Reflection On Babies
A bit of talcum
Is always walcum.
poem by Ogden Nash
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First Encounter - Munir Majid
something doesnt
change much - the talcum
powdered face
first met at an interview at NST early 1981. He must have been in his 30s. Looks like you cant do away with old habits... like you just dab yourself with talcum powder after a bath, and getting ready for work.
poem by John Tiong Chunghoo
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Gunpowder
Warmonger's fiancee
By mistake
Used as Talcum powder!
*[The scope of Moammar Gadhafi's control was whittled away Wednesday as major Libyan cities and towns closer to the capital fell to the rebellion against his rule]
poem by Nimal Dunuhinga
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At The Airport Lounge
All the trappings dropped
Some pretensions still clinging
I stand
At the crossroads
Of life's intersecting paths
Busy passers-by engrossed
In routine businesses
Walk hand in hand
Hands across shoulders
Endlessly with eyes closed
Their faces with sprinkled
Talcum powder and pantomime paint...
I stand
Feet straddled
poem by Indira Babbellapati
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Favourite smells
Freshly cut grass
home made bread
sweetness of jam and honey
just washed sheets on the bed.
Tarmac being laid on the road
Brylcream on my fathers hair
the aroma from coffee
leather of a brand new sofa or chair.
Talcum powder on a baby's body
smell coming from a flower
the pages of old and new books
and the air after a heavy shower.
Scent that was worn by my mother
the aroma of a Sunday roast
candy floss at the fair
and Cheddar Cheese on toast.
Just some of my favourite smells
aromas that just make me feel good
as they can evoke moments in time
and take me back to my own childhood.
poem by Kevin Halls
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Smell
Come, snuggle, smell
The nooks, crannies
Corners – the pits
In my arms.
You’ll sniff the whiff
Of the Fragrant
Shower gel that I use
And the Talcum that
Keeps the ‘feel’ of my
Skin, soft and smooth.
But, my darling,
If you be late
In coming to me
Let me not hesitate
In telling you of that
‘bonus’ that you might
Get - of smelling me
In my erotic sweat.
So choose your time
Make haste or relax
And come to me
In your own time.
Whatever time
You come…
Snuggling into me
I promise there would
Always be some sweet
Smell of mine.
The love and lust
That I carry for those
Fingering Fantasies of thine
Would always emanate
In the Fragrance
Of the shower, the talc
And that invigorating
Sweat of mine.
So come to me, my darling
I’ll await you…
Till the end of time.
poem by Aparna Chatterjee
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Domestic Shades 3
Kitchen mine cited varieties
Recipies, utensils, strange personalities
And Pathamadai Parvathi..
Matted her tresses to a lulling shine
Out with her freckles and pimples
Powdering talcum on a tantrum
Eye lining into the mirror
At a whir of every possible minute
In my absence..
Cooked my anger; ate my temper
Old Parvathi paatti next
Chithi patti for everybody
Of tonsured wedlock in yester pathos
A needy helper
To cook off my in- laws' diabetes
Cooked, ate, drank
Cooked, ate, drank
Often and nasty
Hardship towed me
Timely bruised by my paralysed m'-in-law too
Fortune eloped with chithi patti
Misfortune betrothed me
Hell of two months..
Parvthi paatti back
For a pay through her nose
poem by Indira Renganathan
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Becoming a Nun
For Jennifer Josephy
On cold days
it is easy to be reasonable,
to button the mouth against kisses,
dust the breasts
with talcum powder
& forget
the red pulp meat
of the heart.
On those days
it beats
like a digital clock-
not a beat at all
but a steady whirring
chilly as green neon,
luminous as numerals in the dark,
cool as electricity.
& I think:
I can live without it all-
love with its blood pump,
sex with its messy hungers,
men with their peacock strutting,
their silly sexual baggage,
their wet tongues in my ear
& their words like little sugar suckers
with sour centers.
On such days
I am zipped in my body suit,
I am wearing seven league red suede boots,
I am marching over the cobblestones
as if they were the heads of men,
& I am happy
as a seven-year-old virgin
holding Daddy's hand.
Don't touch.
Don't try to tempt me with your ripe persimmons.
Don't threaten me with your volcano.
The sky is clearer when I'm not in heat,
& the poems
are colder.
poem by Erica Jong
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Thoughts Memorized
Made up face
With 'Remy' talcum powder
Smiling with a smile
Cleansed with Colgate..
But just changed for heart's curiosity
To Ponds and Pamolive
Brushing with Binaca and Forhans..
Playful choices to changes all
Fascinated fancy onto a fantasy
A season of cousins and kids
Sweet thoughts memorized..
Aged mind but matured
In a high-style-masquerade
Musing erudite thoughts
On frequencies of happy journyes
A habitual hobby of the gray
To shrines near and far
Pleasant memory mine traverses
Farther to that Lord of Batu caves
An awaiting wish of yet another chance
Sweet thoughts memorized..
But why sweet thoughts alone...?
Pricking bitter recalls
Themselves stay on to haunt
Like hovering my unhappy heart
Lamenting the loss of two poems
In frail search over and over
Shaded in my domesticity
Numbered nineteen and twenty
Lost somewhere beyond my ken
Bitter thoughts memorized..
poem by Indira Renganathan
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Rany Scouse Git
By micky dolenz
Shes a wonderful lady
And shes mine all mine
And there doesnt seem a way
That she wont come and lose my mind.
Its too easy humming songs
To a girl in yellow dress
Its been a long time since the party
And the room is in a mess.
The four kings of e.m.i.
Are sitting stately on the floor
There are birds out on the sidewalk
And a valet at the door.
He reminds me of a penguin
With few and plastered hair,
Theres talcum powder on the letter
And the birthday boy is there.
Why dont you cut your hair?
Why dont you live up there?
Why dont you do what I do,
See what I feel when I care?
Now theyve darkened all the windows
And the seats are naugh-a-hyde.
Ive been waiting for an hour,
I cant find a place to hide.
The being known as wonder girl
Is speaking I believe.
Its not easy tryin to tell her
That I shortly have to leave.
Why dont you be like me?
Why dont you stop and see?
Why dont you hate who I hate,
Kill who I kill to be free.
[progressive scat vocals]
Why dont you cut your hair?
Why dont you live up there?
Why dont you do what I do,
See what I feel when I care?
Why dont you be like me?
Why dont you stop and see?
Why dont you hate who I hate,
Kill who I kill to be free.
song performed by by Monkees
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Walkin My Baby Back Home
-artist: nat king cole
-peak billboard position #8 in 1952
-words and music by roy turk and fred ahlert in 1930
-charted in 1931 by nick lucas (#8), ted weems (also #8), the charleston
-chasers (#15), and lee morse (#18).
