Bangert 1

For(e)closure

Her childhood and her family’s lake house sat a good thirty feet above the water, and there were weathered,
wooden steps that were daring us to walk barefoot down to the dock without ticks or splinters getting inside—
she said things like that could be taken out if you were careful, so we scampered down the wet wood toward the
last memory of the place for each of us:
we sat in white plastic chairs on the dock with sangria and watched the white plastic boats zip by
before sunset, as they watched us too: lovers watching seaweed dance in the murky water and
reflecting on what we thought of the future, how she sighed “glad you could visit…at least once,”
and change as the shared sun unearthed unique shapes from clouds, holding hands through the fear
of the things that no one could really see, but so disparately wanted to.

(written April 2019)

 Bangert 2

Poppy Flowers
“The paintings fade like flowers…”
— van Gogh to his brother Theo,
April 30th, 1889

Vincent van Gogh, in a stupor, rose

from poverty-stained, tattered linens
to witness Monticelli’s Portrait’s glow
for a fourth time; the colors inspired visions
of saturation again: orange cadmium,
chrome yellow, crimson carmine – unfettered vibrancy!
Art made for the moment, that’s what he knew:
starlight, red roses, sienna vases – ecstasy.

He primed his palette, and layers of oil

mingled with moxie; concluding his flurry,
he just wanted another to toil
with the brightest pigments without worry.
I, later, happen to see

Poppy Flowers entombed in an art blog,

and wonder who ushered us toward this epilogue.

(written March 2019)

 Bangert 3

Poetics Expressed

I walk too fast to be a poet.

I don’t care to confront the phalanxed trees
Or their verdant armories of wetted blades below.
At most, I’ll whistle and wonder if birds think
I’m whistling with or at them.
I wish to escape the sun, the rain, the moody clouds;
would Nietzsche mind the rain?
Alas, I have arrived without the chance to wander.

(written December 2018)

 Bangert 4

Convergence

Nocturnal eyes capture the smallest amount

Of light – of warmth – and sieve truth
From their surroundings.
Sometimes, thinking back
Where your tongue was inseparable from mine
like a cartoon kid on a schoolyard flagpole
White Christmas lights illuminated white frat houses,
and catkins coated oaks in earnest,
I gave the requisite pleasure—
Feline newborns climbed inside the warm
engines of shifty patriots or silverados
Behind knots, under the weather, whether or
not skin on skin in skin, that perfunctory pastime,
Owned by boys who have never, in their life, changed
a litterbox
was welcome.
A candle, that smells more like watermelons
than watermelons do, is just a detail.
At daybreak, nocturnal eyes are best at misremembering.

(written December 2018)

 Bangert 5

Livestock and Shares

Bah, bah, sheared sheep,

have you any verse?
yes, ma’am, no, ma’am,
none too terse;
some in an iamb,
and some in trochee,
and none in new meter
that might be quirky.

Dada black sheep

have you any art?
of course, of course,
where to start?
look below,
or right now:
I’ve gifted myself Liber1ty
(an allusion! – (now it’s a real stanza))
with not masking that pun,
which if you ask me
is art well done.

Bourgeois white sheep

have you any guilt?
why, sir, no, sir,
not my ilk
white wool is proper –
best not to question.
can’t control the market or
the wool-wearing statesman.

1. Liber Pater is another name for Bacchus (Dionysus) – God of wine, freedom, fertility,
prophecy, etc.
(written December 2018)
 Bangert 6

Tea with Honey

My girlfriend said she likes that I don’t write

poems on love, & I didn’t know what to say…
I write on the bee’s weary downward flight
& concomitant visible malaise.

Busy vibrato gone in those still wings,

small forelegs pinned under my intent eye,
I rush to fill a spoon with a healing drink
of warm water & sugar, placed by wanting antennae.

The bee declined the drink, & as my passions rose

too far I tilted the spoon & drenched
the sinless bee! – Which at once in the throes
of excess sought a queen or bloom to quench...

Writing of such hot days, I fail to see

how she does not affiliate with the bee.

(written November 2018)

 Bangert 7

Marlboro Sunsets

“American plains have become quite plain”

Take a filtered breath and laugh at it all.
Rolling toward the fading light
You tear across numbed gravel
Peering out on our town,
Past trees that were cut down
To make building a quarry less hassle,
Over a stagnant lilypad-forest and sky
Matching brown, toward the mingling of soot and sun;

The car coasts, cracking rocks like popcorn

As I think not of night, but of when sunsets end
And if this town will ever understand beauty
Born over and over again and still beautiful.
We are still born choking on amber townlight
Filling the still marble-white quarry
We reach beyond the cauterized charcoal sky, but
When God snuffs his cigarette, we won’t notice.

(written October 2018)

 Bangert 8

Endorsements

Rusty buoys drifting at sea.

Blinking yellow lights in chorus
With breaking waves
in sibilant code:
shh, shh, shh

Idle lighthouses reminding

sailors in want,
a beacon powered by air and filth
and rising

This poem is sponsored by:

A primordial sea
a factory on a rocky crag
and their new tradition

(written November 2017)