ONE WAY TICKET

A poplar stands
As straight as subtraction,
Until the wind blows,
Making the green head sway
Like an old man
Lost on a corner,
Looking for his brother.

Then he remembers a storm;
It rushes into his mind,
Like water down a drain:
Poplars swayed between the
Barn and porch.
"Heavens!" he said,
Fogging up the kitchen window.
"I hope they don't fall over and
Hit the house!"

But his memory dissolves,
Like rage at the end,

And the storm becomes a
Truck that honks:
He has almost stepped into a
Mine field!
He surveys the flatland--
No, the rutted asphalt.
The truck roars
Through first gear,
Becomes a disappearingv Tailgate,
As he remembers,

He saw his brother
Lose his legs
At Passchendaele.
The old man tries to recall his
Brother's name,

While blasts of wind stir up
His white hair.

He tries to flatten it,
But gives up,

Like the poplars that fell over
In that storm.
He wonders if they
Landed on the house,
But all he recalls
Is a smashed fence.

And that reminds him:
Cedar makes the best fence posts;
At The Phoenix Home, however,
The fence posts are green:
(Pine?--spruce?)
Treated with a preservative
(Not creosote).

And in his room,
In Phoenix,
He has a guitar with
Three strings that hangs
Over an accordion that
Only screeches.

Also in his room is a captain's bed,
With four handy drawers,
But Mary and he had an iron bed--
She made chicken-feather mattresses:
One for them and one for each of the
Kids.

The light at the corner turns green.
He remembers what that means,
Just as he remembers the noon news
On the TV in the Golden Lounge:
Some people in Asia, lately,
Buy their parents or parent
A one-way ride on a train
To anywhere far
Away.

The light turns red;

He has forgotten to cross the street,
But he won't tell anybody,
Especially the people looking at him,
That he's forgotten his brother's
Name,
And that he keeps seeing poplar trees
Falling on his prairie-
House.

THE THINKER

He wonders--

But soon only his coffee
Matters.

MY HOME

Midhbar--
Oasis of amhaarets

(A word Pharisees
Spit)--

Is my home,
My wind and rock,
My snakes and scorpions
That thrive where I eat
And urinate
And will die.

This is my barrenness,
My yeshimon,
That surrounds me like my
Heart
And children.

BOWLS BENEATH LEAKS

Caracas, Venezuela: go down, down
To cement, glass, and steel,
Where spires gleam above
Traffic-whine, tetracarbon-
Clouds, and florescent shorts
On camera-festooned tourists.

But above this arcade,
Los Cerros cling to hillsides
That rain churns into gravity-ravaged
Muck:

Steps become cataracts, and
Garbage-toboggans race down
River-filled gutters
Like oysters down a throat,

And zinc-roofed homes of
Rain-blackened boards or
Flattened cans or
Packing cases
("This side up," some still read)

"Elbow" for space and boast signs:
"Pego Cierres" ("I Put In Zippers"),
"Cortes de Pelo" ("Haircuts"),
"Se Venden Helados" ("Ice Cream Sold").

Consider a sunny day:
In one of 500 barrios
(Some named after "saints,"
Others after hope
(El Progresso (Progress),
Nuevo Mundo (New World),
El Encanto (Delight))),
A boy's voice in a battered
Loudspeaker cries out:
"Onions! Yuccas! Plantains!"
(In English?)
Barter-quick poor close deals
With this barter-quick child
On his bent tailgate.
Nearby,
A bow-spined man spray-
Paints a 23-year-old VW
In an unpaved street--
A side-street packed hard by

Foot and tire and sun--
But he releases the trigger
To watch a long-chassis jeep
Climb the 18% grade of a "highway"
Called Si Dios Quiere (If God Wills).

And in that jeep,
Twelve passengers, with
Knees crammed under chins,
Inhale each other's odor.
A fat lady guards a bag of tomatoes
From too many feet.

The driver, after spitting tobacco-gob
Out his windowless door,
Pampers the clutch with a "good"
Place to stop;
Two wild-haired women
In tattered dresses
Tumble out the back doors,
And then the jeep
Trails a water truck that
Drips at a seam

Like a bleeding soldier.

The two women enter
A bodegas--a green-paint-
Peeling-off-like-old-labels-on-
Old-cans home to a school,
Pharmacist/doctor,
And household items, like beer,
For the poor.

No house numbers,
No glass for barred-up windows, and
No mailmen to pace the maze of
Cramped walkways between

Hill-rooted homes--

Homes
In which coffee and bland
Arepa with jam are
As common as babies,

Homes

In which hospitality,
In spite of armed robbery and suicide,

Makes ranchitos warm for many
Who often say,
"Estan en su casa." [ed.: the "a" in "estan" needs an acute accent]
("Make yourselves at home.")

BEST WESTERN-REUNION

"I've got a twenty-five hundred
Square foot home,"
A man with breasts says as
Jacuzzi-steam fondles
Hand-held
Beer-cans.

Other fat men
Bathe in chlorine
And Visa,
And roll lottery numbers over
In their minds. But
They aren't like walruses
Spinning over an ocean floor,
Searching for fish
To eat raw,

Because they like theirs deep-fried:
Up one comes for air;
CO2 bubbles still
Fizz in his throat.
Then children arrive,
And laugh;
A girl in a peppermint bikini

Asks, "Can we buy some pop?
We're hot!"

The men climb out;
They're hot too.
The ice-cold beer
Is too warm,
And there must be something else
To do
Anyway.

Copyright © Dan Lukiv 2000 All Rights Reserved

Dan Lukiv is a Canadian Poet and Educator.