-also charted in 1952 by johnnie ray at # 4
-title song from the 1953 film starring donald oconnor, janet leigh, buddy
-hackett, and scatman crothers
Gee, its great after bein out late
Walkin my baby back home
Arm in arm over meadow and farm
Walkin my baby back home
We go long harmonizing a song
Or Im recitin a poem
Owls go by and they give me the eye
Walkin my baby back home
We stop for a while, she gives me a smile
And snuggles her head on my chest
We start in to pet and thats when I get
Her talcum all over my vest
After I kinda straighten my tie
She has to borrow my comb
Once kiss then I continue again
Walkin my baby back home
Shes fraid of the dark so I have to park
Outside of her door till its light
She says if I try to kiss her shell cry
I dry her tears all through the night
Hand in hand to a barbecue stand
Right from her doorway we roam
Eats and then its a pleasure again
Walkin my baby
Talkin my baby
Lovin my baby
I dont mean maybe
Walkin my baby back home
song performed by by Nat King Cole
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Randy Scouse Git
She's a wonderful lady
And she's mine, all mine
And there doesn't seem a way
That she won't come and lose my mind
It's too easy humming songs
To a girl in a yellow dress
It's been a long time since the party
And the room is in a mess
The four kings of EMI are sitting stately on the floor
There are birds out on the sidewalk
And a valet at the door
He reminds me of a penguin
With few and plastered hair
There's talcum powder on the letter
And the birthday boy is there
Why don't you cut your hair?
Why don't you live up there?
Why don't you do what I do,
See what I feel when I care?
Now they've darkened all the windows
And the seats are naugahide
I've been waiting for an hour
I can't find a place to hide
The being known as wondergirl
Is speaking, I believe
It's not easy trying to tell her
That I shortly have to leave
Why don't you be like me?
Why don't you stop and see?
Why don't you hate who I hate,
Kill who I kill to be free?
[Intrumental]
Why don't you cut your hair?
Why don't you live up there?
Why dodn't you do what I do,
See what I feel when I care?
Why don't you be like me? (She's a wonderful lady)
Why don't you stop and see? (And she's mine, all mine)
Why don't you hate who I hate, (And there doesn't seem a way)
Kill who I kill to be free? (That she won't come and lose my mind)
Why don't you cut your hair? (It's too easy humming songs)
Why don't you live up there? (To a girl in a yellow dress)
Why don't you do what I do, (It's been a long time since the party)
See what I feel when I care? (And the room is in a mess
song performed by by Monkees
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Mademoiselle From Armentières
Mademoiselle from Armentières, Parley-voo?
Mademoiselle from Armentières, Parley-voo?
Mademoiselle from Armentières,
She hasn't been kissed in forty years,
Hinky, dinky, parley-voo.
Mademoiselle from Armentières, Parley-voo?
Mademoiselle from Armentières, Parley-voo?
She had the form like the back of a hack,
When she cried the tears ran down her back,
Hinky, dinky, parley-voo.
Mademoiselle from Armentières, Parley-voo?
Mademoiselle from Armentières, Parley-voo?
She never could hold the love of man
'Cause she took her baths in a talcum can,
Hinky, dinky, parley-voo.
Mademoiselle from Armentières, Parley-voo?
Mademoiselle from Armentières, Parley-voo?
She had four chins, her knees would knock,
And her face would stop a cuckoo clock,
Hinky, dinky, parley-voo.
Mademoiselle from Armentières, Parley-voo?
Mademoiselle from Armentières, Parley-voo?
She could beg a franc, a drink, a meal,
But it wasn't because of sex appeal,
Hinky, dinky, parley-voo.
Mademoiselle from Armentières, Parley-voo?
Mademoiselle from Armentières, Parley-voo?
She could guzzle a barrel of sour wine,
And eat a hog without peeling the rind,
Hinky, dinky, parley-voo.
The MPS think they won the war, Parley-voo.
The MPS think they won the war, Parley-voo.
The MPS think they won the war,
Standing guard at the café door,
Hinky, dinky, parley-voo.
The officers get the pie and cake, Parley-voo.
The officers get the pie and cake, Parley-voo.
The officers get the pie and cake,
And all we get is the bellyache,
Hinky, dinky, parley-voo.
The sergeant ought to take a bath, Parley-voo.
The sergeant ought to take a bath, Parley-voo.
If he changes his underwear
The frogs will give him the Croix-de-Guerre,
Hinky-dinky, parley-voo.
You might forget the gas and shells, Parley-voo.
You might forget the gas and shells, Parley-voo.
You might forget the groans and yells
But you'll never forget the mademoiselles,
Hinky, dinky, parley-voo.
Mademoiselle from Armentières, Parley-voo?
Mademoiselle from Armentières, Parley-voo?
Just blow your nose, and dry your tears,
We'll all be back in a few short years,
Hinky, dinky, parley-voo.
poem by Anonymous Americas
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Hair Cutting Saloon
Thick mirrors of transparent glass,
slates of graphite stuck to wall,
big bottles of shaving foam,
flammable containers of liquid spray,
a tetra assembly of royal chairs,
with protruding headrests of cushioned rexin,
fluorescent light rods producing blue light,
arrays of scissors made of stainless steel,
razor switch blades in plastic shells,
brown hairbrush with artificial teeth,
polygonal cans of medicated shampoo,
soft white towels dipped in hot steam,
aromatic hair oil in copper tins,
giant clock hung to wall nail,
electronic hair drier suspended from a jugglery of
wires,
wooden boxes of talcum powder,
tantalizing odour of body cologne,
huge paint brush coated with black dye,
rectangular green tablets of antiseptic soap,
flocks of silky hair lying dead on the floor,
offering a wide range of services like,
haircut, massage, facial, bleach,
special shave and shampoo bath,
with an iron safe for stacking currency notes,
and a large tumbler of cool water,
shaping hairy demons to presentable gods,
as i stretch my legs,
in the crowded ambience of the hair cutting saloon.
(c) (r) copyright-2004, by nikhil parekh. all rights reserved.
poem by Nikhil Parekh
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2 Proems from ' 'Now, Heart' - Some Of What I Remember When I Listen
for Willie 'in the pocket' now of earth
A river is a process through time, and the river stages are its momentary parts.
—Willard Van Orman Quine
One [Remembering Chattanooga Days With Willie, Tennessee River Close By]:
One night Willie, much 'in the pocket'—an expression for being well onto drunk which I've never heard from anyone but him—wanted to dance to a Bessie tune playing, 'Back Water Blues', him recalling nights as a young man in rural Tennessee where he had worked hard days in oppressive vegetable fields then hit the after hours juke joints for 'colored, twas parting days, Jim Crow, ' he explained, where he would drink, dance then dive/delve into sensual mysteries of moist skin, hot breath, mutually open mouths, their commodious moans and mumbles, venial hands, always vital parts, private hearts mutually pounding ancient known rhythms, odors, tastes of gin and those slender, forbidden, now greedily stolen bites in those all too short nights with their damned intrusive dawns.
Jumping to his feet, Willie described 'powder dancin'' (pronounced marvelously, 'powdah') which I had never heard of. Talcum powder would be copiously scattered onto the planked dance floor where couples in stockinged or bare feet would ecstatically dance, gliding and sliding sweetly scented, muskily bent toward later glides and slides in slippery joy of momentary allure, amour on dimmed porches or in surrounding woods often enough and gratis upon delicate slabs of moonlight gratuitously dewy providing cushion for Passion's out and in, honoring, dignifying deities of skin wanting more making more skin, headlong Nature's frictional algorithms indelibly scored in every each his her yawing yen.
