Poetry of the People with Al Black featuring Tony Pichof

Because I’ve planted a seed
That sparked a thought
And made them think

I chose Tony Pichof as my next Poet of the People for his earnestness and gentle unfrilly lyric quality. He represents the everyperson in each of us.

Al Black

Poet, Tony Pichoff (pee-shawf) retired from the Army in 2006 and has been working as a civil servant since.  He has been writing since his junior year in high school when his English teacher, Mrs. Magoo (yes, really!) accused him of plagiarism.  He has been awarded and recognized in several contests over the years and has self-published twelve collections* under the pen name, Tony Garrison (to honor his stepfather).  He is an active adult scouting leader.  He enjoys spending time with his family and working on his hobby farm.

The Best I Can 

Strangers on the street
Often ask me,
“How’re you doing?”
As they are passing,
Out of some unwritten
Rule of courtesy,
Not expecting an answer
When they acknowledge me.
“The best I can”
Is my standard reply.
Then I see them smile
As I walk by
Because I’ve planted a seed
That sparked a thought
And made them think
Just how they ought-
That everything
Will be okay
If we all do our best
Every single day.
And who knows,
I may just start a new trend
As everything, somewhere,
Sometime begins.
I sure hope it catches on
And becomes part of the plan.
But even if it doesn’t…
I’ll just keep on doin’ the best that I can.

~~~

Sick to My Soul 

We’ve all been there
In those moments we’d rather not be
When in the throes of illness
We feel helpless in our vulnerability
As nausea washes over us
And we know what’s coming next
When waves of sick crash into us
And leave us feeling the opposite of blessed.
Now, take that awfulness of being
And multiply it a hundredfold.
For only then will you be believing
How it feels to be sick to my soul,
With the difference being
There is no release to let it go
And it just keeps on festering
Way down deep within.
This smoldering betrayal
Is such a scorching sin
When I can no longer trust
Someone I once called, Friend. 

Incidental poetry -- Kryptonite the Color of Money by Al Black

Kryptonite the Color of Money

by Al Black

 

What if Superman was just strong

Not super humble and brainy?

 

What if he became a bully, drunk with power

And believed he was ordained to rule?

 

What if he became a politician, a spy for Putin,

A money launderer for Russian oligarchs?

 

What if he didn’t have a cute black curl on his forehead

And wore a dead orange squirrel for a toupee?

 

What if he date raped Lois Lane

and forced himself on women, again and again and again?

 

What if he didn’t believe Truth

Justice and the American Way applied to him?

 

What if despite all this, folks still bought his comic books

And believed he was ordained to rule?

(Al Black, 08/12/23)

Poetry of the People with Al Black featuring Kelley Lannigan

Where is the map when we get lost inside ourselves? — Kelley Lannigan

I chose poet, Kelley Lannigan, as this week's Poet of the People because of the wonderful narrative flow of her poetry.

Kelley Lannigan grew up in rural Richland County and studied art and journalism at Columbia College. She spent her life curating art (most recently the Georgia O'Keefe Anniversary Exhibition at Columbia College) and as an editor and journalist for magazines and newspapers. She is retired and lives in Winnsboro with her cats writing poetry, painting, and taking on an occasional writing project.

Aubade

 The sun raises the red coin of its face.

            Morning, in her gown of light

                        dances among the trees.

A Cooper’s Hawk, the one we hear

            but rarely see, screams reveille.

                        Awake! Awake! Awake!

It rained so hard last night.

            Nipper Creek, dry for months,

                        runs like a marathon.

Trucks haul gravel from the quarry. Gears shift,

            grind, strain up the road’s steep slope.

                        Sometimes a SLAM! A BANG!

