Truck

6 Poems by Paul Sohar

The Stolen Pen

The thief. The pen. The desk.

               The theft.

Thieving magpies streaking across

                the ceiling.

I hear cries for help. Help! But I

                don’t move.

I can’t. No one can help. Maybe

         someone else, but not me, don’t ask me, why me?

                  Why me?

It’s all over. Don’t bother me. I am not

                  a believer

just because I believe. I believe  a lot

                 of things.

Things I would never admit to, things behind books.

                   Meta-books. Theft.

I steal. I believe whatever someone else

                  believes

and even swear to it. I am a thief of beliefs,

                   because

I have none. Or too many. All piled up

                   in a cloud

and I can never lay my hands on any one

                   belief,

so I go on stealing new ones. More

                   and more.

And lose them soon in the cloud of the rest,

               an amorphous

bookcase where nothing can be found and

                  nothing hidden.

A cloud of nothing. Nothing except for

          a puddle with a tax i.d. and address floating in it.

               I need a pen

to scribble specs on the cloud, mustache on a rose,

                a name on the wind.                                                                                       

(Partially a "found text"; the variation in font is entirely due to a genie in the computer.)

Serenade of Queens Boulevard

you’re a queen in distress

in need of rescue from

the castrated jaws of jesuits

you need an Attila

to invade

your queendom

an invasion that will crack

the hymn-lined dome

of your boredom

even your eyes will stay

spread-eagled

for the rest of your reign

your ears will stay

nailed down to your majestic smile

on your wings

a hand used to holding the hilt

will take hold of

your naked glory

the bare prison walls

of your story

will guide a hand in your

fourth-floor walk-up studio

to find the power button

of your ingrown tv set

Accelerating

a dog barks to call for attention

a cat meows to protest it

but a car roars to do both

snatching and smashing your mind

in a guttural dialect

a car that moves silently

doesn’t move at all

only changes its place on the map

if you want to move and really move

you need a convertible with the roof

ripped off and the muffler shot

you need a car that can batter its way

through the silence of distances

a car that moves every cell in your body

in a different direction

all over the landscape

and its engine needs to explode

into a teaming junkyard in the sky

where every wreck is on the move

wrecking every other wreck

clanking roar comes

crashing down on your car that started it all

smashing the map and the landscape

but who cares when you want to move

when you want to splatter your brains in a streak

regroup all your organs into redemptive speed

and grind your slow-witted legs to pulp

when you want nothing but movement

that goes on accelerating beyond

the farthest junkyard of the universe

beyond the white noise of freefall

Facting

facts

facting naked facts

on the floor

of a nude apartment

the bare walls open up

charts without the curve

two of us go circling planets

factors facting our facts

on the floor

in front of the window

in full view of infinity

the kind of fact

factors are apt to fact

when caught factious

in the act and then

we become factors

wrapped in the fractured fact

we’re too rapt to fact

on the finite floor

of empty infinity

Specks

      A

speck in the great

spectrum of things?

      That’s no way to

speculate about the

spectacle of life;

      no matter how far and wide

      you get to

spectate,

      no matter how

spectacular the view,

      the splendid

specter behind it all is

speckled with

specks like me and you,

      what else to ex-

pect from a

spectator sport?

Axes Glasses Pens

            axes glasses pens and knives

the forest floor swallows up

everything dropped on it

            axes glasses pens and knives

nothing but nothing ever survives

the voracious appetite of the loam

except white plastic shopping bags

filled with the wind of empty

shopping center parking lots

but everything else dropped

or mislaid on the forest floor

turns into a dead maple leaf and

slowly sinks into the underworld

of slimy roots and rocks

shadows of the forest foliage solidified

the eternal resting place of

            axes glasses pens and knives

and those who lie down on the ground

not to rest or to look for mislaid gloves

etcetera but just to lie there on the forest

floor expecting nothing more than to

sink deeper and deeper into

the sly slumber of defiant

            axes glasses pens and knives

Paul Sohar ended his higher education with a BA in philosophy and took a day job in a research lab while writing in every genre and publishing seven volumes of translations. His book, Homing Poems, is available from Iniquity Press. Paul's latest book of poems is The Wayward Orchard from Wordrunner Press: www.echapbook.com/poems/soharonline. His prose work: True Tales of a Fictitious Spy is out from Synergebooks (2006). Magazine credits: Agni, Gargoyle, Kenyon Review, Rattle, Ragazine, Salzburg Poetry Review and Seneca Review. Recent translation credits include a recent book of poems by the renowned Hungarian poet Sándor Kányádi as well as poems by US poets for Hungary's elite literary publication Magyar Naplo. He gives poetry readings throughout the United States and Europe.