What if

What if
in our secret hearts
it mattered?


-Jim DuBois
Jan 17, 2007

Bone Memory Poet *

Bone Memory Poet
dwelling in the
blood marrow caves
telling the ancient stories
of the genetic ancestors,
the primates of days past.

These bones,
these caves,
were grown
so long ago
no one really remembers
but everyone knows
they go further back
than some find comfortable,
to rodents and bacteria,
mud and rocks,
strands of protein
from unknown shores
off the planet.

Bone memory leads us back
to the calcification
of our own skulls,
to the womb,
to the very first vertebra,
back further
to Africa
via our individual paths,
to tiny mammals,
an ice age
and the extinction
of the dinosaurs.

Speak, bone memory,
speak, bone memory,
speak!

Remind us of our
elemental nature,
of calcium and iron,
of our siblinghood
with water
and oxygen,
of our ability
to generate
electrical pulses
and create chemicals.

You've seen
all these things
and encoded them
in mysterious genetic runes
and protein alphabets.

Bone Memory Poet,
reminding us
of our foundations,
of our inner structure,
reminding us
that below
the cleverness and cognition
we are physical entities,
forces of nature.


-Jim DuBois
Jan 6, 2010

* title line from a friend of a friend

Stars, and Ice

Walking back through the front field at night,
after feeding the cats at the barn,
we used to lay down and stare up at the stars
and feel the enormousness of their distance
and what it would be like
to just keep falling
up into the sky.

Sometimes when we came back that way
in the winter,
the whole hill would be covered
with ice-encrusted snow
and we used to lay down on our bellies
and slide slowly
all the way down.


Jim DuBois
Jan 1, 2010

Looking for Something

I remember many years ago
when I was browsing
in the consignment shop
down on Pleasant street.

It was grey and snowing outside,
and inside, me, one other browser
and the guy at the register
were the only ones there.

The other browser was a skinny guy
looking for some cheap boots or something.
I wanted some cool cheap shirts, probably,
and the guy at the register kept looking boredly out the window.

Then this girl came in
and we all felt a little happier,
because we were lonely
and our only way out was through girls.

She knew the guy at the register
and they talked for a little bit
and me and the other guy had to listen
because it was otherwise quiet in there.

She said she was having a lazy day,
a relaxed, lazy, snowy day,
and she had spent the morning in bed
playing Nintendo with her boyfriend.

And to me, and undoutedly to the other lonely fellows,
it was like the god we had always wished for,
but never believed in,
had sent a divine being,
a kind of benevolent angel,
to let us know that
somewhere, someone was happy
and not lonely
and that even though such a divine entity
was always going to be out of our reach
and we'd probably have hard struggles
with our separate desperations,
we should not give up hope.


-Jim DuBois
Jan 1, 2010

Computer Summary Poem #2

When I put my whole blog through the summary function of my word processer, this what it came up with:


Shirt,
40 Short Poems

This poem
Run
Run
Run!!!


a love poem
loving
running


- Jim DuBois + Computer
Dec 20, 2009