conspicuous presumptions
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Conspicuous
Presumptions
Recent Poems
Terry McCarty
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Conspicuous Presumptions
Recent Poems 2012-2014
Terry McCarty
McCarty Press
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Copyright 2012-2014
Terry McCarty
All rights reserved.
Thanks again to PIP Printing
in Burbank CA.
Poems within are either
fictional or reality-based.
For Steve Baratta
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Contents
Amarillo 74
I am not ready to wear
my fathers face
Three memories of being...
Twitter poem
Other side of the street
Living in the conversation-free
city
Italy travel poem
Berlin travel poem
I remember Montreal
Found poem inspired by
Andy Gill book about Bob Dylan
Listening to Syd Barrett...
Dont feel bad poem of
poetry venues past)
Finish line
Bonus Poems:
1% Poem
Runaway Boy
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AMARILLO 74
The bus is waiting
Everything out of the motel room
Where I lost a sort of virginity
Spending a night with people
Other than family.
Quick breakfast.
Then take off my right shoe
To make sure
The rest of the money
My father gave me
Is still there.
Look across the street
At the convicts in City Jail
Using a mirror to flash
SOS signals at the girls
In our high school band.
The bus is waiting.
I wish I could stay.
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I AM NOT READY
TO WEAR MY FATHERS FACE
when I was much younger
people would tell me
how much I looked like my father
now I'm older
hair grey on the sides
less of it on top
elasticity of youth
gone
instead there's a hard, determined
certainty
making me look as if I wear
suit and tie every day
ready to pass someone
to the next grade
or approve or deny their loan
but I'm not Authority
no matter how I look now
I'm not ready
I don't think I ever will be
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THREE MEMORIES OF BEING
A COLLEGE FRESHMAN
IN THE FALL OF 1977
ONE I lived in an efficiency apartment
just a half-mile away from college
instead of having my tea bag
steeped in the water of dorm life
and being all by myself
wasn't all that good
for growing up (in retrospect)
even though it gave me time to study
without interruption
TWO remembering the moment
during men's orientation
when the university adviser
who later became a judge
encouraged social fraternity membership
because sorority women
were good-lookin' women
and the adviser actually went on to
call them all that nice hide
didn't join a social fraternity
THREE had a closet in my apartment
big enough to put a twin bed in
and would listen to WXRK
clear-channel AM Top 40 radio
coming from the Mexican border
until I fell asleep,
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waking up at 6 a.m.
to get ready to play
the game of
Parking Lot Musical Chairs
so I wouldn't be late
for 8 a.m. classes
and have to borrow
someone else's notes.
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TWITTER POEM
Twitter's a bit like a rope line
at a movie premiere
most of us
are behind that thin barrier
waiting for the Stars
to walk past
so we can say something
they might find interesting
and/or funny enough
for them to follow us
the way we already follow--
and retweet--them
it's the digital-age equivalent
of getting a signed autograph
instead of a rubber-stamped
publicity photo
when the Stars
don't walk past,
we talk to each other,
sometimes exchanging follows
and discovering
we can be almost
as fascinating
as the Supernovas
who may or may not
acknowledge us
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OTHER SIDE OF THE STREET
if I had been across the street,
I would have heard the helicopter,
plus the sirens of the LAPD cruisers
on each side of me and the dozen-or-so
actors and crew members,
and ordered to put hands behind my head
stay at curbside or else
the camerapeople on my side of the street
wanted to keep the video rolling
although none of this reality
would have been usable in the project
unless they wanted to keep a audiovisual
record in case crew members
got hurt--or worse
all of this was for a stolen shot
on a location there was no permit for
as actors playing low-level criminals
whipped out pistols loaded with blanks
after the mess was over,
I didn't want to be a volunteer crewperson
on that project anymore
the student who drove me back to AFI
lectured me about how I wouldn't amount
to anything in the business if I quit
he talked about the epic film
he planned to make
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after years of giving the business
what it wanted
maybe he'll make that film someday
but at the time,
I thought about not wanting
to risk being dead at 29
because of someone else's decision
to play one-dimensional chess,
get the shots and finish the scene,
believing everything would turn out fine
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LIVING IN THE CONVERSATION-FREE CITY
'Surely the point of living in a city is that
you don't have to talk to anybody. That's
certainly a big part of why I moved to one'-
-commenter on London's GUARDIAN
website
it gets old after awhile
everyone around you
not talking
except on smartphones
and then there's the chill
when you do speak
and the person
you're speaking to
says few words
with colorless smile attached
as if you're either
a perceived threat
to personal space
or a waste of
valuable not-listening time
only interrupted when
the train reaches the station
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ITALY TRAVEL POEM
it's almost 7:00 in the morning
we arrive at Rome's Piazza del Popolo
waiting for Violetta the tour guide
under gray skies
pelting rain
as only a few people
walk to work
at this foreign-to-me-in-both-ways hour
Violetta, please deliver us
from dreariness
to the padded seats
of a recent-model bus
where we can travel
towards Tuscany
where ancient churches,
lunch with wine tasting,
well-preserved villages
(with thankfully few cars)
wait patiently
in all kinds of weather
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BERLIN TRAVEL POEM
In the Alexanderplatz neighborhood,
Theres the Communist-era
Department store thats still
An exterior monument
To East Berlin rigidity
As similar buildings nearby
Undergo obliteration.
