This Good Life

What is the hunger of water-falls
for little men in tiny boats,
flirting with alluring whirlpools,
who lie on crowded Sunday beaches
dreaming of vacations in the winter,
burdened by cameras that seek
Palm Beach condos,
Fort Lauderdale motels,
Miami hotels.
The tourists sleep late, swim,
drive on across an aging land,
veined with highways of destruction,
submerged with cities of corrosion,
skeletoned by crumbling towns and farms,
and always arteries of roads, roads, roads,
coursing its people like blood
through a diseased body,
until one day
the price of oil
ends our way.

- Gary Beck

(featured in the poetry forum 06.14.09)

"This Good Life" is from Gary Beck's new poetry book "Days of Destruction."
To order a copy of Gary's book please click here.

Montpelier, Vermont

Pollution is forbidden in the Winooski River,
but no one seems to remember that men
have driven on uncongested moon highways.
Not many folks seem myths of New England.
Prognathic jaws, rickets, beri-beri, scurvy,
Sunday blue law VD, much sinus trouble
and watery eyes from the gold dome capital,
dazzling with Doric exterior.
Haven’t seen Corinthian interior; won’t.
Not much more than Main Street,
but most of America
is not much more than Main Street.

- Gary Beck

(added 09.07.08)

Cold War Truce

I swam in a tiny swimming hole
in a chilly Vermont stream
and after the first goose-bump tremors
never felt so fine
and couldn’t recollect
in recent crises
when I had no imminent thoughts
in a body of water
of Polaris surfacing.

- Gary Beck

(added 09.07.08)

Ordinary People

People in the South Bronx
are like people in the North Bronx,
or any other place.
If you look behind skin deep,
you’ll find preconceptions
that have judged, condemned, sentenced
the undefended to exile
in the slums of fate.

- Gary Beck

(added 09.07.08)

Tread Lightly

Intangible wilderness
that sometimes possesses us
in the myth of civilization,
is all that holds
this raptured city from destruction.
Do the poets who sing of the city
know anything of the city?
When we are the only core
that keeps reality together,
for surely if our reasoning selves
suddenly were to doubt
that our subway days
and rummage-sale nights
were all the glory
we ever would obtain,
in that faithless moment,
nature, in her new sneakers,
would place her arch-supported,
space-age ventilated soles,
on 8 million delusions
and pffffft....

- Gary Beck

Detached

Among our fevered expectations
there is no time for interruption,
when the meetings of strangers
breaks forth into praises.
City, your men who tread grit-streets
are fugitives from combustible places,
trapped in summer climes, with unthawed faces
that no longer seek the dawn’s arising,
who dwell in awkward hesitations,
by the measures of distance
from sheltered places
abandoned in the wasted siege
that shore no longer seen.

- Gary Beck

Emergency

The buildings rise in angry bruises,
beaten by night’s thin skin.
The city’s desperate cry for help
is throttled by TV antennas.
The air dribbles old men stuff
that stains and smears our visions.
The siren of forgiveness sounds
the last attention to tomorrow.

- Gary Beck

Casualty

This evening she will come,
the dark-haired girl I adore.
She promised.
I sit a Baron of power
dreaming her perfect,
but the drabness of my office day
smashes my vision
and leaves me at my desk,
a victim of my pencils.

- Gary Beck

Pavan

Sitting at my desk, my eyes begin to close,
I doze a fantasy.
The music makes me forest groves.
Two hundred years ago
the wild gypsy whirled
in swot, salacious dance.
Carried by a jaded serpent
so fast I overtake my soul,
I build bigger heavens for monks.
Undeath ready
I curse, I cry,
with ineluctable magic power
cull the gods,
who reborn me.
The straw hat
of too much shade
never lets the little prince grow up.
The dream of three men in a tub
who talk Oedipus.
Two had mothers,
one was prissy,
sipping tea in a tempest of libido.
Armless, legless swirl of gypsy,
sphere of torporous rotation,
your earth supine,
your death forever falling.
The men who watch
lust your limbless body.
Sunlight opens my pyrotic eyes.
Saboteurs creep by
armed with bombs and axes.
I am frightened and return to work.

- Gary Beck

Plaint

Often in the boredom of my office
I think about the ancient Chinese poets,
remote, delicate and serene.
As I wait,
impatient to make my poems,
I see parchment men of long-lost graces
sipping wine, in discourse,
reaching for pen and ink,
making incredible songs.
I do not yearn for T’ang.
Li Po, Po Chu I, Tu Fu
are sleeping sentiments to never come again,
but sometimes I cry for the beauty
absent from this life.

- Gary Beck