Steve De France MFA has traveled widely in the United States. On more than one occasion he hitch-hiked across America. He rode rails on freight trains, worked as a laborer with pick up gangs in Arizona, dug swimming pools in Texas, did 33 days in the Pecos city jail as a vagarant, fought bulls in Mexico, and dove for salvage off a small island on the coast of Mazatlan. His poetry has been published in most of the English speaking countries of the world. Recently his work can be seen in The Evergreen Review, The Wallace Stevens Journal, The Sun, Rattle, Why Vandalism, as well as others. He has won writing awards in England and in the United States. And recently was nominated for the 2009 Pushcart Prize. He continues to write poetry, plays, essays & short stories.
Three Poems (December 20, 2010. Issue 23.)
Nerve
Somebody’s father, someone’s husband
someone’s lover-someone not unlike you & me
tilts his body over the 105 overpass
& wants to splash himself on the Harbor Freeway.
Why is he here? Unpaid bills, unrequited love?
The sight of humans withering & dying?
Disease?
Fear of mortality & dust?
Living life on only raw nerve?
Perched now on the ledge he sways like
a hawk tilting in a shifting wind---uncertain.
Down in the tangle of traffic
We stare up at you
Helicopters churn like flies over garbage
Ambulances shriek and rush forward
Most of us just want to get down the freeway
We don’t want to care--
Other people are paid to care.
We pay the STATE to care
for sick cases like yours.
We underpay immigrants to care
for the old & the sick & all the mad.
We don’t have time to care--we are far too nervous
& just want to get down the LA. Freeway.
Sleepless & sweating---dreaming an L.A. dream.
Some of us think of taking the same shortcut
until we confront the jump, or the darkness
the pill, or the barrel, or cringe from the razor
& find we haven’t any real nerve at all.
I turn off the freeway
Horns honk below
Men wipe sweat from necks
People turn their eyes
Not toward God
Not toward heaven
But toward a tiny figure
as it hurdles down like a stone thrown.
Homeless Poems
The postman dropped Night Thoughts off,
I sat him down saying---”it’s about time
we had a man-to-poem talk.”
“You are going to have to do something
to earn your keep around here.
Four times I’ve sent you out
& four times---editors have sent you back
rejected, unwanted, unneeded, unappreciated!”
“I’m an artist, I’m a genius
so all of you can go to hell.”
“We need to talk this over,” I said
“Kiss my ass!
I’m out of here...you peasant.”
The door slammed.
A lone figure stood at a signal light
I rushed over discovering
another of my rejected poems.
A sign hung around his neck saying;
“I’m a Vietnam vet... God bless”.
“You were never in Vietnam” I said.
He gave me the finger.
That really hurt.
Moving down the boulevard,
I saw another poem of mine
laying in the gutter drunk.
I helped her up & leaned her against a tree.
“What’s happened to you?”
She stared sullenly at me,
“See the broken poems across the street?”
“Yes,” I mumbled.
“They are there because of you.”
“Damn,” I said, “damn,
what could I have done”?
“Well you could of written better!
It’s because of poets like you
we are trapped here---in this poet’s purgatory.”
“I didn’t know”
“Ignorance of poem abuse is no excuse” she said,
spitting two buck chuck in my ear.
Something Is Happening----Isn't It Mr. Jones . . .
Things are happening to Mr. Trueheart Jones,
yesterday his neighbor, Amin, reported him to the State
for watering his victory garden two days in a row.
This week he traded his 57 Mercedes coupe in
under the new junker redemption program & received
a $4,500 credit on a light, tight Fiat-green driving machine.
His structural analysis company was moved to China.
The new job Tsar ordered him on a permanent leave of absence.
Fluent in Mandarin, a Chinese graduate of MIT took his place.
Since he was unable to make the $5,000 monthly mortgage,
his 700,000 dollar house crashed and was valued at $250,000.
Mr. Trueheart Jones had no choice but to go bankrupt.
He is assigned by the judicial Court Tsar to work for the State.
There he collects leaves from all State parks & is designing a
smokeless leaf furnace to drive the turbines of the State windmills.
At his State mandatory medical examination it is discovered
he has cancer of the liver---the State medical transplant Tsar
determines as a leaf collector he does not qualify for a transplant.
The State confiscated his Fiat & his other assets
to pay for his permanent assignment to the
State Hospice for the indigent---where every Sat. afternoon
in good weather---his wheelchair is rolled out
to a spot above the Speedway---
where Mr. Jones is allowed to drool under the sun.
Table of Contents
Two Poems (April 20, 2010. Issue 16.)
Man in the Moon
I bump into a man who has
only a mouth in the middle of his face.
This mouth---grins---and asks for a light.
Is this some kind of a joke? I ask.
He twists & opens his ancient mouth
into the shape of a waiting grave.
I stand looking into nothing.
I don’t know why, or for what reason
But I suddenly recalled a childhood
memory---a dream, or perhaps both.
I can’t be sure---maybe it is now I dream.
A dream of such pure white snow
it clings like a frozen shroud
to the windward side
of a young girl’s face.
Passing me on the street
she had smiled
so sweet a smile---its memory & sweetness
lasted all of my days.
“I asked for light,” said the mouth.
My hand, under a cracked street lamp,
trembles & the flame—ethereal---surges.
Before everything went dark
something funny happened to the moon.
I was watching it—as I said---and right then
it seemed to stop as if it were broken in the sky
and it just hung there.
Somebody’s father, someone’s husband
someone’s lover-someone not unlike you & me
tilts his body over the 105 overpass
& wants to splash himself on the Harbor Freeway.
Why is he here? Unpaid bills, unrequited love?
The sight of humans withering & dying?
Disease?
Fear of mortality & dust?
Living life on only raw nerve?
Perched now on the ledge he sways like
a hawk tilting in a shifting wind---uncertain.
Down in the tangle of traffic
We stare up at you
Helicopters churn like flies over garbage
Ambulances shriek and rush forward
Most of us just want to get down the freeway
We don’t want to care--
Other people are paid to care.
We pay the STATE to care
for sick cases like yours.
We underpay immigrants to care
for the old & the sick & all the mad.
We don’t have time to care--we are far too nervous
& just want to get down the LA. Freeway.
Sleepless & sweating---dreaming an L.A. dream.
Some of us think of taking the same shortcut
until we confront the jump, or the darkness
the pill, or the barrel, or cringe from the razor
& find we haven’t any real nerve at all.
I turn off the freeway
Horns honk below
Men wipe sweat from necks
People turn their eyes
Not toward God
Not toward heaven
But toward a tiny figure
as it hurdles down like a stone thrown.