Chicago Art Institute
They got these two big stone lions
fronting Michigan Avenue
in downtown Chicago
Inside are oil paintings
by Edward Hopper -
mostly city scenes
you know the kind I mean?
empty streets
lonely rooms
deserted buildings
There I was in one of those offices-
feet up on a battered desk
cigarette smoke curling up-
I'd already downed a slug
of good booze that burned its way down
lighting a blaze in my gut
the 38 Smith & Wesson snugged
in a shoulder holster.
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poem by Michael Pruchnicki
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Spring will come busting in
As certain as death and taxes
Spring will come busting in the front door
all fresh and green somewhere else
Here in Chicago it comes dragging through
the grimy streets like a teenage thug
sullen and morose smelling like
a dumpster behind a meat market
raw and red-eyed as a wino on the skids
But what the hell! Isn't that the charm
of a metropolis built on wasteland
near a great lake? Another pewter
day like most of February
dull and without spark at all
a nightmare city in gray tones
But after Spring gasps to a close
we can look with audacious hope
for Summer!
poem by Michael Pruchnicki
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Grammar School Days
Once I saw a black and white photo
taken by a Japanese tourist -
English schoolboys sauntering
down a street in London
on their way to grammar school.
The sky clear of bombers
overhead that September morning-
I thought of Polish schoolboys
as they ran pellmell through rubble
seeking shelter from the German
blitzkreig that same day in September.
Grainy newsprint photos of the dead
and dying in Warsaw ghetto streets
appeared soon enough and replaced
the image of English schoolboys
taken by the tourist on holiday.
A holocaust on the horizon
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poem by Michael Pruchnicki
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Looking Good
I remember big soft flakes
falling all the way home
Streets filling with snow
the trolley plowing through it
like a big red bulldozer
I remember sitting at the table
in the kitchen looking out
at the falling snow
It snowed all night long
Ma and I sat there watching
streets and sidewalks and rooftops
disappearing in a white blanket
of snow that fell and fluttered down
and the snow fell along the Rhine
in Germany and in the dark Ardennes-
fields and woods in France filling
with gently falling snow
and my Pa lying dead
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poem by Michael Pruchnicki
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Long Poems & Short Stories
Some think that a story has no place
in poetry - 'Put it in the short stories, '
he said, dismissing a poem I wrote
as a narrative, as though such verse
must be relegated to short fiction.
Must I go back to Beowulf, composed
in the first half of the eighth century,
to illustrate the validity of the form
(written in meter without using rime) ?
Robert Browning's The Ring and the Book
is a long poem of dramatic monologues
in twelve books concerning a murder
and an adulterous affair in Florence.
Less scribbling and more reading
might improve one's perspective,
don't you think?
poem by Michael Pruchnicki
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English teacher
every seat in room 340 was taken
when mr. dugan entered
first day of teaching full-time
in a newly opened high school
the kids eyed skinny dugan
fresh out of teacher training
teach this guy a thing or two
they thought
won't know what hit him
poor chump teach
mr dugan had a trick or two
of his own
the word for him was not
part of their vocabulary
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poem by Michael Pruchnicki
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Tavern inTalkeetna
I remember it now as a hole in the wall
though at the time I stopped there
for directions to Denali
It seemed like authentic frontier
grizzled trappers and prospectors
at the circular bar
The drinks were never on the house
better than working the river
for gold its owner said
A city chap from Seattle he was
splindly and gray-faced
in red flannel shirt
He perched on a stool near the register
and chatted on about his life
as an entrepreneur
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poem by Michael Pruchnicki
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Storms of November
Every Spring I look forward to the storms
of November that roll down from up north
Green trees and warm sun adumbrates
the cold and fog that envelop the Lakes
From Superior to South Chicago
beginning the first of November
As monster ore freighters like the fabled
Edmund Fitzgerald are broken and go down
With all hands aboard lost to the storm's fury
in a matter of hours on the raging lake
Now I think fondly of those ships at rest
that once carried the ore for industry
Like other survivors of disaster I am blessed
that I forget the hardship and grueling work
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poem by Michael Pruchnicki
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Women who dwell afar
Yes, I think after reading the posts
so steeped in mortal despair
and oozing with anguish
Like the women
slowly twisting
lilac stalks
who come and go
chatting aimlessly
of fashions
in this and that
They wander the halls
of gray anomie draped
In darkest aspect
hoping without hope
that their eye
will light
on what
they know not
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poem by Michael Pruchnicki
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Lesson in Perspective #1
Art students learn early on
what perspective means
by dint of practice
ONE POINT PERSPECTIVE
An imaginary vanishing point
on the horizon takes on life
as students draw vertical lines
angling toward a meeting
at some distant point
far off the drawing paper
TWO POINT PERSPECTIVE
Pencil and straight edge
suffice as students put
pencil to paper drawing
cylinders in square boxes
like skeletons in coffins
floating on white sheets
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poem by Michael Pruchnicki
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