The
Chickasaw
Home Short Stories Poetry Articles Humor Links
Philip Appleman, a
O Karma, Dharma,
Pudding and Pie
“O Karma, Dharma, pudding and pie,
gimme a break before I die:
grant me wisdom, will, & wit,
purity, probity, pluck, & grit.
Trustworthy, helpful, friendly, kind,
gimme great abs and a steel-trap mind,
and forgive, Ye Gods, some humble advice --
these little blessings would suffice
to beget an earthly paradise:
make the bad people good --
and the good people nice;
and before our world goes over the brink,
teach the believers how to think.”
Philip Appleman, from "Five
Easy Prayers for Pagans"
Last-Minute Message
for a Time Capsule
“I have to tell you this, whoever you are:
that on one summer morning here, the ocean
pounded in on tumbledown breakers,
a south wind, bustling along the shore,
whipped the froth into little rainbows,
and a reckless gull swept down the beach
as if to fly were everything it needed.
I thought of your hovering saucers,
looking for clues, and I wanted to write this down,
so it wouldn't be lost forever --
that once upon a time we had
meadows here, and astonishing things,
swans and frogs and luna moths
and blue skies that could stagger your heart.
We could have had them still,
and welcomed you to earth, but
we also had the righteous ones
who worshipped the True Faith, and Holy War.
When you go home to your shining galaxy,
say that what you learned
from this dead and barren place is
to beware the righteous ones.”
From New and Selected Poems,
1956-1996 (University of Arkansas Press, 1996), by Philip Appleman.
In this time of space flight and genocide, a whimsical
poem by the Czech poet Jan Neruda seems appropriate.
(Jan Neruda is the poet whom Pablo Neruda so admired that he took his name as a nom de plume)
Written in 1878, “Frogs” is poem #22 in the collection "Cosmic
Songs"
Do Frogs Exist there Too ?
by Jan Neruda
Frogs sat around a puddle
And gazed at heavens high
Frog teacher pounding into skulls
The science of the sky.
He spoke about the heavens
Bright dots we see there burning
And men watch them, "astronomers"
Like moles they dig for learning.
When these moles start to map the stars
The large becomes quite small
What's twenty million miles to us
They call one foot, that's all.
So, as those moles did figure out
(If you believe their plan)
Venus, less than one.
If we chopped up the Sun, he said
(Awed frogs could only stare)
We'd get three hundred thousand Earth's
With still a few to spare
The Sun helps us make use of time,
It rolls round heaven's sphere
And cuts a workday into shifts
"Forever" to a year
What comets are is hard to say
A strange manifestation
Though this is not a reason for
Some idle speculation
They are no evil sign, we hope
No reason for great fright
As in a story we got from
Lubyenyetsky, great knight
A comet there appeared, and when
It rays were seen by all
The cobblers in a tavern
Began a shameful brawl
He told them how the stars we see
So many, overhead
Are actually only suns
Some green, some blue, some red
And if we use the spectroscope
Their light tells, in addition
Those distant stars and our Earth
Have the same composition
He stopped. The frogs were overwhelmed.
Their froggy eyeballs
rolled.
"What more about this universe
Would you like to be told?"
"Just one more thing, please tell us sir"
A frog asked, "Is it true?
Do creatures live there just like us
Do frogs exist there too?"
by John R. Guthrie
The leaden clouds hang low on
its asphalt silvered by the rain.
Homeless men lie covered in black
garbage bags,
asleep by steaming clouds from cast-iron
grates.
Head down, I clutch my collar closed
and rush to where the puddled steps descend.
A black man on the platform sweeps
the cast-off Metro Cards into his bin.
A flash of noise, the lightning’s
crash,
headlight a bright perceptive eye!
Once on the train a Chinese man.
a patch worn on one eye.
reads his folded New York Times;
ORANGE ALERT, the headlines cry
(he sips
some coffee from his fast-food cup)
no one seems to knows exactly why.
Our wars around the world are going
fine;
a single soldier in one day
has killed a dozen suspect
with sniper scope from half a mile away.
A half-blind deaf-mute beggar,
breaths small puffs of frigid air,
signing each rider with her up-turned palm,
for some small bit of change.
Compelled, I ask of her,
who neither hears or speaks,
perhaps it’s better not to see
the poor’s
uneasy rest,
to never hear, the war drum’s beat,
the dead and wounded’s
cry?
Grand Central Station;
silent still, she walks along with me.
where pairs of armed policemen
mind their beats. The mendicants
now stir in marbled halls,
outside, the rain and theater of the street.
She grips my arm and turns to me to
say;
even the deaf hear this, and though I’m
blind I see,
this is the price of opulence for some.
The
Chickasaw
Home Short Stories Poetry Articles Humor Links