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Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Fast Day 135 December 29 2009 {Three Kings Travel Light}




Three Kings Travel Light


zip open the black mascara'd night
and let fall the stars
like contents of cosmetic bags
before the wond'ring eyes
of King Herod's TSA:
the luggage of the Three Kings;
gold doesn't make it
through metal detector;
dogs sniff out
frankincense & myrrh.
so Three Kings backpack
the last ten miles,
totes and duffel,
club bag and valise;
garment bag shepherds
their samsonite vigils keep...
until the angels come
with their carry-ons,
singing in their sleep!

Friday, December 25, 2009

Fast Day 134 December 25 2009 {Christmas Snow}




Christmas Snow

Shovel snow, hearty lads!
shovel, pike, and broom!
This song we do sing when the solstice yawns
and blows too much snow for man or beast...
an over-measuring of snow... for free
a cornucopia of ice!
So much that old Man North, Boreas,
a well-known Scrooge and miser,
stingy and cold to the boney zero,
is now acclaimed by all
an open-handed and generous man:
the Clement, the Giving, magnanimous!
this the song of the scrapers,
this the song of shovelers;
little boys throw snowballs
at pompous men in top hats!
And all the world's gone
topsy-turvy, upside down,
at this our Christmas time!
Come, truckers! come, pilers!
come sowers of salt!
The drifts grow high, O, fathers!
as high as grandfather Pine!
Sing ye no dirges now!
sing joyful litanies in
this harvest-time of snow!
the lamps of dawn are lit!
Sing, ho! 'tis Christmas!

-------
notes

I am not sure what to say about this poem. It is what happens when one begins to think about Christmas and snow and presents and trees when one has been reading about ancient Greece: it is sort of an antique snow shovelling, snow harvesting type of poem Hesiod ( author of Works and Days and second in fame to Homer ) would have sung as he shoveled the snows of his homestead.

Boreas is the North Wind, and instead of being a royal pain in the wedge, he is seen as sending a white Christmas and snowy gifts.
pike to push the ice with pointed staffs,
scrape to scrape ice, or to scrape snow off the surface of ice.
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Monday, December 21, 2009

Fast Day 133 December 19 2009 {Detroit Hawks}




Detroit Hawks

Night light, feathery and black
as ravens' wings closed
about the City of Detroit;
the lights that burned were few
and appeared to the naked eye
flicked bics in a concert
of a band
no one could get it on with.

People walk about like code,
some in the night, some of it:
viral and uncertain natures;
spectators at a buddy's fun'ral -
not the centers of attention...
they light a match
at a grave
no one could really dig.

Coney Island diners dream
of chromo lights all bright,
kongou beads and turmeric
and the armpit smell of old
latakia tobacco burnt:
but just flip a switch
on the drum
of neon plastique percussion!

A beer and peanut universe
dumped on the barroom floor,
and never resurrected
until the Days of Cashews
and Heineken on tap:
Paradise Alley
for a buck
in mem'ry's Edgewater park.

I do the buzz and do the flop,
smoke pacifico, too.
my girlfriend is a hideous hag
eating one them coney dogs...
she's my drive-thru kiss tonite!
a bucket's gasoline -
and a match -
my devils' night's desire.

I wish we had a hurricane,
or a lovely flood;
devastating climate change
or tectonic plate head-ons;
acts begetting sympathy,
instead of scorn
and scorch'd-earth
of unkind condemnation!

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Fast Day 132 December 12 2009 {Reading Dead Men's Blogs}





Reading Dead Men's Blogs

He was a hiker.
He climbed mountains...
this I see,
speaking in the tongue of Grand Canyons
with just a hint of Denali;
bathed in Sangre de Christo;
traveller
married man...
like eating dead man's curry!...
yet I cannot stop:
and floods in Karachi,
visiting Mr. Jinnah's tomb...
dissolution in Calcutta
when Mumbai was yet Bombeeee...
yet nothing changes...now;
eternal Hindu Kush.

Walter Cronkite's gone
along with peace of mind
and no one's around to answer his questions
about his cancer...
tv set of unending despair
Mesa Verde of his adopted
home country, the USA,
no Yosemite of regret.
His blog does not increase now...
fallow, unchanging fields...
he climbs the same heights...
visits the same lands...and always
he asks his electric question...

Why me, God? Why a Colorado
of desire, dammed up in that enormous lake
that sediments your blessings in endless strata
and shall I die before the flood?
- this I know - oh, God!
before the freedom flood...
Or shall I fly away?
pic: richalyn marquez
----------
notes
A blog of a trevller from India. He died, yet his blog remains.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Fast Day 131 December 4 2009 {The Winter Always Rings Twice}




The Winter Always Rings Twice

Winter comes, and darkness
rings my doorbell twice;
headlight rhinestones smash
on my windshield...
lava of rain,
magma of ice;
when the heater hasn't heated up,
we drive-by people coloured grey,
dracula wanna-bees drinking
with sharp fingernails
their condensation
of ruinous decay.

Barking dogs keep me awake at all times
of the night, while we sit alone and
view internets that taste like the
absinthe distilled in pockets
of our private parts.
Barking dogs' foul rhymes...

Shooting guns keep me ticked off!
at the split of early morning
while we drink the coffee'd sleep
of insomnia and shattered glass
mixed like sugar
in the cappucino -
nexus of kalashnikov!
-----
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pic: catherine jeffrey
www.cajeffrey.blogspot.com