Two [Paean To Rivers]:
I know that wheat is anciently holy but now even more so for flour, the sight and feel of it, its unbaked smell, turns me again toward a Chattanooga 3rd street, its compass river swelling like bread nearby bearing witness still for one cannot say too much about rivers—their irreverence of edges scored, spilling themselves, proclaiming natural gods deeper than memory yet dependent upon it for traced they must be in every human activity no matter the breech, for something there is to teach even deity though it may be wrong to do so, or hearsay to say it or sing, but the song is there for those whose ears are broken onto bottoms from which cry urgencies of Being and between, dutiful banks barely containing the straining Word.
poem by Warren Falcon
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Platform of love
When I tried running on a platform of white ice; I
scornfully slipped; and in the end all that I was able
to taste was incredulously frozen water,
When I tried running on a platform of tangy salt; I
inevitably lost my footing; and there was nothing but
vivaciously ominous powder all over my trembling skin,
When I tried running on a platform of brilliantly
yellow and pure butter; I hurled forward with a
stifled gasp after some time; with the follicles of my
hair incorrigibly sticking to each other like the
gigantic tree and its flimsy roots,
When I tried running on a platform of scintillating
glass; I abysmally floundered; tripped head on to have
my supple skin ruthlessly punctured and in pools of
ghastly blood,
When I tried running on a platform of feathered silk;
I dismally broke the bones of my dainty nose; and my
eyeballs popped out like bouncy springs reverberating
incessantly in free space,
When I tried running on a platform of silver sands; I
collapsed with a thunderous thud on the obdurate
floor; with my shoe flying over my shoulder and all my
expensive pair of clothes ripping apart mercilessly at
their sensitive seams,
When I tried running on a platform of slimy oyster
shells; I heard a deafeningly banging noise inundate
the atmosphere; winced in incomprehensible amount of
agony after twisting my knee to unprecedented limits,
When I tried running on a platform of astoundingly
smooth talcum powder; I fell 10 steps backward instead
of marching towards realms of irrefutably victory,
When I tried running on a platform of disdainful
grease; I kept intractably jogging at a single spot
for hours on the trot; while infact all my adversaries
had already reached the voluptuous strings of the
finishing line,
When I tried running on a platform of satiny white
paper; there were infinite obstreperous and unruly
voices that deluged the soft ambience; and all that
resulted as an outcome was prominently gaping holes in
the body of the sheet which now fitted snugly on my
scalp,
When I tried running on a platform of rolling marbles;
all that was heard after a while was my horrifically
petrified screams and gasps as I found myself plunging
towards an ocean of gruesome blackness blended with
dilapidated nothingness,
When I tried running on a platform of freshly green
banana skins; I banged on my hindside with a force
greater than the force of Nature; and the complexion
of my cheeks metamorphosed to an embarrassingly
childish crimson,
When I tried running on a platform of spongy rubber
balls; I successfully managed to crush a few in my
initial conquests of reaching my mission; but soon
shuddered overwhelmingly before kissing dust on the
ground; dug partial graves for myself in loose soil,
When I tried running on a platform of lifeless whale
skin; I inadvertently shouted beyond hysterical
boundaries as if the monster was alive; collided
terribly on my ribs as I took just a few steps
forward,
When I tried running on a platform of insurmountably
red cherries; all I accomplished doing was finely
pulverizing the succulent fruit; while the
inconspicuously tiny seeds fomented me to tremble
hopelessly towards the cold floor,
When I tried running on a platform of pure Cadbury
chocolate; my feet primordially enjoyed transgressing
through the supremely soft bed; but after a while got
horrendously entangled in the mess; felt as if
deplorably sinking into the valley of death,
When I tried running on a platform of glittering
diamonds; in the beginning I felt insatiably delighted
at possessing such lavish amounts of opulence; but
soon regretted my decision tremendously; as their
pointed surface uncouthly infiltrated into my heart;
satanically assassinating the tiniest traces of
tangible life,
When I tried running on a platform of congenital lies;
I landed up in such a hell; that it was profoundly
sickening to bear with the aftermath's that unleashed
thereafter in my life,
When I tried running on a platform of salacious
lechery and malice; I ended up being imprisoned in my
own sinful trap; a prison which infact had a gleaming
lock without a single key,
While it was only when I tried running on a platform
of immortal love; that my life gained full fledged
momentum; irrevocably refrained to look backwards;
transited to blissfully bouncing and wholesomely
alive…..
(c) (r) copyright-2004, by nikhil parekh. all rights reserved.
poem by Nikhil Parekh
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Four Snortets, A Parody With Fondness For Thomas Stearns Eliot
'Now we come to discover that the moments of agony...are likewise permanent with such permanence as time has...Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination-We had the experience but missed the meaning.' - from 'The Dry Salvages' by T.S. Eliot
1
Burnt Snortin'
Mister, or Sir, rather, Thomas Sterns Eliot left his evening door,
late middle age, having lived into the postmodern 'new' millennium,
having again reiterated his propounded new diet whereupon
wandering on a deserted shore near mumbling twilight one might
meet a most inarticulate soft peach or unutterable yet edible Christ,
or a close match, a little kidding, upon which we may, if we dare,
reiterative quartet playing plaintive though palliatively, dine four
squarely in Piccadilly sempiternal before getting sodden after
sundown, preferably on Friday, which is a good time to do it, to eat
and drink again, remembering that it is end of the week, out of the tube
finally unethered, trousers unrolled at last, the mission to get plastered,
doing lines in the stalls, toilet seat become an altar of dissolution.
But, despite numbness of lips and tongue, of nasal passages,
do not hope that trousers shall roll up again till Monday, and do
not call it fixity. And do not call it fistula for that is to come but not
quite yet.
And who cares? or let us forget. Teach us, O Mannered One,
to care and not to care having lost muscle plasticity which a
good pair of dark socks can cover what was once pliant and
supple, now a gruesome obscenity. Have I overstated?
Shall I overstate again? Shall I? No? not now? how all things
crumble, even a souffle caves from expectation and thus we
wait with dope, we wait without hope for hope would be hope
for another line, and yet another, and we are reduced to shouting
repeatedly shouting, Muther f*cker! Muther f*cker, overwrought,
in the stall, temperatures and ovens not withstanding.
So listen, I said to myself stalling for time for the coke to take
effect, wondering why the hell I mentioned a souffle, to kick
in wait without prematurely crashing, for the night, O Friday,
is still young though I am not so young,
I grow old
I grow old
I unfold a
hundred pound
note roll it
tightly tightly
greedy for
lines and
more time
more time
for laughter
remembered
in the bloody
garden now
grown with
weeds
BOLLOCKS
2
Wasted Coker
so I said to my soul, yes yes yes wait without eating the dish eaten
last week which gave me the infernal trots, now giving me something
else to think about, f*ck that old Edenic garden, wait without faith that
the waiter will return the dish sent back merely because one can,
because one (note how I go to the third person but f*ck that) , ONE
ONE ONE is really angry at the boss and one is in the stalls not for
coke but for yet another freshly chewed double anus demanding attention.
And all things are stalled for in the stall all is bloody and ONE,
erhebung with motion too too much, squatting, endlessly squatting
wiping squatting wiping ad infinitum of bum unto bumbling attempts
so I said in the stall,
wait, wait dumbly, tongue lagging,
for the dope to kick in, forget the late
arrival at office, f*ck Mondays! the usual scene,
one can recover here by porcelain cool
white o white as
the lines are white
which, too, porcelain, is waiting to be cleaned,
and all things shall be cleaned, but only after
midnight for I shall have left by then having forsaken
all hope and the sink where I have discreetly washed
my skivvies in order to go home again, return
uncomfortable, without support, to throw them in the
turning dryer to dry again for I do not hope to return
again until next week to probably reenact the same
scene again, (bringing another pair of skivvies with
just in case) , the patient server, harassed, must add
and re-add my check again and again because I am
still
very
VERY
pissed at the boss, at the chittering fetuses mocking, always
mocking, in the shrubbery near the well-used apothecary and
I shall go home foregoing mulberries, for I am too blitzed, having
forgotten the rejected dish, the wish for justice, for mum's steak
and kidney pie, and I have remembered all too late. Alas.
