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Walter Bjorkman is a writer residing in Maryland. He was born and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., later tempered by two decades in Miami, FL.
This Collection of Poetry is a selection of works reflecting on his coming of age
| Poor Man's Heaven | Journey Within a Journey | Just Like I Read the News |
| Switchblades and Tongues | Watts Burns, I Save the World & Have Fries With That | Hey! Where? Georgie Girl! |
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Poor Man's Heaven
A child of the city autumns, winters and springs
this young boy spent
summers in heaven
in a bungalow bare-boned but strong
built by my Father’s
own strong raw-boned hands
near the shores of the Sound, on top of a
hill
where dogwoods and black cherry trees abound
outhouse, no plumbing or
phone, walking two miles for mail
yet this boy and his brother had no
cares
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Fishing in Miller’s Pond for crappies
just spit-wadded bread on the
hook
where the old farmer would chase us away with a shotgun
he wasn’t
really going to shoot
Scottie’s - the grocery store half mile away
in a
big old wooden shack
getting the Sunday funnies
and picking only one from
the candy rack
My Father, in Brooklyn, to work through the week
how he must have loved to
leave on those Friday nights
we waited and watched, but always heard
first
his arrival in the quiet retreat of this land
in pockets he always
brought some treats
for the loves of his life
we ran out to greet him for
big bear-hugs
then wait for those treats, like bony-ribbed dogs
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We would hunt for huckleberries in the woods
then come back and eat
them
or currants or gooseberry preserves
from the bushes in our
yard
found big box-turtles to keep in a chicken-wire pen
but by morning
they had always escaped
tried for butterflies and grasshoppers
but they
would rarely be caught
fished the salty Sound with my Father
my first a
blackfish so small
my Father’s calloused hands could not feel the tug
but
this young boy’s quiet hands could
My Mother, so gentle the swallows would feed at the window
cared alone for
us during the week
we washed sitting in a big old tin bucket
with water
from the hand-pump
Unca Ivar, Tante Margaret and children would visit for a
week
she told us it snows in Brooklyn in August every year
When the old
brown Chevy was full, he would hop on the running board
one free hand waving
in rapture
Screened-in porch Parcheesi on those bucolic nights
while watching the
fire-flies flicker their lights
Chinese checkers, too - no one could beat my
Mom
though sometimes she let one of us almost win
The last days of August were mingled with joy and sorrow
to go back to the
everyday world, but
as boys we didn’t know we were poor - we were ruled
by
the forces of childhood, when we felt free and protected
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One year after
my father
the carpenter and fisherman
left my
life
as my mom used the summer
to lighten her load
We flew alone from Idyllewild
before it became JFK
on a four-prop
silver bird
Allan eleven going on twelve
myself only ten (and a half)
The pillars of New York
towered in the distance
as I used the barf
bag
to perfection
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Stopover in Gander, Newfoundland
at the edge of night and the world
to
re-fuel and also to repair
A four hour delay
from the air
In early June
still a cold barren waste
two newfound young strangers
in a strange land
Nordic stewardesses
watching to see us safe
they pillowed me to
sleep
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The rising sun
through the window
splashed my eyes awake
to
white-washed cliffs
of Scotland
Glascow to re-fill once again
the silver bird and our bellies
and
quickly in to Stockholm
sixteen hours all in all
where our family
was
waiting
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Barefoot boy with cheek
I climbed wood piles
Jumped in hay
lofts
caught perch & pike for lunch
dove into cold rushing
dark
waters
Hand-milked my first cow
rode in the wagon behind the horse
trained to
shit on the bridges
so the clean-up guy
knew where to look
Smoked my first cigarette
shot my first
and only gun
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Saw Jailhouse Rock
when my retarded cousin
took us in to Gavle, the big
city,
and we slid around
to a seedier theater
when the first one
wouldn’t let me in
for my age
She swooned when Elvis
pelvized his hips,
she a young girl of
twenty
we were just amazed
at where we were
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We set off from
the tiny town of Hogbo
Unca Ole, on his first vacation
ever
at age fifty-six
with Allan & I
on a steam-powered train
Down to Goteberg, up to Lillestrom
we stopped and rested for the
night
riding a wild mouse
at a carnival
Norwegian jugglers and
clowns
in sight
Into the boarding house
entering that room
that forever stays in my
mind
a picture on the wall
that I had in
my bedroom way
back
home
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Through the highest mountains
we passed the Seven Sisters' falls
riding
through Valhalla’s walls
Trolhjem – home of the trolls
off to the ferry
in Andalsnes
Three hour ride through fjords
and around desolate coasts
foot-long
hot-dogs
fresh made that day
steering the vessel
in open
waters
under the Captain’s
careful gaze
Then a bus around winding cliffs
