Jack Galmitz


Five Poems


I don't know
what's going on-
there are men marching
for miles outside my window
carrying burning torches
shouting, "you can't stop us."
"Nothing can stop us."
I call the police
to explain the situation
and they say, "Well, what of it? What's the problem?"

   ∆


What is there

a fence
of warped hickory
posts
& a few splashes
of sun dark shrubs
a long field of grass
that rolls and rolls
the sky and road
are themselves
I do not call it
beautiful for that
is impertinence
beside myself
there is no one else

   ∆


I watch the raccoon
wobbling across the road.
People on their way to work
give it plenty of girth-
they are afraid it might be sick.
When it passes I see
it is hurt:
skin and fur on its shoulder blades
are missing;
and there is blood.
This is what happens
when something is misunderstood.

   ∆


I recovered
my voice
the movement
of my mouth
the sound
of a stream
trickling over
a bed of rocks
the trees were tall
and sent the rustling
leaves of the wind
to the town
where a man
exchanged money
for gas
and a man
ordered breakfast
& patted his friend
on the back

   ∆


I reassured my friend
the sloth
who was looking down
that it was perfectly okay
to spend the day
eating and hanging
upside down from a tree
"After all," I said, "you weren't born to dance."




Jack Galmitz prefers the imaginary to the real. He spends most of his time alone creating stories and visual images only some of which make it to paper. He is nearing 70 and hoping that Herman Hesse was right: that after death we enter our dreamworld.
 
 
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