So let us go home then, which is a kind of personal Golgotha,
for which the rent is beyond my means but let us go and
make our supper remembering to take the gonorrhea pill.
No, let us purchase our meal though on a budget, and forget
even all this trivia. Let us forget all that, too, looking in,
deja vu, the bathroom mirror from the stall
(have I left or do I remain?)
Recall then that I can leave the comb unhandled
until Monday morning. It shall not cruelly beckon
again from the toilet, or it can be justifiably ignored,
to comb what is left of what is left to fall, or grow,
but that's a laugh. Come Monday, and only then,
we must find the diminishing part again, searching
ever searching,
scalp and England
all one, or soon shall
be One
scanty scanty
scanty
3
The Drying Assuages
And all is vanity amongst these my ruins.
And Sweeney, whoever he may be,
tidies up neurotically, gin on his breath
for he is bored unto death but awaits
daily the post for possible liberty
which he once took with a wealthy
widow who mistook him for someone
else. The scar forever reminds of
dumb lusts, and dumber luck, for loot,
never dreaming she was a black belt.
His teeth, now wooden, remind him to
be mindful of the good against all wants,
and so he sits, wise, chaste, chiseled
in the ruins reading Beckett, but that is
another story written in the stars Centauric
qua qua qua
sisk boom ba
'tween Fuquaad
& Apothecary
near the corner
time forgot
but o not I
when the clot
broke and people
screamed no
help at all as I
stood pale,
pale, paler still
leaning upon
a tailor's wall
he, too, no
help at all
threatening
to call the cops
It closes me in
again to recall
qua qua Fuquaad
amongst the forgotten roses
where one is hungover in the supposes
he began with, that he can never finish
like this, pissed, which goes on,
which goes on, 'I can't go on.
But I must because I am losing hair and so'
dot dot dot into eternity
and so we must wear a hat but let us not go then,
you and I, patiently into all that now for come the
proper time
now then here then,
remembering the chaffing bloody garters
we will pack our Preparations H, grateful always,
no longer walking funnily sideways in the garden,
in the wandering streets, the half retreating steps,
without itch or burn, the tissue roll turned slowly
with pleasure not to double, or even triple, ply.
We cleanse what cannot be seen but only reckoned
with, and sniffed, pull at our chains and buckles,
then pick our pace doubly up for we are late yet
again for work for one because we think too too
much and get caught up in cadences but
never mind for reality is
the boss will chew us out another one thus the suppositories
forgetting the time but not the talcum, trailing little
clouds, each hurried step a flurried reminder of
divinity glimpsed, if sought at all
4
Little Skidmarks
O the stall, stall, stall, we all go into the stall
Nevermind, just follow the trail of yesterday's shoe,
talcum and dust mingle taciturn
undoing intention to haste
powdery traces unhidden guidance
the prayed for thunderstorm never come to wash
tell-tale treads reveal some rash is spread,
scaling crud of gory glory and more stains to wash
but what of shame? Do we not hope to turn it to other
than no more to blame? Thus we gait without soap,
panicked, for what is to come, to scrub, to un-stain,
but soon, the boss is pacing. But what is to be gained
in running knowing already what waits ahead?
Another annus. Another anus.
Nothing more.
Hidden children in the mulberries
chittering, heard but unseen.
Note to self:
Must take Thorazine before bedtime.
Goddamn wankers! !
But let us leave them for another dosage,
for another week's prelude sans qualudes,
the sullen departure to work again combing
the faces in the crowd pitching, another aphasia
I prefer to call an 'occluded interlude', yet
another distracted fit caught in a sun ray upon
seeing that the poorly stitched seam hastily done
between the shower and the tepid tea,
between the sorting through the dirty laundry,
the deepening ennui for something to wear,
o do not hope to wear it again and again evergreen
(whatever, BTW, 'ennui' is, but it is fun to say and
in this aesthetic some other language needs to be
gratuitously writ to make the poetic voice more valid
if Americans attempt to art, 'writ' is a good word, too,
let me then write it repeatedly: writ writ writ, to wit)
begins yet again, o Ariadne, obsessive compulsive
to the end,
Thorazine Thorazine Thorazine
must must must remember to wit!
...to unravel that which is still, to look on the
bright side, yet another beginning, the public,
pathetic, peripatetic tugging of shirts and blouses
over the widening rip in the thinning trouser's seat,
pant legs remembering to be gay scrolling ever upward.
And yet we still call these knobs 'ankles', forgoing gaity.
Nothing to be read here, now, in Merry Old,
but old age, varicose. the blank stare dreaming
comatose, of repressed rage, still pissed at the boss,
shamed of ankles, the chittering twats in mulberry bush
near home, following, following
No wonder these
little snots at me laugh.
Them I'll clobber
here then now then
Shall we turn the page again?
Shall we? Shall we turn over yet
another leaf? Shall we repeat it all
again forgetting the unraveling stitch?
The itch and the burn?
The Itch and the burn returning,
for one bought the store brand and not the original.
Now it hurts to sit or stand. Shall I say it again,
under fetid breath, dentures stained?
Yes. Yes!
Sit or stand.
Sit or stand!
Now goddamn it,
bloody move on!
I shall say it again because I can.
But later. But let us remember
indulgently
now then, here then
hidden laughter behind
hands pointing at loose stitches,
boxers gray.
Forgot to do laundry.
Another note to self.
Another task.
Do the wash.
Most important.
Still, it is a good Friday so, sighing,
at last forgetting all Mondays past
and to come
not withstanding, for it hurts either
way to sit or stand, the late pay check,
piss poor pittance, mind, is cashed
probably on bloody Monday but
never mind. Let us presently pour
our penurious libations
Chianti Chianti
Chianti.
poem by Warren Falcon
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Stupid, Stupid World Full Of Lies
Stupid, stupid world full of lies, self-deceit, greed,
conspiratorial stinging nettles, leeching bills, vampiric,
cutting off the flow of things like tiger-mussels,
hillbilly hippies beating up their girlfriends on crack,
all these egotistic puff ball mushrooms with labial gills
mythically inflated by one night's good rain
into albino planets, people who have more keys to heaven
than they have locks on hell, abandoned school bells
that go on talking to themselves like wandering scholars
light years after the children grew old at their perennial recess
and the moths and the mice and the mildew
keep putting out books epilogues after everyone's
forgotten how to read the signs of their own decay.
Between the horns of the moon that's been thrown
like a goat skull into the wishing well of my heart,
roadie spiders string my harp for me like false eyelashes
in the green room, and the nerves of the mirrors
are shattered into the frayed deltas of the ropes of hope
endangered elephants are trying to climb up to heaven on.
The thin-skinned blissed-out gardenias of Maharajji
are wilting under the eyeshadow of their Mary K cosmetics
as their rainbows grow vicious as vegan dogs
in a spiritual junkyard of razorwire and foodchains
that have overextended their supply lines like the umbilical cords
of kites and puppets and angels on the strings of arachnids.