to Molde, the ‘City of Roses’
to the
foot of another pier
forty minutes to Aukra
to the island
of my
peers
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Just seven Norwegian miles around
(about fifty miles US)
Gjetvik was
the address of the farm
just that, nothing else
Sod roofed barn and chicken coop
brand new wood one on the house
birch,
strong and resilient
and the hills where sheep
once often were
brought
by my mother,
left behind
She once pulled a calf
out of it’s mom, with a rope
as the WWI bombs
fell
on the very land
on which I now stood
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They hid in the rushes
as boots stomped yards away
no father at
home
he off to find his way
in the new world
their mother confined
to a bed
Kaffe here, kaffe there
kaffe everywhere
two stoned out young
strangers
eating smorgasboard til ill
and trying to act polite
Finally a day to do
what they have always done
into the Viking boat we
scrambled
to help feed everyone
Hand-line fishing in the fjords
with multiple hooks – count 'em - six
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The shirt was really cool
in the white stripes
the smudges were Runic
symbols
in different shades of blue
But no one on that tiny island
had a Kodachrome back then
my original
Brownie camera
no Polaroid-Land
The boat was about 24 ft I guess
behind my 90 year old grand uncle's
humped back (yes, a troll)
the scrolled Viking serpent head
Oar powered
with wooden rollers
to rest the line
and to help in
pulling
but at the moment of truth
it was pull up hand over hand
The fish were in the 20 - 30 inch range
I could only guess the
weight
I pulled in two on one drop
with only a little help from my
friends
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Cousin Rudy pulled up a cod
out of season
we were rigged for
haddock,
it was dressed for the weather
When he got it in the air
I stood up to look
it was as tall as
me
and perhaps almost as heavy
but the line broke
and in a smooth
splash
it disappeared forever
a life-sized fleeting vision
from the
sea
Unca Ole
pulled up a sea robin
he had never fished the salt
water
only the rapid streams of the foothills
for the pike, perch and
brim
I yelled to him
“don’t grab it”
knowing it’s spiky spine
from
fishing the waters of NY
with his brother, the carpenter
just a few years
behind
He laughed, pulled it off the hook
his calloused farm hands
not
bothered a whit
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We caught 28 haddock that day
in four hours total
we went back and
had
the best fish-boil ever
Feeding fifty relatives and guests
who came to see
their
newfoundlanded strangers
from across the sea
The cast iron cauldron
in front of the house
new potatoes out of the
ground
with salt and butter
flying all around
For those moments and summer
we were left without a care
To fly back on that silver bird
and face the world with no fear
It is a time
I’ll ever remember
altough it would all
tumble down
later
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Just Like I Read the News
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She
stood in the doorway that day in fifty seven
on that warm
bright sunny morn
leaning against the sill
told us what we didn't want to
hear
Children, dad died this night
we went on reading our comics
not
wanting to listen
Here comes
the son
there went the sun
out of my
life
Grandparents and aunts perished thereafter
but it was
just like I read the news, as a boy
I just wanted to hold
his hand
Say, you want a revolution?
She sang
will you still need me
when she was sixty
four years later
I thought I didn't
I was
heltered and skeltered all over the place
doin' it in the
road
no mother nature's son
I got blisters on my soul
while my guitar
loudly screeched
Hare Rama
I rode the pony
down
the long and winding road
back to where I once belonged
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She stood in the doorway in nineteen eight
oh
on that cold bright sunny morn
head against the sill
she told me
what I didn't want to hear
Walter, John was killed
No comic books to block the pain
my
guitar started to weep
and in the end
I got a phone call
no
one in the doorway anymore
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Switchblades and Tongues
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When I grew up in Brooklyn, we were more wary of
switchblades than guns,
pool sticks cracked on the head
getting in the way of gang fights with
chains
avoided them all, now times have changed
I shot a gun once, not in Brooklyn but on a Sweden farm
the year after my
Dad died, the retort kicked my butt
into the haystack behind, never shot one
again
except for the penny arcade air types
I knew one guy who got shanked in the stomach
with switchblade, he lived,
went on to have a normal life
I knew one guy who got cracked with a
cue
almost died, metal plate in his head, lifelong convulsions
faked his
suicide off The Verrazano, dumped clothes
into The Narrows, left a note; six
months later
he showed up as if nothing happened
The only guns on the teenage streets those years
were zip guns, made from
stolen car antenna as barrel
wood handle, spring or strong rubber band
one
shot only, more dangerous to the perp
rather than victim, could wound only,
not kill
My crowd would get out of problems on the streets
by using our tongues,
not switchblades or guns
when accosted by the usual thugs, we
gave
dissertations on why it was fruitless to engage
one guy once said to
us fourteeners
"Youse guys college?"
