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 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.

--

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 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 287 December 1 2012 {Weeds Among The Flowers}

Weeds Among The Flowers
 
Weeds among the flowers!
Eve coped with darnel
mixed within the herbs
in the Garden of Eden,
and our first parents -
who truly lived like monks
within the cloister
and refectory of The Big Bang:
when Creation still
had a new car smell!
in the early days of life:
a billion billion years ago...
-  those two innocents
learned wanton growth and wilding
from the gangster life of weeds!
How sweet
and temulent
the blatant privacy of love!
--

Fast Day 276 September 15 2012 {Ramses of Egypt Entreats His Coy Lover: Long Version}

Ramses of Egypt Entreats His Coy Lover:  Long Version

I sensed your presence before I ever
saw you standing: fine aroma, chestnut
eyes, the modest tread of your feet coming
across the parquet floor through labyrinths
mosaic of lapis lazuli tiles;
Ah, long ago… long ago… so much changed!
Where is the king before whom a thousand
nations bent the sweaty and dusted knee?
My body dead so long that I cannot
tell the difference between this limestone
and divine wind of ibis taking wing!
Nor the mute sphinx and all my vibrant dreams!
O, God is great!... filled with Mercy… and Love:

When I first took your pearled heart in my hand
to breach the kernel of the nut of fire
that lay within that ruby pyramid;
to melt the ice from your pure, snowy breasts!
to plunder the delta of Avaris!
love no longer subdued to the haughty
shepherd kings of your remote horizon brow…
my back cut by long nails… our wounds, not deep… a few…
exhausted we lay… scorpions and asps…
breathing hard… memorious pains of love… !

Were you not the firmament of the sky?
And did you, O, star!, not condemn me to
endless pilgrimage through the Sinai’s wastes?
Exiled from love, where does one find to run?
Love is not a trifle that grows and ebbs
like the Father Nile before and after Sirius
has run his speedy course through the posterns
of the city in the sky of darkest night:
Love desires a mansion for it’s soul’s rest!
The eternity  in mankind is love,
and love itself for all of mankind
shamelessly does lust and like a river
overflows and it cannot be constrained,
and once love has passed us by, it will then
be lost at sea, or evaporated
in the desert, or sink through pervious
stone to the unseen world of aquifers;
then shall our mortal eyes shine like weeping
scarabs no longer affine to the sun…
all our days obtuse angles of winter..
I wait a thousand, thousand years for Spring!
In obscurity of sand and stone where
everything seems dull pain and slow passage-
creeping metronome of nature’s cruelty!
Yet, we shall be reborn, my love, my love!
And we shall sweep away the wasteland sand
and hidden fountains will cleanse the portals
and I shall bring again golden bracelets
to clothe you once again within their bands:
silks and hair, silver tongue, agates and eyes!

--
notes

Avaris                     
the capital of the Hyksos on the eastern part of the Nile delta

Shepherd Kings      
ancient translation of the name Hyksos

memorious              
the pains are filled with memory, not that they are memorable

Sirius                     
the star by whose movement the annual Nile flood was reckoned

Fast Day 258 May 11 2012 {An Engaged Couple Viewing Constable's 'The White Horse'}

An Engaged Couple Viewing Constable’s 'The White Horse'

The Melancholy of a summer day,
governing sky unsure of its mandate
to rain or not; certainty gives way:
to lighten, dark, to storm or to abate?

Bride and groom: vibrant morning star and sun;
they cast their spell upon the River Stour,
and  amaze the clay-pipe smoking boatman,
and throw his horse into a mild uproar!

Her gown a messenger of evening clouds,
wearing the cirrus of the bright sunrise,
punctuating the humdrum of the crowds
with bold calligraphy before our eyes!

Two people alike in love’s advocacy,
Uncommon in mutual fidelity!

--
notes

Written for two people, who are soon to be married much earlier than they had originally planned. I was writing about a photo I had of them at an exhibition, but cannot go into detail, in order to protect their privacy. She was wearing a beautiful red gown as they stood before Constable's painting, hence the emphasis on red.

I have not seen her in years, and him I have never met, so I had to study Constable and his paintings to be able to say anything at all. The painting may be viewed at:
http://www.grahamdragon.co.uk/conwhi.htm
or
http://collections.frick.org/media/view/Objects/80/3504?t:state:flow=e01b8fb1-3864-4caa-9cd1-d6e8dfeaae85

Constable's skies were revolutionary, and he considered the sky to be the "primary organ of sentiment" in a painting.
In this poem, we go from a sky partially cloudy: the weather could improve or deteriorate; this is the source of the "melancholy". We progress to true love, however, and all is well!

