3D Pain Recently I endured an infection. Minor. It began as one thing, built, became something else, kept building, and eventually when it became get-this-treated bad, it was clearly an infection. Once known, easily cured.

I read about a man in a detention center whose jaw pain became a toothache, which became infected, which went ignored. Not by him, but by the system that detained him. It festered until it became a death sentence.

I thought about how nature can disrupt a body. Normal processes, growing into unusual conditions. Anomalies, on the hunt for pressure points, weaknesses, blind spots. Like a storm, moving over waters onto land. This piece is about that. It is about what you can know, how you can care, and what you can do. Ignore any of it at your own peril. This is true of weather, the body, or our country.

But let’s talk about the weather.

3D Pain

I wonder what the winds are like

at Cuba’s six-thousand-foot peaks.

Is there a space-age drone, military grade,

that can hover at the top like a gull

gliding into the jet stream, stationary,

peering down to let us see the 155 mph winds

sharpen the granite ridge to razor edge.

Or can we mount a metal post up there

with camera pivoting with its metal cowl

like an indestructible kite, as our witness

to the slope and slip of debris at ramp’s end,

and see what devastation drops leeward.

Or a bunker of stone, concrete, reinforced

like a bomb shelter, to show us the savageness

of slung forces cut in half by rocky outcrop,

letting drop into the swell of gravity

those things rightfully heir to the earth

once the winds have played enough.

There are ways we could be there

at the storm’s eye: once the vista

of only gods, and the doomed.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Victoria  Standing outside the McNay Museum in San Antonio, Texas, is a stainless-steel sculpture by American artist Philip Grausman (born 1935). She is titled Victoria, a woman’s head elevated on a long slender neck, with a face of mystery. The material reflects the sun and weather. She stands near the museum entrance, but used to sit closer to the Austin highway, basking in the curious stares of motorists who had not made her acquaintance.

This year for Poetry Month, I wrote this ekphrastic piece (poetry written about another work of art) after stumbling onto Victoria in person. This ode is a sifting of impressions landing gently after we met.

Victoria, Philip Grausman (1935–). Stainless steel. Courtesy of the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas.

Victoria, Venus of Virtues

Victoria meets the morning, bright, and brightening

as befits the birth of our daily light, falling first on her with grace.

Her chin, lifted, ready, poised upon her neck as tall and calm as a Texas oak.

Eyes at rest— cradled, both in peace and patient readiness.

Victoria meets the molten midday, proud figurehead of our spinning orb,

she leads our gently musing thoughts through her artful garden of cares.

The noon sun, greeted as brother, met shine for shine, steady in shade or shadow.

Married to moody weather, sibling seasons, mothering tempest and mirth.

She is constant in reveries, our secrets are her secrets, safe and settling.

She hears our inner speech, knows our true worth, smiles at our company.

She converses with silence, knows our presence, our absence, waits for our return.

We can carry her, and she us, and once met, can be found anywhere, comes when called.

Victoria meets the mysteries of our midnight, solemn, sleepless sentinel

safeguarding our dark denizens of wishes, prayers, plans and dreams

that steps us back to the start of another steep climb of moon to sun again.

Victoria guides us, steady star-watcher, secure, our constellation’s gem, our earthy touchstone.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Scent of a Monster: I was a kid when I saw my first monster movie. Not just a horror movie, like Dracula, or Frankenstein, or the Wolfman. This monster was a new class of dread. Gorgo was a child dinosaur that was taken from its home. Gorgo was rescued by his mother, Ogra. Who rose up out of the ocean and waded ashore onto our own innocent happy beaches, at night, in darkness. It stormed thru entire cities, shaking up the very idea of what monstrous could be. This was no Bambi.

It was the fun of science fiction. Decades later, I would come to know such monsters that rose up out of the sea to take on entire cities. These were the hardcore news of special reports. I would live to see several, nose to nose. They were all really terrifying, and terrifyingly real.

Scent of a Monster

For me, it starts in my backyard, standing on the patio slab

sniffing the air for a monster.

The winds pick up and puff now and then, dry,

loose clouds, and then it comes: the first taste

of the gulf, some seventy miles away.

A scent of vacation, of being on the beach,

maybe just after a rain that puts a sheen on palms,

brings the grackles out to hunt in the grasses.

Earlier, it is only colorful swirls on the radar maps

and prophecies of doom and untold calamity

that has no face except the last same storm

that happened here long ago, or there, far away.

Then rains. Easy, gentle rains, pitter-patter off and on for hours

before pushing up the pace, picking up the pelt till you

see it run down the drive way, collect along the curbs.

You become look out for two kinds of rise, local flooding

where the drains can’t handle the downpour or the marathon

and backs up into the streets to look up into your yards,

lick its lips at your doorways.

The other is saturation, which will come from the rivers,

the lake, if really bad.

We don’t have to worry about the surge itself, seventy miles away,

except for the flood of evacuees who will come like a cross

between lemmings and locust, buying all the gas, the bread,

blocking the highways for all the high ground late comers

when they finally get the green light to get out as well.