the tongue is mightier than
the
gun or the switchblade
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Watts Burns, I Save the World from Destruction, and Have Fries with That
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It was the summer of sixty-five. I was seventeen, had a second-cousin of twenty, of magnificant pulchritude and some bucks. She owned a fire red Mustang convertable, would pick me up on days off with her magnificent girlfriend, blonde hair waving in the sun, and, with a lucky friend of my choosing, we'd drive off to Riis Park beach, listnin' to Beatles & Beach Boys on the way, then put our blanket down next to The Fugs, the Anti-beach boys. Later our friends would show up from their 90 minute bus ride from the steam of the city streets. They had to go home the same way, sunburned and tortured with sand in their crotch, while we enjoyed the cool breezes from the open ragtop.
But that is not what this is about - this was war. Civil, foreign and personal identity war.
I had a buddy whose father was a civil engineer for a Manhattan firm. His company got a contract from the US Army Corps of Engineers to inspect fallout shelters - "protection" from the A & H bombs, in our part of Brooklyn. So he set up shop in his basement on Bliss Terrace, and hired myself and three friends, all high school seniors about to go on to college. We all had drafting experience and could handle math.
Our mission was to inspect all the designated fallout shelters in the area, determine the capacity by available floor space and amount of potable water left in the pipes after the bomb fell - they didn't account for the water needed for swathing the radiation burns, and come back and draw up the floor plan afterwards.
Rusted remnants from 3 - 8 yrs earlier, Cuban missle crises, Bay of Pigs, Khruschev's shoe, respectable republican cloth coats, the fallout shelters would never be used, the 55 gallon drums of water and food wasting away. But the real wars were now stirring at home in the cities and abroad in the rice paddies, and I could not help but be swept into it.
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Realizing the futility and triviality of the job, while still being awed at the position this de-religionizing soul was being asked to assume - I developed the "Beej Method" - got a block of row houses? Inspect two next to each other (mirror images), then all the rest on the street were the same so we could all climb into one guy's Plymouth Duster and head off to Coney Island for the mid-day, ride the Cyclone, shoot some hoops, play Skee-Ball and devour Nathan's fries from the original 1916 location, seasoned by the salt air.
Then back to the basement to run off the drafts. Makin' $80 a week take home! while our buddies were hard pressed to gross $50 at normal summer jobs (gasoline, smokes, bread and milk were all about the same - .30 cents). So I bought my beloved Favilla guitar and began my life-long trek into playing, not just listening to, music, thank Dylan.
Meanwhile back on the LBJ Ranch - war was explodin' and our cities too. The daughter of the boss (an object of my wandering affections at times), worked as our secretary. She went to visit a friend in LA late in the summer - and was thrown into the midsts of the riots. Her brother was an all-star in the pole vault, held the state HS record at one point, and got his ass shot up three years later in Nam and eventually became a physical therapist.
Then there were the bars - we would inspect the basements (now that's the place to be after a war and mutilation - cases and cases of liquor all around - make those melting faces look normal.) The owner-bartenders wouldn't let us leave without a beer or two, even though we were all underage; they didn't want to get "in trouble" with the law, as if we could do anything, we had no stinkin' badges. After 3 or 4 bars in the afternoon, we were feelin' good
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We also inspected the subway stations - with open air to the radiation from above, they could only be used as holding places for masses of dying humans - anyone want to call their bathroom water potable, or be the last place on earth you will see?
The army terminal down on the water - very secretive, though they had to show it to us, but under armed escort. This was a place that shipped cars and belongings to officers overseas. The troops departed from here also, Elvis to his Germany vacation some six years earlier, and now boys to Asia for a permanent vacation. They had an escape tunnel for captains and higher that had pontoon planes ready to be pushed out to the Narrows and let them fly up there as the mushroom clouds blossomed, as us regular folk did a deep-fry down on the ground - that's when I realized this was serious business. Planning to survive our own destruction, or at least for the priveleged few and the masters of war.
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Back at the office - the daughter comes back spewing hate out of her beautiful lips about the niggers burning and looting - I had just come back from my first march on Washington against the war, and for civil rights. I was losing my faith, wanting sex, to which the church just said no, and Brigitte Bardot said yes, this is good - and I exploded in a fury that had me on my knees declaring my disbelief in established gods, politicians and the hypocrasy of the bill of rights. Suffice it to say the daughter lost my attention, and I lost hers.
