Ponderable polemics, poetic

WordPress site of poet Mark Lucker

life

  • Sampling

    Sitting at a brewery rural, northern Minnesota tasting a variety of beers, ales small flights of five A couple – mid-twenties sits across from us they too, are sampling each other – first timers comparing dating app peccadillos head-scratching mismatches awkward exchanges preferences for beer types, each other quickly give way to comfortable laughter Another… Read more

  • No French Cuffs

    Plaid flannel shirts of my Northwoods youth smelled of beer and pine cones boat motor gasoline and fresh caught sunfish wood smoke and filtered Winstons when I was a kid the intertwined, pungent aromas of cervelat salami plumbers’ grease, house paint mingled freely, locked in square-patterned fibers, always-rolled-up sleeves no amount of Fels-Naptha soap could… Read more

  • Visionally

    Been here too long seen way too much my empathy has decayed piles of rubble-pity hope was a chrysalis birthed ugly butterflies that now flit from dead plant to dead plant Paradox eternal doing right things for eventual wrong reasons appeasing, ignoring those doing wrong things for right reasons conundrums abound doing good where ‘good’… Read more

  • The sign

    Sawed-off fence picket turned sideways points eastward, sort of you are – we are – ‘that way’ if signs are to be believed The sign unaware you have been gone thirty years, plus your house,over twenty anyone driving north on Crow Wing County Highway Three would believe they could turn, still find you I know… Read more

  • Delivered

    walking old neighborhood streets first time in forty years strolling the paper route I once sped through on bike chucking news, sports, imaginary touchdown passes blithe in my accuracy – papers always landing where intended most of the time remembering homes, faces cantankerous folks the best tippers comforting offers of lemonade, hot cocoa incessantly yapping… Read more

  • 33 (For Johnny)*

    Twenty-one years was not nearly enough; we had just embarked when you left. Thirty-three years is not nearly enough to erase what is indelibly sketched not a pencil caricature, a dimly recollected photographic snapshot or grainy home movie just you, at nineteen, before illness rudely smudged and dog-eared the picture you are smiling, damn it… Read more

  • Eternal, spring

    “You see, you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.” – Jim Bouton Life is a scorecard; an encrypted story in exotic-to-the-unwashed hieroglyphs, easily, quickly translated by those versed in the language. We can excitedly, precisely… Read more

  • Gnosis laid bare

    The tone of your discourse public, private, anonymous shrill, accusatory non-sequiturs blending reality, perception, personality seamless, misguided pastiche grounded in your justified fear of being wrong fear of not being right fear of differences fear of those similar, but who say unfamiliar things unbecoming via people that look, seem like you, aren’t at all, after… Read more

  • Broadsides

    I once asked God for a sign needing more than spiritual Burma-Shave cardboard placards stapled to raw, rough pine sticks Ah, but I am not advertising my tag-board always blankly devoid of political hate hackneyed slogans five-ninety-nine pizza specials! buy your gold for more! I am not here to direct others to event parking or partake… Read more

  • World Serious

    In the game of baseball, a great hitter will often explain his success at hitting a thrown ball three inches in diameter with a round bat a quarter-inch smaller around saying “I slow the game down” – some even claiming that they can actually see the red stitched laces as the ball hurdles toward them… Read more