Courting Rejection

By B. Harlan Deemer

This book includes 40 years of writing seeking clarity and understanding, touching on most life topics : love, sex, politics, religion, faith, death. One chapter is reserved to translations of and originals written by the author in foreign languages. This is the author’s second self-published book of poetry, following Having Words Together. The author has lived in the United States, Germany and Sweden and has recently retired to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula after living 30 years in Chicago.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664157453

Book preview

Copyright © 2021 by B. Harlan Deemer.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 02/11/2021

Xlibris

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Contents

Dedicated

1. Sonnets’ Prisoners

2. Boy-Katt and Dawg-Grrl

3. Quiet Times (QTz) and Countrified Nonhaiku

4. Countrified Haiku

5. SS: Sauna Songs

6. Other Tongues: Translations and

7. What Grieves, Alas, Alack: Can Joy Outweigh Sorrow? Can Love Cast Out Fear?

8. ZpZm

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Dedicated

Helen V. and you

two make up my audience.

That’s my flawed defense

for this country brew

of cordial, potent liqueurs,

small shots to the head

and heart, and hot bed.

What pleasure a word secures.

The measures heard here,

woolly headed flock

that they may be, aren’t one block,

nor treasures for a De Beer.

But that old king’s, weariness of many books,

these dreary days’ mess commends to care’s new looks.

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Without the turbulence of new water/The lake of the soul might well grow stagnant.

James K. Baxter, from How to Fly by Standing Still, quoted in Poetry, p. 477, February 2018.

1

Sonnets’ Prisoners

2/3/2019

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An Opening Cell

Where is their appeal?

The music’s near minimal,

yet their rule is real,

if subliminal—

like Solomon’s seal

holding captive minds

left waiting for their next meal

in fourteen-line rinds.

Fruit from the past, deaf to death,

some modern godlets decreed, binds us; stays free;

fingers tickle that little fig leaf.

Poetry has left to its last, still deft breath

rhymes’ lines moving eyes to think, feel—be,

crimes proving us riddles’ rigged relief.

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For Starters

It’s an ejection.

Is it rejection as well

when the birth waves swell,

break the connection

with the place where all first dwell,

life’s first dejection,

crying for a breath,

alarmed, expelled from the belly’s bell?

Does it sting like death,

or do babies bring this choice

to sing out with their own voice

an election’s hell?

Past pain, rejoice, nurse on the breast of heaven,

little loaf of bread needing love’s leaven.

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5/31/2019

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Monsieur R.’s

Thinking Machines

The old root still greens—

Ronsard’s small thinking machines

shoot out limbs, bear fruit,

something good to suit

most tastes, still, these twenty-teens,

rebooting his lute

with new tunes to toot,

renewed ends with modest means.

Do hearts warm to form

still familiar friends,

bonds still supple, thought that bends

thinking from set norm?

Love weans them from my chest or—Zeus-like—my pate

and sends them out to greet what fates may await.

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5/2/2019

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Flashes from the Machine

Thoughts searched to recall Marcel Proust;

my mind kept suggesting Merleau-Ponty.

Such diggings for names haunt me

frequently. When the words come to roost

I can see the effort’s welling sense:

synapses seeking clay tablets in linen ephods

telling us we’re dust, cannot be gods

with our faulty intelligence.

Still, somehow we manage to crank out

Newtons and Einsteins who seem schooled

by all that creation’s ruled,

hand in hand with, yet beyond, Descartes’s doubt.

Dark matter sings to us with gravity;

gray matter wings it in its small cavity.

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5/31/2019

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They Went Out to Sea

(shades of Melina Mercouri in Never on a Sunday;

dedicated to the Lord of all rejections)

What part of all came

to see magic tricks with food,

hear priests called snakes’ brood?

Did they know your name?

Some believe they would have queued

to witness your cross,

see gain in the loss

to which their brains have been cued.

