Poetry of John Sokol

John Sokol is a writer and painter living in Akron, OH.  His poems have
appeared in America, Antigonish Review, The Berkeley Poetry Review,
Georgetown Review, New Millennium Writings, The New York Quarterly, and
Quarterly West, among others.  His short stories have appeared in Akros,
Descant, Mindscapes, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, Redbook, and other journals.  
One of his stories has been translated into Danish, and, another, into
Russian.  His drawings and paintings have been reproduced on more that
thirty-five book covers.  His chapbook, "Kissing the Bees," winner of the
1999 Redgreene Press Chapbook Competition, is available through Amazon.com.  jsokol7608@aol.com
http://johnsokol.hispeed.com/JohnSokolWebSite.html

The Pond at Beechwood Farms

First of December
  and this pond's gone punk,
     
its Mohawk of spiked bleached
  reeds jutting out from receeding
  
shorelines; its rattail: a tangle
     of algae and sea grass spinning

in the spillway.  Yellow-bellied
  headbangers in the nearby beech;
    
rime tattoos on the green water;
  and - don't you know? -- the genes
  
of these frogs and turtles and snakes
     are more ripped and torn each year.

The Book of Want

Who hasn't read it
or at the very least
hasn't underlined
a chapter here
a chapter there
in that dog-eared
bible of being?  
How many times
have we turned those pages
so that we might ask:
"O, most beloved ledger -
perfect-bound
or saddle-stitched,
hard-cover or soft -
give us your unabridged,
your epigraphic gold,
your latest addendum.   
Give us want without want,  
because all we want
is all we want."

Don't Die Wondering

     -- spray-painted on a large rock,
        in a forest in Pennsylvania

Isolated from all but the crows and the deer,
the message seems misplaced.
Who dies not wondering, unless they're Rasputin,
or Saint John the Beloved: so practiced in the art of dying,
no wondering remains?  

As I wander through the evening woods
(maybe the spray-can scribe meant "wandering"),
I try to imagine what I'd be wondering
if I were dying (hard to imagine,
when the dying isn't imminent).  

Imagine having just been broadsided
by an eighteen-wheeler.  You have this much time:
from impact to "died instantly."  When your life flashes
before your eyes, for what face or word
will your mind's eye reach?

Or, suppose you're dying of cancer.  
You're at the border of delirium, with enough morphine
in you to float a ship of fools, but not enough
to sink your raft of pain.  While you're waiting
to go through customs, perhaps you stare at the ceiling,
where the topics of your wondering
are like a confetti of stars on a cold, country night.  
Will you choose only one, to hold in your mind,
or will you wonder about your entire galaxy,
as you roam the wormholes of your memory,
and strain your milky ways for meaning?

If we're made from the carbon dust of stars,
and, if -- as some believe -- stars are the souls of the dead,
when the anvil of darkness falls on you,
will you die wondering, will you see stars,
or will you simply be dying to know?

Last Call at the Rose of Sharon

Here, at closing time, they're bottoms up
in blossoms, and their one big wife
is calling them home.  "I'm not here"

rings out, all over the little tree,
while a dozen drunks get six-packs to go
for their saddlebags.  A few burly die-hards --

their noses in the doors -- still squeeze
through.  They've come here from down
the road, where they've been drinking all day

at the Foxglove Inn and the Bee Balm Cafe.
Bar fights break out in the booths
over last licks of nectar schnapps.

But, there's no bouncer here; no
designated drivers, either.  When the doors
close, a lone straggler will sleep it off:

a pistil for a pillow.  His buddies,
high on hooch, will stagger home
on a wing and a prayer.  Tomorrow,

they'll be up early, hung over
at the doors of the Dew Drop Inn
sucking down those Peach Blossom Specials.

Walls

              Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
              What I was walling in or walling out.

                                                --   Robert Frost


Like anyone else, I've put them up
with tempered nails.  I've pounded

sheets of a day's dry wall --
every-two-feet -- to the center of bored.   

I've covered unsightly seams
with tear-duct tape.

