Harvey Schwartz – Page 9 – The Poetry Marathon

Harvey Schwartz
Harvey Schwartz

Harvey Schwartz Statement of Purpose Biography I grew up in a suburban Philadelphia area much like Archie Bunker’s. I was a Jewish kid in a predominantly Catholic neighborhood. I didn’t like Hebrew School, because it separated me from many of my friends. A priest told my friends not to play with me. This and other related events created a paradox. I felt compelled to defend the religion that I didn’t embrace. I tried to disprove the stereotypes that crashed upon me like waves at high tide. Jewish kids aren’t athletic or tough were the only ones I could address and it energized me every time I crashed the boards playing basketball. But it also taught me that the world didn’t owe me success. My love of sports was also a saving grace from the boring life that seemed preordained. I had to study science, which I hated, in order to get into a pre-dental program in college. By then I might have come to my senses sans the carrot of a Vietnam War draft exemption. I bit hard. Going to Woodstock changed me. And a year later my draft lottery number was high enough to free me. But being a slow learner, I thought I’d give dental school a try, since I’d already been accepted. I didn’t last a quarter. I spontaneously quit. Then I joined a hippy commune, which segued into a nine thousand mile hitch hiking adventure that crossed Canada and included Alaska, Oregon and California. I never returned to live in the east. And many hitching adventures followed. In 1973 I returned to college for teacher training and became a tutor/councilor for Lummi Indian kids in Bellingham, WA. Then I taught in a school run by an internationally known (but under the radar locally) psychic, on Orcas Island, WA. This was followed by a one year stint teaching fifth grade in a tiny town on the Yakama Indian Reservation, where I learned more than I taught. Next was a vision quest of sorts back to Orcas Island. I pitched a tipi with the intention of staying there until I knew my next step. I happened upon a chiropractic office and the subsequent chain of events led to a twenty five year career as a chiropractor. My life and practice were featured in a cover story of Chiropractic Economics in 2003. My wife Colleen was doing a vision quest of her own on neighboring San Juan Island during mine on Orcas. We were married on Leap Year Day in 1976. Colleen and our children Jerome and Devan are all accomplished writers. I retired in 2004 and the next years were focused on travel, my garden, and being part of an Improv group. In 2010 I went to hear a lecture at Western Washington University on the wrong day. I somehow came home enrolled in two creative writing classes. I was quickly hooked. I appreciate the exceptional opportunity writing affords me to reflect and write about what I’ve experienced and learned. It’s a lot like Improv, but without the speed factor. Coaching from professors helps me tell a better story and classmate feedback is invaluable. I still enjoy the luxury of frequent and widespread travel while the garden that I’m trying to simplify seems to keep getting bigger. Randomness, dilemmas, paradoxes, and peripheral vision are a big part of my writing palette. My goal is to paint a picture that is insightful, enjoyable, and artistic.

I Wonder Where?

I wonder where

it is

I can go to see the

people I hear wailing?

Being of different cultures veils them from me like a wall.

They may think I don’t care for

them at all.

But the

hearts in us are our mothers.

And there are many who

are forced, who gave

away what they could not

and don’t ever pretend it was freely.

Not just I.

Many think we did

what we could but really did not.

And search our country’s past to find

what is a fountain pen blot that

wrote our history books. That which has been anointed

to us as truth. And I cannot find hope in such a spot.

Original Poem:

Mother’s Day Mourning

Colleen Schwartz 1997

Inside Out

I sit here in prison.

Alone.

Johnny Cash playin’.

He’s right.

Sound of trains

tortures me.

It just took a few seconds.

It’s been twenty-three years.

I don’t think about it no more.

Because it also tortures me.

I felt indestructible.

A hot head got me cold time.

No one seems to care.

My so-called buddies used to come by.

Couple of them has been in and out of here.

But mostly it’s just me.

How can one drunken moment define

who I am for the rest of my life?

Well, I’ve got a surprise for you.

Yeah, you.

You’re in prison too.

Before you came here

you were able to fly on some astral plane.

The angels I found told me all about it.

Now you’re stuck in a cell like me.

And I don’t feel so bad.

Fading

My sister’s move reminds me of

flowers starting to fade.

I ponder permanence.

Proud bristling thistle

aren’t so bright or so sharp.

My dancing,

drifting meadow of mallow

starts to fall over.

I tie some up. It will

return to the ground.

Ominous smoke drifts

from fires far away.

Such a thief can

steal summer after

such a long wait.

Government’s

kettle of lies

boils progress

and leaves me just hope.

While my sister picks

a retirement center.

Park Lane East

Steve called me sophomore year in college and asked if I wanted to lifeguard with him the coming summer even though I had no training. Soon after I was shooshing Timmy as he said, “He’s not Steve,” to the state inspector who was saying, “The pH is excellent Steve, you’re doing a great job!”

I was known to Timmy and the other kids as Boss Kahuna and once in a while wore the black top hat that was inexplicably on the lifeguard stand one morning when I opened up. And there were days when Bob invited me to his and Saundra’s apartment to comingle with the smells of incense and float amidst the East Indian quilts adorning the walls and ceilings. I went through the rabbit hole and back to the pool and could somehow keep my focus. I was flying on the astral plane while swimming in the glorified bathtub known as the Park Lane East pool.

