John Updike

With the recent death of John Updike, I am reminded of one of my favorite poems of his ..

Cosmic Gall

by John Updike (1963)

Neutrinos, they are very small.
They have no charge and have no mass
And do not interact at all.
The earth is just a silly ball
To them, through which they simply pass,
Like dustmaids down a drafty hall
Or photons through a sheet of glass.
They snub the most exquisite gas,
Ignore the most substantial wall,
Cold-shoulder steel and sounding brass,
Insult the stallion in his stall,
And, scorning barriers of class,
Infiltrate you and me! Like tall
And painless guillotines, they fall
Down through our heads into the grass.
At night, they enter at Nepal
And pierce the lover and his lass
From underneath the bed - you call
It wonderful; I call it crass.

All The Love For The President-Elect

by Suzan-Lori Parks

U Being U

U Being U
Mr. President-Elect
Makes me wanna get MY stuff
correct

I feel like starting with something RADICAL
Like,
Love my Neighbor
Like share what I've got
Like think for myself
Like ask the hard questions
Like lean toward the good and help keep the peace

U being U
Makes me wanna do something new
Like Go Green, or at least try to.

You being you, Mr. President-Elect
Makes me want to look on others with respect
Makes me wanna
practice Radical Inclusion, you know,
Open my heart wide, especially in the presence of folks who
Are not like me, you know,
work to see my Brother
In the Other
You make me want to entertain all my far-out ideas
Make me wanna represent the race, as in the human race,
And know that, like You, I too am Prized.

And to those who say yr a Magic Negro,
I love them just the same
And my love helps us weave a United States.

Mr. President,
Heaven sent
Since heaven is just a place where possibility
becomes possible
And where hostility
holsters
its hostile,
I feel like picking up the trash in the park or on the beach
I think I'll teach, and learn, from all I meet
I think I'll apologize in person for all our faults
and try to make amends for our shortcomings
And also, I think,
I'll brag,
Just a little bit,
About how cool We The People are

Oh, I just had to sing you a little something
Because you,
Mr. President,
You are embarking with Us on an awesome and beautiful
And potentially perilous journey
And so I am giving you
All the Love
All the Love
All the Love
All the Love
Mr. President
That I've got
Because I believe
In the dream
And I am ready
To wake up
And live it.

Suzan-Lori Parks is a novelist and playwright. She is the winner of the 2002 Pulitzer Prize in drama for the play Topdog/Underdog.

Voices of the Dead

I have been lying awake at night, listening -
for your voice coming from a room next door
muffled and indiscreet, I try
to make out the words. But
however hard I strain my inner
ear, it only sounds like hushed tones
of someone speaking Esperanto or
Aramaic. At night, in the silence,
when I feel you closest, I turn
reaching for the dictionary
on the night stand only to find
an old sepia print in a cracked frame.

32000 plus

Derrick Walton was 67
He thought "I've died and gone to heaven"
Ever since he can remember
Since '51, was it in May or September?
He had watched a movie or two
Each and everyday, a few
times he did a movie marathon
friends and family grew up and moved on
In camel-colored notebooks, he wrote
A line or two,a plot, perhaps a quote
There in a stone cottage in Wales
He sits and watches An American Tale.
He laughs and cries, and then he
Records on vellum, the number 32503
A record by Guiness, is great enough
But what of the time lost alone without love?

My Old Dog

The dog will be 7 in September.
It think about him from time to time
Running over the snow banks in Wisconsin
While I, plaintively, ride out a summer storms
in Florida. He has a better home now.

I wonder if he would recognize me
I in my new haircut and broken wrist
Sauntering up to the front door, expectantly.
He would bark - that high pitched excited bark
The bark that says " Say wait a minute don't I know you ?"
I would look - noticing the bits of gray around his chin
And I recognizing that things cannot be the same
Would, taking in a breath of cool winter air, turn
and go back down the stairs to my old car - my back
to the yip-yip yapping.