Plastered, I've coated walls
with three coats of pain.  

I've torn some down, too.  
I've crashed through, beat on,

sledgehammered, bulldozed
and sweet-talked them down.   

I've carefully dismantled,
cried at-the-base-of, "gone to "

and, once, held up -- and
then, let fall -- a wall.

Jealousy

Listen!  It's no crime --
especially
when you
see people
whose lives
look like full plates:
gravy
dripping over the edges,
mashed potatoes
on the tablecloth,
and four side dishes
they haven't
even touched . . . .

and there's you,
at the other end
of the table,
chasing one sour grape
around on your plate,
with a stolen spoon.

It

drifts into your world
like the invisible dust of stars,
the rust of time,
ether from ancient jars.
It surrounds you --
after lightning, before thunder;
in the darkness, before dawn.  

Midge of unmanageable rumination,
it settles behind the marbles
of your eyes, nests in the canyons
of your ears, makes itself a kingdom
in the interstices
of your gray matter.

It arrives in the vague hours
and becomes palpable
as it sharpens itself
on the intensely specific minutes;
as it counts -- out loud --
while you try to sleep;
as it becomes
your unbearable guest.

This Poem Is Just Like All of Us

If this poem starts to talk, it will say things it shouldn't;
    reveal secrets
it was asked to keep.  It will speak as though it knows
    more than it does;
as though it has inside information, and is privy to more
    than the pen.
If this poem fools you once, shame on it.
    If this poem
fools you twice, shame on you.  If this poem starts to talk,
    it will speak
in riddles; wax allegorical, anecdotal and paradoxical;
    spit-polish itself silly.  
And, if you just came down with the rain, this poem will
    sell you a dry pair of shoes.  
If you come back tomorrow, it'll buy you lunch; maybe
    a car, or, a new house.  
If this poem starts to talk, it will talk about itself and try to
    convince you
that it's talking about you-know-who.  It will speak with
    coyness and cleverness,
and for that, it won't mind being called cheap.  
    Psychologically,
it likes the double-reverse; irony; self-deprecation; passive
    aggression.  
And watch out for the lies: blatant, two-ton lies.  (If this
    poem
is a break-away snitch, who just knifed the guard, and
    approaches you --
still dressed in its black-and-white issues -- what makes you
    think it won't lie to you?)

Don't argue with this poem.  It'll slap you in the face,
    challenge you
to a duel, and, then, turn around at seven paces and shoot
    you in the back.

This poem is -- all at once -- manic and depressed, and,
    often, delusional;
it's confused, and full of fear and doubt.  This poem may be
    dangerous:
at least to itself, if not to others.  The thing is: this poem
    is in pain.
This poem is lonely: down-in-the-dirt, dying-in-a-ditch,
    flat-out lonely.  
And, like all the lonely people, it dwells too much on itself,
    and, therefore,
makes itself more lonely.  But it knows it's not the only page
    in the book
on loneliness.  It's not too proud to admit how it aches, or so
    naive
that it doesn't know that everybody is lonely; that everybody
    hurts; that everybody,
at one time or other, has kissed their own hand in the
    darkness
until an imagined lover comes to life and kisses back; until
    the fingers
rake softly through their hair and touch their eyes with the
    cure of sleep.

But most of all: this poem worries about the future; about
    death and dying;
about wasting away and turning to dust.  Its worst fear: that
    it might see light
a few brief times before the book closes on its life forever;
    that it will forever sleep
in the perfect darkness of flat closure; that it will read, and
    recite, itself to itself
in its thin coffin; that it will be just like all of us: afraid
    of dying alone,
    in nobody's lap, in nobody's arms.

Your Father's Arms

were covered with freckles
all of which
you tried for years to count
but always from
the same beginning
for having lost your place
the time before
when he turned to anger
and smacked you away
in that life-long habit
that made you fear
the arms you loved
until the day he died
when his arms
were no longer strong and rippled
but withered and flaccid
and as still and gray
as winter branches
covered with all those freckles
free for you to count.