Seeker Magazine

Janet I. Buck

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Janet Buck teaches writing and literature at the college level and has published over a hundred poems in a variety of journals, magazines and anthologies across the United States. Two of her poems, The Nursing Home and The Arietta, have won second place awards in the National Library of Poetry's contests in 1996 and 1997. Janet's homepage, entitled A Poet's Pen, has received dozens of awards, including the distinguished Predators and Editors: Author's Site of Excellence.

The empty page, for me, is a rough and ready canvas that must be touched. It barks, it bites, and sometimes it swallows all hours of a day. Inspiration is a mystery, its folds and curves a journey into places often hard to reach. To write is to stumble first upon the magic of sensation, emotion, an image far too dazzling to ignore. The rest is sitting on the riverbank of how we feel, gathering courage, a toe or two at first, then diving in.

Poetry, it seems, is born of dread and urgent air, has less to do with artistry and more to do with foam of need.
From Desideratum, by Janet I. Buck, Oatmeal and Poetry, April 1997.

Tattoos

Round n' round n' round
the carousel of what is missing.
Half a leg and half a life
when eyes recite defeat.
Hard-bound grief beside the bed
and paperbacks of easy motion
others skim and throw away.
Doubt's caboose that pulls
the train of living off the tracks
and paints the canvas of a day
a deeper shade of gray.

There came a time
to take the lime of bitterness
and squeeze and squeeze and squeeze.
To let the chimney-sweep of loving eyes
sift the sands of what she lost
for precious gold of what she found.

There came a time
to shred and burn the map of normalcy
and thread the needle trust.
To push the pirate fear aside,
go naked in the rougher seas of difference.
To make a choice between
denial's three-piece-suit
and beating drums
of who she has become.

There came a time
to roll the sleeves of resignation,
play the castanets of faith,
and turn the bruise of incomplete
a brighter shade of hope.

The Chair

It wasn't fair was rolling right
before their curtain eyes.
Its wheels driven by the dark
of perfect thighs she'd never
lay her hands upon.

Traffic took a sip of gratitude
and then it belched in moving on.
Took the road of passing by
the ditch of dreams that
lay beside the road ahead.
Gravel spitting in the air
and blushing cheeks
of platitudes that needed
space to land.
The simple ramp
the others walked
a mountain in her heart.
Trying spokes upon
the wheel of making do
and sitting out the dawn.

Lessons in the easy air
that many others miss.
Every moment was a hill
that others sledded down.
She wore the hat.
She had the ball.
She knew the bases well.
Knew she had to jump
the curb of tragedy
and roll the chair
of living to its bitter end.

Ceiling Cracks

Trepidation's rocking chair.
Gurneys rolling straight from Hell.
Swatting pain like cobwebs
crawling up the walls or
doormats full of summer dust
that need a shaking out.

Wheels spinning in the mud.
Sprays of tears that fill the gaps
of never knowing what to say.
They stop again beside her door.
Much the same as carriages
for all the traitors to her dreams.
Ceiling cracks of meager smiles
like turning out a jello mold.
If it isn't cold enough,
it cannot stand alone.

Someone mentioned wheelchairs.
She bucked the word and broke the fence.
Their pistols full of platitudes.
Aiming straight in helpless skies.
They needed scars to understand.
Surgery and traffic jams and other dents
in fenders of her womanhood.
Memories of knives before
like sewers full and backing up
in gutters of her eyes.

The Undertow

In the mouths of whales.
I disappear like party hats when
midnight waltzes on the stage.
Machete dreams that come and go
as pendulums that rock
the memories to sleep.
Spaghetti straps of who I am
that slip and slide.
Wheels on this bed of ice.
The bleachers full of syllables
to keep the truth from coming up.
Tears I hide from Father's sight.
Assuming I can reach the shore.
Then the static cling of dread.
Like water-skis without a rope.

If not for you, I might have
drowned among the tears.
Grafts of love like pints of blood.
You wear my pain in circles dark.
They're hanging from your eyes.
Soliloquies of agony
are meant for one alone.
Much the same as kidney stones.
We pass them through our hearts.
Riding tandem through the storm
is more than I could ask.
I guess I understand the phrase:
"Togetherness is art."

Scarecrows

Ask me how it feels to be a centerpiece.
Like whales washed upon a shore.
The gossamer of missing bones
that tickles in the evening shade.
The sharper edge you never see.
I shut the door when pain arrives.
The litter box of soiled dreams
that fate is always stinking up.
Knives and rounds of surgeries
like feces in a bed of snow.

Ask me how it feels to be
a cross between a rose and thorns.
To walk the bridge of normalcy
and want to turn around.
You never meant to spread the storm.
Still I sit like passengers aboard a plane.
Pepper shaking from my eyes.
I'm riding upside down.

Ask me how it feels to be
a scarecrow in the field of dreams.
Play hide 'n seek 'n hide again
with who I am like opals
running from the light.
My nauseous stump a signature.
A barge among the ferryboats.
Pity's headlights always bright,
when someone sees the empty space
below the thighs of night.

Sharps and Flats

I'm not a virgin on the bed of pain.
There are times when courage fever
climbs while I can barely move.
Landing on the sharps of truth
and flats of stoic garble.
Fade to black. Operations
in the wings. Knives ahead
and other violations of the dawn.

Taking umbrage at the thought
of giving in. Papercuts from
wheelchairs and all the scraps of
standing tall, just tall enough
to see the birth of motion
coming back like puppies
smacking eager tails
against the bedroom door.
Petit Fours of feeble smiles
that hopeless hands push
back and forth to occupy the night.

Then the dry that lives below
the shallow talk. Another scar
like postage stamps, truly
meant to set me free.
"It isn't fair," a wasted breath
and absolutely ludicrous.
The syllables like prostitutes
that have a right to walk the streets.
I hide them just the same.

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