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Tuesday, September 5, 2023

Day 409 September 5, 2023

 


Susan, surprising and sharp

As deer that drift up from a hazy forest,

Filling in sun painted areas pale of human voice,

Suddenly swimming into view

With soft breathing, light and dark…

Until life is Monet textured with layers of color.

Sunday, August 29, 2021

Day 408 August 29, 2021

 


 

That morn I said I shall be a love to thee,

until our glances cool and fall to dust,

then swore an oath, “Like Corn I’ll never be…

that spots and blights and drooping falls to rust!”

 

That morn I said that I would shelter thee,

and house and home I always would maintain

then swore an oath, “Like wheat I’ll never be…

that bends to wind and’s beaten down by rain.”

 

That morn I said that I would succor thee,

protect from sickness and all ill-turn

I swore an oath, “Like rice I’ll never be…

nor abandon thee to the flood or burn.”

 

The scarves and mittens of our years are hung

upon the pegs of the winter mudroom door,

like bright-eyed kids whose Christmas hymns are sung

yet keep on finding needles on the floor.

 

Our fate was sticks tossed up into the air,

plane trees and sycamore, some oak, some birch;

and fell as house, as home… as silverware!

Then snowy boots… Maura… Livi… upon the porch!

Sunday, August 8, 2021

Day 407 August 8, 2021

                   

 

What does one call the accoutrements of childhood's beauties?

The small unblemished artifice of art that used to be strewn

where we walked and lived, ate and drank, played and slept?


Hudson's used to have milk pitchers made by Hall China

with a picture of Little Bo Peep, no Super Hero.

The food and the touch of art was enough.


Our loves were no concupiscence,

Our thoughtless freedom no accidie,

and shopping was engagement with the

material world in play...

All accounts are due today!

 


Friday, January 31, 2020

Day 406 For Livi On Christmas 2019

 Image result for rackham fairies titania



Don’t look now,
Don’t look human child!
We are in the faerie clearing,
dancing by the Christmas star,
in forests tame and forests wild!


Come away children!
Come away quick,
Come meet the new born baby!
My children, Maia, Gaia,
Sky, Fire, Frost and Vic!

Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Day 405 May 14 2017 Trinity

The Star Streams of Globular Cluster Palomar 5




Trinity three-stick is a wikiup,
naked, bare, bereft of branch or leaf,
made for the Melancholia end of times
where Armageddon's brief.

Trinity catamaran is a boat,
three logs of the pine varnish tree;
made by Mr. Oppenheimer
and named by him Trimethy.

Trinity cluster... a press of stars,
trimmed by galactic teams;
kneeling as we crash the surf
of glowing stellar streams!


--



Sunday, May 7, 2017

Day 404 May 7 2017 Resurrection Easter

 John Updike, Writer, Poet



"Let us not mock God with metaphor" Updike says,
let us leave Him alone; might Elijah save Him;
yet us he cannot save from the Last and Biggest Sleep?
Twitter philosophies.

The temple's veil torn from top to bottom, in twain,
the earth quaked, the rocks were split, and graves were opened;
and the bodies of many saints asleep were raised;
Matthew Twenty-seven.

And before this Lazarus was raised from the dead,
perhaps he waited Easter with the many saints
raised on Friday, waiting Sunday, waiting, waiting;
Easter's entanglement!

Our life is not despair like a prayer's chance in hell:
Resurrection waits not upon the cantor,
nor the M.C. to tell it what to say, but runs
ahead, fireman and bell!

 --

Matthew 27 records the resurrection of many saints 3 days before the Resurrection of Jesus. I have spoken to many religious who are not familiar with the passage. It reminds me of the beginning of the series Les Revenants, wherein at the moment that the dead characters were revived, one of many butterflies in a lepidopterist's showcase flutters,
 

the glass of the case explodes outwards, and the sole butterfly flies away!


--
refer to http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2015/11/les-revenants-reviennent.html


(better a bit late than a little never....)

Tuesday, May 2, 2017

Day 403 May 2 2017 Cottage Moment




Friends are sunshine in our faces,
and ancient lovers make us wax
like a silver moon
above a lake
where we used to swim naked.

