Back Again (and let me hear that popular demand!)

Dear Reader (that's you, I hope),

I'm back after nearly a month's absence. (Did you miss me? Who? Oh, I'm the guy who sends you short poems most days... [How soon they forget!])

Since I've been gone longer than I expected, I'll send a few poems today (make-up poems). By the way, if you know anyone you think would like to receive my daily poem, please let them know about this subversive or versive activity. Here are some poems:

Poets Who Give Their Poems To Strangers:
NEXT ON OPRAH!
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Two people share a seat on a bus,
but one is having a good day, the other
a bad day. The moral is, take care
in choosing your side of the seat.

[Note: This is meant to be a sort of nonsense poem, the sort of nonsense that comprises most pseudo-science. Actually it has no reason to exist as a poem. I don't know why I like it. But I do.]
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She seemed mysterious, standing there
(waiting, as was I, for an elevator),
swaying slightly, eyes far away,
smiling.

Then I noticed, obscured
by her earrings, the earplug, the wire
leading to her tiny Sony -- heard

(tiny and far away, but
devoid of mystery) the music
to which she swayed.

[Note: This poem suffers from technical advances in electronics. When I wrote the poem in the early 80s, it was still surprising to see people responding to tiny devices, seeming to talk to themselves, for example. Now everyone has a cell phone, tiny gadgets full of music, etc., and we are used to such things.]
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Back from a morning run, dripping sweat,
my reek fills the elevator. All day
people will ride up and down here.
Later, meeting me for the first time,
they will wonder why I seem familiar to them.
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In the good old days, most poets
were consigned to oblivion.
Theese days even oblivion
won't take poets on consignment.

[Note: There's this odd idea most booksellers have that "poetry doesn't sell," so that many bookstores are reluctant to carry poetry books on consignment (meaning they put the books on their shelves and get paid their cut when a book sells). Fortunately for us poets, oblivion is a very comfortable place -- they have soft chairs and a big TV screen there.]
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If we knocked down all the walls,
we'd be free -- until all the ceilings
smashed us into all the floors.
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Oh Dear! You've Been IDed!

"Be careful!" "Don't be silly!"
"Just who do you think you are!"
Intimidations of immortality from
recollections of early childhood.

[Note: William Wordsworth's poem (alluded to above) is "Ode: Intimations of Immortality From Recollections of Early Childhood," all about the days when, more spirit than human, he found a visionary gleam in things, a "splendor n the grass," remembering which, he decides that birth "...is but a sleep and a forgetting," but that some ember of our immortality remains, and can be blown into life by recalling the visions of early childhood. You can find the entire poem at http://www.bartleby.com/101/536.html.

My much shorter version changes the word "intimations" (meaning hints or traces) to "intimidations," (put-downs), a change that is accomplished by sticking the letters "ID" into the middle of intimations, for in childhood we are strongly identified by others with our small and presumed-ignorant bodies. Childhood recollections are full of adult noises that amount to denials of our immortality, including the phrases that start the poem.

I started the title with "Oh Dear" because it seemed to me my poem was less an Ode than a lament. (You can hear the difference if you have an Ode ear.)]
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Dean Blehert
Blogs:
http://deanotations.blogspot.com (short poems)
http://dearreader08.blogspot.com (essays and longer poems)
WWW.BLEHERT.COM