The Blue Pacific
poems by
John Stupp
ISBN: 1-59948-055-7, 36pps, $7
***This title was selected for publication as a result of finishing as a runner up in the 2006 MSR Chapbook Contest.***
Author Bio / Comments / Samples
First Cold Night of Autumn
In the mountains
trees practice for winter,
dropping their leaves.
Birds, like thin farmhands
sweep down on rutted back roads,
begging for food.
I’m driving north to Montana
in a ’68 Buick
with a heater that doesn’t work,
past fields that slip away in the mist,
crusted over with the heapage of summer.
Soon the sun will burn
frost smoke clear as ice.
Snow will come as white cloth
bandaging hills with silence.
Trees will be smooth again.Tonight villages
huddle along the road for warmth.
Their half-open gates
rusted cold until next year,
cry out in the night wind—
then they give up and sleep.
Only smoke from a cog-railroad
makes petals in the air over the Rockies,
a flower garden to open somewhere,
after a deepening Christmas.
Retarded Boys in the Shower
At the YMCA
children ripen
on hardwood floors
tramped like summer grass,
where basketballs sleep.
At noon, men
over thirty, and before death,
rattle in the gymnasium,
their pain the only thing
that’s real.
So who could know
one day,
God’s special children
might dance under the shower,
deaf, dumb, strangers to the earth.
Crowding around
their feet make noises on the slippery floor,
the backs of their minds race
across the tile toward daybreak,
the faucet stream pounds on the scalp of dreams.
Small imperfect boys
smile up in the water,
at the tall men
washing themselves with light.
My Death
After hours,
when I celebrate my death,
dancing in my house in the dark—
the world can go to hell
and all the lawyers, politicians and junkies
can hose themselves with machine gun fire on Geraldo,
if they so choose,
and I won’t care.
And I won’t care
if some Old Testament prophet
dressed in women’s underwear
says these are the last times
before the conflagration,
before the apocalypse,
before the drinking jag of the Last Judgment,
and I won’t care
if Jesus
comes down with a flame-thrower
to prune the vineyards
of New York, and Philadelphia,
and Los Angeles,
and I won’t care
if there is a crimson cloud
filled with a bonfire of the world’s vermin,
seen for hundreds of miles in the air,
or if ashes floating skyward
form a never-ending mantra on death’s prayer wheel,
I won’t care.
And I won’t care
if Christ in his hipboots
comes and says my life has been evil,
because he might—
and because I have been a liar and a thief,
and I won’t care
if I am drunk, and roaming
my house in the dark, naked as a corpuscle,
from one beating chamber to another,
like a child,
because no man’s army can stop
my helicopter heart
from hammering the air with harder sounds—
I’ll play a loud chaconne
and dance into the ground.And God will say it is good.
And he will bless me.
And forgive my sins.And I will move downward great distances
into darkness,
where things are simpler.
John Stupp was born in 1949 in Cleveland, Ohio. He was educated at Notre Dame University, The University of British Columbia and Case Western Reserve University. Everything is pretty much a blur until 1979 when he met his wife Bette while he was working as a jazz musician in a nightclub in Pittsburgh. The rest is history. They now live in Sewickley, PA and have two children in college—one at the University of Pittsburgh and one at Parsons School of Design in New York City. His poetry has appeared in The Seattle Review, Chelsea, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, 5AM, The Pennsylvania Review and other regional magazines.