Everyone’s A Poet
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© November 2005
When I say everyone is a poet, I mean everyone. There is a rhythm and synchronicity to everyone’s life, only some people take the time to get in touch with their soul and let its voice be heard.
That doesn’t mean that everyone is a Sylvia Plath or Ted Hughes, or indeed, anyone of a number of fine poets who have distinguished themselves by placing their emotions in print, emotions of love and romance, sorrow and loss, of longing and confusion, and of the celebration of life as in the case of Walt Whitman. Sometimes rage and twisted contempt for the demons of our souls possess us to compose.
I have never read a poem by anyone that didn’t touch my soul, mainly because it introduced me to that person’s private heaven or hell.
A confession is in order. I am procrastinating on writing my novel of South Africa, which I plan to call GREEN ISLAND IN A BLACK SEA – A novel of South in the Age of Apartheid.
South Africa in the late 1960s was a most traumatic experience. If you can imagine, I loved South Africa, could identify with the Afrikaner Boers, having been born and reared in Iowa, but could not adjust my mind to apartheid, to the passive role taken by my Roman Catholic faith in the midst of it, nor to the hedonistic lifestyle and opulence of my situation.
I epitomized Twain’s “innocence abroad” and was consequently torn by my dose of reality.
My constitution, which I thought was solid, proved to be porous; my moral certainty had lost its buoyancy. I was in a black sea and drowning in sight of this green island.
It was not courage that forced me to cut the Gordian Knot with decisive action, as did Alexander the Great with his swift sword, but to preserve my sanity. I moved my wife and four children to Florida and settled in an upscale neighborhood in Pinellas County on the Florida’s west coast.
Living on savings, I read, wrote poetry and prose, played tennis and basketball, and struggled with an early mid-life crisis.
I would drive across the bay from Pinellas County to Tampa, watch the banana boats unload in the harbor, fantasize about joining the crew, or sit along the Hillsborough River with the University of Tampa with its onion domes in my line of sight, letting the words pour out of me.
It was not until I wandered into the Amtrak railroad station and ordered a cup of coffee one day that I fell deliriously in love with the image of twenty-year-old woman, unschooled, poor, but beautiful in a freshness unmatched before.
Her name was Bonnie and she was between migrant working jobs selling coffee and candy bars at the station’s snack bar. I thought of Plato and his poetry on love, a name she had never heard before. She was blond, the daughter of an exotic dancer with no idea who her father was. She had been to school less than three-years and could hardly read or write, confessing her family was always on the move, picking fruit, and living an itinerant lifestyle.
My romantic idealism envisioned bringing Shaw’s Pygmalion to life with me as professor Higgins to her Eliza Doolittle. The closest I ever got to her was to confess that I wrote poetry about her. She didn’t ask to see it, but instead asked me to read some of it to her.
I lied I didn’t have it with me, too embarrassed to let her know how damaged I was and how my mind raged in its fantasy.
I now sense that I was in the equivalent of posttraumatic shock from my South African tour. A lot of me died there, and I suspect I was looking for a miraculous revitalization. Writing poetry was not a wonder drug but sufficient medicine to heal me enough to go forward if unsteadily so.
Here are some samples of the poetry written in 1970, or thirty-five years ago
* * * * * * * * * * *
ODE TO BONNIE
I close my eyes and I see you there
Wild eyes and a loving stare
I open my soul and I see you there
Irish nose and a lass so fair
I dream my dream and I see you there
Loving lips and a taste so rare
I fly to thee and I see you there
Sensuous form and a love to bare
MENTAL MENSES
Angel hair spirit of steel Christened to this restless night
Boil with beautify flash with anger
Live my love til dawn’s daylight
Bonnie over the bounty
Bonnie over the sea
Bonnie restless Bonnie
Never stop fighting with glee
Angel hair spirit of steel Christened to this restless night
Dance what moves you
Glance where would you
Live my love and claim thy right
Bonnie over the bounty
Bonnie over the sea
Bonnie precious Bonnie
Never stop living so free
You old as time young as night
Me ever mindful
Never timeful
Watching whence there looms thy light
Born worn girl-woman of mind
Nature naturing ever so kind
Taste me with scent’s magic eyes
Let us caress lest we surmise
Be daring as the hours dim
Thank God for love for nature’s whim
Bonnie is as Bonnie was
The moment restless moment twas
The cause of joy a new found heart
A love of sea of wind and art
Blessed be these merry atoms of eternity
A fool nigh old a golden lass
Locked in thought the moments pass
Bonnie over the bounty
Bonnie over the sea
Bonnie lovely Bonnie
Never stop flying to me
COLOR US GREEN
What color is mood
Would you say mood is yellow
What texture is melancholia
Would you melancholia is blue
What garland is happiness
Would you say happiness is green
But how would you find green
Would you say green is yellow and blue
Then why don’t we mix them
Would you say we are afraid to be happy
DIVITIAE OPES COPIA
I touch thy eyes and drink thy sighs
Magic maiden of mind
I bathe thy tears and calm thy fears
Magic maiden of mind
I see thy blues and know thy trues
Magic maiden of mind
I feel thy pain and share thy rain
Magic maiden of mind
- But -
I knowest not thy open road nor thy hollow roar of belly
Nor dirt and grime nor torment’s whine from me prison womb of jelly
- For –
Neither peace nor war nor cancer’s sore invades my sanctuary
What mind doth know it cannot show trapped in this mortuary
AT TWENTY
At twenty
An angel sprouts wings and a fair maiden sings
At twenty
An hourglass queen is no longer a teen
