Category: The Poet

Allowing the muse to run free

Poem For Pollen

It’s the long-awaited springtime in New England; sometimes, I mark the days until Spring and the hours and minutes. I live for two weeks in the Spring and the third Saturday of August when we have summer. But as much as I love our better weather, I am also an allergy sufferer, and for the first time in many months, I have had my windows open all afternoon, and the pollen is filtering in and is doing a happy dance on my nose. So, I felt obliged to write a poem about pollen.

Poem For Pollen


The pollen is blowing in the air.
And not a matter do I care.
For I’d rather wheeze from
Birds and bees
Than blow ice cycles,
Every time I sneeze.

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Rating: 1 out of 5.

Laughter Down the Hall

With an exhausted ear,
I lie and listen,
To the crazy laughter,
Down the hall.

Then, gliding quietly back,
Into my own nightmares,
Finding again the same,
Unanswered questions.

I’m frozen in bed,
Unable to speak,
Locked in fear,
Powerless to move.

I listen again,
To the crazy laughter,
Down the hall,
And wonder,

Am I the crazy one,
After all?

Rating: 1 out of 5.

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The Night

On my wall, the shadows play.
Shifting shapes with every sway.
Through the forest, deep and dark
The wolf’s howl pierces like a spark.
Across the moon, the dove flies high
A fleeting glimpse in night skies.
As I brush tears from my eyes.

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Midnight and Me

A wonderful world happens after Midnight.
Lonely and creative hearts come out to play
No longer hushed by the glare of an unforgiving day.

The graveyard shift,
Or so some call it.
A place where
The dead are laid to rest.
With other undesirables.

In radio
And other lonely places
Time passes slowly.
Midnight creeps to 1, then 2
Then to 6 a.m.
It’s where people drift
When there’s no place left to go.

For me, it was my voice, my opinions,
And my music that was my shovel.
Losing myself in thoughts
Alone in the middle of the night.
Ideas and music flowed like wine.
And I lost all track of time.

Then the phone would ring.
Oh no, not a ring!
You can’t have things ringing
In the On-Air studio.
A red flashing light,
Endlessly flashing, flashing, flashing.
Becoming a silent scream
Refusing to be ignored.
Answer me,
Answer me, answer me.
Phone call,
Phone call.
And many flashes later
I answer.

The voice said
“My name is Midnight.
Would you play a song for me?”

A wonderful world happens after Midnight.
Lonely and creative hearts come out to play
No longer hushed by the glare of an unforgiving day.
So do the strange
and the deranged.
A cross-section of life begins to drift
In and out
On the graveyard shift.

The musicians finishing up their gigs.
Dropping by
Because
Where do you go after 2 a.m.
When there is no place to go but home
And home is no place to go.
We had that in common,
The night people
And I,
As we tried to
Be glad to be alone
When all we wanted was to cry.
Sometimes it worked.

Midnight was neither a lonely heart
Nor a musician.
Just a night soul on a quest for tomorrow’s meaning
And yesterday’s reasons.
A late-night spirit who came to listen
Not just to the show
But to the lonely gravedigger.

And then Midnight would listen more
More from this lonely
Drifting vagabond
Wandering through town.
Both the ringmaster
And the clown.

Through so many passages
In my life, Midnight came to listen
Again, and then again.
Helping me through the
The dark dances of a searching soul
The journey of one growing old.
Dreading the dimming of the light.
Cursing the flickering flame
Fading in the middle of a winter’s night.

And many years later
Midnight came and cared again.
I guess I never really let Midnight know
How much they helped to make my life
A possible dream
Keeping me from going too far adrift
there on the graveyard shift.

It’s time I let you know
You gave my life a special glow
Pushing time along.
Your memory travels where I go.
Thank you for all that could have been.
And for what was.
Lost in the glow of life’s footlight.
Now dimming.

Goodnight, Midnight, goodnight.

Rating: 1 out of 5.

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Titanium Souls

Boston is a city that I love, but I rarely venture into its busy streets. I remember the quiet days of the pandemic when the city seemed to pause and breathe. But I also find inspiration in the crowds of people hunched over their phones, oblivious to their surroundings. They sparked this short poem in me, reflecting the contrast between solitude and connection. I called it “Titanium Souls.”

