Fast Day 311 May 18 2013___ It's Sunday!

 Billy Sunday

It's Sunday !

socks out the door and down the steps !
limestone metalled steps -
yah its Sunday !
Sunday best and go to meeting
day of rest and and Sabbath
restaurant eats and
going golfing
old-timey days of anti-macassars !
Sunday puritan
leather on my foot and out the door
you kin buy some booze
on Sunday
at the mega mall
where everyone works on Sunday...

Brick-makers, brass-founders, blacksmiths, and basket-makers,
brick and stone-masons, boiler-makers, butchers, and book-binders,
bakers, brewers, box and icechest-makers,
they don’t work,
but ya kin buy booze on Sunday....
earth attraction from the magnetism
of my front door… and socks
salt iron fish coal and lumber
used to be my trade
but we rest on Sunday
and tetotall temperance
socks out the door
after a shower and shave
its no-shop sunday !

--

Fast Day 310 May 11 2013 Spring Grass Dance___Mothers' Day 2013

Spring Grass Dance
Mothers' Day 2013

Come, come and rejoice, I call you!
Come and enjoy the spring, I bid you!
Rich in black and gold oriole,
chased in scarlet robin,
inlaid with ebony blackbirds:
ample-talking birds of Spring!
Sky-dancing and singing subtle airs!
come, roll out the green carpet,
shag rich in new verdure!
Come and enjoy Mothers’ Day,
I bid you all, to that feast
so much all-utterly song!

--

Fast Day 309 May 4 2013: Opening The Summer Home 2013

 

The Summer Kitchen

Opening The Summer Home  2013

Not once since the world war
had the cottage been opened up
without my father’s being there;
we withdrew the white covers
from the wicker furniture,
wakened up the pantry once again,
fed the hibernated larder,
electrical clocks and TV hum…
oven flat-lined from a long PF !
was it not? wow, was it not ?
old grains muttering and stretching
the ancient joints and tenons,
waking once again to the nurses of Spring
which lead them Lazarus-like to Summer!

What a mutated thrill there was, and
what a sense of recondite suspense,
as if we came to Bethany and bid this house,
half asleep and half dead
from the somnium of Winter...
the royal underworld of snow and ice…
and we bid it, “Come forth,  Old Comfort!
Wake again, Old Rooming House!
Up North and Northwest Delight!”
and we paused, filled with sublime passion,
“Come, Islands of Les Cheneaux!
Fill the tree tops with your beath!”
This gingerbread Friendly Giant awoke,
and walked to the river to drink…

…like domestic cats and homespun dogs
that descend upon the summer place
and frenzy sniff and incautious demarcate,
so we felt the house came to life!
Unload and carry, store and wipe,
and feel the wainscoting belt expand
from the strict fast days of January…
roses to be unhilled, stalks to be cut,
crooked sun dials set to rights,
…not ready! my feet hurt! my back!
when we collapsed at last, the casements crashed
like post traumatic stress, “Where is he?
Not since nineteen-forty-two… !”
And we heard the one miracle close,
others went on, and a new one began...

--

Fast Day 308 April 27 2013: Rêves d’Absinthe

 Absinthe - Wormwood

Rêves d’Absinthe


Saint Luc, Saint Luc, si gentil que tu sois;
utile et gentil, Saint Luc, avec moi:
marjolaine, romarin, thym,
et encore un peu d'absinthe;
 
Saint Luc, Saint Luc, pilote auto,
miel et vinaigre avant le feu;
je dors dans le temple à colonnade
couronnée de feuilles d'acanthe!


--
St. Luke, St. Luke, however kind you may be,
helpful and kind, Saint Luke, to me:
marjoram, rosemary, thyme,
and a bit of absinthe.

Saint Luke, Saint Luke, auto pilot
honey and vinegar before the fire:
I sleep in the temple with the columns
crowned with acanthus leaves! 


