Poems by John Repp

She Will Always

She will always need to be adored Gail says about Mark’s—no.
No label or name because none do justice to the one

Mark was required to adore & could not. No!
Causation does not apply. Mark did strain to bind

her to him the way her adoration pried—prayed
from him desiccated selves to reveal a self flickering 

atop a pyre of cold fire, yet he could not draw 
from any of the myriad wells she yanked them to

in the dead heat of how many ridiculous summers?
The Myth of Mark makes Mark & Gail chuckle 

as he pours them each another coffee. The galvanized bucket 
of love she says, lifting the delicate cup to her lips. The dutiful

quenching of thirst he says, resting his on the saucer, Paris 
(what are the chances?) belling & sputtering everywhere 

around the iron table that may yet anchor the afternoon.

The Meeting

is a forty-year nightmare.
Like Po Chü-i, I want 

to “stay close 
to things themselves,”

but nothing exists here.
That is, Nothing exists here.

What to do (or not do)?
Po & the other

Chinese bureaucrats we’ll read
till the planet’s a cinder

let go, or so their poems claim
in far fewer words than this.


Now to test (as we must
in the “West”) the hypothesis:

the proposal, the innuendo, 
the sneer, the memo,

the exemplum, the tantrum,
the threat, the joke, 

the insult, the retort,
the sigh, the rubric,

the snicker, the report,
the motion to convene

& the motion to adjourn—
each the dharma, each nirvana,

each hell, but I sit here still,
both hands fists, silence

or speech: no difference.

Self-Portrait in His 58^th Year

Almost always it is the fear of being ourselves
that brings us to the mirror.
                        
                                                   — Antonio Porchia

Battering-ram forehead & tiny scars.
Hair everywhere but the head. I’m nothing

but a stranger in this world sang the zygote 
lodged inside the ferocious stranger

who heard the same song lifelong,
alien this alien gazing into the glass

has long outlived & given up outgrowing.
Well, sometimes. Eyes the color

of weak coffee (or strong oolong), 
orbs a novelist might call kind 

or wounded or wary, on occasion 
effervescent or molten, oh yes. 

Five years ago, the face became 
the father’s face & daily becomes 

more so, though the father has achieved 
a face alien & almost final. 

This begs the Buddhist question, 
so yes, I’ve seen the face “I”

wore before birth & seen
the mountains dance & spent 

years eye-deep in the shit 
& fire of the hell-realms. 

Even I, a mired & rank cinder, 
think Oh please! when suffering 

howls its mundane song.
Blessed blessed blessed I am sings the man

who can’t be other than offhand,
starving & sated & always at the end.

John Repp is a poet, fiction writer, folk photographer, and digital collagist living in Erie, Pennsylvania. His website can be found at johnreppwriter.com.

Poems by John Repp

She Will Always

The Meeting

Self-Portrait in His 58th Year

Self-Portrait in His 58^th Year