In addition, to those who make apologies for their poetry, I think this poem to be a good example of that which can be expressed in no other way. Poetry speaks up to the limit of the ineffable!
Poetry is the Large Hadron Collider of Intelligible Reality.
--

Fast Day 245 February 11 2012 {That Shirt I Shall Call Grandmother}

For Valentine's Day   2012


That Shirt I Shall Call Grandmother!


she
the world is a river, flowing to the sea;
my love is in his canoe of strong, white birch
following the world far away from me!

he
the world is a camp, in a river’s bend;
my love sings, grinding corn in a stone mortar:
my memory is obsidian!

she
flaked arrows and stone points, hundreds; ev’ry kind
tomahawks and axes: flint, quartz, and jasper;
yet he plays at quoits in my dreaming mind!

he
she braided me a shirt, white cowrie shell color:
I wear her breast against mine; I call it girl…
woman… lover… that shirt I shall call grandmother!

--
notes
a duet for lovers apart. they think of the past, present, and the future of their lives.

Fast Day 244 February 4 2012 {To A Spouse Serving In Afghanistan}

To A Spouse Serving In Afghanistan

Boot buckles in the mud room,

unfastened on the floor;

scarves and mittens on the bench,

and coats hung on the door;

and all our togetherness,

like movie tickets in a drawer…

How long do you vacuum until Christmas glitter’s gone away?

The store-bought sparkling snow you spread on Santa’s sleigh?

How long after Christmas will you find needles on the floor?

How long will we be apart, how long will last the war?

Spray snow on the window pane,

a star beneath the chair;

a stash of ancient fruit cake

we did not think to share;

forgotten Christmas CDs,

unheard like my prayer…

How long do you vacuum until Christmas glitter’s gone away?

The store-bought sparkling snow you spread on Santa’s sleigh?

How long after Christmas will you find needles on the floor?

How long will we be apart, how long will last the war?

--

notes

Late getting this one up, as I am.... well, I was going to say I was busy, but perhaps I am pre-occupied with my happiness.
I was cleaning a few days ago, and the elusive remnants of the holidays made this pop into my head...

Fast Day 228 October 15 2011 {Drums}

Drums


That drum is Haitian
of African descent,
comes from Danhomey
and Native American
is this drum here
between my legs I play.

It is three days since
I have tasted music;
it is three days gone
I have drunk water,
and I am drawn taut,
like this tight drum skin!

I see fireflies
under your hair
and your teeth as white
as freshly bit apples:
it's for you, it's for you
I play this here drum.

I sleep with you,
the evening star;
I wake with you,
the morning star:
in an old house
down by Wayne State U.

we were billboards,
wearing shades,
selling rum and smokes:
rather drive a rag top
and stand up and dance -
East Grand and Jefferson!

Belle Isle summer days
of war-like birds!
and island summer nights
of preening, dancing
and display... drumming
mischiefs in our dreams!

--
notes

Danhomey  -  a variant of Dahomey

rag top - convertible

East Grand and Jefferson  -  the entrance to the Belle Isle Bridge is there.
--

Fast Day 220 August 20 2011 {Stuck in Botswana}

Stuck in Botswana

I suck my iPods like a cocainero noses blow,
and I listen to music, and I dance!
There is no worry: a big pumpkin for dinner!
and a bottle beer with misty gold boss!

Outside the house, by the kraal, the trannies giggle
as they go to the music box cafe
There is no worry: I smile at them,
and they throw sequins like stars down on me!

It is time to forget all this crap that has come down!
My girl will eat curcurbit,
and I will eat the pomegranate!
We shall spend the night all Okavonga!

Okavonga delta where Long Dry meets Deep Wet!
All the Namib desert cannot fill!
Rainy season makes the river laugh;
sleep beneath the Milky Way - on and off...

--

Fast Day 213 July 2 2011 {My New Pickup Truck}

My New Pickup Truck

My brother has a pickup truck,

and I will have one, too;

I will take my reel lawnmower

with a wooden handle

to the casa of my girl friend

to  cut her long, long grass;

afterwards we will both relax

and drink some black coffee;

she may smoke a  long charuto…

that girl is very much wi-fi.

I will take my new picape

and go to my parents’

to fix the roof of Friday’s storm

when fell their neighbor’s tree:

to tie the wood up in bundles

and set it out for trash;

maybe they could visit downtown

and I could drive them there;

then I will drink only iced tea

and radio my filial love.

My dog goes in the new pickup

sitting in the truck bed

with the Dee Zee silver tool chest

right next to the lawnmower;

I shall drive to my best friend’s house

to go fishing today:

there’s Corona in the cooler

and my feet in the sun:

and I may smoke a cigarro

that I have rolled myself.

