Ever More Accurate Atrocities of Competence - New and Selected Poems

Also by Jack Shiner

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Whispering Sands and Other Poems

Raking Leaves – Poems

Stunning Jagged Edges of Precise Malfunction

Ever More Accurate Atrocities of Competence

New and Selected Poems

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Copyright © 2024, 2005, 2004, 1989 by John E. Shiner. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address tonepoet publishing, P.O. Box 401, Elmira, CA, USA 95625-9998

www.jackshiner.com

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First eBook Edition

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LCCN 20244903530

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/

D2Dv3

ISBN 978-0-922224-18-0 (Special Signed Edition)

ISBN 978-0-922224-15-9 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-0-92224-17-3 (softcover)

ISBN 978-0-922224-16-6 (ebook)

To my wife Jan

Lover and Perfect Equal

A NOTE ABOUT THIS BOOK

Jack Shiner is retired from the work world, where that journey began as a Newspaper Boy for the Detroit News in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan where he was born and raised in Royal Oak. And the journey was concluded after a twenty-two year stint as a Stationary Engineer in the San Francisco Bay Area.  In between, he worked five teenage summers in a bakery followed by a variety of jobs which included factory work, printing, banking and as a Fire Alarm Systems Inspector and Technician.

The first creative work he recalls inventing was a little song he made up at the age of five as he walked along holding his mother’s hand on the streets of Beacon, New York, where the family was living at the time.  It was a song he called The Man with a Big Fat Nose which, Shiner says, is better left unheard.

Although he created a few little ditties and scribbled down a few lines in his childhood, it wasn’t until he was fourteen years old that he felt he was a poet and would continue to be so for life.  A poet whose every word should be chiseled into marble and marveled at for all ages to come... or so the fourteen-year-old Shiner thought at the time.

It was nearly twenty years later when a friend suggested that Shiner should publish a book of his poetry for all the world to see.  So, at a time before the Internet and digital printing, Shiner began the work of typing and manually creating layout boards in a garage for each page of a book to be called Whispering Sands and Other Poems. And it was then, in 1989, when he discovered that selling poetry was about as easy as making a sculpture from air.

Wanting to publish again, but in no hurry to lose money once more, Shiner waited until 2004 to publish his second book Raking Leaves - Poems. He was amazed to find that printing technology had changed to the point of the whole publishing process being digital.  No layout boards, not a piece of paper needed to be touched.

A year later, sitting at the dinner table, Shiner’s then ten-year-old son Frank asked if he was going to publish a third book.  Shiner said, Yes.  Frank asked what it would be called.  Shiner said, Stunning Jagged Edges of Precise Malfunction.  Frank went into giggle-fits and Shiner saw that as a positive sign that the right title had been found. And so it was in 2005.

Since then, Shiner has continued to write and presents in this book Ever More Accurate Atrocities of Competence many new poems, as well as selected poems from his previous three books.  And why would he do that?  Shiner says:

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I write it

because I’ve always known

that even if you don’t need it...

I do

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NOTE: Please read poetry responsibly.

Ever More

Accurate

Atrocities

Of

Competence

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New Poems

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I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes

I tell you yesterday is a wind gone down

a sun dropped in the west

I tell you there is nothing in the world

only an ocean of tomorrows

a sky of tomorrows

-Carl Sandburg

POETRY IS A QUIET MUSIC

Poetry is a quiet music

of subtle rhythm and pauses

thoughts and descriptions

expressions-impressions-emotions

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Poetry is a quiet music

and it appears that very few hear it

unless someone is singing it in a song

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They consume it several times a day

(if someone is singing it in a song)

but if asked if they like poetry

I think most people

(at least, here in America)

would look at you puzzled

(after a pause)

or they may look at you

as if they had just had a sip of sour milk

or a quick whiff of a foul odor

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Poetry?!!

What?

Really?

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As if it should only be read

by intellectuals or the lonely

or by little old ladies in quaint villages

on Wednesday afternoons

down at the county library

with tea and muffins Mary made

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Poetry is a quiet music—

Poetry is an ocean of thought

in a drop of water

But maybe think of it as short stories

or

dare I say

the texting of the literary world?

