JACK D. HARVEY - POEMS

Jack D. Harvey’s poetry has appeared in Scrivener, The Comstock Review, Bay Area Poets’ Coalition, Scarlet Leaf Review, The Antioch Review, The Piedmont Poetry Journal and a number of other on-line and in print poetry magazines. The author has been a Pushcart nominee and over the years has been published in a few anthologies.

The author has been writing poetry since he was sixteen and lives in a small town near Albany, N.Y. He was born and worked in upstate New York. He is retired from doing whatever he was doing before he retired.

In the Morgue
​

The body on the tiles 
seems cold
as a block of ice;
all signs of life
have flown the coop.
For the living
the wailing wall
waits outside,
dark as oil;
time goes rolling on, 
steady as a wheel.

God’s will be done;
His word and deed
breaking all bounds,
including His own.
Death itself,
confronting His
absolute logic,
goes limp as a noodle.
God’s will is doom;
his extraordinary quirks
shy chaos
into the wilderness,
among the other outcasts.

By the same finger
that blasted the king’s wall,
the body is resurrected,
a brand-new loaf of bread,
the bread of life, the true bread,
the word of God.
Wondering, wandering,
embodied again,
the spirit asks no questions,
hove to in a sea of blood;

home is here.

Give us this day,
weighed one way,
our daily beef,
our sacred host.
Give us, O Lord,
no miracles, please,
light as flies,
to tip the scales.

God’s will be done,
but for eternity
can a universe be,
whirl within curly whirl,
steady complex
planetarium of eternal law,
carrack always on
an even keel?
Or can it come unstuck?
Can it become cracked
like an old china pot,
or perfectly and forever intact?
These are ores unfound
and unmined. 

The body is cold
as a mackerel,
feet, legs, trunk, head,
sunk forever,
bound to the rules
of a dark kingdom
and do we care?

We’re uncaring as bees,
busy about 
the best things in life,
buzzing around nectar,
trying to make things sweet,
trying to stay alive
in a nice way.

The body is cold,
a conductor of 
the unknown, 
a train of cold
going nowhere.
Morticians meander
in and out, 
doing the necessary;
it matters not
to the corpse,
cold and dead,
a stricken ferry 
sinking in a 
surfeited sea,
to the unfathomable deep.

Cold and dead,
the body lies,
a market offering,
glass-cased
among the legumes,
the fish and the lamb;
no way no how
to cheat the fates or
the laws of nature.
The corpse 
by no fell stroke,
by no hocus-pocus,
ever recalled 
from the back of beyond.

It lies there forever.

The body ain’t a body anymore;
it’s gone, 
diminished to a naught,
to less than nothing.

Human fate you say,
this is the way it is,
well, well,
alas and ho-hum,
like leaves of the passing year
we come and go; 
more windy talk
from the pulpit, at the gravesite
bottomless, meaningless;

but say it anyway.

Goodbye life, hello
portico of wealthy King Dis.
Your coin good here, mortal,
and will buy your passage
to a kingdom built on time
and money.
Two pennies for 
the fare, for a stay
that lasts forever,
where a day 
outlasts the gold,
the silver, the copper;
your coins cheap metal
for your reckoning
with the dim realm,
where all the glitters
are the eyes of the dead.

Have no fears, penny-wise;
step forth pound-foolish 
and assured
from the heaving ferry;
hell has no furies,
no denying spirits;
only the dead,
mile after mile of them
decked out and penitent
and hell will last, thank God,
among monuments, a monument
more durable than the sin of Adam,
than all our sins.

The body is cold, now
remote as the moon.
For the noble mourning kindred
noble love and death
go forth
hand in hand
and the rest of us struggle along;
illusions become elusive 
among our daily crusts 
and bumpkins 
and our dearest
bump us out of the park,
this dump called Paradise.
We struggle along,
bound for a rude awakening
in that last call to arms.

Body cold, body 
politic, fetch
the means of meaning;
of being here for a while
in some peace.
Puissant bird of dawn, 
take me, too, when it’s 
time to go.
Longer is too much;
still, the body is cold,
still,
even here in the land
of blood. 



===============================

​

 Cats
​

Cats' philosophy.

Stay close to home.

Avoid people with
cold hands;

in plain sight
hide all the time.

Walk alone.

Live at night.

Trust the moon.  

**********************************

​

​  In the City

Leaves leave
their brittle skeletons
on the sidewalks;
marbles plinked
by the boys
hesitate, passing
over the cracks
between the sidewalk slabs,
the candy wrappers, cardboard,
plastic bags, other
transient debris
left by summer.

