Thursday, May 5, 2016

Five Poems By Jack D. Harvey and One Tiny Drawing By Jenny Mathews

Jack D. Harvey’s poetry has appeared in Scrivener, Mind In Motion, Slow Dancer, The Antioch Review, Bay Area Poets’ Coalition, The University of Texas Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, The Piedmont Journal of Poetry and a number of other on-line and in print poetry magazines over the years, many of which are probably kaput by now, given the high mortality rate of poetry magazines.   

The author has been writing poetry since he was sixteen and lives in a small town near Albany, N.Y. He was born and worked in upstate New York. He is retired from doing whatever he was doing before he retired. He once owned a cat that could whistle "Sweet Adeline," use a knife and fork and killed a postman.

Sturmalarm

Clouds hurrrying;
cloud after cloud.
Dark.
Darker.
Dark boots marching.
Thundersnort
after thundersnort
blazing banging
rank and file;
brown battalions
marching free
on the streets 
of Berlin.

On the sidewalk,
my Berlin sweetmeat
gives me a 
small-moue
lech-look
yodeling
O look!
Oh! Oh! Frightened
by frightening 
dark and lightning.

Herr Hittite,
father of 
ashes and 
lye,
killer of Siegels and 
Greenbaums,
you no I love,
you I hate.
You ring-rang you
rooting-tooting
rattling-tattling
custard from hell
fly-blasted
two-bit turdkneipe.

Not yet,
Minnie the Mouser,
on big B-29s
so unsleek,
so lassome
lissome
langsam they
slip along
alone away
again bombing
back and gone.

Not yet. 

Watching her 
watching the marching,
the goose stepping,
it’s her I wish,
it’s her I loathe
all at once.

Bye bye
creep crack rattle
light light
lightfarb lichtgang
light light
-ning -ning
it goes snarack;
snarackit it gegangs
gegoing gegone.
Noisome sulphur
blaps out stink.

We cower in conundrum
corners and wait for
peace and sun,
the young placid gawd
good God!
to go come-come
beam gelucid
bright-bright
light ringing 
bright bringing
over us unheeded
unimpeded
divine sunhead. 

Dark. 
Darker. 
Dark troops marching.
Bad man
ranting and raving;
Herr Hitler’s favoring
weather rides a ring
of iron and blue
October breaks our hearts.

Go away 
Herr Hitler,
go away;
Apollo,
god of light,

blow him to hell. 



Boat Song
     (after Martin Codax)

Waters of the sea of Vigo,
Hast thou seen my amigo?
O God, that it were given!

Waters of the sea arising,
Hast thou seen my beloved?
O God, that it were given!

If thou seest my beloved,
For whom I sigh,
O God, that it were given!

If thou seest my beloved,
For whom I bear great suffering,
Tell him, tell him, I wait here,
Tell him I wait for him,
in the fading day, 
in the dead of night,
in the rising dawn, 
Tell him I wait for him,
O God, that it were given! 

                                       Tiny Drawings 11-14-2010 By Jenny Mathews


Tempest Storm

She stoops,
her tits swing forward and
on her fanny she sits
                                  plump
while behind the tickling wind
her peacocked fan creates
the flock of friends 
her nakedness creates
like dying foes
the steel of her
stern gape feel;
it wrenches them back
out of passion.
Twin busts
like Darien’s peaks
rise and rise;
their souls in arms,
these prancing dunces.

The thumping butler,
the aspiring youth
shut down
before her
sweet fulsome 
giggle;
it’s Maid Marion,
it’s tenseness,
says the old 
blade and blesses his
stars as he stands
stiff as an icicle;
it’s stupidity,
says the college 
don and turns to his glass;
eorthe mudder,
says the 
street gang,
yelling and yelling.
Everybody sees 
the greater whore 
or the lesser.
Bare buttresses established,
she makes a quivering retreat
backstage.

Dreaming dirty, inflamed, we
slouch, going out.
Lust descends over the
black isles of naked women,
the shadows crunch 
on doorsill and 
fishnet thigh,
cocks grow
hard as rocks; 
insides light up 
and easy in the
light we joke and 
condescend to enjoy
one another’s fixtures.
Spanking Jack
gets his thrill
and Jill
climbs another mons,
brandishes another
tower of Babel.

Indeed, we all tremble
while she,
half slave and 
half sweaty slayer,
gives bubbles and baubles;
lower, higher, streams 
the noise and motion,
nursing us 
she goes on in labor,
on and on-
the belly and its neighbors
have no ears-
fanning, stinging, preparing,
the first and last 
quarrel is resolved. 



But From That Nest

Was there a kangaroo
hopped and hopped
on the desert
tail down,
brown top-fur
burnt tan
under the sun
with his leg tendons
tensing
like ribs on a fan?
Was there the tiniest yellow
swallow swinging and dipping in
gables and winter far off,
far off to the north?
Did he nest, did he sit on
his own ancient crocket?

Were there men
building and breaking,
creaking and stamping?



Idle Hands

Brutus knew;
in the carbonized palace,
when the sons of dawn
in blue array
arranged their creaking 
knives about his heart.

Brutus felt
the distance of life;
his ambitious courses
sped away like
spaceships towards the
dwarfing sun.

In the palazzo
of tinted marble
not a piece of 
royal furniture
out of place.
Lofty wars,
bloody hands,
bloody swords
in the emperor's thorax
become transparent
as windowpanes;
more than
food for thought,
history furnishes
fresh and deadly meat.

Inspired monks
in technicolor
illustrate the text;
on some cold
French winter's eve
Roman Brutus lives
and stalks 
in the pantry,
free as grassy steppes;

Brutus yet.




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