Life-Saving Drill

In empty waves the lifeguards drill

The entering with craft.   Between them
A vessel white as surf and blind,
Dumbly buoyant as they race beside.

Muscle of youth weakly points the hull

Into the green biceps of the wave;
Then the white chaos of its crash
Drives them back, the girl and the boy.

Once again, as lowering sun makes gold

Of them, her lunge aboard will tip
The prow above a wave.  A clack
Of oars, another running heave,

And he is on with her, but she falls out.

His hand outstretched lifts her into him.
The dumb boat only dances back
To shore.  They clamber out and haul it round.

Again they run their golden dash

And ply the waves.  Both aboard,
They then commence to rowing.
This summer their youth is what they save.

They reach and pull in tandem.  Far

Away they wait and turn for shore.
Next summer they will be the same;
The boat alone will age.

John Sevcik

New Found Land

To Arcadia, to Giverny,
Fontainebleau, or Arles;
To Brittany, or Fiji,
The Marquesas, or Morocco;
To Maine, the Hudson, or Cape Cod,
Truro or the Hamptons call . . .
Perhaps to Mexico,
Columbia, or Yosemite,
To the distant-most outlandish
Place, keep a bowl of soup,
A glass of wine, a Key West
Of the heart and mind,
Where art can grow on half
The cost, and half again,
Or less than that.
Or better still a newfound land,
A sandbar off Belize
Or Cannes, to while away, to paint,
To plan, the art utopia
No one can achieve in life,
But hanging dreams of it export
The beauty to which all resort.

John Sevcik

Blame the Sun: an Ode

Oh, Sun, you fickle star,
Not even star, but coin of gold-shine,
Now near, now far,
A season-maker as you climb the sky,
Or drop Dow-Jones-like
Into your depression.
What’s with you, Sun?
Van Gogh and you:
Who else likes to stare
So wildly at the world?
Give me an intensity break.
Soft, and pray you:
Meditate and find
The moderate path.
Not everyone has air conditioning,
Or heat when you’re
Philandering at night.
Where’s your mom
In all of this?
I mean, God –
Who do you think
You are?

John Sevcik

There Is News of the World to Tell

Kind Voices in Evening Light

January 6, 52°, evening in my front yard garden
Looks down the hill of Wingohocking Terrace,

A good place to plant terrace,

According to its native pre-Columbian namers,
And I am hoeing a row for winter arugula, the ground soft
And dark, under the waning blue glow of the sky, in the
Shadow of a rising waxing gibbous, when up the hill
Climb two figures, one in the roadway, one on our sidewalk,
Who calls “Hello, John” in a kind voice – my neighbor Olivia,
A young grandmother, who leans over the fence and asks
Whether I am turning the soil over to help it fallow,
And I explain my purpose, and she goes in like starlight
Passing by through trees as one passes,
And after a while, as I dig, and sprinkle out the tiny seeds
From husk envelopes that look like tiny, crisp, pale bananas,
I hear “Hey, John” from the downhill side, closer, as Nate, Jr.,
Rises up his steps across his yard to home, even talking on
A cell phone, and these kind voices that know my name,
Even in the shade of a warm, winter evening, and whose names
I can feel as well in that situational way,
In that sensing of the voice and its timbre,
And the kindness of it neighbor to my heart. Then
I go out back and cry at the moon’s sweet light, and how
It reminds me also of my old mother’s hair, as did
The bunch of Queen Anne’s lace that leaned over our table
And sat with us for a few meals after she died, and which I
Stroked as kindly as her hair, thinking it was her
In another form, the form of soft soul kindness, as are these,
My neighbors, still with me.

John Sevcik


Happy Birthday Morning

There is news of the world to tell, at 6:00 a.m.,
After wind has lashed the rain against the house for hours
And the moon looks out at last through torn clouds,
The silence raising me from sleep alongside you,
To find why this silence, why the stillness of the dark?
I enter your studio and watch at the windows
How street lights pour their apricot hue
On your unfinished art,
And the finished pieces,
And how blue the moonlit clouds are above,
And how yellow the all-night living room lamp is at Karma’s,
When one car nudges darkly down the road,
Looking for a parking space,
Backs up the hill with reverse lights gleaming. Then a train
Passes though the yard space next to Mr. Boyd’s,
Gleaming green windows like the frequency of an oarfish,
Then slows on the line of Wingohocking Station to a rest.
The black auto tries another impossible space, comes to rest
Tight next to the parked cars below Carina’s.
Its amber emergency lights begin a silent alarm,
Be careful, be careful, don’t hit us,
And a figure unfolds from the door,
Circles behind the trunk, opens the back door, raises
Something invisible and climbs the stairs
Toward a porch light colder than the moon,
Cold as a refrigerator light, and it appears
To be a mother delivering her child in a blanket,
To a nanny, or relative,
In the midst of sleep, while the car waits warning, warning,
In the lonely, silent street.
The high moon looks down from the heavens.
The quiet street waits with the flashing car. The sky
Moans a low note of wind somewhere just above our roofs,
But careful not to ruffle a hair in the street,
Nor wake rudely a little person left
and looked back toward, as the mother
Descends to the waiting car, turns,
And waves goodbye to someone
In the window or door, in the hesitating guise of someone
Sweetly missing already the one borne into the world,
Before driving on. The car calms its lights, just once
Shining red at the corner, like two partners, two hearts.

