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A Boy on a Horse
A Poetry Series by
Dan Lukiv
May 2003
A Boy in Bed Haiku 1 A Boy on a Horse Haiku 2 Local Boys Haiku 3 Skipping Stones Haiku 4 The Circle Haiku 5 Outer Limits The Farm eMail Author Dan's Resume' |
A BOY IN BED Gale-clattered, A cottonwood claws, Grates my window, My blood. I see it--as dark as A terrorist--through The wrong end Of my toy Telescope. But it's in my lungs, Like a tumor, And in my hair, Like lice. It's under the goosefeather quilt, Finding me. I'm awake, Alone, Little. Why does it want me? Titles Haiku 1 Wind rattles windows While a boy pretends to sleep In darkness. Titles A BOY ON A HORSE A ghostly hand rips The cord between Me and the round earth. And there I am, riding-- A pharaoh without a war, A sailor adrift in a Mine field of manure-scabs. I clutch the bow, Push back on the stern, And dangle legs in Barracuda-water, While they watch the sailor, The city-sap, Sail like a helmsman without Arms. "Ha! Ha! Ha!" They might as well force Me to sing For these buxom aunts And boozed-up uncles. "Do 'Old MacDonald'." "Don't be a spoil-sport." "Don't forget to quack, quack, Quack, like a duck." I hate them, these war- Creatures of Genghis Khan. I hate their barn-stink. I hate these wormy reins. And what right, I might add, Do they have to be big And to jerk? I see my parents gazing Up, up at me, smiling As if they've drunk Too much beer. Give me back me-- A new king on a White horse: Ha!-- And take me home to my Skateboard. Titles Haiku 2 A boy, in the Grey mist on the broken dock, Stands by his dog. Titles LOCAL BOYS We practiced dying, The local boys and I, Contorting in Untouchable Shadows, falling over board fences, Jerking, twisting in pain on weedful Lawns, practicing for the big contest. "Let's find out who can Die best!" The Eliot Ness of 27th Avenue, The boy with the Tommy Gun, yelled: "Ratatatatatata!" He fired gleefully At a "Valentine's Day" line up Of Olivier-performers Scattering like bats. Sometimes I won, and that was A great day, to die, twitching in the sun, Better than all the other boys. Titles Haiku 3 A group of boys, On a field trip at the lake, Throw rocks at seagulls. Titles SKIPPING STONES Across the metallic skin The shale skips, Wounding the gentle stream As if a sniper shoots true. Again and again, The hunt continues, .22 slugs into an Elephant's hide-- Blood-angry it cries-- All inside the hunter's eye. Finally, a smooth, flat rock, As black as a beetle, Follows a Gatling row, Exploding the sun-fired, Cold surface, All the way to the other Clam-clattered bank. The bare-chested boy rejoices, Glances at the sun-ball, And smiles at the wind. Titles Haiku 4 "They're safe," one aunt says, But the boy only watches Them eat those mushrooms. Titles THE CIRCLE He fogs up the cool glass With warm breath, And then wipes a circle. He peers out-- A submarine commander Looking through a periscope, Looking for something To shoot. But the power is fleeting, Like a guffaw, Or a sigh. He would cry, But the muscles in his neck Are too taut, Too painful, And the lump in his throat Is too hard. He exhales again, Harder this time, And draws a bigger circle To peer through. But he will not cry, Even if it kills him. Titles Haiku 5 Only two boys, On floaties, laughing in the Cold lake. Titles OUTER LIMITS 8:00, Friday nights, 1962, "Outer Limits." In bed in darkness At 9 at 9 years of age The giant insects that devoured Flesh, The great eyeballs that saw Through night and Into fear, The box that sucked the curious Into a white beam, The horseshoe crab aliens That bit and mutated The bitten, The time travelers that Messed up time, And lives, And the energy cloud that fed On the life force Like an evil little boy Eating a roast beef sandwich-- They all went to bed with me, And horrible others came too, Goading me, terrorizing me From the colors of thought Too random, Too delineated, Too ferocious. I pulled arms and legs and hands Into the covers, Left nothing overhanging the steel rails Of the upper bunk That would float, and yet Nearly plummet Above a great precipice. A turtle, I, drawn up, Cursing myself from watching That show, Living the horror of sleeplessness In a dark room of fiends and Dark evil. Saturday morning I'd awake, Alive!-- Eagerly breathing in the bright air, Smelling the opportunity to run Like a crazed lunatic Up and down the neighborhood, Reveling in all the noise My lungs could muster, Eagerly waiting, Impatiently waiting!, For Friday night, 8:00, To watch another episode of "Outer Limits." Titles THE FARM Death that keeps grandpa silent In a 25-year-old coffin, rotted, I'm sure, Releasing neither theme Nor river-flow, Just echoes, from the imploding Timbers, or perhaps from a clotted Coordinate of my brain or mind Or heart-- His tyrannosaurus-cherry tree That spoke in hums and whirs and strange Night voices that said, "Beware of What you cannot see. Beware of Death, little boy." And that olfactory-raping Chicken coop: Why was it so big? Like the barn? Like grandpa's bedroom and bed? Like his temper that his mad wife Sometimes unleashed? The farm, and the horses, They were big as the ocean, Big as the whole universe. The outhouse once-used Remained a fly's paradise, A terrible reminder that not everything Turns out fine, Like the neighbor who fell off A horse and ended up retarded. "Have some mushrooms," my glee-picking Half uncles would say. "Come on, Danny, ya city slicker." They'd fry them--poisonous? The kind that dissolve and Rupture kidneys?-- Sizzled and black In butter, with the acid smell Of cooked onions everywhere Like the chicken manure outside. My jaw never opened for mushrooms, Warts of the apple orchard. Cow manure would get me, Sometimes every hour, As it squeezed into running shoe Tread, to sleep like the bats in the attic At day. The monstrous wasp-whirring In the cream separator as I'd turn the heavy handle with all my Skinny-armed might-- I grew drunk almost, on the huge sound Of that mini metal beast. "Stop that noise!" Reality always Reminded me this was not My universe, Which made me wonder if I Actually had one. I certainly had never heard Of the word marginalized. A razor-sharpening belt That could have girded Hercules, A washboard-crater- Driveway to this wonderful, horrible Planet called "the farm." And the preserves, Concealed and protected in Sheol, Where 15-year-old cherries in dusty jars Lay still as boredom-- Still as eggs of prehistoric fish Embalmed in rock. O, the theme of it all, The rusty tractor that Smoked and scuttled and Screamed. But it's the dungeon, The cellar, that I see, In the grassy hump between the house and outhouse. Grandpa, who baked pies like A magician, Who finally sent his wife to The mental institution, Floats in one of those jars, Beside the cherry eyeballs, Pickled in time, Themeless, without the flow of Fiction, or even non-fiction. Grandpa, gone in the coffin That must be going-- I loved his pies so much I want to cry. Titles |
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Last updated on: 07 January 2005
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