R W Haynes, Ashvamegh Featured Poet
Introduction to the poet:
W. Haynes, Professor of English at Texas A&M International University, teaches Early British Literature and Shakespeare. His poetry has been widely published, and his second book on playwright Horton Foote will appear early in 2016, the centennial of Foote’s birth. He also writes fiction, plays, and creative non-fiction.
Cartoonists Are Lucky in Love
She left with Hungry Chuck Biscuits, leaving
Him twisting in his creative hurricane
Where the quiet eye left the man conceiving
That gentle words water the spirit like rain.
And one day when the dawn came up he walked
Toward the sun on a red-clay Georgia farm,
Forgiving madly; all alone he talked
To mockingbirds and thrashers; he knew no harm
Was done. He knew the weather had to change
And that expedient Alka-Seltzer affections
We have fiercely strained our prudence to arrange
Dissolve instantly in all directions
At the touch of the elemental. She and Chuck
Plopped and fizzed, but left the poet luck.
Colossal Catfish Crushes Cardboard Canoe
Three-story card house…don’t live there…
The stories build up a crushing weight and then
Everything falls, faces disappear,
And you either have to build once again
Or take your dim-lit wisdom elsewhere.
Cards may not be your game; if so,
Congratulations! That discovery
Should give you strength, for weaknesses you know
Often can be dealt with eventually.
Unnecessary games enforce distraction,
Ruining meaningful imaginative action,
Closing off a vast space of liberty.
The games we can but must not escape
Demand we set what wits we have in shape.
At Delphi
“Sagacity is relative,” replied
The Delphic Oracle, “but following sports
Or the latest Egyptian news reports
Can dry up what wisdom one has inside
And deafen one to the devastating
But not always happy harmony
Of the Fate we find eventually,
In strength or when disintegrating.”
“So you don’t just wink, shuck and jive,
Go back in the temple and smoke a joint,
And giggle about predictions you appoint
For me to await, desperately, to arrive?”
“No,” she smiled, “all the blue smoke I blow
Is true smoke for you, wherever you go.”
Cigar in the Agora
“Atheism,” he laughed, lighting a Cuban cigar,
“Is modernist superstition. These scholar-apes
Sneak like foxes toward the midnight grapes,
Never understanding what they are.
I quit drinking when I sobered up and saw
I was more deeply intoxicated when,
Without booze, I hit the world again
And, high as hell, played Fate for just a draw.”
“But how does wisdom come, and how do we
Benefit from teachers who explain
The only university is pain,
And life is war instead of liberty?”
Exhaling copious clouds of choking smoke,
The teacher smoked and smiled but never spoke.
Hawk in the Mist
That’s what thought should always be like,
Gliding with dignity, unthought intent,
Like part of the wind, itself, its weightless ascent
Actualizing like good, well-sworn words.
Above cold forest and steaming fjord,
An unheard heartbeat keeping perfect time declares
Mysterious mastery of shifting airs,
Escaping to conclude in covering cloud.
