John L. Stanizzi Verse-Virtual 2018 January

January 2018

It is an interesting and rather traumatic experience to look back at poems I wrote 30 to 40 years ago. But that is what I've been doing lately. I thought I would share a few with you. The photos are from my "innocent" days and my days as a Rasputin Impersonator. I hope you enjoy these poem attempted by a young man.

Me, eight years old, when I went to the barber.

Here I am at the age I wrote these poems (and didn't go to the barber). The baby is my son Jason who's 46 years old now, and the boy in stanza three who commented about the barber getting smaller.

THE BARBER

1.
The shop is wedged
between two whitewashed glass store fronts
in a mall that did not survive.
Nobody comes here --
hollow buildings
and the barber shop lodged in.
The barber sits all day in the fat chair,
reads porn,
smokes,
sips his whisky.

In the parking lot
the yellow lines have faded
and the storm swallows the barber’s car.

2.
When I was a child
my father would bring me here.
He and the barber would laugh and drink,
and I would sit in the chair,
a mirror in front, a mirror in back,
and count the reflections of my self.

3.
Years later I bring my son to the barber shop.
The barber is old, happy,
makes me a drink,
sips his.
My son sits in the chair between the mirrors,
says it’s like watching the barber go far away,
getting smaller and smaller
as he goes.

THE MAN WHO DELIVERS NIGHTFALL

You said
you were happy
again
after you dismantled your heritage --
the Italian half a ship adrift in a dream
the German half the rudder

Again
you said
you were happy

your shadow billowing behind you
darkening the room
like a black sail
filled with black wind

FARMER

Daybreak, and the old woman
is pushing the wheelbarrow
full of straw

She is alone
except for cows
arranged on the hill
and birds
darting through
harps of light

I see her every morning
cats following,
pawing the falling straw
and I am certain
it is she who takes
away the night --

when we are all asleep
she is awake
gathering the darkness
in her apron

CEREMONY

it was summer
when the ceremony of unraveling began

walking from the illusion
of water on the road

and the quiet of the path
that could not be taken,

toward the swollen ocean
and its illusion of absence

*

the days were long
and filled with lights
whose shadows were blue

days we wanted to be done with
days we wanted back

*

sitting on the bench
at a bus stop
unable to move
as the buses come and go

I imagine children with balloons
I imagine their laughter

I imagine not being able
to see nor hear them.

I have now been to one of the places.

*

it was the phone call
that interrupted us
the ringing too late

it was the brother weeping in the hall
the family milling around the table
the anvil ringing in my ears
that interrupted us

it was the black flowers that bloomed in the rain
the walk across the cemetery
as if through waves
the crooked woman in the chair
the shattering of the crowd

these are what I said interrupted us
but they were lies

it was the ground
that interrupted us

*

booze
country music
pinball
the language of night

the beer-bottle of swans
the language of day
a change in time
that shall go unexplained

*

the tongues lay open the past
unrecognizable

the door is closed
and beyond the door
shattered glass

they are raising the flag
the flag like a mirror
the mirror like a ship
the ship sailing silently away
clouds closing in around it

*

two women on the riverbank
one pointing to the other shore

I look across
at the changing forest
imagining it as place
where darkness is a choice
among changing colors

*

this is all part of the unraveling
the ceremony of painting that which could not have existed
and that which did

Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to tell him or her. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is the beginning of community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -FF