Lyric Heart: Poems and Other Musings

By Bob Kamm

This is poetry everyone can enjoy, but do yourself a favor and read it aloud

Norm Jackson, Ph.D.

Poetry should be more than a clever collection of words and images. The poet must be a person who has truly lived and experienced the joys and agonies of the heart. Bob Kamm is that type of poet

Barry Bernfeld, Ph.D.

Bob Kamm rejects the idea that poetry is a language of the gods. He makes it fully human in this collection of exceptional scope, addressing all the major domains of the average persons lifefamily, love, work, war, spirit and laughter.

Yes, these are poems that should be read out loudon the subway or in the suburbs, in the workplace or at funerals, weddings or births, on ordinary days, days of epiphany, days of sorrow, days of falling in love and out, days when you lose your faith in humanity and regain itany and all days when your own heart longs to sing and either cant find the words or needs another to take up harmony.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 15, 2007
• ISBN: 9781456724313

Bob Kamm

Bob Kamm was born in New York City in 1947, the youngest of three sons. His father, Herb, was a journalist, his mother, Phyllis, a free-lance writer. In this word-rich environment, it is not surprising he melded with language at a very young age. Throughout his childhood in the New Jersey suburban town of Summit, and his travels as a young man through Europe, the Middle East and across America, he continuously worked at his craft through prose, song and poetry. Entering the business world, he was served well by the capacity to represent himself both on paper and on his feet. In 2000, he published his first book, The Superman Syndrome: Why the Information Age Threatens Your Future and What You Can Do About It. The basic message? It really is possible to live a life of depth in a world dominated by speed. In 2002, his second book, Real Fatherhood: the Path of Lyrical Parenting was released. While it chronicles Bob's personal experience as a single father, it could well serve as a primer for parents in all the diverse family settings of our time facing the challenge of balancing family, work and the need for personal nourishment. In the course of sharing the ideas in Superman and Real Fatherhood, Bob received the attention of the national press including CNN, MSNBC and NBC, Fox, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, CBS and ABC radio along with numerous other media outlets. While some of the poems in this collection were written in his twenties, thirties and forties, the overwhelming majority of them emerged over the last three years as he was moving through the second half of his fifties. Since 1977, Bob has lived in San Luis Obispo, County, California.

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© 2010 Bob Kamm. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 2/16/2010

ISBN: 978-1-4343-0140-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4567-2431-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2007901622

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

For Ben and Shannon

Other books by Bob Kamm

The Superman Syndrome: Why the Information Age

Threatens Your Future and What You Can Do About It

2000

Real Fatherhood: The Path of Lyrical Parenting

2002

The Poetry of Bob Kamm

Poetry should be more than a clever collection of words and images. The poet must be a person who has truly lived and experienced the joys and agonies of the heart. Bob Kamm is that type of poet, experiential rather than observational. Our own life experiences are awakened and clarified by his work.

Barry M. Bernfeld, Ph.D.

Bob Kamm’s poetry is meant to be read aloud. His control of rhythm and line length subtly regulates how we receive each poem, making an oral reading a joyful, insightful event. His images and metaphors are alternately stark or delightful, produced with the word economy normally found in Shakespeare. For example, a love goes bad, sweet memories change and everywhere we’ve been, the air is gouged bloody.

This is mature and advanced work through which even the most sophisticated intellectual quandaries are made discussable. The subjects range from family and death to love and war but the images, which are so carefully and concisely created, are drawn from surprising connections in childhood, in nature, in reflections on human error and in our daily coming and going (see his humorous version of what life is all about in The Kite Flyer’s Tale).

The flow and rhythm of the longer epic poems make them easy to read and understand. Life moves through them reflecting human feelings and frailties in the specific, and the human condition writ large.

The poems made for the pure fun of it such as the hyperbolic disclaimer in About Your Prescription, will seduce the reader to fits of laughter. His Cautionary Tale pokes fun at poets who elevate themselves above the general population. This self-deprecating humor leaves us with a good belly laugh and an enormous respect for a poet of great scope who knows his craft and deserves our admiration.

