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...

--

Fast Day 139 January 20 2010 {The Thief of Water}

Fezzan Oasis

She, not She

I smell a flower,
a mallow stem bleeding, perhaps,
then the queen's lace,
and finally lavander and rose,
and I step into Cairo's perfume shop
of eros and imagination
to think of her.

I see the geese,
a group of males in the wetlands,
then wonder where
the females spend intimacies,
so I go into the woods along
the river of woven reed baskets
and remember her.

I feel the virgin palm tree
bend beneath my over-eager grasp,
then wonder why
I am so angry, so perplexed...
so I go mad within the oasis
to drink naked from the spring
of her lips.

I see a mirage of flags
fly from imaginary forts within
the ancient lake:
suddenly my hair whips, running gazelle,
spit flying and panting mouth...
not pennants of war;
her wet dress...drying!

...I arrive at last,
out of breath and dirty as an eland -
where have you been?
she asks, eyeing my drooping fidelity;
Up and down, I gasp, up and down
Afric's paleo-lakes and streams!
they are no more!

she laughs -
like sparks from the Minotaur's flinty hooves -
takes me down a notch! -
phantom symposium of thirsty eyes!
How could the eternal lakes be gone?
And sacrament streams? Or extinct
my hart and hind?

naked gazelle -
go to the window, look about, and tell
me whatever you see!
Forgetting luxuriant nudity,
I strode - a dusty palm tree, a verdant
papyrus - I was numb catastrophe!
I saw the lakes... and then sat down, bare skin
on alabaster.

Her rain was love;
we replenished entire aquifers!
from my dust came clay
mixed with eros' several peculiar sweats;
Will one tumble th'Atlantean towers?
Or intercept and bind our Mother Nile?
No, she said.


------------------
notes:

Minotaur
the offspring of Minos' Queen Pasiphae and a Bull. Anyway...Minotaur is half human, half bull, lived in the Labyrinth, and Theseus killed him/it.
Daedalus designed the Labyrinth, if you're interested; his son Icarus was the first to die in a flying accident.

Afric's paleo-lakes...
anciently the Sahara was a verdant area, having dried up recently in geological time, destined to be green again in 15,000 years. "paleo" is a Greek prefix for "old".

phantom symposium
she says I have seen illusions, caused by thirst...phantom drinking parties ( in this case, drinking water) caused by thirsty eyes.

Some say that within the paleo-system of lakes and rivers, from the Chott el Jerid in Tunisia - in the North- down to the mega-lake of Chad...and even beyond, when the drainage of the Mighty Congo went eastwards, to the Rift Lakes of Victoria and Tanganyika...there was situated the city of Atlantis...and its destruction came with the Great Drying and plate tectonics within the Rift Valley.

The lady of this poem and I live in the magic time to come - or the time past, when the Sahara is green, and mankind is at peace. We interrelate with the present, and she cannot believe the drought that has overtaken her land in the past, which is our present.

Fast Day 139 January 29 2010 draft 1

Fezzan Oasis

The Thief of Water

I smell a flower,
a mallow stem bleeding, perhaps,
then the queen's lace,
and finally lavander and rose,
and I step into Cairo's perfume shop
of street, eros, and imagination
to think of her.

I taste water
dripping on my tongue; reading with my eyes
old hieroglyphs
that trace the course of vanished rivers
and tell the stories of the god-like lakes -
libraries of Alexandria:
scattered and gone...

I see the geese,
a group of males in the wetlands,
then wonder where
the females spend times of intimacies;
I fend into the reedy bottomland,
finding nothing but the track of drought...
then yearn for her.

I feel the virgin palm tree
bend beneath my over-eager grasp,
then wonder why
I am so angry, so perplexed...
so I go mad within the oasis
to prey, then drink nakedly from the spring
of her lips.

I see a mirage of flags
fly from imaginary forts within
the dry lake bed...
suddenly my hair whips, running gazelle,
dust clouds, spit flying,  and panting mouth...
not pennants of warlike bedouins, but
her wet dress...drying!