I’ve thought thoughts like that—

its attractive gloss

is just so much naked dross;

throwing in a hat

would prove unduly trying,

would risk missing your truly dying.

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5/1/2019

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als kündigte alles…

My bed’s not empty.

A soft, warm dream, asleep, lies

by my head; deep sighs

so often tempt me

to wake it, to see its face

and swim in its voice,

some fake of my choice,

before its rightful time and place.

What’s true opens eyes

on its own, comes home,

lands like Venus from sea-foam

likely a surprise.

What I long to see, to know, to embrace

cannot be grown before it’s a grace.

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11/8/2018

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From Insight Out

The urge to engage

moves ahead to a new stage,

a walk, not a surge—

perhaps growing sage,

but at least, it seems, a purge

turning a new page.

What may now emerge?

Discerning’s sniffing the air

As the fall looms large.

Winter prowls its lair,

getting ready-set to charge

learning’s whip and chair.

In this our age, verging on new forms,

the wars we wage merge with something soft purrs, warms.

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6/23/2019

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Ins and Outs

Swastikas flower,

rooted in an angry need.

Will they come to seed,

feeding on power?

And how many then will bleed,

burning earth’s bower

in new horrors’ hour

until they cower at their own creed?

Learning’s at a loss;

we’ve seen where such leaders lead,

lessons all should heed:

the meek on a cross.

How much good ground can we concede, save

before this wave recedes to its grave?

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5/18/2019

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Denn Bleiben ist Nirgends

(Replay: The growing nowhere to go.)

The bar enjoys a good show;

in come the handsome young men,

year after year—and again

I watch the faces’ slow flow.

If any demands to know

why old men, like me, with pen

in hand, sit here like a hen

brooding on her nest, I’ll crow,

"Son, I have seen come and go

a thousand like you, and when

you grow old, well, maybe then,

with your youthful days in tow,

you’ll be glad to feel life’s glow

warmed before your last Amen!"

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6/6/2019

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Steven, 31

(an ode in sonnet form)

Watch him while he works;

check his constant, clear control

facing his bartender role.

Nothing disturbs, no one irks—

a trained athlete, well rehearsed.

Good figure skating,

each motion stating

easy strength in what’s disbursed:

attention, words, drinks.

Some rough cheek accents, reserves

of smooth form that gives what each deserves,

rises leopard-like above all the sinks,

calm resilience in his stance.

My silence, alone, mentions his pants.

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6/2/2019 Chicago

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The Hug Across the Bar

(S)

I’ve received from him

as much as I’ll ever get:

a hug’s touch, well met;

what’s achieved will dim,

now can only diminish

with events’ next whim

or even grow grim,

form a more-perplexed finish.

How we’re sexed gives rise

to the texts days read;

happy endings are a creed,

crescendos in cries.

If lovers were a clear, convincing force,

resistance would drown in its flood’s course.

6/1–2/2019

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The Unfortunate Horseshit

Scrounge: A Gentle Bitch

Twenty bucks buys bliss;

Chris gives a corner lap dance

that feels like romance—

just a light lips’ kiss,

brushing hips to hips. It traps

something much like trust;

this thrust of wing tips’ touch says just

let my judgment lapse.

For a moment I matter

again, though grayed and fatter

than most men would bother with.

My only in now’s the daddy/father myth,

gay solidarity long dead in a ditch.

It can help, too, a bit to be rich.

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6/3/2019

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One Whit’s Care

(Aber bewältigtest du’s?)

A smile, words, a touch

and life seems so much better,

a welcome letter

or a needed crutch

to get on through the next day,

weighing truth—and fact;

being heeds display—

a pickpocket’s artful act.

The smart stance to take,

wary of fake ways,

is not to chance a clear phrase,

distance set to break.

Such stays stake out what we agree to contract,

redact against the aches that distract.

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6/3. 5/2019

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Using the Metaphor He

Sent to a Woman

If not alchemy,

I’m not lead and can’t be gold.