This is poetry everyone can enjoy, but do yourself a favor and read it aloud, in solitude or sharing with others.

Norm Jackson, Ph.D.

Table of Contents

Family

Generations

A Beginning

Turning Point

The Day Mickey Mantle Died

What’s in a Name?

Untaught Lessons

In Contemplation of the Stone

Voyager

Planting Pansies

Reckoning

Adoring Stones

So, Seventy-nine…

Flight of the Cormorant

River Woman

Beyond

Her Heaven

Snowflakes

Brothers in Arms

Sun Child

Nature Boy

Chelsea at Fourteen

Grandpa’s Visit

The Stone-skipper

First Things First

My Grandpa

Old Rose

Brother Hawk

Home to Laurel Avenue

Love

After

Yet

Out of Green

China

Aqua

Bunny at Her Best

Bunny’s Brain on Dreams

Brainy Love

Motherly Truth

Produce!

Eve and Adam

Surfing

Andean Phone Call

Good Night

Before Long

Religion’s End

The Quickness

Enduring Divorce

Orange Bliss

For Sylvia

For Monica

Flight

Signs of Singing

The Gourd

The Reason

Advice to Lovers

Vows

For Michael and Sharon on Their Wedding

Love—the Answer

Work

Clouded Vision

Guilty as Charged

The Goal

Georgie

A Eulogy for Margie

Oz and the Four Wishes

Greg, the Once and Future Pilot

War

The Wondering

The Business of War

Gary

Pretty

War by the Numbers

The Rationale

Two Killers

Two Ways to Die

A Conversation with Shannon, Age 8

Humpty Hope

His Last War Poem

Apologies to the Dragon

Spirit

The Passing

Now and Then

Legs and Heart

Perfect Hike

Leonard Cohen Interviewed on PBS June 06

Enchanters

The Shift

The Eyelid of the Beholder

All Gone

Why Starbucks Should Be Kicked Out of Bookstores

The Current Condition

Rattled

Nosing Around

Origins

Vision

Of T-bones and Poems

Tattooed

Three Boxes

Zen in the Dark

Lost and Found

Last Message

Timeless in Las Vegas

A Cautionary Tale

The Deception

The Kite Flyer’s Tale

Then

A Little Night Music

Tea Tags

The Stayed Hand

Recovery

Laughter

The Dangerous Name

Buzzards

American Pie

Blame Jeff Greenfield

Airport Bliss

Film at Eleven

The Day West Met East

Ah, Zucchini!

About Your Prescription

Family

Generations

                  I am my father’s son

                  as surely as my son

                  is

his father’s.

                        Our fingertips

                        know

                              earth

                        petals

                        and the points

                              of

                              thorns.

A Beginning

I was younger than the word,

      seated

at the end

of a world-long table,

without syllables to make sense

of such a span

…my father, mightily,

      at the opposite end

intoning,

      his voice

water

flowing along the curb

      after my first summer rain.

I became a stick

and set myself on it

able only to ride

its roil

until

my mind awoke to a magic it hadn’t known

and began whittling words from the flow as if

      the water itself had become a stick,

a thick, long,

            beautiful branch,

      soft as my mother’s face

and firm as her leg,

      yielding to my new blade

so that

      suddenly

I could see

      emerging from the door of my

father’s mouth

      carvings of sounds that may well have had other

shapes and meanings

but to me

were the red berries

on the bush I would one day know as

pyracantha,

      and the flowers I would one day know as

roses, forsythia, peonies and pansies,

still others

a fierce flock of blackbirds tearing the air

above the world-long table

      followed by footprints in snow,

then leaves,

      green,

      answering wind,

then clouds, high

—ash paw prints on a lavender sky,

      and moon-filled drips from the ice-clawed gutters,

and flames in my head

      that drove me

across the watery room and down the night-time hallway

into my mother’s arms

      …all these,

form, feel and color

      bursting in

      my father’s voice

as flecks of bark

and shredded rings of life

—the red ball my brother slapped against the back steps,

the rusty red dog that leapt from the neighbor’s front steps,

the turning of the maple seed as it wound its way to the ground.

