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
--