Friday, March 9, 2012

Doug Draime - Four Poems

Writer’s Block


A self imposed spell
is broken.

The ceiling cracks like
walnuts.

Windows shake from
the shattered sound barrier.

Someone has set all
the pigeons free in Baltimore.

The dog laughs hysterically
at the lopsided, cross-eyed cat.

And reflected on the wall of my mind
are images of a 1930’s Hemingway,
and Celine, and the delicate

movement of Carson McCullers
feeling her way through a dark
and empty house.

Hesitations of creative movement
drowned in the sound of locomotion,
ancient whistles and bells

reverberating through my body
like new blood, or a train with golden
and endless tracks.




They Are Slaughtered Still


Older hookers on 44th Street
Still proclaim that he was just
A kinky, foul mouthed john
From the baby killing Pentagon
They laugh about him now
That his money is going to the
Escort services suggested to him
By a well known congressman
And the slaughter of babies still goes on

They are slaughtered still

As the prices of the call girls grows higher
Without a thought he fucks his girls, and kills
Those babies, his hand in the cookie jar in the kitchen
Of his mansion, his wife chattering on
About her tedious day talking to the PTA
One son is home from Princeton eating
Breakfast at the kitchen table, another
Son is just coming down the stairway
As the babies keep on being slaughtered

They are slaughtered still

As he prepares to go to bed that night
After a long day in the War Room at the Pentagon
He sees decomposing bodies in the mirror but
None of them appear to be his own, so he takes
Two sleeping pills, climbs into bed next his
Snoozing wife and falls fast to sleep like a baby

As the babies are slaughtered still




Banging The Cup Against The Bars


In this
senseless
conflict
the dream
of the
world
presents,
we are
all
prisoners
of
ourselves,
locked
away
in our own
calculated
nothing-
ness
making up
forms
that have
no
con-
tent
and which
can
never free
what never
was.




Poem For Myself


When I hit bottom I
find nothing but
absolute relief, when
truth nails me, like an
escape from a war zone.

Yet in part of my mind I
still battle with grim,
archaic melodies,
in the burning fires
of my ego’s
being laid waste.

The face I see in the mirror,
is just a thing,
like any thing, like a table, like
a cloud, like a memory,
like a daffodil, like the pen I
write this with.



Doug Draime's most recent books in print are Rock 'n Roll Jizz (Propaganda Press), and Los Angeles Terminal: Poems 1971-1980 (Covert Press). He has been a presence in the small press and literary underground since the late 1960's. Awarded PEN grants in 1987,1991 and 1992. Nominated for several Pushcart Prizes in last few years. He lives with his wife and family in the foothills of Oregon.

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