Up ahead on the trail,
the haze of early autumn
turns sluggish, hangs down
in our faces.

Farmers off in the country
look at the stubble
in the fields
and think of birds
flying away south,
get ready
to move their machines
to the barns for winter.

Here in this dirty city
Ethiopia is bright as a dime
for the black man,
high and mighty on heroin;
sinking to ruin in this city,
he sees the polished spear-points
in his white enemy's eyes.

One afternoon
some poor black souls,
lost in the ghetto wastes,
in the urban decay,
say, oh shoot,
and burn Goldberg's
emporium to the ground;
in the smouldering ashes
and remaining bric-a-brac,
old raggedy women pick along
and along the sidewalk
people come and go,
black and white and in-between,
careless and unconcerned;

bound on their own business.  

===============================

​

​On the Island of Circe

On the island of Circe,
safely landed at last,
for these poor sailors,
to laugh, to ramble, to lurk,
that is indescribably ludicrous,
knowing as we do and they don't
what is to come;
their chief, Odysseus, knows better
as he always does.

Even with her sweet singing,
woman and goddess,
echoing out the shining doors,
too quiet, ominous,
her low dark palace,
set apart from the woods;
a crew of lions and wolves
roaming around,
docile as cats and dogs;
the courtyard somehow too like
a barnyard and the pigsty,
destined for more than pigs,
hidden out of sight.

At her ever-welcoming table,
graceful Circe stands,
invites these fools
to eat and drink
familiar homely food;
no special repast this.

Set out with all the rest,
the enchanted communal feed
seems no more than
part of the prepared display;
the unseen singer,
the over-friendly beasts
opening the charade,
the huge loom
with its fabulous cloth,
the long decorated halls
in the quiet and eerie
abode of the goddess;
all of it contrived and ordered.

Not thought of in the offering,
who knew this posset,
deadly and honey-sweet,
this seeming plain food,
guaranteed, sure as night follows day,
a one-way passage to beasthood?

Unconsidered destiny
for these frivolous
unsuspecting guests.

Only one escapes to tell
and with Hermes' help
Odysseus turns the tide,
reverses the transmutation,
defeats the sacred magic,
the goddess' uncanny mastery
of turning men to beasts;
at the wand's touch,
the upright brow and stance
fall away, arms become forepaws,
the speech-dividing mouth
becomes a grunting snout,
walking talking men
brought down to the ground.

Saved by the witful wily Odysseus,
his sword, his threats, his charm
outdo the mistress of the house;
submitting her sheath
to his sword, she ends up
keeping house for all of them,
at once goddess and drudge.

They live out a year
of good times,
food and wine aplenty
and Odysseus gets his time
in bed with the treacherous goddess,
gives the least trust
and keeps his manhood for
the long journey to come.

She confides the ways home
and the way
to the kingdom of the dead,
that dark fabled place
seen by no mortal.

The year out, the good times over,
off he goes with his crew;
new adventures and his fate 
and safety hold true;
for his crew and their bad luck,
bad fate and fatal appetites,
it's another story.

What do we learn
from this ancient myth?
What do we want to know?

Your luck is your luck,
your doom is fully fated, inexorable,
here in this everyday world
where the goddess is never seen
and the gods' messenger never comes;
for us, their absence seems
to make no difference;

would it were not so.

=============================

​

     Al Mein Gelt Verspilt       
After Grimmelshausen's Melchior Sternfels von Fuchshaim  

You son of a whore;
you goddamned arrogant bastard,
all your money pissed away,
again and again,
vagrant and on the move
your locomotion never stops,
travel never gets old
and vagabondage becomes
a rhombus;
Paris to Vienna
to the Schwarzwald,
to Moscow, to mermen,
ending on an island paradise;
idylls of an
out and out scoundrel,
a picturesque rogue,
leaving his life,
his skirmishes
on the road and
of his own free will, 
coming to peace at last.

What a life!
Melchior comes juggling
along life's distorted turnpike,
his cloak, a crust of wool,
disappears around a corner,
but like an architrave,
supporting and adorning,
Melchior, our low water,
our ebb tide, 
our luck, reappeareth!

Along this road
his breastplate creaks and
squeaks, debased from
too much hard use;
a skillful soldier,
a better captain, but
bad decisions among
gentle folk folded him up;
a bungled passage,
a few hasty words and
departure was final.

Skipping out in the night,
the moon is reticent
and behind closed doors
what goes on is 
nobody's business and
no help to this wanderer;
no charitable souls
in God's light or livery
live here.