Titanium souls
In a keyboard world
Lost between now,
And the space bar.

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I Tripped over tomorrow

I tripped over tomorrow
Looking back at yesterday
The football fields and beaches
The games we use to play.

I tripped over tomorrow
As it quickly slipped away
We had music we had laughter
Then the world got in the way.

I tripped over tomorrow
It seems to go that way
As tomorrow quickly passes
It becomes my yesterday.

I tripped over tomorrow
But here I choose to stay
I’ll catch tomorrow passing
And remember it someday

2 responses to “I Tripped over tomorrow”

  1. Melody J Haislip Avatar
    Melody J Haislip

    Lovely and so bittersweet. It’s hard to learn to live in the Now.

    Like

    Reply
    1. Dan Sanders Avatar
      Dan Sanders

      I stopped trying, so I live my life remembering yesterday, hoping for tomorrow, and doing the best I can with the time I’m in.

      Like

      Reply

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The Secret of the Cracks

In the light of yesterday’s Nightmare No waking hour And again today No bell To end the night And bring the light To close The pain The night did bring To end this bad dream Tomorrow will come I pray it so But yet it brings Another day on sadness row Against the curse of … Continue reading “The Secret of the Cracks”

In the light of yesterday’s
Nightmare
No waking hour
And again today
No bell
To end the night
And bring the light
To close
The pain
The night did bring
To end this bad dream
Tomorrow will come
I pray it so
But yet it brings
Another day on sadness row
Against the curse of time
No matter the defenses
The consequences
Death is the unavoidable nemesis.

I sat today in a church
Not my church
Staring at the life-size cross
Of wood
With cracks in seams
It seems the cracks are the same
As in my dreams
Sacrifice the blood
Give up the body
Lose life
The heart breaks
Split like the wood
​Yet life goes on
It has no choice
Just as the cross does not fall
It has no choice
It hangs by ropes
Tethered to the ceiling
Away from the floor
But reaching neither
So it hangs instead
As if trapped between heaven and hell
It never fell
Its cracks showing the assault of time
Like the body as it gives in
Too many days too many nights
Too long the fight
Too small the hope
Life cracks and splits like wood
The cracks
Healing not
Left in the heart
Hang on
No place to go
But the journey continues
Left hopeless to begin or end
Only to hold on and await
The waves of time
Until the final lonely moment
Takes me under
Then maybe I too will know
The secret of the cracks.

Someplace, to Rachael

I still have the picture

And the memory of a cold snowy night

In Washington

In the early 1970s, I was living in Washington, D.C., as part of CCNV, the Community for Creative Non-Violence. I would get gigs speaking at coffee houses, bars, and the occasional college or university. It was all part of CCNV’s outreach, attempts to bring awareness, first to the Vietnam War, and later in D.C. to the brutal conditions of the homeless population. Sometimes my appearances were only personal, reading poetry I had written either as a child or young adult or before, during, or after prison. It was at one of those personal times, a time when I was feeling overpowered with loneliness and confusion while reading in a coffee house/bar just off DuPont Circle, that I met Rachael. Rachael was a military brat whose dad worked at the Pentagon and just saying hello to me could have caused all kinds of problems at home, but she did say hello at a time when I desperately needed someone to say hello. I know at the time we both needed a friendly hello.

( podcast reading at bottom of the poem)

I’m balancing on a barstool

Caught in a solitary light

Reading my poetry

In a coffee shop

Just off DuPont circle.

 

The night is cold

Snow falling in quiet wisp

Like little wintry feathers

Searching for angels lost in hell.

 

You’re listening to me

Tilting your head just so to one side

Chin cradled in the palm of your hand

Arm curving to rest

On the wooden table where

A glass of wine sits waiting

Untouched.

 

Your ring sparkles,

Held in the soft glow of Tiffany

Like a beacon

Guiding the way

To you.

 

It clings close to your finger

Afraid of slipping away

Afraid to be lost

Lost in the dark

Lost in the cold

Lost in the lonely.

 

We spent that night

And more together

Clinging close to each other

In frightened desperation

Afraid of slipping away

Afraid to be lost

Lost in the dark

Lost in the cold

Lost in the lonely.