Then my sympathetic, poetry reading girlfriend dumped me for the boy next door - I was getting weird, and although she was the weirdest of the young ladies I knew, it was in a much more innocent way than me, her foundation intact. So I was losing my religion, any imminent chance at sex, but discovering ideas and feelings that struck an innate chord inside me.
Village nights, seeing the soon to be Richie Havens playing on the street in front of the Village Gate. BS&T at the Bitter End. Tom Paxton, Eric Anderson, Dave Van Ronk, Ginsberg, Kupferberg, the banned Pete Seeger all reinforcing my emerging world view. Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGee all in the small clubs where I could go to get away for a while from the bull. Dylan electro-fryin', real-words writin' to Newport Folk, and change music forever.
Winds-o-war stirrin' - friends becoming enemies, as I headed off to college thinking I'd be studying moon rocks, but wound up with Dostoevsky, Baudelaire, ferlinghetti, Eldridge Cleaver, Allen Ginsburg, Walt Whitman, Keats and a handful of new, nefarious friends.
Gratuitous Cosmos-Soul Connection Reference: As I headed off to college, in the fall of that year, the brightest comet of the 20th Century, Ikeya-Seki appeared, seemingly headed off to another galaxy, Andromeda, much like I felt my soul soaring into the uncharted Universe.
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Hey! Where? Georgie Girl!
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The Decade of Myth didn't start
with the year six-oh
nor did it stop
with the one
ending in six-nine
It started in sixty-three
with the death of Young John the
Debaucher
and ended in seventy-three,
with Sir Dickie the Trickie's
departure
we all got that straight? - solid, man!
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I met the Fair Maiden Georgie Girl
on an Ivoryton Sixty-Nine summer
night
my Boys of Summer campin' cross the lake
as were your
hippie-chicks
Welfare and rich, mixin' & matchin'
in each other's sleeping
bags
thirteen year old Elke Sommer's kid shackin'
up with the Gypsy
Queen's daughter
so we figured why not us too
While my tongue was in your nethers
on that misty-meadowed night
and
yours on my fair lance
I felt another on my foot
thought "How can she do
that?"
I had to give a glance
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"Man, you know what yew got there, compadre?"
said old Ed the cook - "just
one word, man
you'll understand, she goes to the same
school as Jackie O's
kid!"
Your name was Georgette, your brother's Carroll
I should'a got the
clue
but we talked not of backgrounds
we just wanted to screw
That
mescalined night in the pond
skinny-dippin with three others
in front of
the Ivoryton post office
doin' it in the road
an early train-spotting with
cars
none came, we did
Man - we got two days off - where we gonna' go?
it's the weekend of a gig
on Yasgur's Farm -
but we had not enough time for the show
Off instead
to my poor man's heaven
on the other side of the LI Sound
meeting those
children of god
all going the other way
Starry, Starry Night
we
slept, talked and did the nasty
where I, in innocence once
built a raft of
driftwood
to take me twenty miles across
to the shore from which we
ferried
escaping my Father's demise
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"Wake up! Wake up!"
roust the commie, preppie, philosopher, jock and
hippie
I had one of each sort in my troop
Neil the Man's about to take his
midnight walk!
we herded them into the mess tent to see
the moon violated
by mankind's knee
Back in the City, you One East End Ave
me from across the
Gowanus
riding the subway to the stars
wondering what I was
doin'
your nanny plopped with a death thud
to the floor above us
in
your private-elevator duplex
as we were loving in full window view
of the
59th Street Bridge - that wasn't groovy
You off to bucolic Pine Manor in Brookline
with your mama's Standard Oil
money
me back to CCNY turmoil
in Harlem on my night cabbie's pay
visits
on weekends, further apart -
we did start to grow away
One last stab - I your debutante escort
at your coming out debut
for
the Grosvenor Ball in the Plaza
you were both loathe and loving to
attend
four months after you first came with a man
or rather this boy from
across the facts
Dine with a Kennedy here, a Lindsay there
under a
blanket in a horse carraige ride
in Central Park, thereafter
you sneak
into my room
for our last bedding
Remember back when we got kicked out
of that snooty Boston Common's
hotel
for me refusing to wear a tie?
you laughed all the way with me
to
the cheap shack up the block
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We met again in seventy-two on Mass Ave
just up from the Coop
me with
my Nancy girl, you with
a Japanese artist, your Yoko
spurning your
parent's wealth
he hair down to his calves
Maybe we had an effect on
each other,
maybe the Sixties mattered
or maybe we were all just
Fools
on the Hill
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| To Fragments - Poetry | To Marzy Lives On - Stories | To When Out West - Stories | Visit MiPO - a Community |
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Copyright Walter Bjorkman, 2009
Published by Walter Bjorkman, an On the Wall Production, 2009