More than a week after the storm has left the area

another five thousand residents are ordered out, and forced out,

losing both power and water to make up their minds

and save the first responders who may drown in mid rescue

or simply just not come at all.

I plan for the ridiculous worst case scenario now so far away.

If we move to high ground, it will be up the stairs.

We’ll have to remember to take ax and saw to cut through the roof

should we have to go higher, through the attic, and onto the shingles.

Our roof is too steep to pitch a tent on as others have done.

But I do not think to include a bedsheet, as later advised, to signal

that people are still inside.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Hi, Dad: This is a round-about war poem, and one of thanks. Gratitude we usually reserve for Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, Armed Forces Day, Memorial Day, that really old one, Armistice Day. It is an ode to my father, a warrior in the Second Big One. It is an ode to the Peace Dividend, that which was handed down to my generation, and others. It is an ode to my family, his family. It is hard to teach what sacrifice is, compared to the battlefield lessons which use real life and death in such violent and haphazard ways. This was composed on one of those ‘in between days,’ where the truly grateful find such honoring falls upon a ‘personal day.’

Hi, Dad

It’s Thanksgiving
time and we really missed you
again.
This one was just about perfect.
All your favorites
and everyone showed up.
The grandkids ran everywhere.
Mark fried a turkey
and after dinner the boys and I
sat around the living room
talking about the war, and you.

I told them how you were once
left for dead.
None of us had more reason
to give thanks than the fact that
you got up off that snowdrift
your squad left you at
when you didn’t respond
at all.

instead of freezing on
the battlefield, you
walked yourself to
the field hospital
one arm taped to your chest,
another strapped to a weapon,
enemies surrendering to you,
shrapnel in your eye,
shards raced around your skull
and out the back
as if proof of luck of being

god’s favorite.

That pine tree which
sloughed off the snow
and sprung up,
tempting you to
empty a clip into it
might as well have been our
family tree, sensing that moment,
burdened with fate,
when you put one foot
in front of another
all the way to here.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Mid: It’s that time again, for the trip across ‘Mid’ where we transit the Gulf coast of ‘who knows where.’ It used to be the Gulf of Mexico. Now, it’s changed its stripes.

But the one stripe that matters most, is the center stripe that stretches from here to there. One thousand, eighty-three miles. 19 days on foot. 5 days on bike (if you can cover 200 miles a day— an Olympic pace). 100 was my best, with no luggage. My best hike was 20 miles a day. That might get me most of the way through the next state, leaving me less than half-way with three more states to go.

Even driving is plenty of time to dip the marriage in another bath of fondness, with room for a fuss or two. Travel makes compromise look good. When the smart get going, they get along.

This trip has its own wardrobe of worries, wear, and wishes. The forge of its test promises only some new shape, mostly left to us to craft. We have the last trip, as template:

Mid ( Midsummer Dream House)

In mid morn

wife comes home

loaded with groceries

and this idea

in mid trip, mid store

in the vegetable aisle

that

on our trip traversing the gulf

west to east and back

we could forgo restaurants

for rest stop picnics,

mid way.

walk around, eat better,

save time being waited on,

save money, and, I could take

my six pictures.

I love how she reduces my

amateur mania to something

like a carnival game.

six pack of shots.

Six shooter?

How kind.

Interesting to see myself

in her way, tossing out my

singular net of shuttering

six or five or seven times

at a time, when inspired,

when taken, or struck.

She says, in mid conversation,

think about it.

I say, reflexively,

OK.



~~~~~~~~~~~

More New Poetry — Patreon, Substack, and Beyond

The busy year continues.

More of my work has been picked up by literary journals around the country. Here are a few recent acceptances, with excerpts:

“Wallflower” — Nova Literary Arts Magazine

jets fly down my driveway

as I stand at the command

of my garden hose in a late

summer surge to save what’s left

of greenery.

“My Brush with Bleeding Hearts” — Activemuse

in the sunshine state

mid heat fest

beneath the car port

I squeeze by past bleeding hearts

in their white riot

of blood bright blooms

“If the Tongue Dangled” — Rundelania

when the writing calcifies just short

of fingertips, tongue tip, that part

of your mind that says

yes

“Mid” — Midsummer Dream House

…I love how she reduces my amateur mania

to something like a carnival game…

New poems, introductions, and images continue weekly on all three platforms. More news to come.

Thanks as always for your interest in my writing and your support of poetry.

~Mark

Mark writes poems the way we love to drive back roads — no map, good instincts, great company. He knows which roads are ripe with those small time adventures soaked with life — an artful negotiator of surprise. Each trip earns its time.

It
Not to be confused with IT, information technology. My ‘It’ has a lowercase ‘t’. Just another quirk of modern language wrestling with an army of acronyms in a forest of fonts. In the evolution of communication, we may never get this right. Every improvement in communication fails to eradicate any former method; we just stack and stack. We wrote scripts for radio plays that added the big screen and then the small screen, and now cable into streaming, without a single link in the chain being dropped. It’s like building Babel in reverse.

Here’s where it hits home, crawling across the internet to find a modest poet working in solitude. Then seeping into their life, their work, the page, the lines. Even now as my spellchecker quits on me, I may soon be cursed to using only the words I can spell out on my calculator display.

It

Language invades my life
with wife learning deaf signs
and daughter learning Spanish
and grandkid headed toward French

I sit here, still wrestling with
today’s mastery of my native tongue,
weighing typos, enjambing words,
kerning, underline, bold, or not,
still screwing in and out
various additional letters, switching
spelling order, bastardizing definitions
and herding maverick punctuation
in and out of rules—
I am not ready for the more that so many
seem to run to.

I am +/- ! & ~ 🙂 /it.