Changes come, unfold,

some sweet chemistry;

oh, Mister, our mystery

‘s breaking my old mold,

its sad history

taking time to get well told.

Tell me what you will;

you’ve got a good way with words.

They heat, stir: kindness to curds,

let spirits distill.

They feed, fill a need grown old,

form a warm glow from my gray and cold.

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6/20/2019

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Alchemy or Physics?

Will fourteen lines smile

as one when this time is done,

a warm, welcome sun

in a cloudless style,

still owning power to stun,

start a fire hearts file,

put art’s truth on trial,

and have some smart fun?

The ways one can fail,

get shunned, come to a short ton

working under each word’s gun

to gain song’s Holy Grail:

too strong, too frail; tightly, lightly spun—

an eye on love’s ions so gold is won.

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5/6/2019 Chi

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Wednesday to Thursday

(WBJ IV)

It might take me years

to find out the truth of you,

mind all youth can do

to blind me, fill ears

with words I’ve long yearned to hear,

eyes with looks that hold

mine; make arms unfold,

lift up; thoughts learn to shift gear.

Only if you show

and stay, let me taste your voice,

in my heart’s chipped cup sip choice,

can I start to know.

Where we go from here, as each life steers,

teaches us our true ways, one day’s hour endears.

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6/11/2019

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Reflections

(at vaere sej selv—nok)

With the evening’s angled light

the lake looks blue, right

again; my bay was brown this long day.

The Pine River delivers mulch, silt,

not seen now in the sun’s tilt;

this right renewed the wrong way

by sleight of eyesight,

only slightly pleases.

Clear water eases

the muddied mind—at least might—

but these rays raise an odd disarray

in my studied delight’s three-pronged play;

my songs say it’s truth their soft tunes cite,

yet now await the moon’s silver-white.

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6/12/2019

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LL

My home—strange to say,

wonderful, but strange; the same,

never my own name

could claim any clay

to mold in my image, frame,

farm above the fray

of the workaday,

cultivate my garden’s game.

†

My aim: Make good manure of my shit,

dig it in with sweat, a bit of wit,

figs to come at God’s own chosen time,

sweeter when love flows in rhyme.

Get my life’s logjam to flow

and make my lake cabin grow.

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5/5/2019; finished 6/26/2019

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In the Eyes of a Magpie

Above pale blue dawn

one last light still rules the sky;

the other signs die,

fade away, withdraw

as night back at home removes

her jewels with a yawn and

gives herself a hug

with a smiling, silent shrug.

Then to bed she’s gone.

Day grinds in its grooves,

schools the waves to prove their lines,

polished until the shore shines.

Still, night’s moves asleep seep through to spawn

the wildflowers’ gems strewn on my lawn.

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6/20/2019

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Midsummer Eve on the UP

Curtains up!

From somewhere a wind

briefly makes the birch tree dance,

perhaps an advance

force of what was pinned

by the weather map: clouded—

though the night sky clears,

Arcturus appears,

Scorpio’s quite unshrouded,

and Jupiter nears Aldebaran.

Forecasts are doubted

with care, never well flouted

as just clever con.

Still, my eyes note the light, not the dark,

as Spica now adds her virgin spark.

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6/20/2019

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Midsummer Eve on Birka, 1978

The morning after revealed

all our sins: no fires allowed,

no camping, and the small crowd

of seven blooms from the field

I’d picked forbidden!

The sign, although not hidden,

was not where we had landed;

what rules demanded

a brief sign appealed,

and our silence kept concealed.

No true love my dreams endowed

either, none known through sleep’s shroud,

just a waking sense of God

which, back then, struck me as odd.

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8/6/2019

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O-awng-ahng

I’ve a place to go

where I know I well belong,

can hear my own song.

There the days’ slow flow,

far from any noisy throng

so inclined to throw

thoughtful love down low,

banging on its brassy gong,

can sense what’s good grow.

