Dennis Haskell: Two Poems

Belief’s Possibilities

Your father insists he talks to you

inside his head. It’s a compulsion

I resist because it seems a way,

two years on, not to believe you’re dead;

yet when I put pen to paper it’s “you”

who insists on being addressed.

I could no more write you third person

than live guilt free, more or less,

and at night I roam amongst images

where no words need be said.

In truth I can’t believe you living

and I cannot believe you dead.

Dennis Haskell

______________________________

The Hippocampus

The hippocampus is a major component of the brains of humans and other vertebrates… It plays important roles in the consolidation of information from short-term memory to long-term memory and spatial navigation.

I imagine a university where the students come to lectures

keen on transformations, concepts and conjectures

about the brain’s capacities, and professors vie

to teach the studious hippopotami,

lumbering students so curious no-one derides,

academic gowns on their pachydermous hides;

spatial navigation so special, they would tramp thus

through the riverish, idea-strewn, synapsed hippocampus

and all the instructors would there fast find

ideas shift from short- to long-term mind,

while smart tutors carefully consider their marks:

more people are killed by hippos than eaten by sharks.

Dennis Haskell