Soon, blasting will shake the ground.

            Trucks pass, their angry music fades.

                        Silence deepens like a dream.

Tops of pines, slow green brooms, sweep the sky.

            Old cat snoozes on the rough steps.

                        She chases something in her sleep.

She woke me earlier, pawed my chest in the dark,

reminded me that for now,

                        I am not alone.

Terra Incognita

(In memory of Steve, lost to dementia) 

He was the kind of man we were glad to see.

The kind who leaned over the fence to talk about his goats,

his chickens. A farmer, adding his link to the long chain

of Huguenots who husbanded the land. Their sturdy houses

still stand sentinel over the Santee, the Pee Dee, the French Broad.

A family man. Husband, lover, father, teacher.

A worldly man. Soldier, navigator, pilot.

A hunter who knew what passed by its scat,

a mark on a tree, tracks in the snow.

The kind of man we called at 3 a.m.

about strange noise by the barns.

His bobbing lantern across the dark fields

made us feel safe.

Snow melts. Tracks erode. Terrain shifts.

Where is the map when we get lost inside ourselves?

He was a man who disappeared before our eyes.

Forgot our faces, his children’s names.

Left the water running. Could not remember

his phone number. How to use the phone.

What a phone was for. Forgot to eat.

Lay in bed until told to get up.

Replied “yes” to every question.

Missed the turn to his farm, piloted his old Chevy

into the next county. Then across the next.

Or simply sat for hours behind the wheel going nowhere.

Kelley Lannigan will be our poetry feature this Wednesday, 08/16 - 7 pm for Mind Gravy Poetry at Cool Beans, 1217 College Street, Columbia 

Poetry of the People with Al Black featuring Jeff Bryson

Given his years of service to the poets of SC and beyond, Jasper asked board of directors member Al Black to curate a weekly addition to Jasper Online featuring some of his favorite local poetry. A Poet of the People himself, Al produces gatherings of writers and musicians both in Columbia and throughout the Southeast. He is the author of two collections of works, I Only Left For Tea, and Man With Two Shadows.

I have chosen W. Jefferson Bryson as our first Poet of the People, because of the unvarnished immediacy of his truths; no bells and whistles or other affectations; just his truths in his words.

I know Jeff as poet and sometimes musician who grew up in the upstate and spent most of his adult life in the midlands as a social worker and then twelve years as the State Ombudsman and still was able to retain his integrity and humanity.

PTSP: Post Traumatic Stress Poetry   1970

How it Was

Until it Wasn’t

Two years down

How quickly it happens

On a Wednesday

Walking a path

Crickets and comrades

Then little dark men

In black pajamas

With old AKs

As big as they are

Leap out ahead of us

And scream and fire

And their aim

So poor, so terrified

Of hulking, red-eyed

American Devils

Their shots tear apart

The jungle around us

We aim together

And render them

Red mist, mostly

Painting the foliage

And the ground

All around.

And suddenly

Wednesday, again

Tour over, discharge

A duffle-bag

Jeans and a work shirt

Commercial flight

DC-9 to San Diego

Teach Your Children

On the radio

And all I know

Is friendly

Or foe

And me, now

Without a weapon.

Flashback, With Soundtrack  

Listening to Creedence

Reminds me of the jungle

The sound of M-16 fire

Of helicopters, of brown water

Of 50 cals, of F-4 Phantoms

The smell of rice paddies

Hot in the afternoon

Or drowning in rain

The smell of Napalm

The smells of Saigon

Viet Nam.

My Brothers

My God

Where are they

What has happened

To us all.

Zero-Dark-Thirty, One More Time 

Three-thirty in the dark. Again.

And I’m awake. Again.

And I remember. Again.

All gave some. Some gave all.

And the elephant grass

Grows tall and thick

Through my memory

And I forget

Until I dream.

And the sound of M-16 fire

Suddenly returns in the deep night

And the thump of 50 cals