This evening’s glow,

the home of the scuppernong,

where white wine is strong,

would deem poor, its woods’ gleam wrong—

too cool, calm to quiet their shore’s song.

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2/5, 8/2019

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Soundings

(Joan Murray’s Orpheus: Three Eclogues)

1.

On Acheron, Charon carries on, rows,

ferries those who, to some degree, believe

in Hades; JoanM.’s Orpheus queries

Charon, assuming both that Charon knows

and also is one Greek who’ll not deceive

if only because the question wearies,

asking, tasking him, What is Hades like?

◆

Has Charon ever taken there a hike,

thought to strike out on his own past theories?

(The ref’rence to Plato’s ideals has to pose

a series of questions: Can he conceive

Hades perfected? Were that a reprieve?

And, more curious, how his fame arose?)

What’s that cavern hide further up its sleeve?

2.

Leave the leaky boat,

water lapping at its gunnels,

through slaughter’s tunnels;

move to the remote,

relieving it, step ashore

to relive the store

of stories, filling runnels

with milk and honey—or gore—

to make shadows speak,

mouths that Death funnels

beneath hearing, pours the poor

existences heroes eke

out into darkened words so weakly they float

on waves someone somewhere wrote.

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4/24/2019

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Houdini and The Great Farini

Curtain Calls

Each form’s a death trick,

a straitjacket to escape,

surface through that drape—

or drop like a brick

into the dark, chilling stream.

We’ll watch for a thrill:

Walkers on tightropes

above the falls of no hopes

of survival; spill

and it’s over, dream

lost. Surrogate daredevils

on lesser levels;

no poem was ever shot from a cannon.

It’s odd how this art ran on and on …

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7/29– 8/7/2019

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I Say Our God becomes Orpheus

(the echoing voice)

Call me back from hell;

help me hear your clear voice ring

through death’s swell to bring

my stay on earth spill

into another green spring.

Spring me from hate’s traps;

let me never lapse,

slide down that well’s mouth—I’ll cling

to love as the song to sing,

the only good way to be,

so get the hell out of me,

stop its burning sting.

Pulling out what fights us, at length free,

Only in the Lord it shall be said of me …

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5/13/2019

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Memorial Service

It questions me too:

How will I remember him

as our past times dim,

what recall, review,

what come, perhaps, to forget?

Top ten takeaways?

Snapshots’ flash displays?

My life’s deep, abiding debt?

How it could be chance

we met, a match so fitting,

sends my brows knitting;

no one else could ever dance

with either one of us so well, how we grew

slowly, showing the one in us two.

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5/21/2019

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Pursuit

If having a face

grace my morning bed

meant no trace instead

of you, he’d replace

the sweet thoughts due you

that soothe my hot head,

waking me to wed

each day love would woo, …

then I’ll rest that case,

let sleep what were new

to keep my old, true

blessing for home base.

Why strike out? The heart I chase

is yours in each chest I would embrace.

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6/9/2019

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The Homecoming

Long I fell asleep,

keeping count of his short breaths

that lung sown to reap,

to crown many deaths,

though then I had no knowing

of the depths growing

in that shallow draft

threatening to drown my craft.

Now it’s my bay’s waves—small sheep

leaping ashore, breaths flowing

from far-off oceans blowing,

rowing my dreams into sleep—they seep

sweetly through ears, breaking, waking up the dawn

as the lines of new, deep breaths are drawn.

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5/15/2019

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Heavy Cs

You don’t have to be

my hero, but you are, guy,

that and all I try

all the time to see

to guide my way without you

now, learning to fly

solo since love flew

somewhere within and on high.

What could hold you down?

Always something new

drew you ahead; life always grew

green to leaf your crown.

Autumn’s winds darkened; they blew

so hard to free your true—clearer—hue.

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10/1/2018 Chicago

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"Love is