Poetry
Here is a small collection of some my (better) poems.
My newest poems are at the bottom.
#SorrowsOfWerther
February 20, 2015 Joe Heidenescher
My bestfriend stopped snapchatting me months ago,
And my revolving-door-lover says he never cared,
At least there’s still Viola Davis on my television,
Sporting a Blue blazered dress, spewing bullshit about
"I am who I am, if you don't like it, I don't care."
I’ve been drinking a lot recently,
And I’ve realized I like to play with men's hair.
I wish I was who-I-am to those-who-cared, but:
If he really cared he'd call, or something.
Nights like this, my record spins for hours on silent,
Because I'm a statue on the floor,
Frozen in an ivory, marble chrysalis,
Weeping over White collar crime.
Some nights I'll grab my digital wizard, my phone, and stare at its screen:
Flashing pictures, advertisements for jogger jeans,
Updates in bright displays of RGB.
My 140 character tweets bite into the world,
“They’ll never care, I’ll never learn. #MySorrows”
Others’ Kodak moments pass me by, and the ones I once had,
Never seem to miss me so.
So, I try my best to escape through reality TV.
Lives lived with some vivacious fervor,
Butts and boobs bigger than the moon,
Bouncing around every shot, suffocating righteous men.
They fall in and out love in 21 minutes.
I’ve always wondered what happened to Kim’s lost lovers
Traversing the lonely LA streets as the credits roll by.
On the cover of Cosmo he’s flawless,
Dropped onto my green screen dreams.
I’ll photoshop us together,
Sadfaced boy, don’t be so blue.
1963
November 2014 Joe Heidenescher
The Sun burns bright in Saigon as men and women watch.
Christ’s immolation at Calvary dwarfed by one monk’s mission,
To light his human on fire and disperse his protest
In thick, black plumes of smoke.
An idle gasoline can is evidence for intent,
But the monk’s pacific pose became
Undeniable proof of his motive,
To free his people from the Steeple’s Son.
The hood of a car stood ajar,
And its driver appeared worried.
But none stand with the kindled man,
Or effort to tame his wild flames.
Each degree of heat emits silent pleas.
People flew from the inferno tempest
Into their humbled dwellings,
Beneath the cold, frigid stone dome.
Embers smolder on the unpaved street
But miles away could one see,
Ashes sailing across the sea-blue sky
Eclipsing the thousand degree Sun.
Sag mir.
April 2015 Joe Heidenescher
You told me people don’t belong to people,
and that you’ll never let anyone put you in a cage.
You knew that was from Breakfast at Tiffany's,
and that the words sounded better from Hepburn.
What’s so simple in the movies,
Never is in the blue lit bedpost morning.
At dinner we shared our Chardonnay
And you told me you’d never let me go.
In the candlelight you compare us to Ross and Rachel,
You say that they, like us, are “meant to be.”
But what’s so easy on the TV,
Rarely works off the screen.
You’ve explained to me your theories on love
And how its similar to being drunk.
You’ve fancied a summer in New York
because The Great Gatsby made it sound wild.
What’s written in those books
Is fabricated glamor.
On our trip through Germany last autumn
You asked me Wo sind die Blumen?
Impersonating Marlene Dietrich’s accent
I respond, Wann wirdst du je verstehn?
What seems so poetic in verse,
In an instant of prose is deranged.
You said sag mir, tell me, sag mir.
Trailer number 40
April 2015 Joe Heidenescher
Coming to a theater near YOU --
Mass brainwashing via a Government agency
With too much money to spend.
Flashy lights, droning sounds, a series of painful injections.
You love America!
God Bless America.
Poem XXXVII.
2011 Joe Heidenescher
Life hides behind the copse Seeking out when and where
The smallest animal pose
May writhe, wry and tear.
Poking out of snowy brush
Is the new squirrel peeking
Waiting for the silence to shush
For his presence to start leaking.
Occult
2011 Joe Heidenescher
Visions are clouded by panes
Mine sits on the sill in the dull shine
Just as the leaves play in the street
The occult dances on my mind
A spirit sings to my soul and take my hand
The wind seems to rush and dusk seems to still
My window blows open
And my rationale falls off the sill.
My Emily, My Dear
2011 Joe Heidenescher
I’ve seen the world over and its name
Emily. My travels on the endless sea cannot
Compare to the tears I’d shed for you.
Death would be more admirable than
A heathen worship. “You sly thief,” cry
I with a stolen heart. Keep all the knowledge
In the world because I could live in
Ignorance for a thousand years to see of
True love really is blind. I would sacrifice
The entire natal earth before your altar
For the magnificent presence you retain.
You do more for me than the moon does
For the restless tides. All I can do is
Write a poem in which my pen
Cannot serve your radiance any justice.
A pebble cannot compare to a mountain, only
Climb its route to the perfected peak.
“Take my storied amour, my quest for delight.”