--
notes

I woke up this morning with "absinthe" in my head.  I seek old Coleridge having myself overdosed on fried chicken and popsicles...

I had been reading about wormwood - or absinthe - in an old herbal, and there was a bit on love charms and philters addressed to various saints.

The herbs probably make up a love charm, Saint Luke is in charge of the whole process... and I apparently put him on "auto pilot" so as to not interfere with whatever dreams of love may come.

The temple with columns crowned by acanthus is a temple with Corinthian pillars, and I assume it is the temple to Artemis, or Diana of Ephesus. If you remember the well known statue of her, she is rightly called  "amazon", a term which I read as  initial "a" intensifier + "mazon"...
The usual books on mythology read the intial "a" as a "privative", but that is a very facile and thoughtless translation. 

-- 

Fast Day 307 April 20 2013: Deaf Street

Deaf Street

On the sidewalk,
in the sun,
I am Spontaneous Jack
stepping lively,
never looking:
breaking his Mother’s back!

Nah, I don’t hear;
I don’t get
what the heck that means to me!
I step lively,
I don’t look back:
blood flows like antimony.

I do not vogue
as I look down
from the top of starry sky;
I got cat's eye,
I got chromo:
there are no more reason why.

Fate and Evening...
run the same,
mem'ries of the Middle East;
the bomb, the blast
are Eliot's poem:
slouching like that shaggy beast;


--
notes

Eliot's  = pronounce "Eliot" in 2 syllables, such as "Elyot".

Fast Day 306 - April 13 2013 - Bess Detroit

Bess Detroit

We stood outside the Institute of Arts
and smoked Detroit cigarettes,
below the statue of Good Bess, the Muse
of the Classical and the Universal Blues.

Bess with one eye Africa, one eye here;
eyes Ghana green, eyes viridian;
like a transoceanic sybilline
book of Benin bronze ink sewn adamantine.

The Muse hourglass strains black asphalt sand:
grinds time and infrastructure;
memories of auto plants are fine ash,
new sun dawns upon the horizon of that past.

Bess will close the Center For Bad Karma,
and I'll be free on bail!
She'll defund the research into our ongoing pain,
empty the water towers filled with acid rain!

 

--
notes

Just a thought to create our own Muse here in Detroit, the Muse of a New Future.

The picture of the Ford plant is actually the old Highland Park plant.

--

Fast Day 305 April 6 2013 The Coming of the Spring

The Coming of the Spring

things of trifling,
trivial fluff,
may grow to sturdy stuff!
wintery branches,
fagin hands,
twisted all,
do cry out loud alarums
and make cowards of us all !

a swarm of bees
upon the wing:
Queen Anne and escort king!
spring’s pepp’ry pollens
shout ! coxcomb
and male energy...
stirs the honey and the wax
of the queens’ virginity!

--
notes

In an old fashioned mood.

"shout ! coxcomb"    -  I wanted an exclamation point, but did not wish to place it after "energy" in the next line, because I wanted "energy" to link up most closely with "stirs"... so I put the " ! " after the "shout" and another at the end as is customary.

Sorry about being late. I was incommunicado and on the road or at me Mum's
--

Fast Day 304 March 30 2013 {The Four Seasons}

The Four Seasons

wastrel Winter ,
the garbage winds of March
fill flower beds with trash:
beads from Diwali,
Christmas trees,
Hanukah wrap.

buoyant freedom,
we are the waifs of Spring,
and our vernal hunger
when we awake and rise
is hunger most
deeply habit.

floating Summer,
stolen swimmers’ kisses;
midnight's forbidden trysts
under cloak of stars;
childhood dew,
eyes and pearls.

Autumn’s arcade,
when we made love beneath
diving board and dock:
skinny-dipping moon!
nonage love,
gasping breath.


--

Fast Day 303 March 23 2013 {The Day Of The Comet}

Bird Swarm On Andromeda

The Day Of The Comet

 

Hasidim speak Yiddish,

The Amish speak the Dutch;
the educated speak in TED-tongue
but I feel  the arrival of
The  Days of the Comet
to disturb the meditations of the young.

