TWO POEMS
by Gary C. Wilkens

 

THE SOUL FIGHTS BACK

Weekday nights seven to eleven he was engaged behind
the piano at the Café Sperl in Vienna,
having a cold room above that faced a streetlamp.

The light at the bar was always the color of gin,
the piano an elegant black beast wanting to pull him under
with its white teeth, under the soothing quiet jazz,

the your-old-favorites jazz, the laughing lady coffee jazz,
the coming and going of the thin clean waiters jazz,
the fake potted fern jazz, the don’t challenge the customers jazz,

until one night he made a mistake and stopped. Conversation continued.
Through the heavy glass he could see the velvet soup of night,
the stretching arms of supplicant trees and blinking eyes in the sky.

He hit a few notes and nothing happened but a few more notes,
so he plugged his heart into the slot by his fingers and began
the naked dancing lady jazz, the hot nights with Sylvia jazz,

the bursting lights of Paris jazz, the marching of the butterfly jazz,
the dash of the flooding sunlight down the meadow jazz,
the daisy on the side of the spitting volcano jazz, the Oh my God! jazz,

the beauty thumbs its nose in the face of sorrow jazz, and when he got
to the falling over his hot piano in a crash of tinkling keys jazz,
the café was silent.

 

ON WAR

I have taken the sword
you have given me
and used it to brace
my tomato plant.

 

GARY C. WILKENS is an American poet living and working in Germany. He holds a philosophy degree from Hendrix College and his work has appeared in Dialogue and Smorgasbord.