Too pure for me. I'd be afraid of getting myself on their floors.
Tracking starmud in from the mindstream I've been floating down
from one neuron to the next, one town to another,
like the new moon of an origami swan in a scenic calendar
of apocalyptic moments in the life of a hand grenade
people keep pulling on like the handle of an empty fridge.
Count me among the Andalusian vandals of the delinquent dragons
who keep writing obscene truths in lampblack and terza rima
on the walls where the flamethrowers post their prophecies.
I was born to burnish gold. I was born to dry the eyes
of weeping diamonds. I was born to wire the rainbow bridges
with satchel charges of fireflies and lightning for demolition
so everybody can learn to swim through stone
like glaciers to the other side of their polarized cataracts.
And whenever I look at a house of worship built on quicksand
I've got to laugh like an avalanche of meteors
at the self-serving lustrations of their pretentious extinctions
as the world blazes all around them like a halo of inflammable hairspray.
I've got holy wars of my own to go to that won't be disarmed
by the soft swords of their beeswax candles surrendering
to such a little flame of life at the tip of a limp wick
that trembles with every breath it takes like a feather in a furnace.
I see the mad dogs like arsonists with hydrophobia
frothing at the mouth for war, citing ancient conflagrations
from the burnt out scriptures of their sacred matchbooks
raving at the supernovas that ignore them like ingrown solar flares
that couldn't stand up to a drought, let alone a forest fire.
What good is inspiration if it hasn't got a detonator?
Or enlightenment if all it does is ignite a funeral pyre,
cremate a desire to live like a peer of the dynastic galaxies
you were born among with the silver spoon of a universe in your mouth
whether you use it to cook crack, take your medicine
like a human suffers an excruciating transformation,
or let the hummingbirds sip from it like syringes
flagging snakestongues of blood in celestial sugar water?
And all the warrior poets buffed like medicine bags
of talcum powder, and all the healers selling
batches of bad heroin like dealers to the high school kids
who used to steal their mother's oxycontin from the medicine chest
so they could rail the yellow brick road like roadkill.
All the vates, seers and shamans consulting
prophetic pundits and polls as the critics
repeal the fate of the artist before she's born,
cuckoos taking over the nests of better birds,
parasitic guests taking over the house of the host
as the journalists turn from objective observers
to political spiders weaving the webs they spin as the news
and the audience, breaking mutually consenting protocol
gets up on stage with Hamlet and turns a play into a talkshow
for the fifteen minutes of pop-tart celebrity left on their i-phones.
Originality that used to emanate from the roots up
like the light coming out of a dark universe
now seated like an air traffic controller in an orchard
like the wind assigning runways and instructions
on where to take off and land to a riot of blossoms
with pre-conceived flightpaths and well-known destinations.
Creative writing professors in the literary mills
grinding the grist for whole new generations
of mimetically enculturated oxen
to keep the wheels turning of a lucrative careers bank
that used to be the calling of the insanely inspired
too busy working in the visionary mines of their genius
looking for jewels of insight to waste their potential
on getting a job regurgitating words for baby pelicans,
masticating poetry into spiritual pulp fiction
or sipping them from other men's mouths as if
spit were the nectar of the muse they've never met.
The real dragons, their spines lined with sundials,
really don't care how many chapbooks you've published in a year
nor how many times per capita you've mentioned butterflies
just to ensure your fan club you're still sensitive to beauty
or where you're reading next like a matchbook
burning in the valley of Tuwa or whether your chimney-spark
expiring under the stars is an inferno of unignited creosote
caked in your throat like a callous of black matter
or the ore of the braille alphabet blocks you throw
like snake eyes in dice playing your randomness off
against the lottery of your autobiography copied and pasted
like a colony of red army ants putting your books together
like a folio of butterfly wings perfectly bound for the ant heap.
poem by Patrick White
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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The LoRuhamah Poems - Her Death Discordant
for Judy Asher, killed at age 21
These meditations/laments are set in
Appalachian mountains and towns of
North American Southern states, circa mid1960's
[The name, LoRuhamah, means 'not loved']
Hosea 1: 6 - 'And she conceived again, and bare a daughter.
And God said unto him, Call her name LoRuhamah' for I will
no more have mercy on the house of Israel, but will utterly take
them away.'
Part One
1
O rue rue LaRue among the ginkgoes
cloven leaves all fallen whose burnished berries
yellow late melon sweetness of Autumn days
O rue rue LaRue among the boxwoods
evergreen for no good phlox.
Blooded leaves settle upon golden flax of weeds
seeding the chilling ground receiving soundless
lips of grain enduring ice and ice again
O rue rue LaRue amidst the sortilege
Coo of pigeons in the distant spired village
low of legion cattle turning toward evening millet
mow of fringing grain chafing toward winter silos
O rue rue LaRue
Blue waters at a distance
blue the tails of otters
blue the eyelids of sleeping beasts
nested beneath the earth
Distant crows sound the morning field beyond pasture
Dew murmurs names upon passing grasses
Echoing wood gold where below the stream's gash
furthers along slowly murdering dimensions of
width and depth
Remembered gait of young ponies toward
the spring's sweet water
Remembered laughter of the frail daughter there
beside the fields sweet grasses
The daughter, as the water, passes into silence
Laughter remembered beside the old well of the woods
2
Unearthing the old dwelling
found glass bottles
rusted ancient tins of talcum
utensils grimed which once fed mouths
a comb sadly saving some long
uncaressed and beloved white hair
a rusty chain for what purpose used
then discarded
Overturning stones
reveals a child's gum
machine trinket ring
O the lovely hand of the long grown daughter
remembered in the plastic ring hole full of dirt
caked jewel of childhood, innocent, cool
in this finder's keeping
Rest o daughter
slumber in the dark palm of the grave
We are slave to suffering
but the little ring you lost
or bitterly tossed away
when its small circle's promise
outgrew you
is here
in the sunlight again
in a stranger's hand
standing where the gate allowed
entrance to the once beautiful yard
Brief the rediscovered
for all of us are soon
gone under the hill
The ring dear lost dead thing
once human and frail will endure
beyond our bones.
It's promise is safe
I wish I knew your name, dear one
O rue rue LaRue...
3
Spittle on the chin
stubble upon the cheek
she met her love beside the creek
Turned in her sleep
the calling heat gathered
the steep bank in the wood
then fell
as water will
forgetting the blood's
first stain on the long discarded sheet
A woman now she fled toward love
and fed there but
famished still
died there...
4
...there that little greensward swath of green grass
and leaf and limb and tree in that little crook nook
of vale dark there and sky gimleted on each blade
and leaf hover myriad in air...
Part Two
'Her death discordant...'
'Birds must sing to keep from asphyxiating.' - Mircea Eliade
1
Then died there the rose beside the house of tin.
The track bore no train for years.
Weeds traveled tendriled and
yellow rooted between trestles.
Broken vessels whistled through
shattered teeth of glass.
Only wind and no rusted train passed.
Though the scene bears dislocation,
though the brain remembers station and motion
of steam engine and iron wheel rotation
the places of old gone passing
bear no malice toward stillness.
All around mute remains remind the
occasional passer of former days;
an old snuff tin crumbled in a reverent hand
longs for the woman grasping then,
holds sweet dust beneath her tongue
as the land must hold her now where is
no whisper but sleep beyond sleep.