--

notes:

Late posting since I was at my parents' where there is no internet, etc.
Written for a birthday in July.

casa:  house

picape:  pickup

charuto:  cigar

cigarro:  cigarette

Dee Zee:  brand of tool box

Fast Day 211 June 12 2011 {Sweat on Velvet}

 Sweat on Velvet

The shameless excitement of sweaty skin
fracturing fluids upon a velvet couch!
Moaning like the breath that is blown
across a wide-mouthed jug!
Besom of hair wiping
fast as flames lick!

Her hairy vampire lovers like the dark;
I am mid-day sun and dry myself upon
hot backyard clotheslines where I pin
her love's humid mitten!
We show up on Doppler!
like...  it's pouring!


--
for the week June 12 through June 19

fracturing - hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, etc.
--

Fast Day 203 April 23 2011 {At Brandon Plantation, Virginia}

At Brandon Plantation, Virginia

Slavery is gone
but its memory lingers:
potteries ceramic fired in indentured kilns
repeat great odes of naked Greeks and gods.
The childhood of our nation gone,
lapsed in wisteria laden alleys thronged with
anemone and adonis' blood and peony...
a ceaseless wand'ring along the James,
river of our quiescent madness
and river of sacred mud and sand.

The adolescence of the country past,
but still remember the gods and goddesses
who once learnt us with rose-dawn fingers
and lavender stamens and pollen feet!
In the adulthood of our discords,
the eros of our youth inspires!
We yearn resurrection again
and drop the stonewalls of our lives!

--
notes
Easter
At Brandon Plantation along the James River, Virginia.

Life and the Hope of Resurrection defeat the evils of the past...

--

draft 1 Fast Day 198 March 18 2011 (Questions from an ICU Kid...)

Questions From A Kid in the ICU on Valentine's Day

"Father, why did God give us eyes?"

strewn like a quilt across her bed
were crayon'd classmates' Valentines;
his arm asleep beneath her head,
while monitoring vital signs.
He said, "So we can color and can play!
Go to gramma's on Summer Lake,
where we can see the Milky Way!
And count candles on your birthday cake!

Even though we stay outside...
allergies and gramma's dogs..." he sighed.

(O, Crayon robins! Paint carnations!
Color candle-songs with long wicks!
People... peonies of all nations!
Father's love bright pigments mix!)

"Daddy, I don't know exactly why...
God gave us eyes so we can cry."

------------------
notes

final draft:  http://peace-weaving.blogspot.com/2011/03/draft-2-day-198-questions-from-kid-in.html

I do not know about this. It takes me a day or two of vacation away from being focused before I can read something again.  It was very tricky not to make it sound like something maudlin, like some of Thomas Hardy's ironic poems... he has one I have in mind which is a caution I try to stay away from. I still like Hardy.

Fast Day 172 September 15 2010 {Autumn Leaves}

 Autumn Leaves

My love is like a tree, he said.
Ah, wrinkled bark, she said,
somnolent, morose,
dropping leaves...
unhappy parallel!

No, he said; like this tree here!
Many branches, pointing
to all the stars!

Deep roots, covering the meadows!
Bird-friend tree!
The migrating wing'd gossips
return like clouds
from southern climes!

Fallen leaf ? - a message sent
in the haze and smoke
of autumn:

When All Saints approaches,
scarlet, orange,
rust, pumpkins and Thanksgiving;
trees still stitch
heaven and earth together!


--
notes

early - I have no time next week. I wrote it for a birthday this week.
If I can get my other computers working, I shall have a picture.

Fast Day 169 August 28 2010 {Voyageurs}

Voyageurs

I dreamed bees made a hive in our canoe;
came there flying daily, nectar laden;
buzzing heroic hexameters
of epic poetry ultra-marine.
Launch the ship into the wind, bearing north!
with sandwiches and tea.

Oars that deeply drink of argent liquid
of morning, carrier of the hopes of men,
deeply into a cartoon jungle,
to fabled shores chryselephantine.
Cruise among the Atlantean condos-
outspread like Trojan lunch!

We ate upon the Island of Tall Reeds,
drank martinis mixed well with sweet words,
and napped within papyrus' golden house.
Our sorrows drop away like clothes
strewn around the delight place of new lovers:
the light winds gossiping.



notes

argent liquid  :  the morning sun drips like silver from the oars.

chryselephantine : a Greek word referring to an object make of gold (chrysos) and ivory (elephantine). I use it to make me feel the northern Mediterannean - Greece - and the south - Africa, where the elephants live.

papyrus :  commonly paper reed,  image of late summer tawny shafts, sunlit and tall.
goldren house  :  sun on the tawny papyrus and Nero's Domus Aurea.

bees :  there is this business of bees and the hive and honey... and fermented mead , eventually in the ancient, ancient myths of Dionysos, and the notion of resurrection.