At twenty
The hard years before give promise in store
At twenty
The sweet flower of love finds wings of a dove
COMPLEXIO
To love another is self-emptying of a kind
To know the pain in such love is folly to a mind
To love without possessing is chastening indeed but unsatisfying to need
Yet possessing nothing cherishing all is this not amentia
To be that man that being of flesh and bone who loves such
A child of twenty you see no more is to suffer irony’s fluke and pain’s rebuke much
Brains drain grains crane I listen to pain insane
Bury me britches in celestial rains sounding horny refrains
To love a Bonnie past me hour’s fast
To be as anxious as the spank of autumn in the sweat of summer
Is to know pain’s pleasure for pleasure’s pain
THE FOUR SEASONS
I love you Bonnie as the autumn leaves turn to gold
I love you Bonnie as the anxious spring chills my face
I love you Bonnie as the summer sweetness sticks to me
What of winter you ask
It is the winter from whence my frigid heart moans
I love you Bonnie
AENIGMA
Am I a garment locked in a man
- or -
Am I a man locked in a garment
COMPENSARE
How lonely it is to write to think to worry in ink
Black tears on an ocean screaming
- but -
How lovely it is to feel your eyes and measure your sighs
Warm honey on an amber streaming
MENTAL REFLEX
They say that life is not always gay that we must suffer for our play
That we must see the God before or suffer the consequences forever more
- and -
My mind says yea shit shit hoo ray
GLEAM OF SPECULA
If love be hopeless rain is not wet and sun may not set
If love be hopeless grass is not mellow and hay may not yellow
If love be hopeless rock is not gray and ass may not bray
If love be hopeless life is not need and man may not seed
- but -
Love is not hopeless nor beast of such kind
It is the garment of sunlight and tolerant mind
- for -
Hope is not raiment meant only for covers
Hope is a gift of the heart and rainbow for lovers
VERITAS
Worth is a word I’ve often heard
Hope is a word I’ve often spoke
But where is the terror I’d never bear
Where is the scream I’d never beam
Do I hide from the sight of the real me
Do I hide from the gore of the real war
My answer is no though it might be just yes
A lie living out its promised behest
DEUS DE DEO
Tell me if you can what is this thing called man
This being that walks on two and gapes at me while mocking you
Is he brain or body sense or slime
Is he passing atoms or something divine
Does he possess a will and a passion to be
- or -
Is he a senseless amoeba in a fathomless sea
Cherish your mind and seek to be kind
Amble and strut like a plant in a rut
- for -
The answer you see is unknown to me
TAMPA BAY
Happy am I though merry not I be
I’ve the summer sun the gentle breeze the song of gull and sea
I’ve the sigh of the trees the smell of the leaves the stain of grass on me
I’ve the palm the oak the gentle yoke of nature naturing so free
- yet -
Happy am I though merry not I be
The clang of the train disturbs my brain the barge the yacht my subtle pleasure
The horn the bell the chug as well robs me this supple treasure
The drone of air the plane up there the sirens in the distance
The screams of dreams of ghoulish schemes gives measure to the instance
- now -
My eyes sting dry my ears turn gears a robot I be a wasting
The mind to know the sense to show grinds to a morsel basting
Happy am I though merry not I be
FELICITAS
If . . . .
God made a heart only for one why did he bring me to you
Life is earth water and sun why must we see it all blue
Times must go as times must come why pay them much mind
Dust we be in naked sum then why slave to such bind
Love is a sacred sharing why whisper we apology
Love is a gift bearing why shout we theology
- for -
Body mind and spirit we travel this place
Part of us fiber part of us lace part of us spirit part of us base
Married we come to person of grace lust wrapped in love in marital brace
- so -
Cries can be heard through all these blue musings
Why answers why answers why in woeful bemusings
ECCE HOMO
I am a man but am I (well)
I see with my eyes yet I am blind
I hear with my ears yet I am deaf
I smell with my nose yet I am scentless
I touch with my hands yet I am senseless
I speak with my tongue yet I am dumb
I think with my brain yet I am mindless
By gravity here I be a sterile fossil
A human being alive yet lifeless
Afraid to burp for fear I might enjoy it
TORQUE OF WILL
I write these words when time says no
There are things to do and products to show
I drink my coffee when times says no
There are chemicals to sell and the boss says so
I listen to cackle of waiter and friend
To customer growling and similar trend
A bus station you see is the center of earth
The chemistry of folly and thankfully mirth
The coffee goes down and the bladder fills up
The expectant waiter comes intercourse to cup
You come to this spot of lonely confusion
To bury your will in a coffee transfusion
Note: These were all written in 1970, the last one when I agreed to canvas Tampa for a chemical company. My heart wasn’t in it, as the poem suggests. But it did get me writing my first book, Confident Selling (Prentice-Hall 1970), which was written in six short weeks, and became a national bestseller. The only other poem I would write was written for my novelized memoir, In the Shadow of the Courthouse (AuthorHouse 2003). That poem had actually been rolling around in my head since I was five. You may wonder: were any of these poems published? The answer is “yes.”
Dr. James R. Fisher, Jr. is an industrial and organizational psychologist writing in the genre of organizational psychology, author of Confident Selling, Work Without Managers, The Worker, Alone, Six Silent Killers, Corporate Sin, Time Out for Sanity, Meet Your New Best Friend, Purposeful Selling, In the Shadow of the Courthouse and Confident Thinking and Confidence in Subtext. A Way of Thinking About Things, Who Put You in a Cage, and Another Kind of Cruelty are in Amazon’s KINDLE Library.
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