Ponderable polemics, poetic

WordPress site of poet Mark Lucker

remembrances

  • Traveling

    On family trips when I was eight, nine plastic, primary-color cowboys, Indians, soldiers, animals fought and romped in a synthetic, nappy, dark-blue rear-window battlefield meadow Other times, it was a fuzzy ledge on which to lean, and watch the road fading, while my mother half-jokingly admonished me to turn around, see where I was going, Read more

  • Frogs

      – Mark L. Lucker © 2017 http://lrd.to/sxh9jntSbd Read more

  • Old growth

    At age seven I nearly killed the pubescent birch tree anchoring our Minneapolis backyard stripping it of all its bark, roots to four feet up – the physical limits of my fanciful reach As Mrs. Kime’s most intrepid first-grader I planned to build a birch bark canoe, ala the Chippewa we were studying, but my Read more

  • Missing out

    Living now in a place where, in autumn most leaves stay put clinging to their branches without pretense never having the decency to abandon their vibrant green for appropriate, earthy hues A few adhere to my more familiar, season-bound tradition, true natural order small in numbers generally unnoticed It takes keen effort to scrounge enough of 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

  • Stratas

    As a kid I collected rocks – as many colorful pebbles as my six-year-old jacket pockets could smuggle via subterfuge mom and dad later humored my geologic interests with a small, paperback, field guide to rocks – which I always took with on trips we took – grandpa in tow – playing along, helping me 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

  • diurnal

    “…and there’s nothin’ short of dyin’ that’s half as lonesome as the sound of a sleepin’ city sidewalk and Sunday mornin’, comin’ down…” – Kris Kristoffferson There is no respite from the escape the night before, sketchy adrenaline rush of getting there, staying there, leaving behind whatever it was trying to find whatever it is Read more

  • One metmorphisize fits all

    Happily-ever-after mythology prefaces every sequel continuing character-driven sagas story arc only tacking an index onto volume one, three, sixteen in a set having read this scene repeatedly life movies annotated script writing, rewriting books they were based on playing déjà vu-all-over-again never more than countless times here-we-go-again monotony of changing times changing directors same cast Read more

  • Driven

    Waiting for an oil change customer area big-screen TV Rachael Ray cooks pasta something a grandfather across from me texts the coffee is respectable volume on the TV isn’t but Rachael is Rachael it doesn’t matter she cooks rhythmically zzt! zzt! zzt! the unmistakable garage sound of tightened lug nuts al dente oppressive smell of Read more