Just the Ashes

8/6/10

joshuaheizer — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 12:38:16 +0000

This time last year
I was waiting for you

25 hours into it
I stopped believing in God

But at 6:29 in the morning
I couldn’t help but believe again

You finally showed up
Late as you could possibly be

And now a year later
You are my life

One-year-old and you have so much power
A smile or a kiss can make my day

Thanks for sharing my birthday month
Buddy Bear

ROUGH DRAFT (UNFINISHED)

joshuaheizer — Fri, 21 May 2010 14:58:01 +0000

The idea of naivete knocks
on the door of my thoughts.
You think this praising God thing
falls under my territory? It asks.

Naivete makes a good case sometimes.
I see pain and heartache and rejection all around me. All day.
And I don’t mean on the news.
I mean in my life. In the lives
of my friends.

How can I keep up with this stuff?
How can I…
How can I….

Salle Des Departs

joshuaheizer — Thu, 13 May 2010 14:04:09 +0000

I heard a story about this
musician who was commissioned to write
a piece for a morgue.
A stretch of violins and
angel-esque voices to
comfort the family of the victim.
This does not comfort me.
If I were called to go identify a loved one,
Drove to the morgue, processing
as I passed all of the living
walking on the sidewalks.
All these people who are not my family sitting cold in a morgue
across town.
So when I get there, I want to hear nothing.
No pretentious stringed instruments I hear in the
movies in the similar scene.
I want to deal with the silence.
Deal with the heartache.

Out-of-date Filter

joshuaheizer — Tue, 04 May 2010 11:37:48 +0000

Last night as I fell into bed,
My thoughts spewed out of my brain,
Through my sinus cavity,
Down into my mouth
And sure enough, right onto
My tongue.
And now whatever my
Mind was spinning in those seconds…
Now that’s fact. Now its how I really feel. Even if it isn’t, its what left my lips so who can argue with that?
That’s the danger of not replacing the out-of-date filter
In your head.

Return of the Poet

joshuaheizer — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 18:40:11 +0000

It’s National Poetry Month. I can’t help but think about my poetry, and where I’ve been since the last post on here. I haven’t been writing much lately, and I accredit that to several things. Mainly, I have a seven, almost eight month old daughter who occupies almost all my time at home. I’m not complaining. I am 100% head over heels in love with her. But I haven’t had much time to write lately. Also, I feel like I haven’t had much stuff coming into my head worthy of writing into a poem lately either. I’m not saying I’ve been thinking bad thoughts or anything, just simply the inspiration hasn’t been there. I reckon a writer’s block of sorts. Anyway, I feel that I should share some poetry because of the celebratory month at hand, so I’ll share someone else’s.

Of Politics & Art
for Allen
by Norman Dubie

Here, on the farthest point of the peninsula
The winter storm
Off the Atlantic shook the schoolhouse.
Mrs. Whitimore, dying
Of tuberculosis, said it would be after dark
Before the snowplow and bus would reach us.

She read to us from Melville.

How in an almost calamitous moment
Of sea hunting
Some men in an open boat suddenly found themselves
At the still and protected center
Of a great herd of whales
Where all the females floated on their sides
While their young nursed there. The cold frightened whalers
Just stared into what they allowed
Was the ecstatic lapidary pond of a nursing cow’s
One visible eyeball.
And they were at peace with themselves.

Today I listened to a woman say
That Melville might
Be taught in the next decade. Another woman asked, “And why not?”
The first responded, “Because there are
No women in his one novel.”

And Mrs. Whitimore was now reading from the Psalms.
Coughing into her handkerchief. Snow above the windows.
There was a blue light on her face, breasts, and arms.
Sometimes a whole civilization can be dying
Peacefully in one young woman, in a small heated room
With thirty children
Rapt, confident and listening to the pure
God-rendering voice of a storm.

Papa Poet & Baby Poet

joshuaheizer — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 23:56:19 +0000

There are four kinds of poems.
That’s it.

That’s all we have to work with?

Yes.
There are poems about God.

Mmhmm.

Poems about girls.

What about guys?

Those poems are really about girls.

What else?

The poems about the shuffling of paper, or about fruit… Those poems are about nothing.

Well, that’s boring.

Not at all, those poems are the best.

Let’s see… What about poems about war and history?

Those are usually really about God or women.

Okay. What’s the fourth one?

Poems about poetry.

Like this one?

Yes. Like this one.

Bob Dylan Goes to the Movies

joshuaheizer — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 18:55:25 +0000

Bob Dylan Goes to the Movies

Starting the car, I hear
“Mr. Tambourine Man”, the Byrds version.
Disgusted, I put in a
Patti Smith CD a friend
gave me the other night.

She was sounding marvelous
until
“Changing of the Guards”
Jesus Christ.

In the lobby, “Like a Rolling Stone”
is wailing over the crowd.
Holy hell. I can’t even escape
my life by going to the theater because
my life is there in the speakers.

The picture starts and “Rolling Stone” rolls
through the credits. I almost
throw up my popcorn.

It’s hard to keep the Coke down now as an emo-punk
version of “Desolation Row” plays…
They brought my eleven minute brainchild
down to a three minute clamor.

The climax of the film features
Jimi Hendrix covering “All
Along the Watchtower”. I can’t avoid myself
anywhere in this country.

Declaration of Dependence

joshuaheizer — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 00:36:39 +0000

can

not

this

own

New Poems…

joshuaheizer — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 20:45:16 +0000

So awhile back I saw Derek Webb play, and before one of his songs he told of a new realization he had. He was going to stop explaining his songs. The reason being he wanted the listener to make his own decision of what the song meant, and how it could apply to their own life. I thought this was really good, and I’ve been thinking about it recently because I think I need to make the same sort of declaration about my poetry. I am slow to put many poems up because of how I think people will infer them. Many of my poems are from other people’s (oftentimes fictional people..) perspective, or they’re simply the retelling of a dream or whatever. And in the past I’ve worried that people might think that if the character in my poem is struggling with something, then that means that I am. This is not always the case, and I’m through being concerned about this.
That being said, here are two newer poems.. still in need of a lot of tweaking.

Waiting For

The wolves are waiting for
us when we come home.
My parents, my brother, my aunt;
we all stop when we see them.

They stop too.

All of a sudden they are asleep.
Asleep or dead.
My brother slides one off with his foot
It falls off our wraparound porch.

The family follows his act.
Except me.
I have no part in this.
____________________
The Shower

I am a fast shower-taker.
I can get in and out in five minutes.
Tops.
But this morning
I stayed in the shower
for over an hour.
It was an easy choice.
Be soaked in this soothingness
or face the world outside
the shower curtain.
Outside those green paisleys.
Those beautiful green paisleys.

The Brutal Saint

joshuaheizer — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:42:08 +0000

The Saint thought to himself
“I cannot be a real poet;
for it is being raw that makes a poet
a truly good one.”

And his religion did
not allow him to be raw

He sat,
resenting God for instilling
this desire in him,
but not the means to fulfill it.

It was then that God
showed the Saint the uncompromising portrait of Himself.

For no other god allows
one to be more real than He.

He is the God who allows people
to even call themselves saints;

Allows man to ask the Creator of the Sky
why his dog died;

To ask,
and to curse,
and to blame, and even to
reject.

What could be more uninhibited than placing a child in a woman’s womb?
Or lightning in a cloud?

Tell me Saint, what is more fervant than saving the ones who despise Me?

The Saint knows nothing else more raw
that the furious love
of his Savior.