Weeds to the eye are sad between rails
but listening to their green and yellow belles
the rightness of their swaying displaces all sorrow.
Their distance is a distance one cannot know
but only borrow in imagination by extension
of miles, their reach is ours then, translated
green and longing, their leaves throng the
evening air, in silent clamor fling down seed
to summer's blundering prayer.
2
Discovering a small print of Degas' painting,
'The Singer In Green', on the day of her death,
sending it to her best friend, saying:
This reminds me of her,
her features, the beauty of implied song,
a tenderness, and sadness,
head tilted back in order to lift her voice,
crooked hand above breasts gesturing
in physical song, green light bathing
the mortal scene.
Was this not her
green with life,
woman prime,
taken into the vast green
of the earth during Spring?
She sings still.
In memory we hear the literal voice,
see her gesture, catch her fading laughter.
2
Go out into some silent space
of green world then. Sit. Listen.
Muted voices and motion are greater there
than any little pocket of earth that our
body or grave can hold.
She dies into the world which
is always alive
and Mystery.
So the singer has become the green light
which bathes her, her life signaling toward it,
her death become it which is greater music still.
Be sad, as we will, but know
she is now where the Green is -
in woods,
in the world,
in memory in
hearts and minds
we but borrow it while alive and return
to the Green source with our passing.
3
O rue rue LaRue it's here
this space between the gate and the lovely garden
is here everywhere in the ring in the hand in the dirt
within the hole of the ring in the breath flung in
and out the grave house underneath
the dirt's coolth and dank breath
thank the air and pass the leaves
the hand of the digger becomes the tree
becomes the sign upon which all breathing things
shall hang language surpasses itself breaks
upon its own weight like the empty shell of the beetle
little is the frame we live within this tiny world
the walk upon Vast the space it partakes of making
the wave of the wind ripple in the mind and Mind
turns to the dropp of rain the flaked paint of the
barn side the vague window pane opening upon
the eternal scene of stones breathing becoming bread
the living the dead artifacts
All
4
That green has grown.
Leaves have darkened
deepening shadow and hue of green
and so, imagining, walking through,
has her death.
I walk through that, too,
wonder how she fares,
silent lady of dirt
having lost at last
the hurting care of the world,
and we, green and growing,
curl above her dark place,
sure sometime of our grave
as sure as we are now of hers.
5
Scattering wind over bending blades,
I grieve still her leaving,
feel its weight as I see scattered ones
on benches in the park, asleep,
one wretched man huddling where
a band of young musicians tune
their instruments for song.
Disparate images entwine -
gone man,
gone band,
and her death discordant -
the living die
the dead somehow live
singing in the sometime green.
As green returns
so she will in silent memory,
in waves of wind
which is only wind.
We will change but not as she
so changed to every possibility of song.
6
It appears to be ended
but as grass shows there is
a forming wisdom and the same,
Desire.
The fire in our house of living rages
and we cannot come out of our own accord.
The event of her going is a beckoning
to see the flame leaping so let's creep
toward the Green and be silent
but if we cannot be then let us be as she,
frail and tender, lifting voices up
in the greening shadow
7.
Dear one.
Dear one.
They've mown the hill.
The grass remains.
Modern scythe and sickle
felled the frailer blades but
stained their metals
green with your name.
The sun shines,
burns that hewn spot where I first
learned to love your passing,
where I watched your leaving
grow wild and lovely,
untamed beside the street,
learned to hear the quiet there
where now a cycle is begun.
A new season of your death
is running rampant again to know
the blades of time and men.
8
Among oaks the fallen do not speak.
The dirt upon which they lay is hard.
Hard earth.
Cold earth.
Need us here
spoken for nothing.
We scratch our mouths
across the scar of land,
wait in the black sun,
pray to break apart.
A bird with injured wing
sits among the yellow leaves.
It's wild hurt flays the sky.
poem by Warren Falcon
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Now, Heart' - Some Of What I Remember When I Listen
A river is a process through time, and the river stages are its momentary parts.
—Willard Van Orman Quine
From early poems,1970s, youthful indiscretions/attempts to vocally/poetically arrive at/derive a worthwhile writer's voice. Some explication might serve or enhance these under serving, undeserving though 'striving-after' poems hidden in old journals understandably unpublished but now so with apologies which are these expiatory explanations. Recently rediscovering these early arrivals, derivative yet aspiring I recognized and reembraced an enduring self maturing, arriving into late middle age:
Obsessed newly by jazz, mad about the many miraculous lady singers, entranced all too easily as youth are wont to be by sorrows and sexual infatuations which feel, emphasis on 'feel', like love, here are two of many 'songs' as tributes and life markers to jazz singers who provided soundtrack and felt expression to my angst and easily inflated/deflated sense of self, of beloved others, and of that new territory, independent life away from parental home and childhood community discovering, blundering into the fray of separate hearts and minds, irresponsible genitals and insouciant jouissance ('juiciness', in French) , discovering then and again and again that like Walt Whitman I 'contain worlds' and many disparate selves poorly formed, most of them collective projections and expectations of who or what I wanted to be, what others wanted and expected me to be, resulting in much confusion, tumult and multitudes of momentary throw-away selves. Thus singers like Bessie Smith and Dinah Washington became anchors, warm contexts and containers, for my daily fragmentation and re-formation.
I lived on 3rd street in downtown Chattanooga, a refugee from zealous, politically conservative white evangelicals and the vestigial yet still viral Southern Confederacy. Just a block or two from where Bessie Smith was born, I used to watch from my upstairs porch the steep hilly street's comings and goings with a glimpse of the Tennessee River between tenements across the street, its persistent rich aroma heavy in the air. I imagined Bessie Smith as a little girl playing up and down the street like the kids I saw then - once, two of them gleefully chasing a frighteningly large and confused looking rat.
William—he insisted on 'Willie'—an old man down the street who knew Bessie as a little girl, used to come up to my porch after one day hearing Bessie from my phonograph singing blues onto the always busy but attentive street. One of the first and permanent things I learned from my porch is that a city street has keen, observant eyes, acute ears, omnivorously seeing/hearing everything, indifferently, perhaps, but nothing escapes it, a roving, all-knowing urban Eye of God.
Extremely green and eager as green always is though stutteringly, and without apology, I enjoyed Willie's many stories and back pocket bottles of Old Mr. Boston Apricot Brandy, both of which—story and spirits/spirited story —dissolved or appeared to, age, racial, cultural, and sociological differences, along with those catalysts/cata-lusts, the forever alchemical Bessie and other jazz singers, Billie! Dinah! Ella! Sassy! Lil Ester Phillips! Nina Simone! to name only a few of the sensuous solutio chanteuses resolving sexual confoundaries by Miss-ambiguating sins' plethera with loose lilt and will- o-the-lisp whisper tongues.
One night Willie, much 'in the pocket'—an expression for being well onto tipsy which I've never heard from anyone but him—wanted to dance to a Bessie tune playing, 'Back Water Blues', him recalling nights as a young man in rural Tennessee where he'd worked hard days in oppressive vegetable fields then hit the after hours juke joints for 'colored, twas segregation days, ' he explained, where he would go to drink, dance then dive/delve, as it were, into the sensual mysteries of moist skin, hot breath, mutually open mouths with their commodious moans and mumbles, venial hands, always vital parts, private hearts mutually pounding ancient known rhythms, odors and tastes of gin and those slender, forbidden, now greedily stolen bites in those all too short nights with their damned intrusive dawns.