Melchior strides on like
the dragoon he never was,
ramps comically and
catching some 
dumb country lass,
retires at last with a sphinx
who stinks of more than knowledge;
in the morning her lovely
stone arms hold no more than 
the billow of Melchior's bedclothes.
He left hours ago,
marching across the inhospitable heath;
his intent lasted to a satisfying root,
a roll in the hay and
no goodbyes;

doesn't have the time.

These adventures come in flocks,
and what in all the world,
what in all the world
is as real as the red herrings
thrown across his meandering trail,
in the windings of his ways,
and windy, too, from too
many open windows,
too many getaways;

no time for introspection
in the heat of the moment.

Melchior whispering in the
grey ears of Death, it's not time    
yet, it's not, but Melchior's fears
assume oracular importance;
on his snorting horse 
he rides hard, rides on and on;

any delay may pitch him down.

The poetry of the moment given
to the most Fabian of his
lights of love,
the best of all his rare birds and 
clear-toned canaries; 
let her do with it
what she wants,
speak clear-toned vowels
never before heard 
in any of the lands he saw,
the cities and villages he visited;
like a Bengal tiger raging and 
shifting his line of march,
like a beggar, too,
when occasion demanded.

This is the end.
An island of peace,
a romance of fate and abdication.

Before we resume our 
various hyperborean tasks,
let us pay some respect 
to this scoundrel, this devourer,
this waster, this wanderer; 
let us be warm and friendly
all the livelong day
to his memory,
to a man
not afraid to go his own way,
large bold unpredictable,
who performed tawdry wonders,
who had his luck,
good and bad,
and laughed at it.
 
Let a last percussion of
prima-donnas shout loud
the glad verbiage of 
approbation and love;
glory, glory, glory,
in excelsis,
Melchior,
cog and wheel,
type and terminal of
the armies of disorganized chance.

Melchior, props we are
and we know it, 
not necessary for your support,
but in your unwritten reports
signal us sometimes,
put us in your island scrapbook,
for we, too, trace your footsteps
and this, too, Melchior, remember
delusion we do and deceit,
when the harpoon of doomsday
pierces our gloomy backs.

----------------------------------------------
 

       Don Juan          
(after Tirso de Molina’s El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra)

​His memoirs falsely construed,
a contrived Casanova
is left playing in the dirt.
Leave him and
his fornications.
Turn your heads instead
towards a real legend, 
a damned titan of despite
strutting across the boards,
butting heads with his rivals, 
giving not an inch of himself
to the house assembled. 

Let’s hear it, all of you;
let’s hear ten thousand cheers 
for Don Juan Tenorio,
nickname, byname, byword,
egged on by beauties 
felled and foiled
in the blink of his 
roving indifferent eye.
He’s better than the bible, 
than the Divine Comedy,
larger and clearer than life,
coo the fallen madonnas,
dripping fluid and passion and
who should know better than they
his insouciance, his insolence,
I defy you! 
Not to be found elsewhere
or anywhere,
by God’s grace.

And after he’s finished with you,
ladies, try to remain composed,
I beg you; 
open the blinds and watch him go 
while the tears drain away and 
you bleed and weep at the usual ports
for the loss, the shame, the invasion.
You opened your wards,
beautiful moppets and
paid the price,
let a passport to lust
and indolence become 
yours by a chance flutter of eyelids,
an unfortunate ogle;
your own fault, little ladies,
by your lack of
innocence betrayed.
His eyes took note,
he took his pleasure 
and off he went
to new ports,
blissfully sailing away
across his sea of immorality.

Be quick says the laird’s wife,
getting poked hard in the pantry, 
but Don Juan pays no heed
and with aplomb
practices no economy of time;
in his hot eyes streaking
dissipation and no hoarding;
spending it all,
he gives all and his inspiration
flows like rain from heaven.
With a sigh and a gasp,
they open their fortifications,
the heyday of surrender,
the radiance of munificence
shine in their eyes. 
He smiles in satisfaction and
what teeth in his smile,
what teeth, I say! 
Don Juan moves on
and on and the sun 
shines its magnificent espionage. 
A glorious day, surely,
perfect and uncertain,
a daydream of a day
makes the birds
seem to sing
little operas in the park,
sweet and melodious.
The sun so warm,
such a sweetie-pie in the sky,
blinding us with its brightness;
boys and girls skip 
hand in hand 
across the green meadows,
shy and sweet,
and under the green grass
the septic tank
keeps its peace,
holds its foul burden.

Fuego! Fuego!
Shout your guts out,
dishonored Tisbea,
one in a row of many,
shout for revenge,
go in the sea if you must,
but don’t bother drowning just yet;
time will tell all and 
time will ensure payment
of every debt. 
Stick around.

