July 2, 2005

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  ©1971 Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri

  
  

  I began the year writing a comic “epic” about friendship. At the end of the year (I turned 18) I’d written about nearly every emotion I felt. I made it a practice to sit down and churn out poem after poem. Now as I look back upon my hopes and fears after living a little life, I find many poems very nearly prophetic. In “Depression IV” I wrote, “I have felt all the feelings without living all the life.” It was true. Even now I find I only repeat my themes from this period. I think I shall never be as productive as I was in 1971- even before I entered life from the “sanctity of highschool.”
  MFN from the 1980 introduction

  
  

  Michael F. Nyiri
  poet

  
  

  Meditations IV

  If we were all bundled together
  
  And we were real close
  
  For just one hour
  
  Everybody could get to know
  
  A little bit more about
  
  Themselves
  
  With small snatches of conversation
  
  The mass would come to
  
  Be able to understand
  
  Each other
  But when the door is
  
  Opened isn’t it a shame
  
  That we will all forget
  
  We were together
  
  For that hour

  Trepidation 

  
  Taking off for the land of the free
  Leaving your worries behind you
  There’s a time in our lives
  When nothing seems to go right
  And you need to have someone to find you.
  
  Learning about the many people
  Listening to what they say
  Waiting every moment
  For the right thing to happen
  And you never get to go your own way.
  
  Sitting here alone
  With nothing on my face
  And everything in my mind
  Wondering, cogitating
  Feeling, contemplating
  What’s left for me to find.
  
  We’re all ourselves
  We can’t be anything else
  We run into disappointment 
  And trouble
  And we’ve got to pull through
  That’s the only thing we can do
  We will abolish the tears, 
  Burst the bubble.

  Untitled 

  Hundreds of people were passing through a door
  Though they didn’t know where it led,
  And I asked one of them why they marched
  But he only shook his head
  He walked right on through the curious door
  And he acted as if he were dead,
  His eyes were following the floor
  He seemed like he took the right stead.

  
  More and more people were passing through the door
  And into an unknown land,
  I watched without believing what made them march
  As a passer extended his hand
  I laughed as he walked through the curious door
  Along with his curious band,
  They were stupified to the very core
  And I continued to stand.

  
  What is this mad, crazy group
  I asked,
  With fervor and gusto and zeal
  Why are they marching like zombies
  I asked,
  But I couldn’t hear a squeal.

  
  And I watched too long
  At the massive crowd
  I just had to see why
  They went through that door!
  It was tearing me up
  I was going insane!
  I had to know why
  Why 
  Why 
  So I joined at the end of the line. 
  

  Moving Day 

  Here’s a box, a cardboard box
  
  Filled with shirts, and pants and socks
  
  Here’s the house, locked up with locks
  
  Bitter time, it’s history mocks
  
  The grass is brown, no children play
  
  The trucks are here; it’s moving day
  
  Pile the boxes in the trucks
  
  Ones with toys and old stuffed ducks
  
  Neighbors wishing stale good lucks
  
  Glimpse the house, as go the trucks]
  
  We all go now, we cannot stay
  
  The trucks are gone, it’s moving day
  All of us will hit the road
  
  Say goodbye to the old abode
  
  Soon we’ll stop, unpack our load
  
  A long way off’s a new abode
  
  Through paradoxical elation, you’ll find dismay
  
  Look to Mother’s face on moving day

  
  

   

  
  

  Lament

  It had been a long time since he’d been in Pasadena.
  
  A long time since he had seen the Rose Parade.
  
  A long time since he’d managed to beat the stoplights
  
  on Colorado Boulevard.
  
  A long time since he’d been to a performance at the Ice House.
  
  Now as he stood on the corner looking over at P.C.C. he thought
  
  about the days when he used to attend classes there.
  
  He thought about all the friends he used to have and the times
  
  he used to have and the classes,
  
  And parties over at Fred’s and Issac’s, and.
  
  Of course the people weren’t all hippies then as they’re called
  
  by some nowadays.
  
  It had been eons since he had walked down Colorado; years since
  
  he’d been in one of the little shops.
  
  Of course now he would have long hair too if he’s have had the
  
  chance over the last four years to be in the U.S. intead of
  
  some unknown thatch-hut complex in Viet-Nam.
  
  He sighed a giant sigh of relief as his thoughts brought back
  
  the Pasadena of his boyhood.
  
  And he sighed because he was able to see the city now.
  
  How many times had he taken his girl up to the hills up back
  
  of the city?
  
  How many times had he zoomed along the old freeway to L.A. on
  
  hot summer mornings.
  
  He wondered why he ever took the wrong freeway out of L.A. once.
  
  The freeway past San Bernadino.
  
  The freeway that led straight to hell.
  
  After he found that the girl he thought he loved wasn’t in
  
  Nevada at all.
  
  She said she’d be there,
  
  And if he ever changed his mind he could find her.
  
  He changed his mind and quit school right in the middle of his
  
  second year and decided to find her and marry her.
  
  She hadn’t waited for him.
  
  So the road took him to Indiana where he sold his car in order
  
  to eat and sleep.
  
  And he got a job in a two-bit town sweeping out an apartment
  
  building where he got an apartment in the back with ten percent off.
  
  After a year of nothing but resentment for the state he wrote
  
  to a friend in Vermont.
  
  A friend whom he hadn’t seen since the guy left home when they
  
  were college freshmen and the guy said “Be sure to write.”
  
  He wrote now.
  
  He took a bus up to Vermont and laid a cot down in his friend’s
  
  bedroom and his friend was too much of a friend to kick him out
  
  after he proved he was too much of a burden.
  
  A few months later he realized what he was doing bumming off
  
  a guy he’s really cared nothing about so he hitchhiked to the
  
  great state of New York.
  
  In New York he hardly had enough money for food and a flophouse
  
  and he got hard up for a girl because he hadn’t had any since
  
  Vermont.
  
  For another few long, dragging months he suffered.
  
  He saved up money for a whore but she took his wallet and he gave up.
  
  Pasadena was a long way off.
  
  The next trip was on a plane back to California and a boat trip
  
  to the Far East only the plane and boat were free because they
  
  had ‘U.S. Army’ painted on the side.
  
  He thought his pay would get up enough to let him live in peace
  
  at the end of the war but what he didn’t figure was that only
  
  three weeks into action he and two other guys would intercept
  
  a Cong patrol.
  
  And they threw him into a little room an tortured him and back
  
  in the states the Red Cross made a little silver bracelet with
  
  his name on it and some girl in Michigan or Florida or California
  
  wore it on her wrist.
  
  But he didn’t much care about that because he didn’t know about
  
  it only when a new guy came into camp who did know.
  
  And last week Barney came in.
  
  Barney is a young guy 18 who joined the Army when he was 17
  
  because his dad died of machine gun fire in Nam last year.
  
  And Barney came from Pasadena too and he told the guys everything
  
  about how it had changed and Barney even went to P.C.C. for a
  
  semester and he described the city in detail.
  
  Barney wasn’t too acquainted with POW camps.
  
  Barney died the second week.
  
  And he thought he had known Barney.
  
  Wasn’t he the kid who lived down the street in one of those
  
  big old houses,
  
  Or was he the little boy on the red bicycle who delivered
  
  papers?
  
  He thought about Barney and Pasadena and the old freeway and
  
  about standing on the corner across from City College looking
  
  at the kids..
  
  And he sighed.
  
  And then one of the slant-eyed midgets with his terrible
  
  weapons and voice came in with more misery.
  
  Yes, it had been a long time since he had been in Pasadena,
  
  And he prayed to anyone that he could be there now.
  
  

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