Wild red rose joined to a sturdy bush
and winding through the upright branch
like a menorah
next to the gate
we used to open to the garden.




Friday, December 25, 2015

Day 402 November 21 2015 Christmas Poems: The Gates




Elven gates that empty swing throughout the year
are filled at Christmas
with joyous cheer.

The festive house stands glowing, the fires bright,
bid us the feast partake,
spirits make light!

The table is spread with meats, and breads, and pie!
all who feared starvation
find salvation nigh!

Joyful entertainments enchant us until morn,
pageants on gold field-
when that Child is born!


--

Thursday, December 24, 2015

Day 401 November 14 2015 Christmas Poems: The Trip

 Seeking Room In Bethlehem - Tissot



Christmas Poems: The Trip


I could tell you, I could say,
Where comes the legends, and traditions,
a young mother and her family-
Today, our Christmas Day.

Traveling past the piney trees,
deep forest odors,
censed with balsams -
the valleys’ mists and heavy rains
push rivers to the seas.

Thunder, Alleghany,
reverberation
down the turnpike
‘til the curling smoke of home and
hearth greet the family!

--

Saturday, December 19, 2015

Day 400 November 7 2015 The One Who Carries Water






The One Who Carries Water

May daylight hurry me to this poetry,
my four-hundredth bad shoe verse
limping
with pebbles in the instep.

The blacksmith or the one who carries waters
on their back, does sing themself,
rhyming,
with strong and noble voice.

Achilles' anger and the cause of the grief
that befell the Achaeans,
slipping
back to the futile Aegean waters!

May daylight hurry; I will slay grim monsters:
the math test... chemistry...
triumph
it took my entire life!

--

Thursday, December 10, 2015

Day 399 October 31 2015 Memorial October 2015




Memorial  October 2015

Take a red, red rose
and place on the snowy berms
of Port Huron streets to mark
the place where we threw the last
of his wardrobe -
before the removers came...
to remove now and at last
forever.

Belladonna tincture
to swim within my heart,
leaving dirty residue
of love's inability
to entangle
the spin of hearts separate...
those actions at a distance
so spooky!

--

Day 398 October 24 2015 Mixie Kids




Mixie Kids

mixie child, of mixed race:
how seraph,
how cherubic thy face!

all earth waters blending,
into thee;
mankind's discords mending!




--









Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Day 397 October 17 2015 Venetian Blinds





Venetian Blinds

If the eyes be the window to the soul,
then Venetian blinds my emotions,
blurring another Earth outside,
mandolin of light

When I open them white prisoner bars,
they clatter like the bones of saint death,
I jump - they list - like sinking ships,
Lusitania light

Hate cleaning all them individ'l slats,
dust and nicotine... remember man
yer made from dust and nicotine,
O, let there be light!

My tattoos are stained and polished tendons
like blinds with an equalizer cord,
tasselled with gold, yet indifferent
to my needs for light.


--

Monday, November 16, 2015

Day 396 October 10 2015 Reading The News






Reading The News

Piles of cinders and ash!
burning laptop cauldron;
pouring forth bitumen and sulphurous fumes
like vehemence upon a desolate shore!

Vomit of drones and bombs!
burning seas off Aden;
Beirut and Paris swept into Etna's maw -
like pyroclastic clouds of evening news!

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Day 395 October 3 2015 Disposable Smokes (Cigares Jetables)




Disposable Smokes

Les cigares jetables de 400 souffles...
myriad de bars a cigare,
couleurs illimitées,
sumptueux, verts, grises, rouges,
etc.
pour que vous choisissiez...

Choisissez s'il vous plaît;
O, que vous choisissiez!
avant la fin du monde,
avant fin de la vie,
etc.
la prière d'enfer est tou'c'qui reste...


Sunday, November 8, 2015

Day 394 September 26 2015 Derecho Rain




Derecho Rain

This is the year the neighbor's tree came down;
the wind and rain was like derecho
a sinister derecho
like I never seen before...
and then a crash!
like Kapellmeister Bach slamming fast down
upon his primeval Himmelsburg
frightening his twelve obbligato woodwinds!
 
So I called my neighbor 
and he did not know me,
and asked if I wished to clean it up
and I said I did not have a chain saw anywheres
near that big, I mean, by Santa Muerte
and Lord Death...
I have not the mortal mean Scythe
to cut, to chop!
To thin out the surplus population!

