undergroundbooks.org - PS: Your Poem a Week w/ Philippe Shils

24. Bossy

5/4/2020

24.

Bossy

Bossy as a limp.
He's a cover hog.
I'm cold over here
but he seems warm.
He's made me believe
I like it in Alaska.
He blows on things
to cool them.
He blows on things
to heat them.
The purse
of his lips
is always the same.
Sirens and pox
coming over the bridge
but his breeze carries
infection far away.
He wrote me a poison
haiku. 19 syllables
of cyanide. About
v-less geese. The
importance of the flock.
The need for a leader.
He led me south.
I marched to
his soothing rhythm.

#weeklypoemandpic

23.WarHorse

4/26/2020

23.
WarHorse

It took 1000 men
to kill the last destrier.
They died under its hooves.
The horse had flanks like walls
and sincere murderous teeth.
It had been unsaddled
when the army was triumphant.
It was rendered obsolete by victory
and considered malignant.

The deaths might have been incidental--
water off a spiraling dog--but its
wide muddy eyes gave events
the look of calm intention: a coincidence
of wind and leaves.

And a continent away
its rider: rheumy eyed
and with a slack mustache.
He'd sat proud and tall
aboard his mount--
fashioned for
riding and fighting.
Good only for war.

He wants to say momentous things:
He's seen men falling from the sky
as though they'd cut the branches
from beneath themselves, the long
thorns impaling them as
they struck the dirt.
There had been a stone angel:
a concrete shepherdess
who arranged ambushes.

He's witnessed what lurks just
beside the normal electricity of
living and knows that's the secret
for cursing one another.
He's palpated the shape just outside
people's skins where seizures
and cancers and suicides seep in.

He tries to write but his hand is
too damp and tremulous to hold a pen.

The people thank him for his service
and bow as though to someone wise.
He longs only for his horse.

#weeklypoemandpic

22. Love letter 14. Asylum seeker.

4/25/2020

22. Love letter 14. Asylum seeker.

We watched the great man
and bowed together. All
holding hands in a chain.
You were as noticeable to
me as a mottled egg.

Escape you whispered.
No one else heard.
Escape hissed in the flags
and the rolling tires.
No one else understood.

I gathered up my things.
Made them into balls.
I'd never packed to
go anywhere. I made
luggage from a box
that was a table
now maybe a boat.

There were piles of
shoes at the river. You said
you’ll walk until
you begin to sink
because you can't swim
then you’ll drift and cling.

I went awkwardly past
the checkpoint. Stood on
a beach. My box
of rolled things will
float I hoped.
I lingered on

your tardy curtsy.
Your dry eyes
amidst moist faces.
Your sidelong
glance implied.
We did something
other than pray
to be unbuoyed
by ideology.

#weeklypoemandpic

21. observing for seizures during the storm

4/16/2020

21.
observing for seizures during the storm
the medicine has to be given during a hurricane so the mothers fathers and their babies gather on the island: a bitter tourism. planes laden with tensely watched children and parents poised to catch them arrive in the gravid air to a merciless economy of hope. the lights will fade as the electricity fails but the dose must be administered when the wind has risen, the trees are bending and as the eye approaches but hasn't passed over. there isn't much that can be done say the doctors so go here. stay off the beaches they say. even after the storm men will try to sell you things. especially after the storm.
#weeklypoemandpic

20. Ooph

4/12/2020

A poem and a pic a week (with some catching up to do).
20. Ooph

I'm not writing about
embryonic cannibalism.
I'm writing about eggs because
my children are eating them.
Egg toxicity: The taking on
of too much albumen.
The overeating of omelets.
I was an egg. You were an orgasm.
Twelve jokes in two rows.
Each egg released a laughing yolk
that broke with a guffaw. The sizzle
of the crowd. The clatter of a fork.
Eating something that
could have been something more.
No regrets. Just growing larger.
Stronger. Chewing. Breathing.
An egg a crab an iguana a turtle.
Piles of eggs cocooned in dunes far
from the waves. Eggs are antithetical
to undulation. Impervious to water but
amenable to air. Investments. Things
that become husks if abandoned in
trees. Things that bad boys are tempted
to throw. Cartons and accounts.
Fifty eggs in one basket. Her finite
amount of eggs. The cold regard
a shark has for an egg.
The egg as traffic cone.
A puddle of broken eggs
on the pavement.
The unchewable shell.
It's uncookability.
The dialectic of the
contained and the container.
I shall indulge in the
bourgeois largesse of eggs.
The surprise of an egg in an
unexpected place: a sidewalk,
a carseat, a dog bowl. The places
you should see eggs: a furrow,
the anatomical snuff box.
An imperfect egg?
My mother taught me to always open
the box to inspect the eggs as though
I were about to shoplift.
A nest full of closed mouths.
The opposite of an egg
is also an egg.
#weeklypoemandpic

19.