Bondu girls and killah nights,
I try to speak the sacred kiss,
but have not mesmerized the words:
we are pilgrims of the universe,
leaving behind old Europe,
flying across Andromeda’s dance like birds.

Telephones to Neptune,
Skype calls from the Sun:
the illusions of omnipotence;
we still arise to milk the cows
by light of morning star,
awaiting melancholy in a private place.

--

notes

Dutch  -   Deutsch, i.e., German 

Andromeda's dance -  the route the galaxy Andromeda takes through the sky

Inspired by a NASA spokesman's reply to a Congressman who asked what could the USA do if a comet - such as that which hit Russia recently - come straight at us. The answer was, "Pray."

--

Fast Day 302 March 16, 2013 {My Father's Cabinet Has...}

My Father's Cabinet Has... Many Earthenware Cups

My Father's Cabinet Has...

The leavening is gone
from our house;
it has been burned;
dust to dust –
my father’s gold cuff links,
and collar studs;
the idle socks and shoes,
the atrophy of his belts,
cords, laces –
things to tighten,
things to cinch…
ungirded.

Some of us are steel
cooking ware:
and are kashered
by boiling –
Yet I am earthenware:
terra cotta,
and even with bright glaze
am of a porous nature:
no soaking,
in water hot,
in water cold…
suffices.

Incomp’rable dangers
that proceed
from the morning news
this year –
we gather Easter icons -
dolorosa -
in stabat Mater sketchbooks
painted to His holy death:
sounding brass,
tinkling cymbals…
saxophones
still rage!


--
notes

Easter and Passover approach this year.

kashered  -   cooking utensils are made kosher by various methjods of cleaning.
dolorosa   -  via dolorosa, the way of the cross during Passion Week.
saxophones  -  I believe St. Paul would have loved the saxophone.

stabat Mater -  a hymn from the Stations of the Cross during Lent

--

Fast Day 301 March 9 2013 {My American Wisteria}

My American Wisteria

My morning hair in an unflattering
mirror, destitute of any beauty;
irregular spikelets rare, mostly sessile,
squashed flat as a grey, thread-bare beret…
and I sigh.

Where has all my dark hair gone?
I strip the sheath of sleeping clothes,
searching clandestine cloughs and broad
meadows wrinkled with racemes…
and I sigh.

Sweet scented valleys of cockspur grass,
variable in its luxuriance;
diffuse flood of the auburn light: all gone!
now dried fields, ditches, and somnolent ponds:
riversides.

Where is my American wisteria?
the cable-like sinews and woody sytrength...
so spare and yet strong enough to support
a pergola of hope to my youth?
and I sigh.

--
notes

the American wisteria is the slim and trim and leafy hardy growth of youth....

Fast Day 300 March 2 2013 { Beautiful Sparks of God }

Vesuvius Erupting Soon After The Landings At Salerno, March, 1944

Beautiful Sparks of God

funeral home collage of history,
unsure whether we be bound or free;
ruins, fossils,
fire-drinkers of the dew:
Vesuvius erupts
and world war, too.

I go through the tomes for what I may see,
and find the works of the old Livy;
beauty ejecta
a baleful rain yields!
not in Elysium
but Phelgræean fields!

photos and videos, like leaves on a tree,
bold brushstrokes of vanish’t conspiracy;
buried in ash
the soot of noon-day,
pyroclastic x-flow
in the streets of Pompeii !

---
notes

I have found the usual ways of talking about the separation from a loved one are awfully opaque and trivial to express what I feel. I am still trying to express it.
My father was at Salerno. Soon after, the volcano Vesuvius erupted.