Near the ultramodern Sony Center
With the giant Lego giraffe
In Potsdamer Platz,
A few portions of the Berlin Wall
Have been allowed to remain intact
For the inspection of modern tourists.
May we never forget to remember.
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I REMEMBER MONTREAL
I remember Montreal
when we were at the vegan restaurant
and I tried the cashier's patience
by attempting to order our meals
in bare-bones Canadian French
I remember Rome
where a sidewalk vendor sold
a gelatin figurine which,
after being flattened,
would instantly recover its original shape
I remember Dublin
opening the hotel window to the
roar of a late night a capella chorus
from the nearby Temple Bar district
after the rugby match ended
I remember Paris
where you and I were accidental tourists,
consuming a nonvegan dinner
at a Planet Hollywood restaurant
on the Champs-Elysees
When were together,
anywhere in the world is home
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FOUND POEM BASED ON ANDY GILL BOOK
ABOUT BOB DYLAN
verbal artillery trained
on outsiders passing by
plus the NYC folk music insiders
seated at the Table of Bob
wanting to see inside his mind
and find out Secrets
pick up Crumbs
see if they too can become Dylanesque
while Bob rubs their noses
in their opportunism,
telling them they would never
be as successful as he,
then saving the Silver Bullet
for Phil Ochs--
suggesting that Phil should find
a new line of work,
since he wasn't doing very much
in his current career
Phil handled this withering blast
quite well,
offering this assessment of mid-60s Dylan:
...you really had to be on your toes.
You'd walk into a threshing machine
if you were just a regular guy,
naive and open,
you'd be torn to pieces.
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without the clock-punching
what will the fans
and the executives think of this
headaches of 1967
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DONT FEEL BAD
(poem of poetry venues past)
don't feel bad
we were part of something
spread out all over town
making some real friends
and seeing lots of people
exposing artistry
longing for approval
knowing they had
something valuable to say
every night
there was somewhere
(sometimes more than one somewhere)
to go
then some of us died
others moved elsewhere
and the rest found other ways
to utilize their leisure time
don't feel bad
for a few years,
we had a ball
before it landed
on sharp coral
and began to shrink
into a small mass
of rubber
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FINISH LINE
here's the finish line
grab a bottle of water
from the check-in stand
breathe in and out
drink the water
glad to have made the run
all the way
from East to West
leg muscles cramp
knees throb
but I did it
didn't stop
didn't call for a taxi
didn't take the subway
just kept running
and now I'm here
maybe I'll do it again next year
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1% POEM
you dug a trench in the sand
filled it with the foulest water
threw in lobsters, crabs,
snakes of all sizes
and electric eels
planted barbed wire fence
all around
to make damn sure
no unwashed
unwanted people
could share
with you
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on your side
some people eat large slices
of a small world
while the rest of us
wonder why
you felt justified in
disfiguring a public beach
by planting a trench in the sand
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RUNAWAY BOY
stand in line
on movie sets
select menu items
in company cafeterias
sit with acquaintances
when possible
and alone
when necessary
>
mark time
drift from one day to another
hope everything will fall into place
without pulling psychic muscles
>
bleed inside
encounter the word no again and again
when you peck through your shell
>
no shouldn't sting and burn so much
at the age of thirty-two
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ALSO BY TERRY McCARTY:
HOLLYWOOD POETRY: 2001-2013
(Xlibris, book/e-book formats)
WICHITA FALLS: 10TH ANNIVERSARY
EDITION (Publish Green, e-book)
20 GREATEST HITS:
POEMS 1997-2004
(Publish Green, e-book)
POEMS BELOW THE LINE
(Smashwords, e-bookalso
available as self-published book)
ANTHOLOGIESPrint:
THE LONG WAY HOME: THE BEST OF
THE LITTLE RED BOOKS SERIES
(Lummox Press)
SO LUMINOUS THE WILDFLOWERS
(Tebot Bach)
LUMMOX VOLUME 2
(Lummox Press)
ANTHOLOGIESOnline:
theoriginalvangoghsearantholo-
gy.com
poeticdiversity.org
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