...I arrive at last,
out of breath and dirty as an eland -
where have you been?
she asks, eyeing my drooping fidelity;
Up and down, I gasp, up and down,
questing Afric's paleo-lakes and streams!
they are no more!

she laughs -
like sparks from the Minotaur's flinty hooves -
takes me down a notch! -
phantom symposium of thirsty eyes!
How could the eternal lakes be gone?
And sacrament streams? Or extinct
my hart and hind?

naked gazelle -
go to the window, look about, and tell
me whatso you see!
Forgetting luxuriant nudity,
I strode - all dusty, a  palm tree,  verdant
papyrus - I was numb catastrophe!
I saw the lakes! ... and then sat down, bare skin
on alabaster.

Her rain was love;
we replenished entire aquifers!
from my dust came clay
mixed with eros' sev'ral peculiar sweats;
Will one tumble th'Atlantean towers?
Or intercept and bind our Mother Nile?
...illusion!


------------------
notes:

Minotaur
the offspring of Minos' Queen Pasiphae and a Bull. Anyway...Minotaur is half human, half bull, lived in the Labyrinth, and Theseus killed him/it.
Daedalus designed the Labyrinth, if you're interested; his son Icarus was the first to die in a flying accident.

Afric's paleo-lakes...
anciently the Sahara was a verdant area, having dried up recently in geological time, destined to be green again in 15,000 years. "paleo" is a Greek prefix for "old".

phantom symposium
she says I have seen illusions, caused by thirst...phantom drinking parties ( in this case, drinking water) caused by thirsty eyes.

Some say that within the paleo-system of lakes and rivers, from the Chott el Jerid in Tunisia - in the North- down to the mega-lake of Chad...and even beyond, when the drainage of the Mighty Congo went eastwards, to the Rift Lakes of Victoria and Tanganyika...there was situated the city of Atlantis...and its destruction came with the Great Drying and plate tectonics within the Rift Valley.

The lady of this poem and I live in the magic time to come - or the time past, when the Sahara is green, and mankind is at peace. We interrelate with the present, and she cannot believe the drought that has overtaken her land in the past, which is our present.

stanza 1:  I sense a wondeful scent
stanza 2:  the waters of Africa are drying, and are ancient as hieroglyphs...gone like Alexandria's library
stanza 3:  animals are disappearing...yet I remember Her.
stanza 4:  within an oasis, my passion bursts out...
stanza 5:  a mirage of flags reminds me of Her, and I run, for the flag is her dress drying in the wind.
stanza 6:  I arrive and She asks me where I'd been...
stanza 7:  She tells me the disappearance of the waters is the mirage
stanza 8:  She tells me to look out the window and see for myself...
stanza 9:  Rain Storm!

Fast Day 137 January 14 {Walk Like an Egyptian}

Nut, the sky goddess, and Geb, the god of the earth

from the tomb of Heru em Horeb

Walk Like an Egyptian

Like Egypt's gods of earth and heaven,
the sky sits on my face today...
while I sit on the concrete stoop out front
and buzz to the sun going
around the girdle of her hips.
like sixty!

Like the music of a pantheon,
I plunge into a mystery
where the nude girl plays acoustic guitar,
and ties me to the bed with
the smoky rings of incense from
Kashmeer.

We go in, and climb the booming,
throbbing bass of footprints worn deep:
crevasses in the glacial wooden stairs;
like kneelers from a bankrupt church;
wish I was again outside,
dreaming.

I'll fly away in the morning,
when the patchwork quilt, sewn by hand
from the liquid smells of love's acrobat
stifles me with succubal heat:
I'll fly and leave my jeans behind,
like TV.

-----
note:
I originally had an unfinished poem scheduled up by mistake; I removed it and put this in.

added 01/26/2010
someone asked that I clarify a bit of imagery: stanza 3, when "we go in", we are climbing old, old wooden stairs which have deep impressions in them left by thousands of footfalls over the years...deep as cravasses in slowly moving glaciers...glaciers which now recede and disappear.

Fast Day 124 October 17 2009 {Venus Rising in Aspen Grove}

Venus Rising in Aspen Grove

We took the road to Aspen Grove,
and turned off where the interstate ends:
where the funds ran out
or where the vision stopped
like the Cinema Palace when
the projectionist fell asleep.

The earth and sky come together
here, as close as spit -
and the misty net of moisture
cools the fevered lands
where sticks and kindling
once were houses.

Inside the brims of our white hats
we are circumpolar stars
in a time lapse photograph;
we cut through heaven
like quantum mandoline
picking a steel guitar.