'Dawnus interuptus, ' I quipped, us both slapping knees, passing the narrative bottle fore and aft hefting moments re-grasped between us, offerings to the equally narrative river, the all-knowing hungry street.
Jumping to his feet, Willie described 'powder dancin'' (pronounced marvelously, 'powdah') which I had never heard of. Talcum powder would be copiously scattered onto the dance floor where couples in stocking or bare feet would ecstatically dance, gliding and sliding sweetly scented, muskily bent toward later glides and slides in the slippery joy of momentary allure and amour on dimmed porches or surrounding woods often enough and gratis upon delicate slabs of moonlight gratuitously dewy providing cushion for Passion's out and in, honoring and dignifying deities of skin wanting more making more skin, headlong Nature's frictional algo-rhythms indelibly scored in every/each his/her yawing yen.
Willie shouted, 'YOU GOT ANY TALC POWDER? ! '
...The jazz us trembled...
'NO! ' I bellowed, curious.
'YOU GOT ANY FLOUR? ! '
Even more curious, 'YEAH! ! '
'GO GIT IT! QUICK! ! '
He grinned an Old Mr. Boston juke-joint night-memories quaff-again grin.
Martha White, a brand of flour sold down South, has never been put to better use. Willie threw handfuls of 'Martha' over the tenement-planked living room floor as I half protested at the mess it (and me and Willie) was and would become. Completely gripped by his present-in-the-past brandy trance, a much younger man now, he suddenly grabbed me, brandied and tranced, too, my long hair flying, and danced me all over the floor the night through with swigs of Old But Now Spry 'n' Sprightly Mr. Boston with pauses to change record albums on the phonograph, 'catching up our breaths, ' he panted.
Next morning (more likely early afternoon) , Willie long gone, I awakened sprawled on the penitent porch—a cool concrete floor my sinner's bench—sweaty and thick as pan gravy, mosquito bitten, marinaded in Tennessee night mists. I staggered into the living room onto the ghostly floor powdery white, 'stroked' with two attached, or close to, sets of foot prints, heel slides and smears, a kind of 'Jackson Pollock meets Tibetan sand painting 'yazzed' yantra'**' with cigarette ashes flicked into the flickering impermanent mix. I've not powder danced since when we drank discovering oral history's joys, opened eager ears and fraternal arms forgetting fears of race and religion, age and expressed/ espressed Desire's multilingual disseminations.
I know that wheat is anciently sacred but now even more so for flour, the sight and feel of it, its unbaked smell, turns me again toward a Chattanooga 3rd street, its compass river swelling like bread nearby bearing witness still for one cannot say too much about rivers—their irreverence of edges scored, spilling themselves, proclaiming natural gods deeper than memory yet dependent upon it for traced they must be in every human activity, no matter the breech, for something there is to teach even deity though it may be wrong to do so, or hearsay to say it or sing, but the song is there for those whose ears are broken onto bottoms from which cry urgencies of Being and between, dutiful banks barely containing the straining Word.
**From Tibetan Buddhism. Visual meditation devices,
Yantras function as revelatory conduits of cosmic truths.
1. To Bessie Smith,3rd Street Chattanooga (circa 1971)
Already the river begins its sweat.
April to September I'll be on the porch
Come sunsets listening to cars in the
Dark and you, remembering the flour
On the floor and me and Willie in
Stocking feet dancing till dawn,
An old man down the street come
To drink on my porch sometime.
You were singing one night
While we drank and he just
Had to dance and pulled me,
Reluctant, skinny ass kid
All over the floor that night.
But my feet did dance.
And the flour stayed down
The whole summer long.
Now, Karen E. and Dinah Washington are still too painful 'o' dirges to give but only the skinniest details about. Karen, skinny, too, like this account where the devil is, indeed, in the details; Karen, young, vibrant, brilliant, German literature Thomas Mann scholar, once a patient in a mental hospital I worked the night shift at, committed suicide. We both loved the divine divas of jazz, Dinah Washington in particular.
I used to read William Blake out loud, the voices of the school children on the playground out our window and in the nearby park so loud that I had to shout out his 'Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience' to be heard. Karen would almost always cry when she heard me quote/shout now by heart, mistakes and all, holding her sad face in my hands, 'And we are put on earth a little space, That we may learn to bear the beams of love And these black bodies and this sunburnt face Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove, For when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear, The cloud will vanish, we shall hear His voice, Saying, 'Come out from the grove, my love and care And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice'...'
By then gin had replaced Old Mr. Boston, and thin Karen had replaced some earnest yet fleeting others for in youth there are ne'er too many, from Willie nights to other momentary eternities of lovers. We lived Blake's songs, and Dinah's. Karen died them. The gods and Thomas Mann love her. I still do. Die of them, that is. And love her, do.
2
Dinah Washington, All Alone On The Street Of Regret (circa 1977)
It was sunrise, October.
Karen had just done herself in.
I suffered it through with
William Blake and gin.
Over the fence across the street
Children ran to class and Blake,
Too, chased those kids fast through
Leaves in the chill school yard.
I thought - the ground's already hard over
You, Karen. To Charon, then, and keep
Yourself warm. My arms no longer can.
You left no note in the dawn.
Out of lime and song at 7 a.m.
I dress, spin down the steps like then
In this morning now thin with Spring.
There's green over you now.
I cannot help but see a thin mildew
Form around your fingers in the dark.
Blake's still down playing in the park.
I'll play some Dinah when I get back in.
Now, Heart, don't you
Start that singing again.
poem by Warren Falcon
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Easy
Easy to extract oneself from the climacteric of doom
that will absolve humanity of its horrors
by placing its destiny in its own hands
like a loaded gun in the hands of a child
by taking long nocturnal walks by the Tay River
among wildflowers full of farewell.
To watch the moonrise glowing
on the Texas toes of my wet black boots
as if they'd just been spit polished by morning snails
and sense the just proportions
and inchoate eloquence of eternity
in the trivialities of sublime coincidence.
How randomly everything fits
into this urgent medium of life and death
as if it played the tailor to its own emergence seamlessly
the way the mind stream cuts a path for itself
among a bewildering array of rocks and fallen birch
or a startled rat snake adds its wavelength
like a higher frequency to the laconic water
and yet no river has ever flowed the wrong way to the sea.
Easy to step out of the polluted light of the streetlamps
into the cleaner darkness on the outskirts of town
to renew my innocence
in the macrocosmic reveries of my solitude
enchanted by the mesmerizing details
of the mystically miniscule.
How the New England asters
in the middle of September
that yesterday bloomed like stars
in happier zodiacs than this
today are watching their eyelashes fall out one by one
and the daylilies that blazed with desire
wither like the kisses of old women
when no one's there to receive them.
Easy to accept catastrophe in nature
as the spontaneous gesture of a hidden wisdom
that our eyes are too dependent on the light to see yet.
The muskrat gutted by the cattails
by a posse of rampant coyotes
in a frenzy of panicked hunger
sensing the cold-blooded wind turn vicious.
Soon the air will bare its fangs and snarl.
