Category: Poems

From up on stage the band catches their breath

Respirating the halycon adoration of an aging crowd

From their elevated pulpit they see all our faces

The same faces they see in every city

The faces that bought these tickets to recapture the past

Thrusting cameras at the band hoping to cage this one

A cyborg Chex-Mix of big eyes and tiny lenses

The Buddha-smile below the trucker hat behind the mic

Contemplates his foolish fans

If he resents them he doesn’t show it

Instead he calls for silence

Holding the attention and the breath of the world

He offers his prayer for the world

You already own this moment stop trying to own this moment

-T. Weeks

(A response to “Halcyon Days”)

In a shadeless corner of a roadside swap meet
I met the Ghost of the Sierras
Hat drawn low on his homeless eyes
Behind a table of cherubic pipes and rusty blades
Artifacts of a time when his kingdom sprawled
He watches for the spot where my eyes hover
I settle on an ancient device and he opens the catacombs
His voice the heavy grind of rusted hinges
He tells me of its past and when last he used it
The journey of this thing is the journey of the ghost
I'm holding a child of the ghost in my hands
He turns to the sun and adjusts his hat
He tells me he's Arapaho so the sun doesn't bother him
Then I see that he is not the fallen king of this land
He is the land
The western comrade of Kerouac’s ghost of the Mississippi
Maybe even Kerouac himself
My arrogance has blinded me
Unworthy I replace the relic with newfound deference
Thank you I say
I'll do that he says

-T. Weeks
(A response to “Halcyon Days”)

In this forest there are no dead trees
Trunks lean inward against the massive weight of the sky
As the marshaled legs of an ancient army of green mammoths
Woolly green pelt sprouting from every side
The moss grows without respect for death or life
Long after spring branches with new needles disappear
Green pillars stand as scaffolding of the forest shrine

-T. Weeks
(A response to “Out of May's Shows Selected”)

Pitched about me in the dark a quiet tent and a dark forest
Soulful melodies rising from the valley with the stars
Staring down through the elbows of dead branches
At little faces that stare back unsure of a new experience
They don't really know why they are lying on uneven ground
Far from home
Up on the side of a vibrating hill with the chants of crowds below
Tonight is born a memory fresh from wherever they come
It will live and die with our family
And live again each time we gather and recite the incantations
That raise the ghosts of childhood and simpler times

-T. Weeks
(A response to “Abraham Lincoln, Born Feb. 12, 1809”)

Here we sit at the pickathon or some sort of thon
Wheezing heat of the day melting into the dark of the moon
The band tuning tweaking preparing
Cooling crowds bounce from blanket to blanket
As if on rafts in the calm of the river just before the falls
Bass and drums signaling change ahead

-T. Weeks
(A response to “After the Dazzle of Day”)

I love everyone
Or at least the nice ones
The rest should learn
Otherwise what's the point

Paul Simon knew it
Him and Al
Long before I was born
But was it really that different to be born 20 years earlier?
20 years?

None of us mean anything
And all of us mean everything
Maybe that's the secret to happiness
Or peace
Or whatever you call it

-T. Weeks
(A response to “To-Day and Thee”)

Why so grateful deadman?
You are dead
Your heart stopped
Your brain oxygenless
You are nothing
Nothing and growing nothinger
Lost through the sieve

But I am not dead and I see you
So you are not gone yet
How grateful you must be
Maybe to me
Or maybe I’m grateful to you
Either way we together are life
Waltzing partners

-T. Weeks
(A response to “Memories”)

The earthquake rumbled into town
Announced only by the thunder of its tectonic track
Echoing across the sleeping valley
Through the sleeping valley
Through never-shaken walls
Through so-called foundations
The buildings sway and respond
They were designed for this
Our fragile etch-a-sketch confidence
Faded after one little shake

-T. Weeks
(A response to “America”)

Mountains impassable
Strung with tinsel roads
Wound minarets

Long-robed goats watch
Humans follow in lines
Up the hill
Down the hill
Always in a line

Sheep and bear wonder
At the single-file people

-T. Weeks
(A response to “The First Dandelion”)

We walk in the day
We fear the dark
When a few roam for food
How precarious the life
Of the walkers in the dark
That sleep in the day
When all the world eats

-T. Weeks
(A response to “The Wallabout Martyrs”)