Beautiful sparks of God   -   "Freude,  schoener Gotterfunken" from Ode to Joy
world war, too  -   world war II
Livy  -    Titus Livius observed the eruption of Vesuvius which buried Pompeii
ejecta    -    things ejected and thrown by the eruption...   I seem to remember Livy was sitting on a boat in the bay watching the spectacle, and probably dodging ejecta.
Phelgræean    -    sulphurous fields, the opposite of Elysium
x-flow   -     extreme flow

we are buried in our remembrances: photos, videos, souvenirs. The soot of noon-day is darkness at noon.
There is an end and the promise of an archaeological beginning in the future.

Fast Day 299 February 24 2013 Death and Sequester

Death and Sequester

Into this world we are born,
not of blood
nor the will of the flesh
from the peace and quiet torn

Is Satan bruised under feet?
no more life,
nor of the love which nurtures,
but keen pain of this quick retreat

we count them happy which endure;
now alone,
we count our ills and meds;
O, blessed are the poor!

warmed by fire of dog star:
we lucky ones
corrected by the Lord
whose bailiwick our world bell jar.

money! power! jump!... ricochet:
the living
envy those who stop to smell
the funeral bouquet.

This was not the world for me;
the ash heaps
at the corners of the globe:
delusions of paternity!


-----
notes

late with this, as I was at my mother's.
I used to say "my parent's".
I am unhappy with just about everything under the sun.

ricochet   -   refers to the infinity of guns and weaponry
ash heaps  -   The Great Gatsby
bell jar   -    refers to Plath;  now we think of the world as a computer simulation or living in the Matrix; sometimes people used to think of the world as a simulacrum within a bell jar of a god who did not care about the creatures in his laboratory.

Fast Day 298 February 17 2013 Lord Cancer and Baron Samedi

Lord Cancer and Baron Samedi

Death - take us to the bone !
Death, head cop in Jar City;
formaldehyde jars -
city of copper,
city of bronze,
metropolis of urns.

Gun -  take us to the blood !
Gun, principal of Slab School;
midnight prom morgue -
school of marble,
school of steel,
stainless of the scalpels.

O, King Cemetery !
columbary smiles and
dance a sarabande
of Baron Samedi,
of Madame Brigitte.

Dantó  - open my eyes !
Elizi, let me danzón !
and hear jazz euphonium !
I read the drum beat signs
that conspire to sap
Lord Cancer’s arpeggio !
--

peinture par Gerard Fortune

Fast Day 297 February 10 2013 Mother of Patmos

Mother of Patmos

με την χαριν τησ παναγιασ
"Thanks to the Holy Virgin"

As the Greeks often say,
now and in the past,
along the blue Aegean where
sails the ship of John,
the island Patmos,
within the Icarian Sea
with its wax-concreted wings
that droop like shrouds -
the halyards of the artemon.

The name "panagia"
does not mean "virgin",
but "all holy".

As the ancient used to say,
before the birth of History,
when they sought the plumaged bird -
as one doth pursue and hunt
a partridge in the mountains -
the mother of Icarus,
son of wooden Daedalus;
holy land maritime...
O, navicula autem sum.


--
notes

με την χαριν τησ παναγιασ     =     Thanks to the Holy Virgin


navicula autem sum     =     I am but a small boat

Fast Day 296 February 2 2013 Beulah Land

Beulah Land

You are strange and beautiful lands,
newly discovered;
Trees espalier upon the winds;
flower flame that pierce the dark
axillae of the musky night;
mysterious mountain cabal,
sinister and skulking afar;
aromatic canyons temblor
of unresistant spires!
Let us love, my beauteous,
bodies uncovered !


----
notes:

Late again / in a computer-less environment
axillae  =  better known as "armpit"

Fast Day 295 January 26 2013 All Across Africa

All Across Africa

Vacation on the inland sea
south of Kilima Njaro,
beads and wives of necklace flow
and no thought of tomorrow.

I wish I had a TED talk
to tell me what to feel;
else within a dream I ramble
aimlessly surreal.

Launch then evening news like terror,
while arrows and bullets flee;
like a banana republic
seeks white and black iv'ry.