No, no words shared

      yet

…but

in my new arising,

      a simple declaration

            —this was the world for me,

                  to whittle as fast as I could

            small slices of wood

                  from what had just been

                              water.

Turning Point

Once upon a time in the basket of a rime

I was a small boy-being,

being a small boy

rising and turning

on my big toe

in the exact center

of my boyhood

on the lawn that was mine

and my brothers,

so I was told.

A small being,

being a small boy

and in the thrall of the theories and practices

of legs—

      the skip

            the jump

                  the spin

                        the lunge

      the fall.

Between the beats of time

in that broad basket of rime

on a particular day

at the end of a particular breath

—a summery breath and day

—in the middle of a skip

above the bug-jungled grass

that was mine and my brothers,

I turned to see

the sun

buttering the leaves of the maple tree

and the leaves move in their very particular way,

soft green hands rotating slowly left and right,

left and right

brushing and colliding

gently

in the theories and practices of wind-clapping.

This I

saw

      with the eye in my chest,

heard

      with the ear in my belly,

felt

      with the skin that separated me

from that tree, my brothers, my mother and father

…yet at once turned me out towards them

flushed with rushing senses

and at this particular

moment between moments

joined me to twigs, veins and the palms of leaf hands

in a rime and chime and gong and drum

that made the skin and ear and eye of the neighborhood

stretch to contain a joy

far bigger than a small boy-being

learning to be a small boy

could possibly hold all by himself…

a joy that splashed from leaves to lawns

and there

across the sky

—arcing colors!

      Until

            a darkness halted all

with the unwanted clap of a thunderous

knowing.

            I was alone

in this basket of rime,

            alone

between beats of time,

            alone

beyond the skin of my family,

            alone,

unable to yet share sufficiently in

the theories and practices

of lips and tongue,

            alone,

when everyone strode from the house

going somewhere I was not to go,

even as they passed so close,

—my mother, her perfume reaching me

but not her hands

—and I turned on my toe

and looked to her

to my brothers and father

and then to the tree,

waved and pointed

to the sun-buttered leaves,

the eyelid in my chest

growing heavier and heavier,

            alone,

the joy rapidly sealing itself inside me…

a frozen

knife-edged lake.

      What was I to do

if not become

a snowman,

a snowboy

in the middle of that summer lawn?

What other choice was there?

And so, snow it was

—tight fists, taut cheeks,

      throat and body full of winter.

But

soon,

in spite of all my musterable might,

the belly-held lake began to cut and melt,

making small incisions in my flesh

as it trickled into

      tentative drawings,

humbled hummed melodies

      turning

left and right in the wind,

      basic rhythms,

      nickels and dimes of rimes,

      simple stories whose first heroes

were spiders and lightning bugs,

until,

heated in the furnaces of more elevated verses,

      waterfalls sliced their way through

and I was a Moses in my own basket and river of rime

roiling through the rocky gaps that kept me from my family,

      roiling

in the hope that

      in some other space

between beats of my heart,

      some other time

between breaths and signs

they would unavoidably

but happily

be soaked with noticing,

fetch me from the waters

join my joy

and take me back into the family I’d left

unwillingly

at two and a few bud-bursting months,

kidnapped in mid-skip

by the realization

of all that we were

and were not to each other.

      Oh, if only now, these many years on

they, too, could rise on a toe

and know

what I knew

in the quiet prayer

of the maple tree

as its leaves

turned left and right

and felt the sun’s butter knife dragging

across their edges

      softly.

The Day Mickey Mantle Died

In memory of my father and Leo Wells.

Mickey Mantle died August 13th, 1995

This poem was written that August 13th and 14th.

You fall into your father’s arms.

All you can say is, Hey, Dad…

Then, you remember

lunging

through the screen door

corn still stuck between your teeth

lawns

exhaling

beneath evening sprinklers.