John Sevcik

The solidarity of freedom

In Chinatown, once Little Italy,
Until Marco Polo brought all things foreign
To New York City, I had on its periphery,
Say, Lower Anatolia, an unfurnished
Apartment share with some other editors, actors, and writers,
Not quite a cold-water flat, just a refrigerator (empty)
And a mattress I dragged in off the street
And a pillow I bought and carried across the Village
In winter or something cold like that
And barren – well, the sun wasn’t near.
There were roaches that ran on the lips,
Wide-awake noticing of hurried shapes
Darting, horrid self-slapping, un-sleep.
Follow that without dawn like February,
Cloudy and dark like Dr. Zhivago
During the Revolution, and no palace
Or snow in sunlight, but I was
Hungry and cold and found
A hovel of a Chinese restaurant:
One small room filled with men
In Red Chinese uniforms, slate gray,
Cold, huddling round the few
Connected tables in Amish seating,
In other words, arranged regardless of
Group, one group, all of us having soup.
I settled into one bench, accepted
Without glance or comment, between
Small men whose bodies held their
Warmth on either side to me, and I
To them, and as I hunched closer to the
Leveling table we shared, I felt myself
Resorting to that Peasant memory my father
Transmitted into me from long ago in Europe,
Even as I ate with hurried relish
In the steam of our mingling breath,
It felt like some painting of suffering,
Though all around me there was more
Of it than mine, and more comfort
Because we were all there was of it, together.
For this I thank all of China,
Marco Polo, and the Revolution,
Including mine, in my green Army coat,
And my father, who climbed
From scholarship to engineer, then married
My mother, a landowner and landowner’s daughter,
Then dispossessed by Communists
As these lunch companions in my circle
Perhaps lost their own farm, or freedom,
To the want of history and its resentments.

John Sevcik

Greed Suite

This cycle of poems looks at greed from a number of sides. Does it exist? Has it been seen? Where is it?

The Statue of Greed

A statue of greed, if it could be made,
Might be of a fisherman, when the fish are
Biting, after the second and third have come in,
Or the seventh is on the line.

It could be of the fisherman at the pier,
Looking for takers, the village that might redeem
His insane catch as an act of Providence.

A statue of greed would have a human face
Of glee, the boy who has scored a hat-trick,
The girl with three boyfriends, or just the old
Man with three gloves, none of which match.

John Sevcik

What is Beyond Greed?

If greed is an addiction, what is success?
After success comes greed. Or come before?
Is the present-day economic system founded on addiction, conformity, or the sense of insurance? Assurance? Perhaps all. Fictions function as conduits for money. Write your business plan. If it makes a movie, all the better. Numbers don’t lie.
The numb move en masse. Greed is another’s problem, not mine.
There is a vortex in the sun. Other stars, too.
Stars earn more than their keep. In the keep of their un-use.
I would like to buy and sell, what to sell? Sell-out.
The position of everything is worth, even not recognized.
How is this perception of recognition? How is it to open
its eyes? Nothing can shock, if only a movie.
We are standing in front of the television.
Both sides. The mirror is wide-screen, high definition.
Nothing of truth seems to matter with those tattoos on the screen,
tattoos on the skin, the Dow Jones, the Davy Jones, the Jones’n.
Low-high, high-low. To the woodshed we go.
Something doesn’t believe we are in this jam.
Winning is forward to fail. Flail if you must.
Somebody serve the few. Everybody. Make yourselves useless.
Scurry out of the way. The giant is near and the mouse must away.
Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, heigh-away.

