Everyone's a Poet -- Poems of a Sick Puppy Written in 1970

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.”