Monday, March 30, 2015

HALVARD JOHNSON




(This feature is part of TRUCK’s Theme Issue on the List or Catalog Poem. You can go HERE for an Index of the Participating Poets.)



Favorite California Churches


Church of the Sacred Cucumber
St. Vitamin's
Santa Cuisinart
Church of the Holy Rose Bowl
St. Vim and St. Vigor
2nd Church of Santa Clarification and Mudslide
Temple of the Seedless Orange
Valley United Methadone
Iglesia de Julio
Seventh Chapel of San Andreas de Culpa
Our Lady of Dolores del Rio
Synagogue Ben Hur
Cathedral of the Blessed Catheter





Vielle priére bouddhique


May all things flow into whatever it is they are flowing into.
May those who are lost find happiness in their lostness.
May those who cannot tie their shoelaces learn to do without shoes.
May those who behead one another keep their wits about them.
May those who are slack straighten up and fly right.
May the powerless learn to remember to pay their bills on time.
May those who are unagitated bestir themselves to action.
May those who are angry chill out. May all your prayers
be answered or, perhaps even better, unanswered.





6 Kirghiz Proverbs

                   "It comes as the Kirghiz light."
                                   --Thomas Pynchon

1.   One who does not respect one's father,
will also not respect one's grandfather.

2.   Better to have dry farmland than to have
a father who is in charge of water distribution.

3.   It is as if the Moon gave birth to one's front
and the Sun gave birth to one's back.

4.   One who has six sons has cattle in six places.

5.   Money is good in an urban area.

6.   A stupid man builds a house, 
an intelligent man makes friends.





Retrospective Narratives


*

Once up
on a time.

*

A darkened
stormy knight.

*

Lonely horse
man riding
in two towns.

*

Best of
worst of.

*

Wood you
believe in.



_________
Poems first published in Remains to Be Seen (New York: Spuyten Duyvil, 2013)



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