

Doppleganger

You wrote

about a nightmare world

Brothers Grimm

dialed one notch grimmer

Where every soul mirrored

another

a dark twin lurking

And you

sharing so much of my name

Sylvia Plath, Sheila Path

Your name asphixiated my hopes

as much as that oven

killed you

Only by changing mine

could I begin to think

I might escape your fate

But I still wonder:

Was it the gas or the

poems that finally did it?

It just goes.

I don’t know what to write.

I set my pencil to paper, and it goes

it just goes.

no deep thought

certainly no structure

no counting syllables

for me

nary a rhyme

I have no scheme in mind

or at least I try

because the patterns

have been patted

and the sayings

have been said

but doesnt matter anyway

I just need them

out of my head

so teetring on iambic feet or

flowing out in waves

the words I write

go forth to meet

and who knows who they’ll save

many, some, or none.

I’ll write til my hand goes numb

and I’ll talk until I’m dumb

and read your words until I’m blind

or til I’m out of time and rhyme

I would rather expire than lose my desire

to share this fire. 

The Polar Opposite of Nothing

Noun. A person, place, or thing.

No such thing as a neutral noun

never needing nothing.

Nouns require something

simply because they are there.

Accept or reject – two choices

it all boils down to a binary code

right or wrong, yes or no, on or off, in our out

cower or shout

it’s the grammar of my life

words, choices, compound sentences

involving conjunctions and various functions

I must make these choices

respond to these nouns

be the agent of action

be the verb

do something

some nouns make it easy

food? eat it.

water? drink it.

yarn? knit it.

concrete nouns call for concrete responses

abstraction blurs the choices

how you respond to them

love, life, death

is everything, the polar opposite of nothing.

Biology Poem

The idea that all our cells

are replaced

every seven years

frees me to

forget

forgive myself

for thinks that happened

so long ago

my body doesn’t even remember -

but oh, those stories

have been passed down.

You’ll like her she’s black too.

When I was 12, we had a baby-sitter – Evelyn.

She was black and 15, and so very cool.

She told me all aobut dinosaurs, that’s

all I really remember, but she was

beautiful – and she could make her

hair stand any which way – and I

was profoundly jealous because

my hair was very long and straight.

It would never stand on end.

My dad said to his friend

John – you’ll like her, she’s black, too.

Oops.  No more friend Joh.

You’ll like her, she’s black too.

Yes, offesnive, yes, rude, but I

think dad meant well.

Not you can only like other blacks

but there’s something that links

something like racism faced

homes misplaced

ghosts chaced

always raced

often erased,

disgraced

sometimes maced,

and on nothing is it based.

Little Poems about Pigeons and Mormons

Small groups gather.

They look like they

should be chattering gaily

but they are intent.

searching the ground for a scrap

they musg be finding plenty

their plump bodies

hardly look like they could fly

yet here comes

a toddling two year old

in their midst -

Airborn!

###

State and Lake

there’s a brisk

breeze off Michigan

the pigeons flutter

behind me

an articulated bus

breathes heavily

the el squeals

overhead

and people splash

by me.

###

A young man, homeless,

rests by the building.

He has a lanky cat

on a leash.

now you, cat, are homeless, too.

###

Two Mormons bicycle by.

Does anyone else

bike in two’s?

###

By Sheila sometime in 1999.

My Dad – a poem

My Dad.
A bus-driver on the early shift.
He looks to maps for everything.
Checking his route before he moves.
Up an hour early every day.
3am.  I’m still trying to fall asleep. 
Getting up out of frustration, I go upstairs.
Dad is kneeling, bent over.  I hear him.
Whimpering.  Next to the wall – barely space to breathe.
He’s praying, crying. 
He looks up at me, tears in his eyes, face a grimace.
I know that look.  The emotion written there: guilt.
I feel guilty because I don’t feel the same as he does.
He’s making up for lost time with God.
Time when he didn’t believe, either.
Am I losing time right now?
Will that be me in 20 years?
Prostrated before a dime-store picture of Jesus, apologizing for my life?

ROY G. BIV is Raping the Rainbow

Children gaze with lazy imprecision
At the results of a thousand years
Since the first discovery of a prism.

Locked inside, warm dreams are lost
in the cold distance of stars in space.
A poster lays bare human knowledge,
painstakingly gathered in stolen glances.

Once thought to be a gift from God
a rainbow shimmer on the horizon
kept the dream alive.

Roy is a lonely explorer
sputtering his useless seed over the sea of
seventeen-year-olds no longer able to explore new lands.
Forced to act as though they are curious,
and please teachers by attempting to explore and make new
something that was captured for them in kindergarten.

“forget everything you know.”

Forget Roy.
Nothing so beautiful should be reduced to a short-hand memory device
to be vomited at a teacher’s convenience.
Forget Roy.

Forget IQ.
Your intelligence is not a number
to be belched out by a machine after it consumes you.
Your intelligence is no one else’s accomplishment.
Your rainbow is not a secret key locked in you and you are no prism.
Don’t let anyone steal what is yours by shining a light through you.
You are the rainbow.
You are the refraction of everything around you, and you are your own;
Your own order and your own beauty.

Rainbows are all basically the same, they just occur in different settings.  What if we, a chemical composition, are as consistent as the prism in our output, what if that proves some consistent human emotion, some order to us, simply by how we’re made.  Does blue feel green being so close to yellow’s brightness, yet so far away, a border uncrossed in history?

These questions never occurred to me in astronomy class. I partly blame myself for being unable to see the obvious beauty contained in the experiments, but I forgive myself, too, because the beauty was so well hidden between the lines of lab notes.

- McMahon C 2003

Sparktallic

Recycling Life

i’d love to take the long lines
            at the grocery store
and transform them
                  into lines of poetry
or lines drawn in great art
              my winding path to the cashier at Cub
could be the horizon as defined by a mountain range.

if each trudging footstep on the way to work
             was a blob of paint
spattered on a grand canvas
               every movement – every moment
in life – fast or show
            staccatoed or stationary
were translated into
              paint, ink, or pigment
what art
              life would be
                                    and is
                                              if we can but see.

C 2007 sheila mcmahon

I had plans once, Isabella

I had plans once, Isabella

 

I had plans, once.

They were simple, really.

Paint a room, refinish a rocking chair

Knit some booties.

 

There has not been a reason to follow through

Seeds have not started to grow

I gave you a second chance, a third, to show.

Sometimes I feel it like a plague

Other times my feelings are hazily vague.

 

Some months the sight of that blood brings bright, spiky pain

Others, I feel a contempt for the fool that I have been again.

The sorrow that I have could fill up a lake

Sometimes it’s a lot to take

 

And then there are times

When I think of all those plans

They stand boldly contrasting the life I have lived,

I have to think that this is the way it’s supposed to be

Even though it’s not what I thought I wanted

There’s nothing wrong with me,

And I am thankful

 

Thankful even for the sorrow of your loss by default

Because it defines me, Isa,

And you’re still in my heart, in the vault.

 

C 2006 Sheila McMahon