notes on ‘A Few Little Poems’

I wrote these little poems at various times over the years. None of them seemed substantial enough to warrant their own post, so they just sat for a while as notes jotted down. After a while I started to list all the ‘Little Poems’ in one place, just to keep track of them. Together, they seem like enough to publish, and I liked how some of them turned out.

A Few Little Poems

Railroad Track
Steel rails not
straight but curled
with curvature
of the turning world.

*****

Wire
Wire comes from a ten
mile spool wound by faceless
men who toil ceaseless
as the coil itself as
circles are continual

*****

Wine Glass
It’s dishonest to appear
so bulbous yet so thin.
O crystal vessels of evening time-
hold it!  Hold it in.

*****

Lighter
Cheap, broken plastic.  Yet
someone desires you;
one who seeks the flame but
not the sleek, nor the new.

-B Taylor 2022

notes on ‘Bourbon’

The idea for this poem is the parallel between the process of bourbon being made, and the process of it being consumed (and maybe of it consuming us, or at least some of us from time to time). Bourbon gets its flavors from liquor that is pressed by temperature cycles into and out of the charred inner-layer of a wooden barrel. Later at the point of consumption, the same bourbon tastes hot due to it’s high alcohol content; and is sometimes placed on ice. All that ice, heat, warmth, cooling, char, cycling, and so forth, seemed to be a good metaphor for the solitary drinker, remembering while he damages his ability to remember, thinking of past relationships now gone, while at the same time dis-interested in the other human beings right there in the room.

The “memory of flames” was a line that just popped out without any foresight; but it carries the perfect double-implication… the inside of the barrel was charred by flame; and this drinker was himself charred by an old flame of some kind, not described in detail but just remembered in the moment. And remembered only by the drinker, who does not share all his secrets with us.

Bourbon

At the bar were ladies, made up for the night
and one struck up conversation with me directly
about where I was from, and my plans that evening.
I said almost nothing, but was merely polite
until she lost interest and left me there alone.

I stared down at my bourbon, the crisp brown circle
alive with memory, and with the destruction of memory.
How is it that the past tastes cold and charred?
Warmth destroys the memory of ice.
Ice has numbed the memory of flames.

– B Taylor 2022