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Poetry / Billy Eugene Wagner II
Tennis / Mills Genealogy |
Poetry
These were mostly written in
New York, 1969 – 1971 and Santa Monica, 1971 – 1976. Over time, and during the course of many moves in the West, they were entirely lost and largely forgotten — perhaps just as well. But an old friend, L. Phillip Clifford, had once requested a set, and that sheaf of faded papers wound up being the sole remaining copies — returned briefly in April 2011 with a suggestion that at least some be shared. So below are a handful of the more satisfyingly morbid ones. |
| New York | |
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The D-Train to Brooklyn: Church Avenue local, 2 a.m.
The train moves on with jolts resentful, grating sounds that die away. Air is stagnant here, dank and gray. It slips around me an odor of the guts of this place. Step along with purpose, now — the stairs a goal. Avoid their eyes a glance, perhaps — not two. Try not to run. Try not to panic here. Trash lies damp along the tracks. |
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Saturday morning, 7:01 at the Met
The guard moves slowly in his silent corridor. It's Time. Hiss of air conditioners and his own breath. He knows when it begins: Far away, muted echos start, distant murmerings, rising sounds. Footfalls thud on marble, click on parquet floors. Hordes are coming, spilling over, room to room, invading every gallery, approaching him and ravenous for Art. |
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Prospect Park
Late fall dew soaking through my socks and shoes the grass is wet damp air, too and chill. This is November now. Stiff north breezes meet me.
I hear rustling voices. Leaves
Later on, weekend strollers tugging dogsone and all, they've fled before the wind, agitated lemmings, nervous to escape. But as I scuff along I still crack bones. with kids in tow will come and bring some other sounds. But now I stride ahead restless with the leaves. Stiff north breezes meet me. |
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Near the corner
There's a window there, second floor, and every day, peering down between three potted plants geraniums flimsy curtain pulled over to one side, a gray old woman sitting there. People down below stand waiting for a bus. None speak. It comes, and she's alone again. |
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| Santa Monica, et seq. | |
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Upon being challenged by Mary Swaggerty to write a limerick for the impossible word plinth, — and doing so on office time
There once was a girl from Corinth
who managed to climb up a plinth. But she fell from her perch and made half the town lurch, for her width was as great as her linth. |
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Tempus accelerit
Fresh out of school, he placed a quote from Hillel on his wall. (It turned into a fixture there, enshrined like holy relics are):
". . . if not now, when?" Days and weeks slipped by. They spiraled into months and seasons. Decades spun him dizzily around the sun. Finally, at sixty-one, he took it down. |
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I probably could tell you that I love you
that I need you and you could probably go on and on congratulating yourself on your Personal Attractiveness and all that. But I won't. Because if I did, you would. |
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Point Fermin
We were on the beach that day together, that day a minus tide exposed those ancient, long-drowned strata unaccustomed to the wind and pounding waves and spray. We gazed in icy pools at purple urchins all intent, oblivious picking through the vari-colored browse brown and red, anemones, mute despite their many tongues, blind and patient, wise enough to wait. We found a sea-stone smoothed for an eternity tumbled there just for us that day. |
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Hollywood Wax Museum
Reagan was there! He was right there! I mean, he looked so real, I almost reached right out to touch him! Never thought he'd look so real, so . . . authentic! |
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Great-Aunt Annie [1886 – 1989] Well, she's gone. The call came just at noon: died at a hundred and three. She told me once about the ringing of the bells and how the principal came gravely into class the day McKinley died. And she recalled when horseless carriages were brought to Kansas City metal rims sparking on the red brick pavers down the street scaring kids — and, yes, the horses too, clattering "We all ran out to see!" And yet she watched the telecast when men stepped on the Moon. She baked and cooked and did the wash almost to the end. The call came just at noon. Tonight I'll sleep beneath a quilt she made long, long ago. |
Note.
Although a number of her beautifully sewn quilts were carefully preserved
for many years, upon Aunt Annie's death they appear to have been
disposed of, perhaps in an estate sale . . . alas.*
Only one quilt remains known to the researcher, whose will bequeaths it to the Wyandotte County Historical Society in Kansas City, Kansas. 
* Hélas, le monde a trop de gens qui savent le prix de tout mais connaissent la valeur de rien. |
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Volcanos, Tornados, with Earthquakes and Floods She's never hostile, Mother Earth. Never angry. She simply doesn't care who lives who dies. Each process works its way inexorably ignoring us. |
| On Wandering Creek | |
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Upon completing genealogical research into my family's Scotch ancestry, the McNay of MacGregor line
I'm a Celt with a kilt and I got a sheep dog
I toss big stones and cabers, then come home for haggis and grog to rest up from my labers. |
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Recited to Phillip Clifford while driving along
a rural back road
We'll be remembered as that foolish generation who ate themselves into obesity, spent themselves into bankruptcy, and, as the ultimate consumers, ultimately consumed themselves.
(The probability that future citizens will throw rocks
at our graves: 98%.)
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On calamities and absurdities: Can there be a year without either?
The short answer: No. |
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| 2005 |
A congressman pontificates that God sent Hurricane Katrina to devastate
New Orleans because they allowed riverboat gambling on the Mississippi. But what about those storms He sent when nobody was even living there? Perhaps the 'gators ticked Him off from time to time: "I told you not to go a-bitin' on them frogs!" Mangroves down the bayou, flattened in the mud, might well complain: "So, what did WE do, already?" |
| 2006 |
A weeping woman crys about the lightning bolt that struck her house:
"And I tried so hard to be a good mother!" Dear, it wasn't about your parenting. It was a storm. |
| 2007 |
A Georgia governor, in this year of record drought, proclaims a
Day of Prayer for Rain. He didn't know you never pray for rain — you dance. |
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Bad Housekeeping seal of approval
He showed tremendous acumen in doing little vacuumin' lest lice and bugs flee from his rugs and mice not think his house so nice. He showed concern for spiders, too so left their cobwebs in situ until one day he lost his way and disappeared from human view. |
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Haiku
(easier to read than write, given the Japanese 17-syllable limit, |
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He waits, good dog. Whatever comes is coming. No frontal lobes annoy. |
A sad, tired old hen squats on tiny eggs, weary wings outspread. Breasts sag. |
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Storms have torn off roof tiles. Swollen streams flow fast. Only frogs are singing. |
Withered, mournful gardens give up hope. Clouds float by. Silent bees sit still. |
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Surgeons stitch and snip — they can bury their mistakes. Architects plant vines. |
They're chanting on the Promenade. They pass out conch shells to gather coins. |
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And a perennial haiku motif —
not original with me, of course, but here reworked, with apologies to the Japanese master-poet Matsu Basho: The cicadas' springtime songs give no clue that tomorrow they will die. |
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