Ken Poyner
3 poems
**
The 2050 Census
How many balls can you keep in the air?
How much hand-eye coordination
Can you exert? How much
Is simple expectation of physics?
I know about practice.
I know about technique.
Talent is merely but not merely
Perseverance. One ball
For some is hard enough. Simple
At the start, fatigue
Is almost as quick to set in
As inattention. Two become
A game, and over time
Anyone can learn multiple plots
For use when juggling the pair of balls.
But coordination is not that common
And shifting between schemes
Requires more practice than most will invest.
Those who will do three are a small pool.
The job has then become not something
One can do, but something one
Must do. Practitioners know each other.
They share secrets amongst themselves.
They can recognize fellow vivants
Even when there is nothing at hand to juggle.
How many balls, and for how long,
Can you keep in action?
Those who can do four
Have gone too far. Three may be special
But four is suspect. An aberration. Above four
There is only a rumor, an exercise
Caught with the chill of the eye
From someone unguarded in joy
And unaware of the danger.
So you can see there is no need
For a demonstration, a proof by exhibition.
Just tell me what should I put you down for:
Two, or three?
**
Electorate
This is the day you win the lottery.
This is the day your unknown
Rich uncle dies, leaving you
All his fortune and a note confessing
Secretly he always wanted
To screw your sultry ass.
This is the day they strike oil
Just forty feet inside your property line,
Just outside the fixed unaware spot
Through the kitchen window you watch
While taking fellowship with last
Dinner’s dishes. You identify
With those fancy people in the Beamers,
Who have people to do their grocery shopping,
Who have wonderful social marriages and
Gardeners or maids who entertain.
This is not your skin for long.
There is a Picasso in the frame
Behind the oil on silk Elvis you bought
For two fifty at the garage sale.
You smooth out the folds of your clothes,
Keep the hair out of your eyes, a step
Beyond the neighbors’ level of purgatory --
And soon more – knowing
The better quality goods in the Woolworth catalog
From those intended for the masses,
Knowing that good shoes are worth any price
And that art makes a statement.
You are going places. A talent agent
Somewhere is looking for you,
Your voice or high set features or
Easy sway when you dance,
Your precious way with the camera.
Oh, how you can tell a story,
Lean into the drama and draw
The whole tire-stud audience with you.
It begins, with the ungodly heart of it:
Once upon a time.
**
Eternal Gratitude
I am thinking you know better.
The bow already frayed,
The strings not quite pulled right,
The base scarred from too many
Last moment get-aways. Your music
Is nothing much at first,
The sorry background that keeps patrons
From counting their own breaths aloud.
No one actually notices when the sound
From that damned fiddle is just then louder
Than the early sportscast on the TV behind the bar.
It is now a tune, has all the elements,
The logical and hinged structure,
Though no one knows it, no one
Can place it. I am thinking
You know better. You choke the bow,
Delicacy gone, the music
Soon a rabble, your teeth a-grit,
Your face suddenly a fugue of
Wonder and purpose and atonement.
Men are now thumping their feet and hands,
The unknown music yet music no less,
The tune lost in tune, the tune
Remembered as lyrics. I know
How this ends. At the intersection
Of expectation and raw material something
In the music that is your service
Pushes the drunk at the left of the bar
To challenge the drunk at the right,
And at the silence of your sudden stop,
You miserably brilliant bastard,
All the bar is chorus or reply and
If I am to get drunk tonight
It will be in the parking lot
With a six pack you played out
Of the innocent convenience store keeper.
I do not know how to thank you,
I haven’t the notes,
I haven’t the talent,
But your seeing my awkward tone deaf gratitude
Is the gift I return to you.
**
return to sawbuck 5.2
**
Ken Poyner’s last book, Sciences, Social, came out in 1995 and he is thinking of doing another, much like a salmon might consider a Kodiak bear. This year, he has appeared, or should soon appear, in Kill Author, Corium, The Medulla Review, Pank, decomP, The Pacific Review, Frigg and even Asimov’s Science Fiction, as well as other places. He is married to the woman who has been the number one raw (as in unequipped) power lifter in the 48 kilogram class in the world for the last three years. Playing in each other’s arena is complicated, if outrageous, fun.