~~~~~~~~~~~

More New Poetry — Patreon, Substack, and Beyond

The busy year continues.

More of my work has been picked up by literary journals around the country. Here are a few recent acceptances, with excerpts:

“Wallflower” — Nova Literary Arts Magazine

jets fly down my driveway

as I stand at the command

of my garden hose in a late

summer surge to save what’s left

of greenery.

“My Brush with Bleeding Hearts” — Activemuse

in the sunshine state

mid heat fest

beneath the car port

I squeeze by past bleeding hearts

in their white riot

of blood bright blooms

“If the Tongue Dangled” — Rundelania

when the writing calcifies just short

of fingertips, tongue tip, that part

of your mind that says

        yes

“Mid” — Midsummer Dream House

…I love how she reduces my amateur mania

to something like a carnival game…

New poems, introductions, and images continue weekly on all three platforms. More news to come.

Thanks as always for your interest in my writing and your support of poetry.

~Mark

Mark writes poems the way we love to drive back roads — no map, good instincts, great company. He knows which roads are ripe with those small time adventures soaked with life — an artful negotiator of surprise. Each trip earns its time.

When I was younger, canon fodder age, we were involved in a war in Southeast Asia. Men were being sent to die by the tens of thousands. It was an unpopular war, so much so, that a volunteer army could not fight it. So men were drafted, forced in a modern black bean lottery, to serve as soldiers. When I became eligible, I waited out the school year to see which way my life would be spent. And if war, what would that look like, and would I come back in one piece, or at all.

As the draw kept drawing, I resolved myself to the fate of going. But the draft was stopped, just before my number was up. A chilling turn of phrase.

This piece is about how so many of us were grateful to continue our march into peace time, to enjoy the future my father fought to secure in World War Two. The word ‘unless’ does a lot of work here.

Not Joes

We, the not Joes, did not go.

Never went. Never knew.

There was a test given

and not taken,

graduation held but not

attended, an

initiation of fire

not felt.

Most of the generation

un burned

un scarred

un healing.

marches on

the sound of a missing drummer

flying the blank flag

the vacant collars

without decoration

or distinction

knowing what it is

to be left alive

Burdened with virginal courage

un expose guts

un tried fortitude

Lucky in the draft

lucky in life

we drink without the taste

of the seasoned survivor

Unworthy of the actual

survivor’s guilt

denied to civilians

We will live out our

non veteran lives, and

most likely meet our fate

with non-valor.

Unless we do our duty

to cherish, cradle and

deliver on this peace dividend

paid for by the dead

and those whose duty

was not to die.

~~~~~~~~~~~

New Poetry now available on Patreon and Substack

It’s been a busy year — and I’m not done yet.

All three platforms (my website, Patreon, and Substack) have been updated weekly with new poems, personal introductions, and new custom images. Meanwhile, more of my work has been accepted for publication in literary journals around the country, including pieces in Mantis (Stanford University), Cool Beans Lit, and Confetti — with excerpts below.

This is the first of a few updates to catch you up. There’s more to share than fits in one note.

“IT” — Mantis, Stanford University

…Language invades my life

   with wife learning deaf signs

      daughter learning Spanish

         and grand kid headed towards French…

“Signal Falls, Nebraska” — Mantis, Stanford University

…that this construction was exactly

how it was meant to be and how this guide

was the only one

to lead us here, and we naturally

    weep with him…

“Digital Smoke” — Cool Beans Lit

…she expects to find my ashes

atop my shoes when I am selected

for some digital rapture…

“Spider’s Brood” — New English Review

…As the world folds up around you into blankness

your birth pains and pangs are imploded into others

and the young you’ll never know and never teach

are launched into the world without you—

“Proving Grounds” — Confetti

…Why is the wrong hand

so much faster

than the right…

For those who want to dive in now, a free sampler — Five Poems, Five Worlds — is available at thekessinger.com. Five poems drawn from five collections, each one a different landscape:

“Out of the Blue” — from The Book of Joe (CSU Poetry Center)

“Children” — from The Exploded View (CSU Poetry Center)

“Marys and Joes” — from Misery’s Lick – 1900 Storm

“Life with an Expert Lover” — from Once in Love

“A Rising” — from The Smolder Between Solstices

Thanks for your interest in my writing and your support of poetry. More next week.

~Mark

Mark writes poems the way we love to drive backroads — no map, good instincts, great company. He knows which roads are ripe with those smalltime adventures soaked with life — an artful negotiator of surprise. Each trip earns its time.