Peter Forberg

I’ve had writer’s block, mostly poetically, as well as some prose. So I’m trying to write poems again. Here are a few I’ve written since arrival. These aren’t done but if I post them online I’ll be forced to come back and keep editing them. Except “dinner time,” I don’t know what’s up with that one.

While You Were Not Looking [refrain]

This is a cyclical poem. I wrote it on the beach.

yet the ocean sings softly, and the wind follows suit; your feet find their footing, and sand shifts in pursuit.

And while you are not looking, it crashes and falls, and though it does not listen, its waves call in withdrawal.

While you are not watching, crabs compile homes, nests from attackers, the birds preying on the world down below.

Still unblinking, the earth turns its head, the waters get higher, and the tide makes the planet its bed. Every shoreline shimmers,

every mountain catches sun, every forest is growing, every songbird has loved, and every river is flowing!

with children in baskets downstream, there are people still here, even if you cannot see that they are living and near.

While you are not listening, the needle is broken, so many conversations slipping between unspoken codes and truths and

the sky looks like rain and somewhere else it is raining, ears pressed, gently, to windowpane, hoping to hear secrets again.

With chosen deafness, you don’t understand that silence is theft: The world does not wane to your want and weft.

Blindness does not block out the stars, quiet does not quiet gently breathing lungs. And numbness is not to forget scars, for as the whole world watches

nothing in life is far apart. Between sunset and sunrise are twenty-four different hearts that lay down to rest, relax, restart.

Let your feet in the sand stay away from the horizon. Find your home in this land, where distance is not presiding.

What follows are the undertows that pull you to ocean’s bed: The world is getting louder with things left unsaid,

I Saw The Stars

I like the idea of the stars being witnesses to our planet. Wrote this on my first plane ride over.

I saw the stars from the plane and the ocean had no reply. The wind went quietly, and the city set itself aside.

I made my epithet the starcatcher live up to the name–forever? Forever then–it’s the same stars that witnessed the planet cooling.

The stars bore witness to me, and I chose when to peak back in. A foxhole window, the explosion is worse within. The ceiling collapses, masks drop–the stars implode.

Do unto others and others will do unto you: learn this message in eye contact. We haven’t broken our trance, but the heavens stare at us still, unblinking.

I saw myself reflected in the sky and felt smaller than fiction, a screen of my faded figure wavering in the window frame.

I saw heaven from Row 35, K. It had no interest in gravity. This is all there is to be said about heaven–little interest.

Untitled

The God of Mutual Exchange is 1000 mortals running, their limbs loose, to the edge of the nearest cliff, knowing they will not fall. They fell and fell and fell, always falling, but they do not fall.

A Blog Post For the Dads

I wanted to know where my Eat Pray Love was.

A book for the dads, but the hot ones only. An Eat Pray Love about late night benders, seedy motels, and extra marital basketball games played on the tarmac of international airports where that nag can’t read you for filth under the combustion of jet engines.

A collection for the dads, but the homebodies only. A Milk and Honey written in all caps about the proximity to death granted by mowing the lawn to preserve you small patch of happiness, about open fire barbecue grease and the delicate flavors lost to the suds of the Champagne of Beers.

A song for the dads, but the adulterers only. A “Before He Cheats” about changing the radio stations back to classic rock on the minivan’s console, about sneaking out to buy baseball mitts for your son who’s expressed no interest in the sport, about insisting that, when silent, you’re “not thinking about anything.”

A movie for the dads, but the gentle giants only. A The Notebook about long car rides with the kids asleep in the back seat and your window down, nine more hours left in the road trip, but for now it’s just you and the stars and the quiet of their breathing.

A poem for the dads, but the napping ones only. A “Morning Song” about that early dawn coffee, that wordless affect who lumbers out of bed to shovel the driveway, wipe clean the cars, and take in the newspaper before the sun has made itself known to the winter landscape.

A painting for the dads but the loving ones only. A “Girl with Earring” for the ones who will always allow for forgiveness and never grant permission, for the ones who will, at moment’s notice, lace up their shoes and respond to the call already on the way to your frantic IHOP gibberish, whose mouths are filled with phrases like “as my father would say” and “it’s just part of being a father” and “but what do I know” and whose heads and hearts know better.

For those dads and those dads only.

The Places I’ve Slept in Senegal

In which I inadvertently rewrite an Elvis Perkins song.

I’m only sleeping, and nothing more, the idle waves lap my floated body back to shore, and the shoulder near is a place to rest my head, as the lone pirogue swims us back to bed.

I’m only sleeping, this much is true, a slightened moon pushes (pulls) my flu, and the lone owl with feathers cold, flies my dreams over the streets of gold.

I’m only sleeping, so let me rest, under palm trees I slow my chest, and with a dusted back up against the wall, my tired frame awaits a locked-out phone call.

I’m only sleeping, my fears subside, a mosquito net princess awning traps me inside, and the hotel fence where we balance frames, lets me slumber, slip, and sneak away.

If It Was Up to Me

In which I intentionally rewrite a Tindersticks song.

If it was up to me   said the trees,   I’d let all life be my leaves,   I’d hold on during heat,   and let it fall before the freeze.

If it was up to me,   said the seas,   I’d bury all secrets in the deep,   I’d let truth lie and scream,   and let it shout where none can see.

If it was up to me,   said the wings,   I’d let lighter be the breeze,   I’d let all life fly straight and free,   and the rain would cleanse belief.

If it was up to me,   up to me,   if the sun could eclipse the sea,   if the dust swallowed everything,   if the birds circled our bodies,   if the wind sang soft (sweet) to me,   if the earth gave out beneath,   if the stars allowed youth to be, I’d let you sleep.

dinner time

i am fish bone,   pretty speak.   the sea ebbs,   talk to me.

i am small things,   movement.   i wish a lot,   the stars agree.

i am being there,   the sight seers.   another dog dies,   heaven freeze.

anecdotes

Missing my father’s sagely advice.

our doctors are dead:   let be the moon;   blood is a renewable resource. labor practitioners in bed:   give thanks to stars;   dowries have run their course. abandoned librarian:   sacrifice sunlight;   knowledge is based on financial reward. we fired out fathers:   grant genies wishes;   genealogy is just another word for “captured!” the children are gods:   let go of your blueprints;   heaven was made by squinting, not light. the king is an unwanted cactus:   don’t be a burden;   form-content mimesis you knew us so well. iTunes is missed by the old generation:   weigh your secrets;   every constitution is stored in player pianos.