Time now for a little killing,
a little swordplay;
a spilling of blood
the old-fashioned way.
Farther down the line, Doña Ana
does some shouting
of her own;  
Don Gonzalo,
father of the deflowered
daughter lies
dead as a stone.

He’s not the only one 
nor is she, outraged 
by Don Juan’s careless taking;
day and night
Don Juan does his best
to shame the snaky principalities,
the powers of Satan,
with his spiritual wickedness,
his slapdash knavery.

So Don Gonzalo  
lies dead as a stone.
Undiscovered witness,
the green glass cat
traps no mice on the lawn;
the sun on her green head
falls neat;
like a green marble
the sun makes
with heated rhetoric
her feline stillness complete. 
Death just dealt,
with sun delicate,
sparkling and deepening
the scene is watered.

Such a day
butchered Pentheus. 

Don Juan turns away 
and saunters and 
saunters with a more
rapid pace 
than his wont is. 

A time for introspection?
Not for him;
too many open windows
in his corrupt soul,
too many opportunities 
for lust and mayhem,
too many allegiances
to the depths of evil.
He eats his vittles and
uproariously waving
knife and fork,
condescends to cut up  
with his butler.

A last supper beckons,
a joking invitation
to a guest of stone.
This is the narrow gate and 
beyond the fable
the stone apparition asks
a favor not for himself or God.

Don Juan doesn’t care
one way or the other;
his humor, his sarcasm
hold to the end.
In fits and starts
even God has his limits
and wise-cracking cruelty and lust
will crack open the earth
to receive the perfect sinner. 

Eaten by the earth,
walking into hell,
Don Juan winks back
at paradise lost,
smiles his arrogant smile,
and continues on his way. 




=================================

​  Relics

​Schiller’s skull
on Goethe’s table
awaits interment.
The unspeakable,
the mothering earth,
impressed with too
many monuments,
is dumb;
unanswered Beethoven’s
out in the cold.

Mann’s Faust,
lost in spiritual ice,
like a crane stretches
from one shipwreck
to the next;
shipwrecked for good,
Schiller’s skull,
thrown up
by an unsteady sea,
lingers on the beach.

Consider the consequences
of genius or exceptional eyes
and ears, limbs and
all the rest;
like the rest of us
consigned to jumping over
fences till death
do you part
from the earthly part,
the dross, the gloss
on the text;

consider the ant,
you dreamers,
and fall back in line.

The fires of creation and
the winds of the muses
blew through Schiller’s head,
possessing him and possessed;
breathed on by divine lips,
eyes rolling like windmills,
he suffered the bread 
of pain, the water 
of anguish,
scribbled away and
the legions of the lesser
built their castles on his books,
built on his backbone.

Long ago
in the dark German woods
Varus had his problems.
Rome marched back and forth
in the damp and the cold;
the southern Mediterranean light
paled, and went out.

Centuries later
Schiller
turned south;
dignity and sun
drew on enthusiasm;
the sacrifices of yore
dimmed to a point
and then all was light.
Light from the dome
blasted the dark
sides of the temples
white as sheets;
Schiller, at the 
zenith of his flight,
unmoving
as Zeno’s arrow
looks out:
an eagle fixed.

Now on a table
his skull
grins at the skill
not lost;
the bard shall not 
go speechless to Orcus.


And Goethe,
setting like Antares,
sees a pattern everywhere;
moonlight and 
hope at the last. 

Goodbye both;
you served us
better than most,
raised us
high as the Venusberg,
sunk us
to the depths 
of the Brocken.
Flesh and bone conjurers,
sufferers of human ills,
your secrets are safe
with us,
your honorable works
stand in unbroken ranks.

Immer besser,
immer heiterer,
the dark side,
the light,
live off the flame;
Schiller’s skull,
balanced in Goethe’s hand,
grins like an ape,
and then dies again.

=====================================

 Guernica at the Prado
​

For a year or more
I looked and looked at it,
in my soul,
lived under the spell
of Picasso's baleful
grey and black fandango
of a bombed town,
a farrago of agonies
of bull and horse,
parts of people
caught and displayed
in sharp outline;
then it became too fine,
too perfect in its kind,
too much to take
and I had to turn away,
turn my mind and eye,
try to isolate and
banish the pieces,
try to burn away the vision
of that monstrous canvas,
bury a pretense, a practice,
a sacrifice of time;

none of it worked.

Never forgotten,
that huge ghastly swipe
of paint haunts me still,
hurts me and will
until the end of its world,
ending as it did,
and the end of mine.   



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