**
The 2050 Census
How many balls can you keep in the air?
How much hand-eye coordination
Can you exert? How much
Is simple expectation of physics?
I know about practice.
I know about technique.
Talent is merely but not merely
Perseverance. One ball
For some is hard enough. Simple
At the start, fatigue
Is almost as quick to set in
As inattention. Two become
A game, and over time
Anyone can learn multiple plots
For use when juggling the pair of balls.
But coordination is not that common
And shifting between schemes
Requires more practice than most will invest.
Those who will do three are a small pool.
The job has then become not something
One can do, but something one
Must do. Practitioners know each other.
They share secrets amongst themselves.
They can recognize fellow vivants
Even when there is nothing at hand to juggle.
How many balls, and for how long,
Can you keep in action?
Those who can do four
Have gone too far. Three may be special
But four is suspect. An aberration. Above four
There is only a rumor, an exercise
Caught with the chill of the eye
From someone unguarded in joy
And unaware of the danger.
So you can see there is no need
For a demonstration, a proof by exhibition.
Just tell me what should I put you down for:
Two, or three?
**
Electorate
This is the day you win the lottery.
This is the day your unknown
Rich uncle dies, leaving you
All his fortune and a note confessing
Secretly he always wanted
To screw your sultry ass.
This is the day they strike oil
Just forty feet inside your property line,
Just outside the fixed unaware spot
Through the kitchen window you watch
While taking fellowship with last
Dinner’s dishes. You identify
With those fancy people in the Beamers,
Who have people to do their grocery shopping,
Who have wonderful social marriages and
Gardeners or maids who entertain.
This is not your skin for long.
There is a Picasso in the frame
Behind the oil on silk Elvis you bought
For two fifty at the garage sale.
You smooth out the folds of your clothes,
Keep the hair out of your eyes, a step
Beyond the neighbors’ level of purgatory --
And soon more – knowing
The better quality goods in the Woolworth catalog
From those intended for the masses,
Knowing that good shoes are worth any price
And that art makes a statement.
You are going places. A talent agent
Somewhere is looking for you,
Your voice or high set features or
Easy sway when you dance,
Your precious way with the camera.
Oh, how you can tell a story,
Lean into the drama and draw
The whole tire-stud audience with you.
It begins, with the ungodly heart of it:
Once upon a time.
**
Eternal Gratitude
I am thinking you know better.
The bow already frayed,
The strings not quite pulled right,
The base scarred from too many
Last moment get-aways. Your music
Is nothing much at first,
The sorry background that keeps patrons
From counting their own breaths aloud.
No one actually notices when the sound
From that damned fiddle is just then louder
Than the early sportscast on the TV behind the bar.
It is now a tune, has all the elements,
The logical and hinged structure,
Though no one knows it, no one
Can place it. I am thinking
You know better. You choke the bow,
Delicacy gone, the music
Soon a rabble, your teeth a-grit,
Your face suddenly a fugue of
Wonder and purpose and atonement.
Men are now thumping their feet and hands,
The unknown music yet music no less,
The tune lost in tune, the tune
Remembered as lyrics. I know
How this ends. At the intersection
Of expectation and raw material something
In the music that is your service
Pushes the drunk at the left of the bar
To challenge the drunk at the right,
And at the silence of your sudden stop,
You miserably brilliant bastard,
All the bar is chorus or reply and
If I am to get drunk tonight
It will be in the parking lot
With a six pack you played out
Of the innocent convenience store keeper.
I do not know how to thank you,
I haven’t the notes,
I haven’t the talent,
But your seeing my awkward tone deaf gratitude
Is the gift I return to you.
**
return to sawbuck 5.2
**
Ken Poyner’s last book, Sciences, Social, came out in 1995 and he is thinking of doing another, much like a salmon might consider a Kodiak bear. This year, he has appeared, or should soon appear, in Kill Author, Corium, The Medulla Review, Pank, decomP, The Pacific Review, Frigg and even Asimov’s Science Fiction, as well as other places. He is married to the woman who has been the number one raw (as in unequipped) power lifter in the 48 kilogram class in the world for the last three years. Playing in each other’s arena is complicated, if outrageous, fun.
Labels: 5.2, ken poyner, summer 2011