Wild trail, ocean trail:
prison of the morning sun;
warden of the misty glen,
saving all time's elements together
for Venus to rise up again
before we Hummer home.

Fast Day 57 July 4 2008 {Coyote Sat By The Coleman Flame...}

Coyote sat by the Coleman flame,
thinking small bird, small animal;
AH, hunger is...snap at mosquito!...
so horrible, so beautiful!

Coyote saw footprints hours ago;
footprints of saint coyote;
footprints leading off the world
"like all the sweetmeats of my hope..."

Three Tuesdays for the holy coyote,
yet this famished one could not sing
a christmas carol nor talk til dawn
with sandy words in his mouth.

Three the nations and three the kings,
three days dead and hungry;
"tres milagros de ma vida", coyote thinks
hoping to break his fast.

Coyote sat by an open window,
and silently wished for fat,
knowing the prey as he knows himself...
Dawn! hits the optic nerve...

Fast Day 52 May 30 2008 {Ancient Stories}

Ancient Stories

A tale told in eternity,
more ancient than any existing thing;
and in it there was every being, either for
a purpose wise,
or the beauty that they bring.

The earth had donned its robe of green
with sleeves weighed down with bowers,
and everywhere was thought of you,
...your princess head...
tiara bound with flowers.

Fast Day 49 May 10, 2008 {Sibylline Mothers' Day 2008}

The Delphic Sibyl by Michelangelo

Mothers' Day 2008
Sibylline

A wary eye, a link between
the Rembrandt past and now;
sunlit day to th'uncertain dark
mirror of misty future;
prophesy the sibylls.

the eye blinks and she moves
from manticore to mother,
and crosses the wide stars' gulf
on galactic stepping stones
spilling ink upon her books
to save her lovely kids.

Kids of solo Artem
or Apollo's children;
a disturbance in the force,
a magnetic variation,
compass heart bears true
ensuring love's direction.

A glass bridge between
heaven and the earth;
mother daughter link
of gold enwraps our lives
in gilded boxes chocolate
and mystery cream cores.


--

Notes:
1) again, here we use manticore as an amalgam of mantis + kore, meaning a young prophetess.
2) the action is: some force threatens the children of the sibyll, and she speeds from light years away across the galaxies to save them. This is the mother's love - the gamma burst of affection and nurture.

Fast Day 29 December 21, 2007 {Creation Tale}

Creation Tale


Notes on the poem:
1)Yggdrasil is the great tree from Norse Mythology, Mazdah is light and fire from the Persian.
2)"Kukeon" is a drink or food of ancient Greece which Demeter is mentioned to have drunk while in exile here or there. Heracleitus asserts that the Universe is layered just as is the kukeon which segregates when not stirred.It has been likened to a fondue. Fondue has been attested to have come from Vaudois, Switzerland in testimony from 70 or 80 years ago, before the dish's fame spread.

Demeter, great Mother in Olympus’ kitchen:
the great and continuous stirrer at the stove,
whose wood is Yggdrasil
whose fire is Mazdah.
Great dame of the world falls asleep and ceases the endless
Whirlpool of her wooden spoon which comes to rest
like Noah’s ark forgotten
upon a snowy mount.
The Kukeon on the stove begins slowly to separate,
Slowly at first, then more rapidly it layers;
kukeon like Vaudois fondue,
a dish from heaven:
Dionysos good red wine and Demeter’s own barley,
mixed with divinely grated cheese , white cheese,
made from the milk of a lionness;
a cheese whole and unbroken and
eternal as the albined Moon.

As she slept the fondue spread wide;
From Demeter’s pot spilled out the Earth
the mountains and the sea;
and the inhabitants thereof.
Out spilled the four rivers of Eden and
Its garden filled with cautionary blooms:
the poppies first,
whose blood gives dreams.
Then the lilacs and lavender and roses
Lastly fell the marigolds and lowly vetch
which actually tricked
our mother Eve to sin.
From the bottom of Demeter’s kettle came
Weighty the sandals of beauty, sandals of freedom,
great running sandals far ,
filled with thee outstanding!

(Homer wished for 2 voices to sing
of thee!)

Kore, or Persephone - the daughter of Demeter, sitting as Queen with Hades, king of the underworld.

Note that the symbols are associated with life and growth. Also note how much the chair upon which they sit resembles Egyptian chairs. This one reminds me of Tutankhamun's chair.