We've closed up for the winter
and the fence rails where it fell
and still broke and splintered,
but I imagine I can still see the full foliage
of its first fall! when the leaves
filled our back yard full fifty
feet from its trunk!

And even now my vision is obscured by
that fallen crown of leaves,
just as I still see the long gone rock garden
and the wisteria alley with its swings,
and outhouses pushed over on Halloween!
I see through cataracts of the past.

--




Day 393 September 19 2015 Fall Festival

Moon and Sand  (Photo: Russ Bishop)



Fall Festival


When Isis was but the name of goddess love,
Aphrodite, Venus, Ishtar –
the city walls were virgin pearl,
and books were ivory.

Our love grew like the kudzu of desire,
beneath the bright scratches of shooting stars!
the bed sheets were magician’s charms,
our eyes were like gazelles.

Now in a world seduced by war and disease,
the over-ripe perfumes of ghosts!
we can yet bear witness:
no victory but of love!

--

Day 392 September 12 2015 Noon






Noon


The gardens have no tears left to water them;
the mowing madness of gasoline
engine-hordes have run through the ecumene...

All solar schizophrenia lay out
around the thunder-struck Jerusalem
bush, red now in this leech time of autumn.

The grass is dead like selfie-bleeding
celebrities awaiting the compost
cenotaph of  fame.

--

Day 391 September 5 2015 Matins




Matins


Matins are mid-morning.
I throw prayers at gods like piles
and bundles of laundry heaped
in dusty unused corners of my room.

I sweep the blessings
indifferent from the dust and dirt
that layer dark my floors
but scatter diamonds of light while falling.

--

Day 390 August 30 2015 Dawn




Dawn

Dawn is a yawning rose,
dripping scarlet liquor,
thrown at my naked thigh
by the lusty nymph of morning;
I use it later as a paint brush
to paint the gardens of life
and blur the borders
that limit my skin.

Thursday, September 3, 2015

Day 389 August 23 2015 Aylan





Aylan 

Indifference is the ghost beneath my bed,
the bush where tinsel ghosts congregate,
trolls that wish to party and dismember me,
to scatter the pieces of my body
around the Mediterranean -
(Venice of the soul, as we sink into a sea;
great Doges of our madness!) – 
like the alabaster torso of Osiris
washed up from Syria and Beirut,
drowned upon the shore,
where we Instagram
and soon forget
th’indifference what drove us mad.


 --
written 09/03/2015 on hearing of the death of Aylan Kurdi of Syria.

Day 388 August 16 2015 Soon To Be Grandmother




Soon To Be Grandmother 

 Fiery and treasured stone of the wide world,
deep earth stone and fire;
Sun of dawning iridescent stone:
Vesuvius of flowing love, like cooling lava,
wrapt in smoke and lurid glow,
which gives to our unheedful Pompeii souls
the blatant mortal bodies, so easy on the eyes;
Mother, lovers, father, daughter, and mother again.




Thus the way is uncovered
to the Villa of the Mysteries,
and Demeter wanders no more;
she comes home to Eleusis,
finding her way by the geography of baby clothes.

--

Day 387 August 9 2015 Old Age




Old Age

Muses of old age cough...
idyllic pleasures culminate,
into idle agrimonies for pain:
will-o-the-whisp dreams,
hawthorn days,
finger-apple cancer,
chafeweed elbows and joints,
so take sprigs of rosemary
to the closets and the library
to avert the moths of time...

in shivering frost and a coldness that cloys
like sugar on tooth decay...
no hearth

--

Day 386 August 2 2015 Cottages




Cottages


I had a cottage I stained green
to match the under foliage
of the pear trees all around.

I had a house I stained smoke
to match the banshee scream of clouds
of the approaching storm front.

I had a house that I limed white
to invoke the lofty cumuli
tumbling from Lake Huron.

--








Day 385 July 26 2015 Romeo In Exile




I understand the honey and the sweet
which is that power of your letter,
conveyed to me in Mantua;

I flee as a butterfly from wormwood
to the deeply embroidered valley
of your carnation satin breast.

--