Only once in three years did anyone need to be saved. And just about when my mouth opened in notice that Danny had gone down and not come up, a nearby adult grabbed him automatically and lifted him up.

I remember Clyde who was a balding forty and seemed to be the only one that noticed my visits to a teacher’s apartment who was about ten years older than me. I nonchalantly returned and

sidestepped his questions just like I had learned to strategize in sports. “Vicky’s adding fabric to a pair of Levi’s – turning them to bellbottoms,” I told him (which was true).

And I also learned that lies can come back to bite you when I made up a whopper about an uncle having a heart attack in Connecticut and having to go there from Philly to run his business while he recuperated…when I was really going to Woodstock. And how improbably was it when I became a cabana boy in the Borsht Belt after Woodstock, a job gotten for me by Steve’s twin brother Alan, that someone from Park Lane East would go there on vacation and tell my boss?

I was both attracted and repelled by the hippie movement but Woodstock nudged me to join up. The next thing I know I was dropping out of dental school and joining a hippie commune, which then propelled me to hitchhike west. And I’m still here. So even though a lie began a chain reaction that has defined the rest of my life…I sure make it a point to tell the truth.

When I Can See Inside of Me

Foggy morning clarity

seems therapy of prosperity,

pales and runs away to flee

when I can see inside of me.

But truth be told I only see

that which is in front of me

as if it’s real and tries to be

foggy morning clarity.

When I can see inside of me

I push away this vulgarity

cut all the trees like forestry

within my melody of irony.

Seems therapy of prosperity

is a hidden form of tyranny

that comes bereft of warranty

when I can see inside of me.

Eternity Now

I am lost in a desert

of things.

Think that these

things matter.

Occasionally

I remember.

I don’t live here.

I am looking at a reflection

of a reflection of a reflection…

Because the real me

is far from here.

Tapping his feet to an LP.

Scoffing at cassettes

and later CD’s that

morph into digital

sound on their way to

who knows what.

He sees the obvious.

Nothing changes.

And he laughs at

the smoke screen

that I think is

permanent.

In darkness there is a neon light saying

ETERNITY NOW, but he knows

come sunrise it will be battered

by bright blaring blasts of light

that cover creation in a clarity

that seems so real.

Drifting

I listened to Leonard Cohen and Buffy St. Marie.

They spoke to me in unity.

Philadelphia. 1971.

I was adrift like

the Alaska Ferry

I now see in

what would be

blue sea and sky

now gray as if

hope is paralyzed.

Smoke from fires

far away, has drifted here.

I was soon to drift away.

Dave said, “Why haven’t you

shared these albums with us?”

As if I was hiding them.

As if I knew more than a calling.

As if I knew where I would go.

All that I own is such naivety

that I look for answers in songs

and boats and eagles.

All I could do was shrug my

shoulders to Dave because

it would be presumptuous

to think I am more than a

spec that listens to the mysterious

yearnings that sometimes

pull on me.

Earthen Fantasy

I walk Bellingham’s Boardwalk frequently

and only once felt fear.

Winter gust so strong

I brace, prepare to grab

a railing or try to fall.

What is permanence?

I think we are

more than specs

twirling in space

on an earthen globe

whirling with the sound

of our dancing planetary partners.

Our center, a ball of flames

warms us to the narrow frequency

of what we call life but would

cremate hope if we got too close.

Bellingham Bay beckons

me to its grey green void

with dark murky innards that

foam with a lust its waves

cannot hide.

A gust, invisible guest

growls and roars.

Yet I am surprised when it

pushes me with such force

that just for a moment I lose

faith in gravity.

And when it’s gone

I quickly forgot

that all that I know

is an earthen fantasy.

Today

Three guys and three women from Potlatch asked permission before using the community lawn in front of our cabin on Lake Coeur d’Alene. Bud light and laughs. They were loud last night till after midnight while I slept under the stars, excited to see the Perseid shower from a sky that defines the word dark.

The green jeep next door has a dent in the side and just over fifty thousand miles. They got it from a retired guy for a song. Sits parked under a canopy of cottonwoods that sprouted up on both sides of a longhouse.

Old Glory flies from our cabin, which stirs some feelings of bygone days when the reflection of the moon on the lake lights it up some nights. But it also reminds me of the coming election and how most of these folks vote.

Justin says he’s 27, worked in a mine in Nevada for a while. Now he’s an appraiser in his small town and it took him a while to figure out that he might be a little unpopular for raising people’s taxes.

Jet skis and boats, tonight’s first glass of wine. I had to think about it before jumping in today, water’s maybe 62. And all day I have been the scribe, writing a poem an hour and trying to take it all in.

Seeing You

You look past me like I ain’t here and maybe I ain’t.

Sometimes I wonder if there’s anything I can do to make you look at me, but you wouldn’t like it if I tried. It feels like you’re turning the dials on a radio that doesn’t stop on my station.

I used to try to look in your eyes. I know you’re in there. But you don’t see me, so I guess I stopped tryin’. I tried smilin’ a few times, but you always thought I wanted somethin’ and I guess you were right.

I didn’t ask them to blow off my legs over in Iraq. I was a strong kid from Kettle Falls. Felt indestructible. That was a long time ago. But I knew if I fell down that you’d help me up. Guess I was wrong.

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