I feel them in my ribs

My own heartbeat

Even now, quickens

And I remember

The smell of Napalm

And screaming death

And I will sleep no more

Tonight.

Steppenwolf  

You hear

Magic Carpet Ride

I see fire

Blossoming, rising

Red and black

Mushroom clouds

Of Napalm

In forever-green

Jungle.

Hueys

Cobra gunships

F-4 Phantoms.

Burning villages

Cluster bombs.

It won’t hurt you

It only kills plants.

Mekong catfish,

Twelve feet long.

China Beach.

Saigon.

Vietnam.

Some of us

Never went.

Some of us

Never left.

Something As Simple As a Song  

Creedence

Steppenwolf

Blood, Sweat and Tears

Da Nang

Dok To

Long Binh

My Lai

Khe Sanh

Hue

Suddenly 

How can it have come to this?

To be a sick, sad old man

Alone in a small apartment

In a raging city of angry strangers

All my comrades

Lost or gone

Ghosts of memory

Living or dead

And the greatest tragedy of all

Not a trace of senility

Or forgetfulness

Or rest

Or peace

In me.

W. Jefferson Bryson is a retired Social Worker. He has spent a lot of time with Vietnam vets and heard a lot of stories. Sometimes they come back in bits and snatches in poems like these.

A Poem by Randy Spencer

In this summer of Oppenheimer (and Barbie) mania, Chapin poet Randy Spencer was reminded of this poem, which he read in 2002 at a gathering for Richard Rhodes when he came to USC for a discussion of his "The Making of the Atomic Bomb." Jasper is pleased to share this with you 21 years later.

Georgia O'Keeffe Discusses Her Poem

                        [1945] My Ghost Ranch in New Mexico is due North

                        of Los Alamos. I have painted two canvases of the sky

                        pouring through the pelvic bones of cows, the first where

                        that light is deep blue, and the second where the sky turns

                        yellow and blood seems to pore from the circle of bone.

Pelvis III, 1944, Oil on Canvas, 48 x 40

Pelvis Series, Red and Yellow, 1945, 36 x 48

Pelvic bones, held up, are wondrous against the sky's blue

I felt would always be there, fixed, long after Man's

Destructiveness is finished. Cut sharply, they are a beauty

At the center of something unique, both horrifying and grand,

Empty, yet keenly alive. Perfect ovals, my eye captures

Them as elopements toward Infinity, absent any middle ground,

No perspective intervening between Birth and Death, treasures

I searched for among the camposantos until they were found.

Now red encircles the yellow, the acetabulum, the vinegar cup,

The foramen of blood, Batter, then, my heart,

Oppenheimer, quoting Donne, Three-personed Deity, now his Trinity,

His opening of an orifice for God to sculpt.

What colors, I would ask, could be left for the pacifist artist

Who magnifies emptiness, who paints Death against the desert sky.

- Randy Spencer

Photos courtesy of the Georgia O’Keefe Museum

Randy Spencer is a retired child psychiatrist living on the lake in Chapin. He is a published poet and short story writer, who most recently was a Pushcart Award nominee for a poem about the Ukraine war. His upcoming book from Muddy Ford Press is a series of interconnected poems taking place in Andersonville Military Prison in Georgia during the Civil War, but the themes are universal and timeless. He is currently working on a novella that reimagines Remarque's classic World War II novel, A Time to Love and a Time to Die, but is set in the current conflict in Ukraine.

Join Jasper's Al Black, Ginny Merrett, and Cindi Boiter for an Ekphrastic Poetry Event Sunday, July 9th

Al Black and his friends are generously reading their ekphrastic poetry about Ginny Merett’s Tall Women series in what Al calls “Poetry Church.” Meet us at the hallway: community art, 701 Whaley, from 2-4 July 9, 2023 for what will be a show highlight!

Artists include:

Songwriter, Alison Trotter

Songwriter , Alyssa Stewart

Poet, Janet Kozachek

Poet, Jane Zenger

Poet, Tamar Miles

Poet, Cindi Boiter

Poet, Michal Rubin

Poet, Jennifer Bartell

Poet, Kristine Hartivigsen