Fast Day 234 November 24 2011 {Procne Is Among The Slaves}

Procne Is Among The Slaves
Dedicated to the US Congress
November 23, 2011


there was construction on Mack Avenue
so I got out of the car and walk for a mile
walk for a mile

in my high heels
my crane-like high heels

in my black, black high heels

(chorus: her black, black high heels)

bike guy on my left
food truck on my right
I got out of the car
walk for a mile
in my running shoes,
black Converse running shoes

(chorus: her black Converse running shoes)

Eastern Market Thanksgiving turkey
no hormone nonsense for my babies...
I took the turkey home,
and gave it to my Sis;
get new gilded shoes on
and going to go to Greektown

(chorus: People Mover Greektown)

Greektown casino takes my money,
and tries to take gold lamé virgin;
blue-heron-like
heels, and my life
to sit like Procne
among the slaves.

(chorus: Procne among the slaves)

I will shoe my feet in rain clouds,
I shall clothe myself in line;
like a phoenix.
we shall rise and fly
away, swallows and
nightingales...


scorn the ruling tyrant owls-
carrion eaters of the night;
we leave them behind,
we high-legged herons!

--
notes

Procne and Philomena were sisters and both became married to Tereus, king of Daulis, who symbolizes government.
He was depraved and eventually caused both sisters in their turns great grief. They escaped from his depraved tyranny and were turned into a swallow and a nightingale, while he was turned into an owl, or some stories say a hoopoe bird.
There are many variations on this story.

So was that tyrant Tereus' nasty lust

Changed into Upupa's foul-feeding dust

Lord Brooke; Declination of Monarchie.                   ( Upupa = hoopoe )

Hoopoe Bird

The poem is a symbolic story of the oppression of the poor and the powerless by bad government and its  supporters. It tells how the people will become free from their chains and fly away to freedom. It is about women and poverty.

line    =   linen

--

Fast Day 233 November 20 2011 {The Heidelberg Dolls}

The Heidelberg Dolls

I did not believe what I could see:
they stole the girls from therapy;
like organs smuggled from the poor,
sold today in some rich town;
they sit now in endless cinema,
watching future and the past…
chemo dolls
chemo dolls

The footprints left in memory
and recreated by Tyree,
leads through city and the forest,
their waves break upon the shore
of enigmatic and iconic
lost islands of Laz-y-Boy …
shadow feet
shadow feet

The vacuum cleaner armies stand
forever to unheard command
cleaning rooms through thwarted doors,
to answer flow’ring telephones;
Hastings Street pianos brood
as empty as cold fireplaces…
thirty-threes
in the trees

A ruin is profound regret
while found-art is our future bet:
gravity defying hobby
reaches out for the all the stars
beyond half-buried pink limos
of Chemo Ken and Barbie:
take shelter
take shelter

--
notes
The Heidelberg Project is a Street scale art project in Detroit, founded by Tyree Guyton. The photos is from the project. The art uses found objects… everything from a found Street down to the smallest objects.

chemo dolls – the abandoned dolls used in the work... the "chemo" refers to chemotherapy and I think the rest is obvious and somewhat painful.
vacuums – there is a empty lot with arrays of old vacuum cleaners
Laz-y-Boy - an adjustable chair in the midst of a path of shoes
thirty-threes - 33 1/3 records used in the art

I think everything becomes clear if one looks at photos of the project.

I like this poem, it is not the way I want it yet, and I feel it will take a long time.
I think I shall extend the rhyme and use the pattern of the last stanza:
a-a-b-c-d-b-e(rep)

Welcome Tänya

Welcome Tänya Priest as a friend.
I notice she is a runner. As I just wrote in a comment, I have been running for 45 years now. This year my ligaments and tendons have been a problem, and I hurt a knee ligament back in July, forcing me to lay-off running for 6 weeks. I returned cautiously and slowly. I still cannot do things like squat down comfortably, but I do not think I ever could. I never was able to sit of the floor very well.

I found that jogging or running for at least an hour was an important part life: it got one outside and right into Mother Nature, wet grass, hidden bumps, tumble, fall, roll, and bounce back up. You became part of the changing seasons, as you were running throughout the entire year, even in the winter: cruel winter wherein you ran eastwards to begin with the wind at your back, then sooner or later turning back and feeling the sadistic division wrought by winter wind, freezing the sweat on your body and forcing you to greater effort to warm yourself! The division of time into the Warm and the Unbearably Cold!

By being "within" the year, instead of merely living through the year and using a calendar as a way to mark off the passage of time, it changed my perspective on Nature and Creation forever.

--

Fast Day 232 November 12 2011 {Running Early)

Running Early

Early dark running on fall's last warm morning
I develop new shoes blisters
high and low on the plimsoll veins
of my feet... and it begins to rain...
each step agony,
I walk into gardens
of the houses along Detroit's rivers,
and untie my brand new shoes
sewn by children slaves in some far land
beyond the scope of hundred-eye TV...
remove my socks
and walk barefoot
along the sleek black rainy asphalt.

No longer do I practice safe-running habits,
the blood runs from my open sores
onto the rainy street, in payment for
the globalization of desire
and retribution
that it brings:
fearful of broken glass bottle shards,
gingerly stepping in chiaroscuro,
street lights glow brazen like Roman arms,
and my only apostles were the night,
those shoes,
and my wet socks!
As we tramp our way to Calvary!

--
notes
plimsoll  -   plimsoll markings on the sides of boats

--

Fast Day 231 November 4 2011 {Day of the Dead)

Day of the Dead

I heard the water laughing loud
at some off-color joke;
it was a witchy tinnitus
raging within my ears;
then I saw many, many moons
up in the dark night sky
like bright and silver coins, oblate...
fallen from a pocket;
many moons and laughing waters!
and I was very drunk.

I smelled the autumn leaves burning
smoke that was like frost,
medicine moons are in the sky!
like ice in rum and coke!
medicine weed is in my head:
suspend animation -
it takes paleontology
science to walk back home!
we wrestle dominion away...
stars at elbow and foot!

Ah, love! Ah, love! All passion spent!
who is it that does not
need a friend in cold November...
Dia de los Muertos!
Let the vibrant orange-sienna
of autumn leaves rise up;
call out to all ghosts and spirits
to come here for the dance!
Oh, Grandfather! Oh, Grandfather!
flower... moon... deer... divine!

--
pix: Claudia Salguero

Day of the Dead - dia de los muertos, november 2

dominion -  death shall have no dominion... etc. etc. etc.

ps.
I am really beginning to like this poem.
--

Fast Day 230 October 30 2011 {River Phoenix}

Mississippi River and Tributaries

River Phoenix

I googled "river" and they gave me River Phoenix, whom I had seen in "Mosquito Coast", a long time ago...
on the banks of a muddy water, flowing by stealth to the Caribbee, a sulphur sheen of unbroken surface...
so I stayed with River Phoenix, and I did not rerun my search.

River Phoenix is just like the memory of a river, or a tree, if you prefer;
since he has passed away, his image forms a substrate in a portion of our minds,
just like the gingko tree raped by a backhoe
by your living room window
when they came to widen the roads... to make things better...
nowadays they are always making things better...

The Rio Negro is one of many rios negros;
it is the river of the Mosquito Coast, itself an image and memory...
a river which miscegenates with the wide, broad Sea beyond the harbor
and the Jesuit churches cloistered around the Largo da Palacio
where incense rose like morning fog...in colder climes of time forgot.

--
I just sort of kept a beat going, changed it around at times, and wrote stuff out and tried to leave out the individual stanzas... sort of like reading an Ancient Greek inscription: all boustrophedon and run together with no punctuations.