the poetrysheet
whimsy, subversion, bowling
Number 503, June 4, 2004
Stefan Zeromski
(1864-1925)
“Without cultivating the inside of your mind, just looking
for fortune outside of your mind is not the right thing to do.”
—Bodhidharma,
“What is Church?” in On Mind Watching
Making the cops come
Police cars surrounded the main entrance of the Air
Force base at Knob Noster. The protesters, however, had not shown up and the
cops looked disappointed and bored. They really wanted someone to show up,
someone to give them a little opposition, because without it, it seemed, they
didn’t have purpose.
The back entrance was completely free of cops. No
one, for some reason, had thought of protecting our nation’s protectors from
its citizens. We drove up to the visitor parking by the gate, climbed out of
the car, and walked over to the security doghouse. One of the giant B-2s flew
over on its way to Afghanistan. The soldier smiled at us.
“Can I help you?”
We told him we just wanted to ask a few questions. He
told the man with me not to take pictures. He could answer questions as long as
they had nothing to do with base operations or personnel.
“Fine,” I said. “I just want to know if you’ve seen
any protesters around here today.”
“No, sir,” he said. “It’s been quiet. Real quiet.”
A hot wind blew in past a levee-like embankment on
the other side of the road. It smelled of oak leaves and burned grass. Another
of the B-2s took off just beyond us. The jets, I thought, were surprisingly
quiet, which made them even spookier, like black, empty-eyed bugs.
“Where are the cops?” I said.
The MP was young, smartly pressed. He had gentle blue
eyes. Very professional.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said.
“The cops. They’re all over the other gate.”
“Sir, I don’t have any control over that.”
I said thanks and left him. He called into a radio on
his shoulder. We sat on the fender of the car ad watched a third of the bombers
take off. The MP waved to us, making a motion that indicated we had stayed too
long, and that someone was coming.
As we drove out, turning a different direction than
the way we came in, we saw in the rearview mirror, a phalanx of red and blue
lights come over the hill toward the base entrance we had just left. We thought
they might chase us down, but instead the lights went down and they set up shop
at the drive to the doghouse where the MP stood.
By
Philip Miller
The curtain comes down.
Everything ends,
Too soon, too soon
I come at spring’s end, and at the start
Of summer’s long shadowing,
Catching as I do
Lovers stealing kisses under
My leaved-out trees,
Locked in embraces in the cool of my evenings
Breathing the odor of my foliage
Making promises that I hold them to—
For awhile anyway—
As I lead them to the altar,
That useful spot
For starting things off,
But ending them too
For I‚m the god of marriage
And divorce,
Watching happy couples reach consummation
And later—half-the-time—choose separation
Under the same mad moon‚
That brought them together.
Freeing them to find others.
I’m god of twinnings
And unpinnings
Of yes and also no,
And I raise and lower the curtain
As the song says
Too soon too soon
All through
the merry month of June.
This weekend!
Local members of Actors' Equity Association, the
union for professional actors and stage managers in the United States, present Seven
Short Plays:
The Individuality of
Streetlamps by Anna Gorisch
Playing Othello by Frank Higgins
The Rothko Room by Stuart Spencer
Yellow Wood by Karen Paisley
Blackout by Matthew Webb
Choices by Jeph Scanlon
Rex by Joe Pintauro
7 plays, 7 directors, 15
actors—all in one memorable night.
It's a
short-attention-span theatrical dream!
June 6, 7, 8, 7 p.m., Studio 116 (1st floor), UMKC Performing Arts
Center (PAC), 50th and 4949 Cherry St., Kansas City, MO
Suggested
$5 donation
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