Ponderable polemics, poetic

WordPress site of poet Mark Lucker

remembrance

  • Father’s Day Requiem

    We never had one of those TV sitcom father-imparts-his-sage wisdom, serious sit-downs that I can recall I have no fatherly counsel fortune-cookie-inclusion viral-meme-worthy wisdom to share rarely proclaiming, “As my daddy used to say…” Sans great punchline parts of my father I carry with me, mirth more tangible than profundity less open to interpretation than Read more

  • 1958

    Eight-by-ten, glossy Women’s gowns a snowy hue men’s jackets polar-colored pants black, everything else radiant shades of grays drearily brilliant tones off-black, dark-white vibrant portrait in celluloid Twelve adults, a young boy bouffants and buzz cuts, ogling camera, mischievously dead serious, mindfully aware playful magnitude of the day fighting off hangovers practicing feigned solemnity due Read more

  • Father’s Day Requiem

    We never had one of those TV sitcom father-imparts-his-sage wisdom, serious sit-downs that I can recall I have no fatherly counsel fortune-cookie-inclusion viral-meme-worthy wisdom to share rarely proclaiming, “As my daddy used to say…” Sans great punchline parts of my father I carry with me, mirth more tangible than profundity less open to interpretation than 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

  • 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

  • 1958

    Eight-by-ten, glossy women’s gowns a snowy hue men’s jackets polar-colored pants black, everything else radiant shades of grays drearily brilliant tones off-black, dark-white vibrant portrait in celluloid Twelve adults, a young boy bouffants and buzz cuts, ogling camera, mischievously dead serious, mindfully aware playful magnitude of the day fighting off hangovers practicing feigned solemnity due Read more

  • Vestiges

    As kids, we tied our fates to various inanimate yet participatory objects spun bottles Ouija boards dandelions professed proof of true loves brought cryptic messages all interpreted with certainty until the imagined magic wore off leaving us with our first taste of skepticism but the bottle could be redeemed for the deposit, the eye to Read more

  • Christmas, remembered

    There remains, for me, a magic to Christmas Eve a carryover from youth, augmented with the new memories being created, added to the repertoire Thou the idyllic Mel Torme and Norman Rockwell versions of iconic song and picture were only loving adornments to the Christmas Eves I remember their annual, wistful reappearances are welcome The Read more

  • Freshness

    cardboard Tupperware crowds my attic keeping my soul preserved if not fresh rows, stacks of oddly square bowls repositories of then; lost loves, past successes other leftovers sometimes leftovers trump a fresh lunch filling rejuvenation found amidst the smell musty brown wood pulp – Mark Lucker Read more

  • Pictures

    We were a long time ago years? decades? lifetimes? carbon dating? time is filled in a long forgotten coloring book half the pictures never finished bold, black-line outlines dated, quaint stumbled across by accident you flip through remembering all the scenes beach, park, ball, puppy love ? first few pages carefully colored giving way to Read more