Soon the earth will harden into knuckles of ice
and the raccoons semi-hibernate
and the blue jays come like thieves
to pick the time-locks on the sunflowers
and the seeds enter the cryonic comas of their afterlives
confident of their revival in a future beyond doubt
as the planet sidles up to the sun at perigee
like an old love affair gone cold
tilting its head away
to rebuff any further advances.
Easy to lose yourself in the life of the mind
and the phantasmagoria of reality
that makes you feel you're walking with gods
you'll never know the name of.
Turn your back on the world
and let your thoughts wander off like smoke
from the fire pits of lost caravans
that have pitched their tents
on the dark side of the moon
where they can make up their own myths
about the strange stars
that have misled them this far from home.
How the creek laps the rock
like a doe at a salt block
left out in a farmer's field.
How the water purls over the terraced shale
that looks like a burnt book in the ashes
of a fire that's just been put out
like the library of Alexandria.
You could do that.
And who could blame you?
You wouldn't be wrong.
It's hard to listen
the way you listen to a star stream
slipping through a grove of birches at night
astute to everything it's whispering;
hard to listen to the blood
gurgling out of a wounded child
like a poppy choking to death.
Hard to fine-tune your sensibilities
to the miscreant devolution of your own species
and not be savagely appalled
into holding a mirror up to nature
that blocks the view as surely
as if you'd put your hands up over your eyes
to escape it all and wake up somewhere else
where skulls are more natural in Eden
than in the abattoirs of human carnage.
A clean life with no skidmarks of despair.
No fingernails scratching at the walls
in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.
No graffiti under the bridges of PsychoBabylon.
No university students on the road to Damascus
tortured like Rosetta Stones
that have just had their tongues cut out
for not saying anything
that makes any sense
to the body language of the depraved
mutilating their flesh like slang.
Just the claw marks on the rocks
that have been sanitized by time
like the glacial striations of the last ice age
that gouged out the eyes of the lakes around here.
The bitter aesthetes of retreat run back to paradise
to study demonology by the light of fireflies
to better understand their fellow man
and live tactically out of reach
of their common inhumanity
where there's not chance of a ricochet.
Under a locust tree in full bloom.
A fragrant cloud of honey-bees
with as many thorns as they have stingers
behind a wall of zinnias, cosmos, gladiolas
on a hill in the eye of clearing
completely surrounded by trees
sitting at a picnic table
with a black coffee, cigarette, and journal
inspired by the beauty of the morning to write
before your lover wakes up
to tend nine bean rows in Innisfree
though it's eleven miles
and a hundred years ago
outside Westport Ontario
where you can hear the scarlet carillons
of the wild columbine in the rain
tinkling like delicate wind chimes
and modestly agitated chandeliers
plucked by the rain like the plectra
of home-made harpsichords
on the moss-pated rocks
of their composer's skulls.
No mediocrities in nature
it's hard not to feel like Mozart
whatever you're listening to.
No air raid sirens, ambulances
squad cars or firetrucks
screaming like banshees
like furies and erinyes
to the scene of the tragic event.
No fractious braying of political jackasses
grinding their teeth in their sleep
like the mill wheels of the stony bread
the rich resent the poor
like loaves and fishes and mice in the silo
boat-tailed grackles and black-capped chickadees
salvaging what they can
from the dumpsters of leftover gardens.
No pathological racket of garbage cans
being tipped over in a street fight
to end all street fights
like knights in armour on their backs
in front a shield wall of local police
picking them up to hold them for ransom.
No drunks and druggies in the hallways
only bats velcroed to the burdock
blinded by the porch light
and star-nosed moles and snakes on the threshold
the cats leave like offerings
on the stairs of the temple of Bast.
So much easier to listen to the eerie wailing
of baby porcupines high in the basswood trees
than the shrieks of a family
being dragged out of their beds
by an occupation army
to see which of their daughters sisters mothers
will be raped like the Congo
whose childhood shall be pressed into murder
and who shall be bred out of existence.
Easy to buff the crack of the world with talcum powder
to spare you from getting diaper-rash of the mind
and side-track the ferocity of your insight into the horror
with lightning-rods and tuning forks
you can break with your pinky finger like wishbones
torn from the throats of children
who didn't have time enough on earth
to learn to read the names on their own gravestones
if they're lucky enough to have one.
Easy to have a time-share
in nature's indifference to death
when there no place left
on the surface of a raging planet
that isn't a dangerous vacation.
So much easier to tinker with echinacea
and smudge the bad spirits
out of the renovated farm house with sage
from home-grown herb gardens
than it is to inhale the reek of cordite
or the stench of organic decomposition
of the adolescent flesh of the festering corpse
found in a drainage ditch among the weeds
like a lily that smelled far worse than them
on the outskirts of Argentina
in the stadiums of Chile
in the Tiananmen Squares of China
in the mass hysteria of the bloodbanks of Syria
trying to assail a nest of dynastic vampires
with a silver bullet through the heart of the cloaked one
in the radical slums of Gaza
in the Warsaw ghettos of the West Bank
run by Israel searching children outside the gate
for smuggled vegetables from the Fertile Crescent
in the native reservations of the originals
who peopled Canada
like a charter of indigenous freedoms
without any concept of surveying their mother like real estate.
Outside the emergency exits and entrances of Arizona
where immigrants beaten to death
and dumped on the pavement to die
abandon all hope of ever entering there
and bullfrogs squatting on their sheriff's badge
croak about getting tough on the mosquitoes
by hand-cuffing them to the food chain for deportation.
Flies eggs in the goat's milk.
Spiders sucking the life out of the jewel
in the heart of the American dream catcher.
All that is hideous, grotesque, perverse,
genocidal, fratricidal, patricidal, matricidal, suicidal and worse
than acid splashed in the eyes of Afghani schoolgirls
learning to read through holes in the ozone
by flashlight under the veils of Isis.
Seek ye knowledge even as far as China.
Wheresoever ye turn is the face of God revealed
like the encaustic portrait of girl that came unglued
like a multilated candle on CNN
trying to shine a light on
nur wa nur
what's dark and brutal
about the alif ba ta tha gim
of an alphabet in the mouth of an oral tradition
with an alchemical regime of hashashim for muscle.
You know how many dolls they collected at Dachau?
You know how many soccer balls
have had their feet blown off by cluster bombs in Gaza?
You know how many weathervanes
have stiffened their resolve
to look the other way like iron roosters
with alarmist political agendas
and industrious military complexes
as corrupted as the weather
when the wind is blowing the wrong way
like bad spin from the chimneys of Auschwitz
and Sabra and Shatila lie in the direction of prayer
like the gunsight of a Palestinian sniper?
Is this God's ferocity
or the inconceivable atrocities of mad men
eaten alive by Herodian maggots
seeking the life of the first born of every nation
to preserve their myth of spontaneous generation.
Sweet to see the shadows of the autumn leaves
fossilized like bat wings on the sidewalk;
to notice how they turn
in the same succession of colours
from the outside in
as rainbows sunsets
and the emission spectra of nearby stars
busy on the nightshift making calcium and carbon.
Sweet to know this and to wonder at it
easy in the mystery
among the dragonflies and the blue hyacinth,
nailing bluebird boxes out of the reach of the barn cats
and egg-stealing raccoons
to play your part in it like a companionable spirit.
Asylum from the world.
Sanctuary.
Diplomatic immunity among the great blue herons
because you've stood there so long
without disturbing a fish
they think you're one of them.
poem by Patrick White
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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