Clinton Inman
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Clinton Van Inman was born in England in 1945, he
received his BA from San Diego State University in 1975.
He is still teaching in Hillsborough County, Florida.
Besides writing poetry, plays and novels he is a
consummate portrait painter and plays the trumpet. He
considers himself the last standing Beat poet as his latest
poetry book will be called, "The Last Beat," He is married
with two children, grandchildren and lives in Florida. He
still fights for the "cause."
received his BA from San Diego State University in 1975.
He is still teaching in Hillsborough County, Florida.
Besides writing poetry, plays and novels he is a
consummate portrait painter and plays the trumpet. He
considers himself the last standing Beat poet as his latest
poetry book will be called, "The Last Beat," He is married
with two children, grandchildren and lives in Florida. He
still fights for the "cause."
Clinton Inman's Poetry
DIANA (MOON)
Drag your white skull beyond blind seas
That tumble dazed to you mono-eyed magic.
Go tell Neptune when the night is through.
Charm him, too, with your waxing and waning.
But you can’t catch me with those veiled half smiles.
Your borrowed brilliance exposes you.
I know your darker side.
Go charm some other star struck rhapsodist.
LIGHTLESS
Each year the light is less.
We can barely see it now,
The faint necklace of
The Milky Way.
The old ones were wrong,
You know with their waxed fingers
Pointing up like abandoned adobe.
Yet you know better in your cubical gardens
And half moth-eaten moons,
You have arrived in
Handcuffs.
JUST LIKE US
From one to six we will let you play with blocks and sticks
then you will be ours. We will teach you to be our kind of Mensch
as you color everything chain link grey. We will erase all magic
inside of you. With picture ID and major credit and number 2 pencil
you will be like us pushing and shoving all the way up to barely alive.
FRONT PAGE GIRL
Just a bag of clues is all you are,
Just a bit of bone, a cut of cloth,
Wild dogs took all the rest.
Like some grisly jigsaw pieced upon
A table they now call you Jane.
But I knew it was really you.
Sketch artist captured well
That girlish grin I thought I’d
Never see again until your
Composite un-identified you:
Front page girl, eighteen to twenty-one.
You know we searched for you
Day and night, night and day
Until they gave up and thought
You had really run away.
But I knew it took more than snow
To cover you that day not even
Your horoscopes could predict.
But from that cut of cloth the trail
Of footprints follow from fibers
You left behind upon the front seat
From the only sweater you had owned,
Though badly burned it could not hide,
And was more than enough to show--
Now your forensic fingers finally point
To the one who had really lied.
MONO IN MY GAMOUS
Dragged before white cake
I dare choose only
Mono in my gamous
Before the sentence of I do.
I will learn to settle
Down to yard work and
Become a tinker in my trade
Before the perturbations prove
Too much for me now with
More patience than a starfish
My topsails are flapping.
Run Jane run
And drag some
Other toad of a prince
Before you!
REPLY OF AN ATHELETE
Yes there was a time I had won a race
As they chaired me shoulder high
Up and down through a market place
And past the place where I now lie.
For I knew then and so did she
How frail the strings of mortality
As a widowed mother wished me stay
At home and nurse the time away.
But you do not know why I ran,
Not to defend some challenge cup
Not for laurels nor to prove a man
And not for the record still pinned up.
The rows of pictures on the piano
Top have hardly moved to show
One last smile from one smart lad
Who had won one for dear old dad.
DIANA (MOON)
Drag your white skull beyond blind seas
That tumble dazed to you mono-eyed magic.
Go tell Neptune when the night is through.
Charm him, too, with your waxing and waning.
But you can’t catch me with those veiled half smiles.
Your borrowed brilliance exposes you.
I know your darker side.
Go charm some other star struck rhapsodist.
LIGHTLESS
Each year the light is less.
We can barely see it now,
The faint necklace of
The Milky Way.
The old ones were wrong,
You know with their waxed fingers
Pointing up like abandoned adobe.
Yet you know better in your cubical gardens
And half moth-eaten moons,
You have arrived in
Handcuffs.
JUST LIKE US
From one to six we will let you play with blocks and sticks
then you will be ours. We will teach you to be our kind of Mensch
as you color everything chain link grey. We will erase all magic
inside of you. With picture ID and major credit and number 2 pencil
you will be like us pushing and shoving all the way up to barely alive.
FRONT PAGE GIRL
Just a bag of clues is all you are,
Just a bit of bone, a cut of cloth,
Wild dogs took all the rest.
Like some grisly jigsaw pieced upon
A table they now call you Jane.
But I knew it was really you.
Sketch artist captured well
That girlish grin I thought I’d
Never see again until your
Composite un-identified you:
Front page girl, eighteen to twenty-one.
You know we searched for you
Day and night, night and day
Until they gave up and thought
You had really run away.
But I knew it took more than snow
To cover you that day not even
Your horoscopes could predict.
But from that cut of cloth the trail
Of footprints follow from fibers
You left behind upon the front seat
From the only sweater you had owned,
Though badly burned it could not hide,
And was more than enough to show--
Now your forensic fingers finally point
To the one who had really lied.
MONO IN MY GAMOUS
Dragged before white cake
I dare choose only
Mono in my gamous
Before the sentence of I do.
I will learn to settle
Down to yard work and
Become a tinker in my trade
Before the perturbations prove
Too much for me now with
More patience than a starfish
My topsails are flapping.
Run Jane run
And drag some
Other toad of a prince
Before you!
REPLY OF AN ATHELETE
Yes there was a time I had won a race
As they chaired me shoulder high
Up and down through a market place
And past the place where I now lie.
For I knew then and so did she
How frail the strings of mortality
As a widowed mother wished me stay
At home and nurse the time away.
But you do not know why I ran,
Not to defend some challenge cup
Not for laurels nor to prove a man
And not for the record still pinned up.
The rows of pictures on the piano
Top have hardly moved to show
One last smile from one smart lad
Who had won one for dear old dad.