It Rained So Hard

I'm staring
at this swamp
and remembering that time
when we were young
and it rained so hard
a pond formed
next to the junkyard
and we built a raft
from old tires
and the hood of a truck
and floated around
in the rain.


-Jim DuBois
April 12, 2010

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

Wandering in Other People's Memories

This broken twig,
that muddy footprint --
these show the paths they took
to become themselves.

Here is the campground of her fearful heart,
there is the happy hillside of his youth.

There is the pizza place that still serves
    hot hope for the future,
here is where she buries her forgotten days.

This is the trash heap piled high with
    unsent love letters.
that is the wasteground where time
spent waiting for things ends up,
and little yellow flowers grow.


-Jim DuBois
2004 ish

The green champagne bottle

The green champagne bottle
on the side of the road
reminded me of being young.

We used to play in the old junkyards
behind the barn,
collecting the pretty blue bottles,
the miniature bottles,
and the large rusty cans
and scraps of metal
which we couldn’t determine
a past identity for.

We stocked a boulder fortress
on the frontier of our exploration
with such goods,
and wondered how people could have
thrown them out in the first place,
since they were still interesting
and useful.


-Jim DuBois
Nov 3, 2003

The Economy of Memory

I'm watching a sea of static on TV
    late at night

I'm talking to my girlfriend on the phone

I'm writing a poem
    and finishing it later

I'm living in a tent behind Hampshire College

I'm going nowhere

I'm standing on the balcony of F2,
    going nowhere

I'm living on Bridge Street in Northampton

I'm thinking about thinking

I'm thinking about memory

I'm taking off my shirt

I'm looking at the clock

I'm wondering how it will end
    and when it began

I'm floating, a tiny black-eyed fetus
    in amniotic fluid

I'm making notes for a future poem

I'm learning to write the alphabet
    by tracing sandpaper letters

I'm writing a story for the first time
    in my life

I am six

I am twenty-five

I am thirty-four

I'm telling her about myself

I'm using her attention
    to search through my memory,
    to reconstruct myself
    from different angles

I'm telling you about telling her

I'm remembering remembering



-Jim DuBois
Dec 13, 2003

Incandescent Time (March 11 2007)

Incandescent time,
burning the edges of reality,
softly glowing
as it consumes eternity.

Incandescent time,
revealed by memory and motion.

Incandescent time,
I offer you this moment.



     -Jim