Charles Springer
4 poems
**
Kingdom For a Spoon
Franktheman reaches up on Thursday for a coffee from beatcopJack while Jack waits for a nod from Frank the world is good but Frank just stirs, then Jack says keepthespoon so Frank makes room inside his coat of many spoons but now he clacks and so he gives a spoon away a day and I, I’mChucknicetomeetyou, stop one noon and say, heythanks and keep this spoon inside my pocket for a week to ten days until one Friday when I need a spoon to eat my cupo’soup and take it out, think of Frank and does he have some left and here begins the afternoon I look for him but fall asleep beneath the town’s bronze hero when next I know the sun is popping up behind a cloud, no, cop who hands me down some coffee with a spoon much like the one I have and now I have more spoons than I will use so I begin to look for anyone to give my extra to but everybody moves away and I begin to wonder what is with them going around in plastic bags to keep the rain off, then look to see wind lifting all the umbrellas and not one cop is on a beat where ends of streets are orange with flames and sirens spin and hydrants spout into the not-so-distance where someone’s yelling spoonspoon.
**
Door Nails
Who cannot say we are not made
for death? Life doesn’t ask us to say when.
*
It’s obvious we want to be leave our bodies
with all the jumping up and down we do.
*
Death’s not afraid of flying
when it takes a holiday.
*
Wife plans to come back as a chair.
Husband will most likely be a stool.
*
No one does a figure eight before
she falls through ice.
*
So when does death get tired?
*
If we didn’t know we were alive,
living would be a breeze.
*
He who dies with the most toys
still ends up with a box.
*
More should be buried with their cars.
*
Learn patience while you’re living.
I heard dying really takes it out of you.
**
Patch
**
Curfew
**
return to sawbuck 4.2
**
Charles Springer has degrees in anthropology and is an award-winning painter, having lived much of his life in Cincinnati, Philadelphia and New York. He currently eats, sleeps, bicycles and writes from the family homestead in the mountains of north central Pennsylvania where he earns a living in advertising and is constantly trying to keep his barn from falling down. Over the years Charles has enjoyed publishing in Apalachee Review, Boxcar Poetry Review, The Cincinnati Review, Faultline, Heliotrope, and Oxford Magazine among others. New poems appear or will appear in The Coe Review, The Avatar Review, Forge, The Lumberyard and Edison Literary Review. A recent Pushcart nominee, Charles is currently working on a manuscript for his first collection. And he is much pleased with having poems appear in Sawbuck.
**
Kingdom For a Spoon
Franktheman reaches up on Thursday for a coffee from beatcopJack while Jack waits for a nod from Frank the world is good but Frank just stirs, then Jack says keepthespoon so Frank makes room inside his coat of many spoons but now he clacks and so he gives a spoon away a day and I, I’mChucknicetomeetyou, stop one noon and say, heythanks and keep this spoon inside my pocket for a week to ten days until one Friday when I need a spoon to eat my cupo’soup and take it out, think of Frank and does he have some left and here begins the afternoon I look for him but fall asleep beneath the town’s bronze hero when next I know the sun is popping up behind a cloud, no, cop who hands me down some coffee with a spoon much like the one I have and now I have more spoons than I will use so I begin to look for anyone to give my extra to but everybody moves away and I begin to wonder what is with them going around in plastic bags to keep the rain off, then look to see wind lifting all the umbrellas and not one cop is on a beat where ends of streets are orange with flames and sirens spin and hydrants spout into the not-so-distance where someone’s yelling spoonspoon.
**
Door Nails
Who cannot say we are not made
for death? Life doesn’t ask us to say when.
*
It’s obvious we want to be leave our bodies
with all the jumping up and down we do.
*
Death’s not afraid of flying
when it takes a holiday.
*
Wife plans to come back as a chair.
Husband will most likely be a stool.
*
No one does a figure eight before
she falls through ice.
*
So when does death get tired?
*
If we didn’t know we were alive,
living would be a breeze.
*
He who dies with the most toys
still ends up with a box.
*
More should be buried with their cars.
*
Learn patience while you’re living.
I heard dying really takes it out of you.
**
Patch
Just outside Leftover’s Diner, Patch sits shaking on the bench, waiting for his next set of instructions in front of the newspaper box and whether they will come complete on fronts of T-shirts going by or as single sweater letters, he has to spend a morning puzzling but most of the time he looks like he’s just waiting for the bus that never comes and so I buy him tea he stirs with his pencil when he isn’t writing diner menus which people line up to see just how beautiful eggs over easy with sausages can read but then last Saturday the waitress had to speak the specials while the box outside sat empty with its door left open and the bench was gone and the air, the air had a fickle glow from the blinking yellow light and some folks walking by like extras said they saw Patch down at the ocean fishing in a bottle.
**
Curfew
An original summer evening and I was walking down the street for what was the first time and ahead of me a block or so away some guy just standing there and soon (trans. from 0 to 12 seconds) another guy appeared from North Side Street and started talking to the guy just standing there and after some contiguous seconds, they laughed and patted each other and then a third guy and by the time I reached them, there were at least a dozen guys laughing and patting and then (trans. from 0 to infinity) the police showed up and took us downtown, no wait, we were already downtown, ok, to some station somewhere and booked us for, according to the report, no reason and days later the circuitous judge sentenced us to 30 days of, according to the report, nothing so for the next month none of us could even think, let alone think of something and so there was nothing for the first time in our lives and to this day we don’t know how we got through it so we’re bringing in the psychic detectives to get us back our neighborhood, not to mention something we can’t put our fingers on.
**
return to sawbuck 4.2
**
Charles Springer has degrees in anthropology and is an award-winning painter, having lived much of his life in Cincinnati, Philadelphia and New York. He currently eats, sleeps, bicycles and writes from the family homestead in the mountains of north central Pennsylvania where he earns a living in advertising and is constantly trying to keep his barn from falling down. Over the years Charles has enjoyed publishing in Apalachee Review, Boxcar Poetry Review, The Cincinnati Review, Faultline, Heliotrope, and Oxford Magazine among others. New poems appear or will appear in The Coe Review, The Avatar Review, Forge, The Lumberyard and Edison Literary Review. A recent Pushcart nominee, Charles is currently working on a manuscript for his first collection. And he is much pleased with having poems appear in Sawbuck.
Labels: 4.2, charles springer, summer 2010