You remember

the calm

that settled on the neighborhood

around seven-thirty

no cars anywhere but driveways

and

your Dad

striding into the street

and singing out,

Chuck it in here, boy, just like Mickey Mantle.

Father to son

son to father

leather-slapping exclamation points.

And you remember

sprawling

on your parents’ bed

studying

the TV screen

and Dad

sitting straight up saying,

"Here he comes. Let’s see what he’s got in store for us today."

It had to do with

anticipating

that

swing,

that

swing

like no other…

on both sides of the plate,

dropping

so

low

to hurl something at the ball

no one had ever seen

something that rose right out of the earth

—an Oklahoma twister.

Wham!

"Look at that swing! Did you see that swing, son?

Man, nobody can touch him. He cuts the world in half!"

That’s the Mick, was all you could utter

feeling

a piece of that Okie twister moving through

your heart,

feeling

your father’s eyes

rolling

into yours.

Yeah, that’s the Mick, all right, he’d nod,

in a low voice

usually saved for Sundays.

Mickey’s game was your game

pop flies

you chase down

over the curb

across the sidewalk

backhanding

in the middle of the Taylor’s lawn.

"Way to go! What a catch! Just like Mickey Mantle.

Whip it on in here, son."

Yeah, the game of Mickey Mantle,

it had to do with grass

—the smell of grass

the feel of grass

to lope across

to sprint across

to dive across

snapping the ball off a shoe string

or scooping it up as it slowed

in the grass

with grass stains

streaking white.

It had to do with

Dad at home plate

whacking one

in a high arc

and your legs discovering

a horse in each back pocket

hell-bent to out run

that shooting star,

turning at the last second

your glove

stretched out

beyond itself

and…whaap!

right in the webbing

            you caught a chunk of heaven

                        just like Mickey Mantle.

It had to do with

flopping down

on grass

eyes closed

fingers tracing threads,

tongue

sipping

sweat.

This game of Mickey Mantle,

it had to do with

the drive

through the heft and swirl

of the city

to the stadium

—the true cathedral

where all denominations

were welcome,

where preaching

boomed from bats,

where confusion and contradiction vanished

in the face of

pure mystery

            wonder

                  magic

as men did the marvelous

in the mastery of simplicity

—running, leaping, sliding, throwing, catching, hitting—

and none more than Mick

who launched the Space Age

with the

solid

rocket

boosters

in his back.

It was about peanuts and crackerjacks

and beer foam on your father’s lips

and the feeling

that you’d swap your home

for home plate

as long as

Mickey Mantle

might saunter out there one more time

…you’d stay

forever

no matter

how

sore

your butt

how

hot

the sun

how

heavy

your eyes

…you’d grip

that seat and hunker

just to see

just to hear

one more hymn

            arise from

the air around his body

and one more time

feel Dad touch your head

half laughing

half crying

whispering to

you

and only

you

in his Sunday voice

Geez…..Lord….ain’t he beautiful!

What’s in a Name?

Would you like a Turkish coffee?

The question alights gracefully

from the mouth of my

new young friend

eighteen year-old Nihad Hajdarhodzic

from Tuzla,

a city built on salt,

literally,

a city where towers resembling oil rigs

hold up the sky with one arm

while digging for salt with the other.

Nihad’s manner is a bit sugary

for a salty boy who,

in fact,

was an expert on land mines

by the time he was eight,

a salty boy who explained that all Bosnian names

end with the ic sound,

meaning, belongs to.

In his case,

he belongs to an imam,

a holy man, an elder of the community and father

of Nihad’s spirit.

He belongs to the imam Hajdar.

Hajdar is his soil, his sustenance,

as he is for Nihad’s entire family.

Everyone he knows,

in fact,

belongs to someone or something with his ic ending name

—a mountain, a stream, a wood, a holy man—

so that even before I take my last sip of his gritty,

tooth-staining offering

I’m thinking about my family moniker—Kamm