Adytum
2011 Joe Heidenescher
The marble monument lasts not
Without its pedestal equal to its feet
Walked upon as if the gods
Were along with nothing to eat
Your trove is an adytum
Keeping your thanks forbidden
Yet without a center gravity
You are but ground ridden.
Pear Tree
2011 Joe Heidenescher
I can walk a mile to a tree.
Seeing what real life shall bear in fruit.
Only to find an empty shell
A spot where crows dug in unforgiving .
By cursing on the shrugging wind
My heart recedes from logic
But if I look around its easy to see
The bare earth boundless in room for love
Dusk shall break senses and leave only vice
Shall I stand numb?
Perpetually waiting for the stills of dawn.
Come Home
(Komm nach Hause)
April 2015 Joe Heidenescher
1945
Peaces comes to Europe,
With the liberation of camps that spread across the nation.
Otto Garbers was at Auschwitz when the Soviets came,
he was dragged by his German lapel pin and shoved into a cart.
At home Small Diedrich Garbers has presumed his father dead,
And continues to bathe himself with ice cold water from the hill.
Attending grade school, he failed at Mathematics
Still he knew, several years gone must equal gone forever.
1950
Otto is released from his time in the frozen Gulag,
And he rides the long rail back towards the Fatherland.
On his journey home, he hums tunes of
Unity, and justice, and freedom — uber alles.
The happy German family is reunited after the war,
Dinners were the same, with or without Otto
The three legged table filled with aluminum plates
And meager loaves of bread and cuts of lamb from up the hill.
Otto tells Diedrich about his rich American brother
Living a life of abundance and peace in Ohio.
Ohio, the land across the Jordan, land promised to the free,
Where dreams of standing brick houses and full dinner tables come true.
1955
17-year-old Diedrich gathers his savings
And boards a large steel steamship
That was setting sail on a 3 month journey.
It docks on Ellis Island in the shadow of Lady Liberty.
Papers please.
Hello Mr. Garbers.
Wie lange? (How long?)
Drei Jahre. (Three years.)
Ich kann wenig Englisch sprechen.
Hello, my name is Dick Garbers.
I come from Schneverdingen Germany.
Nice to meet you.
1959
Hampton Park Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
“Christ invites all to his table, join us on Sunday”
Diedrich walks in the large Sanctuary doors on Feb. 18
No one speaks to him or others of his kind.
A year later, Diedrich meets Martha Helber,
The nursing student who sat in the third pew.
Soon they’re engaged, married, with children.
She teaches him English and he builds their house from brick — solid and firm.
1963
“Kennedy is killed by sniper as he rides his car in Dallas”
Susan Garbers is born, the youngest of five.
The Garbers’ home acquires a television
And the family watches Cronkite while eating Leberkäse.
The children attend Washington Elementary school,
Only a three minute walk from home.
The children, except for Susan, took a liking to
Sports, theatre, and band.
In middle school Susan learns German,
Without the added stigma of Nazism and WWII.
Diedrich never allowed the language to be spoken,
She was forced to practice in guttural whispers.
On one occasion she finds her father’s Lutheran Bible,
A family heirloom stuffed into an attic chest.
In this attic sanctuary she hangs her smuggled flag
And plays her Dietrich record at the lowest volume.
1981
Susan graduates from her high school,
And she grabs her diploma, her Lord, and her heritage
Packs it all into an overhead compartment,
Hops on a plane to West Berlin and never comes back.
Ms. Dawn
April 2015 Joe Heidenescher
Most days she sat alone on the bench
Watching out and feeding the pigeons
The bigger world passed her by
But she never seemed to care
Watching out and feeding the pigeons
She could see the people cry
But she never seemed to care
They weren’t her people or her problem.
She could see the people cry
They would drown themselves with fear
They weren’t her people or her problem.
Pigeons were better than people she thought.
They would drown themselves with fear
Only with the most urgent of cases
Pigeons were better than people,
Their hope wasn’t innate.
Only with the most urgent of cases
She would deal in the affairs of men
Her hope wasn’t innate
She seemed to have none.
She would deal in the affairs of men
When she’s been paid a hefty sum
She always seemed to have none,
Wasted on empty things.
When she was paid a hefty sum
Bottles of booze would fence her in
Wasted on empty things
Shes drunk in the middle of the day.
Bottles of booze fence her in
The neighbors talk and whisper
“She’s drunk in the middle of the day.”
Spurned, broken and alone.
The neighbors talk and whisper
About who she was and why she is
Spurned, broken and alone
But none even ask,
About who she is or why she is
Talking to pigeons
None even ask.
In a lofty space
April 2014 Joe Heidenescher
There I sit in an Ivory Castle
With shiny ivory walls and high in the ivory tower, I sit.
But reasonably I pace, passing
Pointed windows clad in iron bars
Protruding from slanted walls.
And from those crooked beams
Radiates a reflection of myself onto thee.
Yet thee has not any less form
Than that that accompanies me there,
There where I sit.
Visible beyond the gothic panes
A slush dampens the copse hidden beneath it.
The shinning ivory walls gleam
With cracks so marvelous that song birds best within.