(U  R  2 deep... LOL) 

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I see you smirking—

those of you who are reading this—

because you all know

that I am likely

only preaching to the choir

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But maybe—

just maybe—

one person will read this

that has never taken the time

to read a poem before

(unless forced to do so in high school)

and maybe—

just maybe they’ll hear it in their mind

and enjoy a poem

(maybe not this one but—)

maybe one that makes them wonder

or one that makes them look away and smile

close the book on their finger to keep their place

and then open it back up and continue to read

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Poetry—

is a pleasing pause

for a reflective moment

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Poetry—

is an ocean of thought

in a drop of water

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Poetry— is a quiet music

FIFTY YEARS AGO

Breezing up—

A fresh wind from the north

White capped waves

roaring and rushing to the shore

The blues and greens of the water

stretching out to the horizon

The whites and grays of billowing clouds

and gulls gliding over the beach

The classic look and feel

of a Lake Michigan summer day

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The deep blue shadows of the clouds

move over the shimmering surface

ever-changing

evermoving

silently southward

swiftly southward

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Fifty years ago

I first walked into this log cabin

as an almost-nine-year-old boy

It was unfinished at that point

No water

no power

no front or back porch

no railing on the loft

or on the stairs up to it

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It was the first week of July 1965

The first day of July— maybe

I just remember pulling up to it

in a 1964 silver Pontiac Safari station wagon

and Mom saying: "They had promised

it would be done by the first of July

and the kids and I are moving in

and they can just work around us!"

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That was that!

(and that’s how it was)

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We got our drinking water from a hand pump

up the road, behind the Mines family cabin

about a quarter mile north in the woods

and we got our toilet flushing water

by the pailful from the lake itself

Lanterns were the lights at night

and when weather and winds permitted

meals were cooked outside on a campfire

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One of the first pieces of business, as I recall

was to get a big propane tank out there

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A secondhand gas stove

and an old Norge gas refrigerator

were purchased from the Cromptons in town

who ran a secondhand store on Waukazoo Street

called Treasures and Trash

Some of the furnishings

and dishes and pots and pans

came from Treasures and Trash, as well

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That’s the way it was

with the other five cabins

along the shore that summer

(and other cabins that followed)

Secondhand—

used—

Quaint and cozy were the interiors

of all the cabins

and some never changed

Some always kept their hand pumps

and never had running water

or power in their cabins

Only propane

or maybe a little fuel oil stove

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Some up here never built cabins

and just set up camp each summer

for the two or three weeks they were here

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It was the middle of the Sixties

1965— Smack dab in the middle

and a Middle-Class workingman

could afford a cabin on a lake

with hand-me-down appliances

and the kids could have a summer Up North

in a cabin on a lake with Mom

while Dad worked away the weekdays

and pulled in the driveway to the cabin

after his Friday night drive north

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It was 1965

and Beatlemania was sweeping the nation

(Among the young, at least)

The music-filled British Invasion was underway

as Civil Rights and the Viet Nam War

filled the news programs

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But up here—

in the evenings that first summer

it was Mom—

reading the local newspaper to us boys

after a day of swimming and hiking

running through the dunes

climbing trees

finding new secret places

or exploring the abandoned house and barn

a mile up the gravel road

and out on the two-lane blacktop that led to town

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It was her reading from the newspapers

she bought on go-to-town Saturdays

or us boys reading comic books

and playing board games in the evenings

and on rainy days

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Once the power got put in

a radio was added to the entertainment

that could capture the only two or three stations

that could be captured out there

No television

Mom made that off limits

forbidden—

at least for the first few summers

after which a small black and white portable

invaded the cabin

that could pull in two stations with snowy reception

and sometimes one from across the big lake

in another state

another time zone

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And back in those days—

this place seemed to be in another time zone

A time zone all its own—

when we may be the only souls on this bay

nine miles from the nearest town

for weeks at a time

and sometimes seeing no one

until Dad pulled in the driveway

around 11 o’clock on Friday nights

and—

all these stories have been told before—

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I’m just reaching back fifty years

as a hammer bangs away

at the new place next door

My daily morning dip in the lake done

and it was a quick one

The winds that blew in from the north

all day yesterday

brought the chilly water of the north, as well

but the skies the last two nights

were just perfect for stargazing

No moon

No clouds

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My son Frank and I lying on our backs

out in the dunes on the edge of the forest

with billions of stars up above us

and the streaking meteors of the Perseid showers

silently aglow

swiftly moving

fading out

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We were out there in the dunes

until three-thirty in the morning

lying on beach towels under the stars

A mound of sand formed under one end

to serve as a pillow

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Looking straight into the Universe

The Big Dipper— low and to the left

The Milky Way straight above

and stretching from horizon to horizon

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layer upon layer

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beyond the beyond

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and where it all stops—

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...nobody knows

IN A DREAM LAST NIGHT

In a dream last night

I was standing in front

of an automatic teller machine

somewhere unrecognizable

generic

and I was transferring money

to all the babysitters

my brothers and I had

during our rambunctious childhood

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Maybe my mother paid very well

or maybe the girls were desperate for money

or maybe my mother just begged

or used the babysitter’s mother

to influence the arrangement

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However it happened

we ended up with a babysitter

But not always the same one

and I think we went through

every teenage girl in the neighborhood

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A wag of the finger from Mom

as she and Dad walked out the door

for an evening of square dancing

telling us boys to be good

while wishing for the miracle

that it may actually happen—

once—

just once

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There was Beverly

who would rap us on the