Monday, March 04, 2013

New Poetry by Howie Good







THE ORDER IN DISORDER
Everywhere I go a different man keeps checking his phone and smiling. I myself carry a little notebook. If I happen to have a thought, no matter how trivial or melancholy, I write it down. Sometimes what I write down isn’t a thought at all, but just a word or phrase. You call me a “depressive realist”; I prefer the term “tragic optimist.” As I start out on my morning walk, a gull is resting its head under a wing. They say Munch could paint a landscape without once looking up from the canvas. There are so many more stars than I remember there being.


- Howie Good 2013


WAKE IN FRIGHT

Having fallen asleep in one city, I somehow woke up in another. The lame hobbled about the street in a busy kind of way. An accordion I hadn’t realized I had been hearing for a while suddenly stopped playing. Instead, flames waved from the windows to get my attention. My face must have betrayed what I was thinking: I would be happy with a front window that looked out on telephone poles receding into the distance. For now, though, I must resign myself to exaggeration and paranoia. Imagine a cloud sniffing like a dog at a dusty clump of weeds.


- Howie Good 2013


WHY TRY

The darkness gleamed
like Lincoln’s stovepipe hat.
It was either very late at night
or very early in the morning,
but whichever it was,
I filled my pockets with apples
from a tree while we waited.
Around the corner, I saw, faintly,
the occasional Cupid crumble.
I began to wonder, Why try?
The flash of falling water
was the only answer I ever got.


-Howie Good 2013


Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Cryptic Endearments from Knives Forks & Spoons Press. He has had numerous chapbooks, including A Special Gun for Elephant Hunting from Dog on a Chain Press, Strange Roads from Puddles of Sky Press, and Death of Me from Pig Ear Press. His poetry has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net anthology. He blogs at http://apocalypsemambo.blogspot.com

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