Provocation and the attack
subterfuge and gallant men,
pass the powder and the ammo
to the missionary children.

-----

notes:

some people feel themselves under siege, like missionaries of the 19th century in a hostile territory. Thank goodness we have people in various media forms to tell us what to think.

This needs a lot of work.......

Fast Day 294 January 20 2013 {Alone On Navy Street}

A Street Almost Lonely

Alone On Navy Street

All alone on Navy Street
all men walk to their ships,
birds take flight and they do not hear them,
the morning star remains unseen;
they cross the line of no-return.

Permission to come aboard!
officer of the deck:
Yeoman, take this man to the Captain.
he remembers vividly and sudden
Halo wars of tenuous youth!

He wields gravity hammer,
blasts the plasma cannon;
and laughs to rout the enemy!
watching all lines of their approach,
strums the warlike guitar’s neck.

Thirty-six hour furlough
ashore in New York City;
leaving his dying father alone
to maintain the convoy
like the sea’s Good Shepherd.
--

Going home for 36 hours from the house where my father dies. He was in the Navy.

Fast Day 293 Janaury 12 2013 Animal Graveyards

 Victorian Foyer With Ivory Statues

Animal Graveyards

ivory ornaments in an elephant graveyard…
how commonplace a disaster may become!
even death falls to desuetude
and has no dominion
over the mundane.

like old fur coats imprison'd zoo of the hall closet…
like vinous fox stoles with agate, beady eyes;
vestibules of my grandparents
where Adam’s television
made gray-fingered dawn.

knock upon the door; it will not be opened to you!
animal skin, bone, and hide within our homes
prayed for magic; the spirit cares
naught for doors… and gets a
panoply of portals!

 

Elephant Leg Umbrella Stand

--

notes:

imprison'd zoo  -     imprisoned in the zoo  =  imprison = in + prison  =  in prison, that is, the zoo


Adam's television    -   early tv sets with black and white picture, the light of which breaks like dawn, but not "rosy-fingered" dawn.

"Knock and it will be opened..."
This is misinterpreted usually and conforms to a magical way of thinking: how we force a god to do our will.
Only by disdaining all thought of doors will one fall into a forest of doors.

I am late getting this up; I was at my parents, assisting my mother care for my father, and they have no internet. I pray that his pain may go away, but I suppose I must disdain the presence or the absence of pain in order to have power over it... our prayers are infinite.
--

Poetry Blogs

I like art blogs. Even the ones with the worst taste in anything have an incredible vibration of life...
except poetry blogs. They are sort of drab. Drabulous... a new word made from drab and crapulous.

Poetry blogs are drabulous.

Give me a poetry blog with a splash of Watson and the Shark, eh, Mate!

J.S. Copley's Watson And The Shark

Not a drabulous pixel anywhere.

--

Fast Day 292 January 1 2013: Joyful Season

 

Joyful Season

For most of this undancing year,
for Easter,  Candle-time, and Michaelmas,
may the mercy of the Lord -
or the scarcity of liquor - keep us sober ,
but let us wassail this Christmas eve!

I do not want for busyness
nor diligence in summer, spring, and fall;
but the holly of the season –
or the holm, the ivy, and the bay festooned -
make love spring up like tender plants!

Porter, punch, and the hot negus
turn our minds to your beauteous romance:
we hear the carol of the Waits -
we remember then to give thanks for thee,
Joseph - humbled -  and cherry tree.

--
notes

We are giving thanks to Mary, mother of Jesus, and refer to the story of Joseph and the cherry tree: Mary asked Joseph to get her some cherries from the tree, and Joseph - in a bad mood - replied that the fellow that got her in a family way should get those cherries. At this, the cherry tree bent over and bowed down, bringing its branches and fruit within Mary's reach.

negus  -   a type of hot punch.

the Waits  - these were the town criers, who had their own types of songs to sing in Christmas. These songs are vanished and the tunes and structure are unknown.
--