The Lovliest Place in the World

The jays jump, plump in blue
Plumage among the fallen pine cones
In this tilted land of ponderosa pines.
Spaced apart are the wise old junipers,
Drifting sleepily in their heady odors.
You are quite tired from hiking all day
And lean against a solitary rock
Where the blue-white light shines
In cool dense breezes.

At twilight the forest is stock-still.
You might see a tireless black ant,
So leave it alone;
Leave everything alone.
Even yourself
That you may soak in the forgotten
Songs of the moon and milky way.
All musically tuned to the arrowhead
You found on the high blue trail.
And hold it tightly in your hand,

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poem by Stan Petrovich
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Passion (Counterfeit Suicide Note Written Once Only)

In the integers of dark
Morning, I live & pine
For your return,
My bloodstained tongue
A cheek away from insanity.
Mobster movies are on.
Their guns do nothing but
Make the victims slowly slump;
That isn't right. When I shoot people
In the dead of night,
They fly backwards,
Scraping pavement, then halt all of the sudden.
I have not come alone:
I have this; I have that.
You have to be mine again
Or you will be forced to.
'Antisocial Behavior Disorder'
Is what he said I represent,
So I shoved the table onto his shins,
Hearing them crack

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poem by Stan Petrovich
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The Doldrums

Ashen faces flood the street.
Change abounds so much so that its retreat
Is lauded & called the doldrums.
Hernan Cortez facilitated pogroms,
A sacking that gave Spain a brand new fleet
Of towering masts & enemies to meet.

Warfare now has become as well an ashen face,
Rivals to the east & an unknown west.
Unkempt maniacs with plots fooling plots
Is all they shall get-
There being no maker to meet;
No invisible virgins replete;
No sultry shores of whinnying sands.
The can look forward to no thing-
No thing but bandages on their heads & their hands.

The rest of us die for no visible cause, as well:
Food, family, shelter, flag,
Santa Claus.

poem by Stan Petrovich
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Sensory Deprivation

See not the crocus crack its bloom;
The evening is still as an endless dream;
No screaming child, no tortured men;
There is no hiss from a snaking sun,
And no report from an unloaded gun.
Silence has reigned for a kingdom come.
The air plays in the waves no more.

No water splashing on the seashore,
No sound in conches held to an ear;
Mounds of golden sand stretch without end,
And if the moons must revolve
They will not react again.

To the observer, who now sits in two
Unparalleled dimensions, there are the
Awkward points of light, burning above,
And the obsessive fear of unwanted flight,
Never from below, but above the wastrel breadth.

poem by Stan Petrovich
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Not Of Earth

I do not know what Earth looks like,
But I can fathom the faintly strawberry smell
Of your lovely hair, dangling there.
Where I am is anybody's guess:
Hopelessly meandering in bogs,
Wordy and throaty as a toad,
Not so blunt in recognition
That the whole oblivious continent
Is joining the condition
Of the rest of the fetid world.

How am I aware?
I have never been down there.
Two plus two are always twins;
They say the same thing over & over again-
We we begin to breathe
We suffer air-
No getting away-
I can see the unsettled yellow trees
Bending in a once-wholesome breeze;

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poem by Stan Petrovich
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Underachiever

What molded the variegated
Vegetables, anomalous animals,
Machine-like bacterial roll-a-dexes,
And travelling thought,
To say nothing of the absurdity of transubstatiation;
Somethings must surely be a crock.

Baal, Yahweh, Allah, God and the
Host of the Tooth Fairies
Are imaginary;
At least they do prove WC Field's
'A sucker is born every day.'

In my study is the bust
Of Charles Darwin;
He is not my god,
But he is my elevator or crane.
Were there a creator
He would be an infinite underachiever'
(From Woody Allen) .

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poem by Stan Petrovich
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In the Mountains of Madness

In the Mountains of Madness
There is one, and only one, large outdoor cafeteria.
It lies between frozen lava lakes and soft sandy peaks.
From the patio
One may glimpse the desert far below,
And the distant sea.
The desert is wrought with black outlines of giant monkeys, runways and cosmonauts.
It never rains there,
So the patterns remain distinct,
As they were for viewing from the aeroplanes of the Second Century.

If one sits at the cafe in the Mountains of Madness,
Sipping espresso after espresso,
The wild fury of H.P. Lovecraft invades the mind,
As it begins to snow.
The snow gathers in the small cups,
Being only the dandruff of the fallen gods.

poem by Stan Petrovich
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Agreement

Someday there will be all-fire,
Fire enveloping everything;
And also someday there
Will be a consuming chill,
A chill way beyond a sting.

You and I cannot experience
This polarity of fire and ice,
Having reached the Fourth Universe,
Having lived more than twice.

Will we become gods or goldfish, Peering out of the curved bowl, Unable to fathom what we see?
Even gods can lose their reality.

In any case: a gentleman's agreement.
We shall both turn off the TV,
Cease arguing politics and theology,
Waiting for the fire in our life to vent.

'Peace on Earth' is no acrimony;

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poem by Stan Petrovich
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Meet The Cowboy

Handing me the pint of 4 Roses whiskey
He whispered (or rather) rattled,
'They say the hills have eyes.'
'Yeah, it's a movie, ' I noted.
'No, ' he replied, 'the hills ARE eyes.
'Look there: those two granite slabs are the iris.
'Two pine ledges perfect brows.
'And I can see a nose, even if you can't.
'In that old busted-down cattle tank, there.
'The mouth you gotta see from the damn-blasted highway.
'I've been to them caves.'
i gazed at the caves that were indeed impressive,
Hollow emptiness to swallow men and horse alike,
Hollow entrances into the real gut of the earth.
This I proposed to him.
'They ain't goin nowhere but down to a bunch of bones, ' he said.

poem by Stan Petrovich
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A Sad Bridge In Eastern Europe

In a Slavic city,
Unpronouncable, on a concrete bridge,
Spanning churning gray water,
Smokestacks on the shrore belching yellow fumes.
Peering over an English paper
I saw her and we locked eyes.

She joined me on the bench:
'All alone? ' she asked.
Then we exchanged pleasantries
That soon, so soon, became profound.

Of course it began to rain.
We held hands and trotted off the bridge.
Here she told
me she had to return to work,
Home or boarding-house.
It was predestined, my loneliness, for why else was I here.

Walking the drizzling streets,

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poem by Stan Petrovich
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