3/12/2020

19.
Two Pear
1.
Was the
workday
carefree
as we were?
Is it the job of
each generation
to find the juiciest
half of a peach
and then throw
the rest away?
2.
I tried to demonstrate the uses of a peach the taste of a peach the superiority of the peach to the apple but could find only half of one that seemed right. I tried to get her to ignore the shriveled and manky side but can't remember if she did before I threw the rest away. Or was it a pear? A pear I think it was a pear. What was her name? Should I have married her? We moved in together. What was her name? We were quite a pair. Was it a peach or a pear?
3.
Goats are nibbling on
Lucia's shirtsleeves.
She's got no dues to pay.
We threw
a perfectly
good peach
on the path
so the goats
would wander
away.
4.
I was
nurtured
behind lead
My mother
was raised
beneath
peaches
#weeklypoemandpic

18.

3/5/2020

18.

War letters.

That afternoon I read letters that had been written during a war and collected into a book. They were rearranged as modern verse and rephrased in a current vernacular.

1.
Fancy paper huh?
The proposal of Sir Isaac
to Lady Gertrude is in grey
lengthwise within the linen.

We work our
Danburg forms daily
like we were taught.

2.
There is
money to buy

William
some chocolates
enclosed.

3.
So many of the
boys are sick
and shot and
missing their moms.
There’s boredom too.
We’re tired
as though old.

4.
Receipt:
4 pounds.
Don’t worry
about
repaying.

It was a weird form of delirium. There is a movie planned. In the movie soldiers are landing on a beach just south of a famous forest because one of the letters is from there.

#weeklypoemandpic

17. Empty Town Ship

2/27/2020

17. Empty Town Ship
A.
My kids went around a corner and were gone. Only a city was in the field. Buildings and tents. I didn’t ask the one man that came out looking curious about the names I called. My terrified children had heard me yell. I had to walk somewhere to make a report and by then it would be too late. The police would scoff. There was a man in a mask at a bus stop because of snow.
I awoke
afraid to
open doors. B.
Every day for years this neighbor took
pictures of kids getting on their bus. He said he’d give them the photos when they were old so they could remember. The members of his church thought it was so lovely. I went to his house selling charity candy and he said: we all end up where we are meant to be. I said: are you saying people in hell don’t know they’re there? He said: there’s no telling.
His walls were
empty
and very clean. #weeklypoemandpic

16. Going solo

2/21/2020

16. Going solo

When I sat next to the rock star at the restaurant
or just above behind and to his left I listened but didn’t
intrude. He was with his wife or his sister and some
other friends or helpers. When he was leaving and
as I was ordering dessert he said my name in the
way that people who don’t know me think it’s
pronounced. I complimented his shoes and asked
what I’d won. He said: nothing just saying hello. His
song As the Light Is was in everyone’s heads.
People think it’s religious but it isn’t at least not to
me.

#weeklypoemandpic

15.

2/14/2020

15.

Hikers

A forest of siddarthas
and the trees they're
wrappped around.

Wander the woods
and catch a glimpse
of the gardeners.

There's no need
to be the best
boat in the water:
you just need to float.

I've never hiked.
Well once as a college
traveller. A buddy and
I trailed along behind
goats. We whistled and
stole their bells. We

worried about the
shepherdess but she
never appeared.

My son said
'We'll win the rain'
Who wins the rain?

#weeklypoemandpic

PS: Your Poem a Week w/

Philippe Shils - he lives in central Illinois. He has chapbooks available from Underground Books, Right Hand Pointing Press, and a collaborative one with his band The Red Wheelbarrows available at gigs and on Facebook by request. He plays old time banjo and has two kids who are patient with their father.
Check out his New Band, Books and Social Media!!

Weekly Archives

March 2020
February 2020
January 2020
December 2019
November 2019

Categories