Atlantean condos : houses on the water front, and beyond the Pillars of Hercules, the western end of the Mediterranean.

Trojan  : refers to Troy at the eastern end of the Mediterranean

Canoeing on the St. Clair River. In the delta of the river, there is Dickinson Island, Harsen Island and Russel Island, with many small islands scattered. In the northern part of Russel, there is a cut from the South Channel to the Middle Channel with another canal heading to the northernmost  part of the island which has various signs and icons of jungle animals here and there among the reeds.

I like the notion of our sorrows being like lovers' clothes: a hindrance, yet there is the possibility to cast them aside and transcend their limits.

Fast Day 127 November 7 2009 {Waiting On The Bed}

Waiting On The Bed

I wait for my brown-haired lover

like a ship of war resting at the quay,

lolling on  the flaccid waves;

arms behind head,

catching the breeze

within my hair.

She enters like the offshore wind;

cast off and let roam the trim white warship's sprit!

weigh the heavy double anchors!

head her to sea;

biting the bone

of the white waves.

Set sail upon the ocean wide,

seeking Circe's cave of intoxication!

Love's gasping halyards adorned with

naval emblems,

whole gale pennants,

hurricane flags!

-----

notes

offshore wind     blows from the land out to sea

sprit     the bowsprit, a small pole or spar crossing the fore sail diagonally from the mast to the upper aftermost corner, serving to extend the sail. In the picture above, you may see it extending out from the bow.

weigh...the..anchor     raise the anchor.

biting the bone of...waves     the white froth at the bow of a ship underway is often referred to as a "bone", as in the expression: "She (the vessel we are looking at) has a bone in her teeth", meaning the vessel is going fast and possibly in choppy water.

halyard     is the rope of the ship"s rigging upon which flags and pennats are hoisted. It is then the means of inter-ship communication via flag.

Circe     a lady Ulysses met on his travels.

It is a love poem, and - to my mind - is pretty explicit, so I beg pardon from anyone offended.

Fast Day 123 October 9 2009 {My Own Private Falluja}

My Own Private Falluja

Cleave the Sea with a sword!
or pierce the Mountain's black basalt heart
with a lance that's stoutly thrown!
Spit and douse the fiery Sun
and light the passion of the eunuch Moon!-
with tender lies uniquely told!
The lies of love, unnumbered,
rise from my body's parts like steam and fog! -
burning like Falluja furnace! -
Like a cigarette whose smoke
I gulp down like Ramadan-starved men
who break the fast
with food...
with drink...
with sweets and more.

Bodily forms from afar!
I sense the Boundaries of my affection! -
their circumference I invite.
Yet my eyes are empty;
your face has set into the West, and has
not yet arisen in the East!
Scatter the treasures of
Byzantium with phosphorous white delight!
Count the gold as sand! -
without value...
without hope...
without your jewelled arm!

note
written with more passion than clarity.
it is filled with desire and anxiety.
any meaning expressable in words escapes me.

Fast Day 122 October 3 2009 {Ramses Entreats His Coy Lover}

Temple of Abu Simbel

At Abu Simbel, Ramses Entreats His Coy Lover


Before I ever saw thee sitting there,
I sensed your presence,
the sandy ore of your chestnut eyes
that fall on me
like a meteorite falls
in the waste lands: fire and iron!
So much has changed; it was so long ago
that nations bent their dusty heads
and obeyed on bended knee...
They prayed to Great Rameses!
Ruler of all you survey!
...
I forget. I forget the fragile thread
of our lives together...
O, when the ibis took wing!
O, when the figs grew in the Fayyum!
O, when first I sought to break the gold
plate inlaid with lapis that lay glacier-like
upon your breast, I panted as Anubis
and hunted the fierce brown kernels
that lay symmetrical
upon that ivory ground!
A thousand years I wait in pain,
and then a thousand more
until you come up the Nile...
until Sirius runs his course...
until Geb desires Nut again
and heavens and earth combine
your beauty to create -
beauty so fleeting -
impossible to carve into this stone!
Let me be a servant of immortal Isis, and
I shall sweep away the flowing sea of sand
from the bourne of your cruel resting place!
O, come to me in spring,
Daughter of the Heavens!
+
+
+
notes

Rameses was the pharoah who constructed the temple of Abu Simbel in Egypt.
The Fayyum was an area in the Egyptian desert anciently and modernly irrigated and bearing fruit.
Geb and Nut were the god and goddess of the earth and sky. Their embrace brings forth the world.
Sirius is the Dog Star.


Whereas Rameses could capture his grandeur and power within the huge carved temple for all eternity, he could not capture the beauty of his lover, whom he awaits endlessly.