Good morning everyone,
It’s already beginning to feel a lot more like summer, and I hope you’re enjoying it as much as I am. Our poet today is Phil Timpane, whose work I have always found mysterious and interesting. Phil Timpane lives in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, where he works as a building contractor and designs and builds new poems. His poetry has appeared in the Atlanta Review, Canary, The Cortland Review, The Philadelphia Inquirer, upstreet. and Vallum, among other print and on-line journals. He was a winner of the Atlanta Review’s International Publication Award.
Here are three of my favorite poems. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.
–Irene Willis, Poetry Editor
Climate Change Too
We thought we could take it
in random doses
all those new age poisons–
my dad with his PCBs in the lab at GE
me and my orange sunshine
black beauty dropped
in unmarked tabs at school
And it’s anybody’s guess
whether the dementia was from natural or man-made causes
the creep of the next regularly scheduled ice age
or reason’s not so glacial retreat
in the face of deregulated doom
But even his Pa before him near the end
blamed the cancer on additives in his Kellogg’s Special K
ignoring the Parliament recessed filters
laid out like stiffs in a hinged glass case
on display between us during those weekend visits
Even I admit that luck and love may not be enough
to stuff the damage done back
into the magic lamp of wishful thinking
its finish rubbed to a blush of self-inflicted wounds
No turning back
the hands that wound the working guts
sprung before the digital age
when made-in-America meant something
that conceived the likes of Pa and me and him
and truth
Be told
generation is a two edged word
that cuts in one direction
what’s written in the blood
whether chemist’s code or poet’s scrawl
is the cursive on the virtual wall
A forecast
of days being numbered
believers and skeptics alike
probability after all just
math at a distance
moving in like the fog that closed on dad
or the flashbacks I never had
to map the thickening climate
[Ir]Religion of the Day
Where to now, Saint Peter
-Elton John & Bernie Taupin
I have to confess I’m a serial liar in the lurch
I mean why burden somebody with the truth
When you know what they want to hear
Maybe I’ll pay one day
Some final accounting before the pearly gates
But maybe one last whopper taken on faith
And I’ll join my fellow sainted sinners who know
Just how much the world loves
A good spin with just the right slant
To balance Dark and light
God and gullible be damned
A Taoist Heretic’s Anniversary Poem
The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao
– Lao Tsu
Sometimes no poem
is the only poem
that speaks
Forty years
or a lifetime
silent as first light
of a dawning year
The void can’t hold a candle
to this
The uncarved block splits
with age
I love the many lines and the wrinkles
in time that we’ve become
the imperfections
that make us less
somehow making us more
The love that can be spoken is not eternal love
still
This poem