 

One morning you were gone

Leaving a picture.

You’re tilting your head just so to one side

Chin resting

Cradled in the palm of your hand

Arm curving away

Leaving me

Like your wine

Untouched.

 

Your final words

Fading in my memory

Like the image you left:

“If you ever need or want a warm place to stay

You know where to find me.”

 

That was more than 50 years ago.

I have never looked for you

Even when I was cold and lonely.

 

I don’t remember the name of the coffee shop

And I’ve lost the old poetry

But I do remember you

And the ring

And how you would tilt your head just so

To one side.

 

I still have the picture

And the memory of a cold snowy night

In Washington

Tucked away safely

Jackal on My Grave

   Fall’s curtain descends too soon.
In the middle
Of the third act
The lights dim.
Darkness hides
A good actor
In a bad play
Smothering his final words
He bows.
Expecting no roses
No standing cheers
No encore
No bravo
In early dark
Shadows dancing
Way too early
Mistress of light
Will have her way.
To dance in the yard
Like a jackal on my grave.

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“The Ballad of the Sandman” by Mike Agranoff, Intro by Dan Sanders

Hi, welcome back, or is it I who has returned? This week I’m doing something very different. For the first time in the roughly ten years or so that I have been blogging and podcasting, I have a guest, sorta. His name is Mike Agranoff. I do not know Mike personally, but he is a musician, folk singer, and poet, and we have been in touch over the years by email. He has a piece of poetry that I have loved for many years called “The Ballad of the Sandman.” The first time I wrote to Mike was about 7 or 8 years ago asking if I could publish his piece on a blog as part of a fundraiser I planned to do for a memorial for my wife who lost her battle with cancer on September 27, 2011. I was going to raise money to place a permanent bench overlooking the harbor and ocean at a place we use to visit to watch the ships go out to sea and come back in again. I never did do that fundraiser, but Mike’s response was instant, saying “Yes, of course, you can do that for your wife.”

“The Ballad of the Sandman” is a piece of writing that anyone who has spent most of their lives behind a microphone will relate to, but I think it’s also a piece that will bring back memories to anyone who grew up listening to “real” disc jockeys, people you got to know and who became your friends through a box that sat on a table and had a dial and needles and sometimes static and woke you in the morning and kept you company in the middle of the night.

As some of you know, I came of age on Staten Island, a reluctant borough of New York City, for years wanting to secede from the city. I never did understand why. In the late ’50s and ’60s it was a good place to be, close enough to the big city and yet isolated and country. In fact, in high school, we would play football teams from the inner city–Bedford Stuyvesant, the Bronx, Queens, and others–and as they would line up against us, the calls of “country bumpkins” and “how do we get off this hillbilly island” would only serve to make us more determined to lay a beating on these city slickers, and most of the time we did.

At night when all the games were done, it was radio time with friends–yes to us they became friends because they would talk to us–Cousin Brucie, “Dan” Daniel, Jonathan Schwartz (a name you will hear in Mike’s reading of “the Sandman”), and of course, Wolfman Jack. Those are only a few of the names that led me into broadcasting.

Mike said I could do the reading of his work and at some point, I will try my interpretation, but I think no one can read something the way the person who wrote it can, although, as Mike pointed out to me, he does not read his work. It is all done from memory, which amazes me because it’s not a short piece. At the end of this blog, I have included a link to the written version of “The Ballad of the Sandman” and a link to Mike’s website, if you want to contact him directly.

CLICK HERE FOR PODCAST

Link to Mike Agranoff  http://www.mikeagranoff.com/

Link to The Ballad of the Sandman http://www.mikeagranoff.com/lyrics/Sandman.htm

I love Old Things, For What They Bring.

I love old things

For what they bring

Memories of those that touched

And loved them

And now are gone.

They loved them long before

My name was known,

Then they touched me

And loved me

But had to leave

The pain wounds the heart

And so, I grieve

But I still love old things

For what they bring.

Memories of those that long ago

Taught my heart to sing.

A lonely Question

Darkness comes too soon
For the lonely.
Midnight last longer
The pain cuts deeper
Nights never end
Day never begins.
The sadness starts
The aching deep within
Then morning comes
The sun is bright
And you try again.
For what else is there?