HALVARD JOHNSON

(This feature is part of TRUCK’s Theme Issue on the List or Catalog Poem. You can go HERE for an Index of the Participating Poets.)

Favorite California Churches

Church of the Sacred Cucumber

St. Vitamin's

Santa Cuisinart

Church of the Holy Rose Bowl

St. Vim and St. Vigor

2nd Church of Santa Clarification and Mudslide

Temple of the Seedless Orange

Valley United Methadone

Iglesia de Julio

Seventh Chapel of San Andreas de Culpa

Our Lady of Dolores del Rio

Synagogue Ben Hur

Cathedral of the Blessed Catheter

Vielle priére bouddhique

May all things flow into whatever it is they are flowing into.

May those who are lost find happiness in their lostness.

May those who cannot tie their shoelaces learn to do without shoes.

May those who behead one another keep their wits about them.

May those who are slack straighten up and fly right.

May the powerless learn to remember to pay their bills on time.

May those who are unagitated bestir themselves to action.

May those who are angry chill out. May all your prayers

be answered or, perhaps even better, unanswered.

6 Kirghiz Proverbs

                   "It comes as the Kirghiz light."

                                   --Thomas Pynchon

1.   One who does not respect one's father,

will also not respect one's grandfather.

2.   Better to have dry farmland than to have

a father who is in charge of water distribution.

3.   It is as if the Moon gave birth to one's front

and the Sun gave birth to one's back.

4.   One who has six sons has cattle in six places.

5.   Money is good in an urban area.

6.   A stupid man builds a house, 

an intelligent man makes friends.

Retrospective Narratives

*

Once up

on a time.

*

A darkened

stormy knight.

*

Lonely horse

man riding

in two towns.

*

Best of

worst of.

*

Wood you

believe in.

_________

Poems first published in Remains to Be Seen (New York: Spuyten Duyvil, 2013)