The songs echo up through the tower in which
I have been placed.
Tunes and tones absent of lyrical sense
Melt their way Into the hearts of we.
Oh but we loathe the mimicry of
Human melancholy and
Yeh Jubilee!
In our sanctuary and tower
Replications are so loud and grand
The hum of strings and beating drums
Illustrate glory through harmonious crescendos!
The hallow hall beneath my feet roar with
A tremulous forte to ritard life
For but a moment in fleeting time.
Notes, meter, and rhyme
Silence nor still that simple song
That escapes few meager birds' beaks
Yet into my crysilis state it leaks.
The faceted flakes paint my pane
In a tomb of white.
On a careful glance images appear
Of unique individual patterns and pose
Snow sits on the silent sill on the outside
Peering in on my inner architecture.
Their democratic view lacks any
Unanimous certainty.
Each facet holds a light of it's own
Yet also shades a sun in it's prism.
Neither sounds nor sights constitute a
Vector by which we may ride to virtue.
When this city of Ash does fall
To a quaking of earth and sky
The Pompeii that exists within these walls
Shall sit on my shoulders much
Like I sit there high in ivory rooms.
By what shall we cling to then?
I hold faded maps, crumbling books,
Scribbled codas, tools of persuasion.
I and thee may converse
Doing out best to avoid gaps in walls,
Where the songbirds sing songs full of
Lyrical sense.
But here I sat with thee,
And to that songbird
I have here a musing envy.
52nd Stret
November 2014 Joe Heidenescher
Shoes hang from the telephone wire, mocking our short reach.
Druggies slouch on the stoop, stewing into bitter soup.
Autos pitter past, spewing carbon mess across our sky as
Martha hangs her laundry to dry, showing all her sad stained sheets
The ambient sirens alert this world of an end,
The FM radios broadcast the circus within.
Still, Children giggle, rhyme, and smile,
Even when their land of wonders is bullied by a bulldozer.
The air is so stale, the river much too green,
Our blocks of dwelling space are bricked up so high,
Sealed with numbered doors and circle peeps,
Where we hide in safety throughout the cold night.
The ruined rubble rescue feral animals,
And the wild crabgrass overgrows the lot.
The odor of pollen is interned in the dirt
Where a foreclosure sign marks the grave.
Not many sidewalks have daisy weeds, but ours do.
And sometimes a bird may shit on
Your new 85 cent thrift store shirt,
But, these secluded sights are what bring me back to you.
Imports and Exports
May 29 2015 Joe Heidenescher
The red stripes were soaked in Chinese blood.
The white stripes bleached the hands of Ugandans.
The indigo square dyed the Ganges dark violet.
And the stars are embrodiered by Caroline --
She lives in Kentucky and she is
The cutest old lady you will ever meet.
She stitches each white star by hand,
And she does it for free!
What a noble, hardworking servant of this great nation.
We need more Carolines in this glorious country.
Music for drinking alone
May 29 2015 Joe Heidenescher
Here I sit, at an empty independent coffee shop,
I'm making a playlist titled "Music for drinking alone."
I screen the songs before I click "add"
So I daydream--
About her, about a girl -- there's always a girl.
She's on repeat, a haunting chimera.
I miss her theories about Sleeping Beauty's metaphorical rape,
Phallus -- fallacy.
No matter, on every matter we disagree.
She'd show kindness to the
Guy who buys alien DVDs from church garage sales.
She still believes.
When her friend refused to pay respects
To his no good two faced step mother,
She brought flowers and sat at the cemetary gate till dusk.
They asked her to leave.
I can still see the sunlight peeking through
The the frizzy haired gaps in her bun,
Her cheeks embraced by laughter wrinkles,
Eyes touched with tears.
She made me happy.
We are done here.
Brecht and Hawthorne
June 6 2015 Joe Heidenescher
Biology doesn’t create or explain life,
Biology names life, open on a table.
Heart beating in hand, blood on the floor.
The stoic eats the heart,
The fanatic calcifies it,
The scientist watches it die.
There is a poem, by a man that goes:
Society without a heart is sad,
A society that needs more heart is even sadder.
National Running Day
June 6 2015 Joe Heidenescher
Today is national running day,
So I suited up for a 5k,
We were raising money for some cure,
I came in fifth place --
Not bad for a beginner.
Came home to honey,
She had a hard day and the cat was sick.
I made dinner in my compression pants,
Lyca as amphibious skin,
Absorbing bacon grease and cigarette smoke.
“How was the race?” she asked, ash tray in hand.
“It was packed. But they raised five grand.”
“What for again?”
“I think it was for lung cancer.”
Our cat died a week later.
Wheel of Fortune
June 6 2015 Joe Heidenescher
America is a looming disaster.
Economies fail, oil is expensive, banks are de-regulated.
There is a wheel, it spins,
Breeds misfortune.
Can I buy a vowel?
I’d like to solve the puzzle Pat.
“This land is my land, this land is your land.”