New poems by JD DeHart

 

 

Poor Me

 

Poor me, I have an arrangement of friends
but I slip in and out of the world, because
their faces are mere fragments arranged
as pixels on a webpage.
Are they real? Are those their kids?
Poor me, I have pretended to read so many
classic books that now I only have a half-
knowledge of the ones I have actually read,
the Victorian slipping into the modern,
and the modern sleeping over with the post-
modern. To say nothing of Shakespeare.
Poor me, my stomach threatens to eat
my spine, not out of hunger but out of spite
and how will I stand with no spine, and how
will I continue to speak with no stomach.
Poor me, I am the son of leisure, the brother
of pardoned sin, and the nonchalant cousin
of hard work only as a phrase, not as any real
kind of truth or solid footrest.

 

 

 

Fish Bones & Cold Woods

 

That tiny tickle in the back of the throat,
the filets clearly holding tiny bristles,
like the spindly teeth of a brush.
My father casting his bait into the river,
magic being of the outdoors,
my brothers trumping along behind him,
carrying their tackles and gear.
I, nearby, reading a novel,
only one time hooking on through the head
not by bite but by accident.
Comfort creature, nestled cozy
in the hospitable environs of a hotel on vacation,
not sitting alone in the winter woods
waiting for an animal to pass by.
Elsewhere, someone sights a gun or dresses
a deer, but I am by the fireplace.

 

 

 

You Knew Me When

 

You knew when the only music
I knew was what had been passed own,
and the only voices I knew
sounded too much like my own.
Their rhythm was what I pretended to be,
and I quoted movie lines incessantly.
You knew me when I saw life only
through my narrow views and gave
everyone a barrier to exist in, typified
every soul I met. I soon learned that history
and people and everything else is more
complicated and only partially revealed.
Life is not what I saw on the screen.
I probably owe you a multitude of apologies.
You knew me when I thought it was still
important to know all, never grasping the limit,
never realizing that the other adults
played their own game, and that what was here
as enough without a laundry list of trivia,
never appreciating the “I have not read” or
“I have not seen” that requires courage
or the simple phrase, “I do not know.”

 

 

 

The Digital Age

 

When I was your age, I tell them
(which always, always induces a groan)
and then I recount the use of a paper book.
Now I can download and stream reality
as much as I please or displease.
I can be the avatar in a historical or futuristic
world and need not worry about starting
the game over next time. Auto-save, baby.
I can spell correctly always when typing
but when writing, I am not so sure. Sometimes
the simplest words do not look rite.
And yes, that was on purpose.
I once knew a few people, but now I barely know
thousands, and once had a few bits of literature,
fragments of thought, but now can touch centuries
on my worn-out keyboard.
Pilgrim, adapter, progenitor, whatever,
because I can only trust less than half of it.

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