Two Poems (Lenny DellaRocca)

The Soft Wilderness Antelope stampede across dusty sunthunder days Copperhead twilight rusts in the sky- sandstone erosion of dry afternoon- The moon is a wild bone Hyena laugh in the dark Lions gone blind sleep without fire dream of strange drums that beat from beyond a four-day taste of blood
Murder of a pregnant baboon in thick treehouses of night Elephant skeletons- a bleached junkyard of graves Birds the color of ripe fruit cry a Tarzan language while insects the size of fists in spurts, buzz like hot transformers or saxophones of long jazz- Life is a stretch of perseverance, a sudden crack of cold lightning- the loud tumble of rain

Truck

I’m driving a truck, watch trees go by at night scratching the face of the moon, sound of water beneath wheels hissing like a mile-long snake. I’m not alone; clouds, stars and fences all around me. And I’ve got her, the one who appeared in a dream, riding the wave with me. This gravel road goes on through storms and cycles of the sun. Nothing in our pockets except our hands, loose change leftover from far away towns where people are named Lavender, Amber and Spiral, certain something has changed; the truck never runs out of gas, never needs repair. Entire countries reveal themselves as if cartography is something on the radio between stations. We know just ahead are all the pages of books we always wanted to read falling from the sky and we’ll ride through, hands out windows, stealing masterpieces. When the road runs out we’ll turn back take that left where the sign said: Quantum Coffeeshop Three Light Years. We hope it has a drive-thru. Marie smiles, reads aloud: Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful,

I took a 10-year break from writing, reading poetry and attending poetry events, and have recently returned to it. I wrote a handful of poems in the past two years, nothing much different from what I wrote years back. But in the last few months a certain something has changed. I began writing what I'd been calling Namedropper Poems, based on my experiences in the poetry world, the poets and the events. Most are pretty bad but a few I like and a couple I like a lot. And then another shift happened. In the past -- going back to the late 1960s -- I wrote poems mostly stream of consciousness, and then tried to form and shape them into something that meant something (though not always). Sometimes, I let it be what it was, all meaning aside. But in the last month or two, I've been writing with an idea in mind. I've always had the hardest time doing that. I've typically failed at putting anything good down. The new poems are sitting in the oven on warm. I've already deleted the worst of them....

-- Lenny DellaRocca