Scenes the Writer Shows {Forty-one Places a Poem can go}

By M.B. Moshe

Scenes the Writer Shows {forty-one places a poem can go} is a collection of poems from my travels and experiences. They detail situations and moments in life—mine or someone else’s—that were either positive or negative. A few poems deal with teenage angst and issues of learning to live with how a world that sees a disability. “The Hustler” loosely mirrors my life as a disabled person in a Downtown Minneapolis. In this poem, and “Salvation for Burns,” I illustrate riding public transit and adapting to urban life:

“The bus shelter knew its place;
Its times, its sounds that gave
Excelsior Boulevard a
Bolder face that welcomed us
As summer burned its heat

The heat sweltered cadence of
Blistering skin’s appeal,
As buses’ wheels left, fleeting past
Carts homeless would lift on for free;

Sheltering cognitions,
Of grasps their fists would never be.
Uptown merges through downtown,
Routes tracing perfectly,
Hennepin Avenue’s cache;”

Word-play, meter, and music are used often to create images that draw the reader into the poem:

“She writes for him on Sunday after the church lights fade,
Then ferments the burgundy to see if wine would fade;
And she steals bread from the Eucharist and eats it while
On parade.
When she writes verses for a South American band,
A samba beat grows malignant on palms of her hands,
“Buenos Dias” is written for tides that meet Ipanema’s sand;
Now her writing is imprinted on the souls she’s saved.”

My poems take the reader from England to Scotland and Wales. They go to the Middle East and Norway, all from the streets of Minneapolis.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael P Amram
• Release date: Aug 19, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310962004

M.B. Moshe

In 1989 Mr. Moshe graduated from the University of Minnesota with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. He was first published in a small journal out of Canada called The Unicorn Reader. Since then his short fiction has been published in various online magazines and anthologies. In 2011 a portion of the manuscript for The Orthodoxy of Arrogance was selected to be a finalist for fiction in the Loft Literary Center’s Mentor Series program. Moshe is the author of Scenes the Writer Shows: {forty-one places a poem can go}. His upcoming novel, Agent of Orange, employs historical fact to develop his characters. Although not a prequel, Agent of Orange has a connection to The Orthodoxy of Arrogance. Moshe lives with his artist wife in a suburb of Minneapolis, MN. He writes fiction and poetry full-time.

Book preview

Scenes

The Writer Shows

{Forty-one Places a Poem can go}

M.B. Moshe

©Copyright 2013 M.B. Moshe

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval

system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,

recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

Printed in the United States of America.

Contents

Prologue

Centerfield Troubadours

Salvation for Burns

The Hustler

Dog-eared Pants Bit Her

If Gallows Spoke

Her Manipulation

Waxing on our Flames

Counting on Benches

Arawak Pastels

Her Ship’s Lull-a-bye

Virtual Tourists

Deck Party

A Faint Trace of Wonder

Burning Rocks

Civil Servants

77’s Nights

Halcion Days

A White Board had my Number

Dickensian Sublimations

Humility’s Clown

Walkin’ with Pathos

I Hid my Legs in the Sand

Last Night’s Refrains

Boondoggle Sounds

Lūneburger Heide

Birds of Prey

Valhalla’s Eyes

Past the Sage

Ramona’s Contriteness

Ramparts They Watched

Random Acts

Somewhere Earth Ends

March Eighteenth

Tel Aviv

Tennessee

A Termite’s Mantra

Favorite Sons

We Saw Wales at Bay

The Best Farthings Spent

Lothario Disillusioned

Trickling Down Mason

Bonus Tripping

The Contender

Scowl

Acknowledgments

Reviews of Scenes the Writer Shows

Virtually Meet the Author

Prologue

There is a certain sense of tangibility born in all the poems in Scenes the Writer Shows. They convey my travels, or are based on incidents in my life. They examine the lives of those close to me and interpret what they experience and how I was affected. I attempt to bring the reader as close as I can to sharing the experience with me. Through use of musical rhythms and sensory details, I hope my poems create spaces of my time to which the reader can relate.

From discothèques of Bergen, Norway to the urban streets of downtown Minneapolis, I’ve recorded experiences. Some situations offered lessons, while others merely etched memories. In Scenes the Writer Shows the reader travels with someone who tests people. In my life I have often pushed the envelope and taken the less guided paths that weren’t handicapped accessible. Most of the forty-one poems are written from the perspective of someone with a disability.

In The Hustler, for instance, lines are crossed, doorways are shadowed, and places are briefly visited. The protagonist is left looking for those trains that would not go where he wanted. The poem is a summation of my years in the 90’s living in a neighborhood declared a Drug-free zone in Minneapolis. It may seem embellished and playful, but accurately reflects my thoughts, or perceptions of others’ thoughts, at that time in my life. The poem reveals how being disabled has touched me through others in various venues and vistas of urban street life.

My book attempts to emulate the feelings that follow me. In Humility’s Clown words are taken from an actual conversation I had. It light-heartedly and sarcastically describes reactions I often get for things that