John Sevcik

Greed:

Psychotic God of gold abound with me,
Inspire me to plant my Lobby fees
Behind the doors of power in the vestibules of war;
High five hundred billion dollars overtime my palms;
Cross me with the crucifix of no reform;
Believe in me and not the others who must pay;
By death and killing mutilate their souls;
By poverty arrange their apathy and vote-less No.
I am for the rush of everything turning into my
Possession, into me, replacing me,
Into the vacuum of the universe blown up
So long ago and lonely and so filled with dark
It absorbs the lightness of absurdity and woe.

John Sevcik

Mendicant Blues:

Emolumental truths align against me, envious
And disturbing as I’m driven, in my window-tinted car,
My jet of private overflight, my private stateroom,
And my private glee. No one to associate with,
Except to scorn from my own height of heights.
Buddha of the broken marriage, Buddha deadbeat-dad,
I pray you be the Buddha of banking nirvana.
Fiscally sound, middle-brow mendicant-lite popularizer
Of enlightenment and compassion: Feel sorry for me,
Until I begin to feel it, too, and then in a universalizing
Instant, feel the same for every one of you. Instead of greed,
I read the truth of each of you, needing more than me,
Needing while I while away my time at the mill of money
You can’t have. Oh, how I feel above the common need.
Needing only to feel and be felt about, I need community
Of spirit, and not only property. How much does compassion cost?
“Everything they own,” the Buddha whispers in my ear.
“And if they own nothing, it is free.”
Freedom is in the spending of everything,
The granting of everything, the everything of life.
I have made the masses free. I am the robber Buddha.
I am their enlightenment from greed.

John Sevcik

The Beggar’s Sonata:

If you support me in my 501(c)3 non-profit tax bracket,
And I come on-air to interrupt your favorite underwritten shows,
Can’t you see compassion in my eyes for you alone?
I am executive so as not to offend you with rags. Square
In the square of public opinion. Please let me have pennies,
Or if you want this mug, and tote-bag, and a handsome calendar,
AND a DVD of this show, all for 29.95, you can help underwrite
With your compassion my compassion, and all I care about is you,
Even though I again make a nice six-figure salary, it is begging
That is earning, all of us begging and earning. This is the truth,
Whomsoever we serve the opportunity for compassionate giving.

John Sevcik

And So, What Is Greed, After All?

When we die we are rich and then poor, or is it
Poor and then rich? When we are no more, we can’t take it
With us, yet some did, in their pyramids of wealth, and yet,
Power stayed behind on earth and went to others, so what is
Wealth, or the feeling of greed that has it, or wants it, or goads
One to get it? Over and out. Candles at the dinner table go out
Once the meal is feasted in their golden light. Away
It goes and what is left behind is grief – before or because of,
It doesn’t matter. Grief is neurotic that way, as crying at weddings
Shows the grief of waiting, or losing, or mistaken choices, or what?
Back to the story of greed and why it forgets to become immortal.
It is because anyone paying attention to it will probably not have
A better idea for anything else. It keeps one busy with nothing that lasts.
The telephone wasn’t discovered for greed, nor the wheel, nor the car,
Though fortunes were certainly made at some point, by someone.
Greed, simply put, is boring.

John Sevcik

Imagination

Envy imagines greed.
Greed imagines envy.
Together they tie the world in knots of injustice.
This injustice is both real and imagined.
Thinking a free thought, you can escape it,
Even invent your place in the sun.
May you have good visions.

John Sevcik

Thanks to a past art teacher

This is a poem about an old instructor of ours at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

He was a remarkable and wonderful painter. Mr. Remenick often comes up in conversations among his past students. We remember his humanity and teaching with fondness.

And Then, Seymour Remenick

And then he wandered through the Louvre
Putting out a cigarette in Paul DuSold’s studio
And then lighting another, and then remembering
Walking up to a Rembrandt and wanting to know
How the other did it; how did he make those paintings
Like pure feelings and humanity fused?
And then he had also gone to the Academie
Des Beaux-Arts on the GI Bill
Right after his unit’s demobilization in Europe,
And then he told me in my studio
Of how he wouldn’t go to classes, only walk
In Paris in Spring and in Summer and Autumn
And in the Louvre, and then he would inhale
As he did then, to pull life into him,
Its very life and spirit, he would intoxicate
Himself and need a cigarette, and then
He would light another. We weighed crits
By the empty shells of Lucky Strikes
He left in a row, from the bandolier of pleasure,
And then Paul thought of Seymour in an American uniform
Getting girls in Paris, and I didn’t think so,
And then I said he was one of the soldiers
Eisenhower sent through Birkenwald or Auschwitz
To witness and remember, and then Seymour
Only told most of us of living, and then living,
And then painting the living of that time he paints
And notices, with the rapture of the world of the living,
Living even more, perhaps, for those refused their lives.

John Sevcik